#146 Blake Cook - America's Scapegoats: The 365-Day Service That Never Stops

Blake Cook is a former U. S. Army infantryman (11 Bravo) who deployed to Afghanistan in 2012, where his bravery and sacrifice earned him the Purple Heart. Following his military career, Blake shifted to law enforcement with the Fayetteville Police Department in North Carolina, dedicating most of his eight-year tenure to the SWAT team. There, he developed expertise in high-pressure tactical operations and emergency response. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://helixsleep.com/srs https://shopify.com/srs https://bunkr.life - USE CODE "SRS" https://blackbuffalo.com https://ShawnLikesGold.com | 855-936-GOLD #goldcopartner Blake Cook Links: Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/blakecookactual Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/blakenicole.cook LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/blake-cook Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram | Download Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig.

• 0:03Speaker 01

  On October 2nd.

• 0:04Speaker 00

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 0:16Speaker 02

  What would happen if I stopped moving? You stall, you freeze in there, that's what.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 0:24Speaker 02

  I'm not the first then.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not admitted without parent.

• 0:30Speaker 03

  There is so much NFL on ESPN right now. Monday Night Football, plus pregame and postgame. NFL Live, NFL Primetime. Everything you need to stay on top of every game, every week. Unbelievable. And now, NFL Network is on the ESPN app. More football, more coverage, more ways to watch. Football's on, all season long, on ESPN and streaming on the ESPN app.

• 1:06Shawn Ryan?

  Blake Cook, welcome to the show, man. Thanks for having me, Sean. It's an honor to be here. It's an honor to have you. Yeah, thank you. So we met through Kyle. Yep. Kyle Morgan. Awesome. One of my favorite guests ever on this show. An only human. And he is, man, he is. And he connected with us, and I know you guys are working together. Yep. And I'm just really thankful that he made that connection, because I've been looking forward to this interview since we spoke, so. Appreciate it. So, welcome to the show. But, so, I want to do a, just a full-blown life story with you, and I know you have a lot to say to the law enforcement community especially.

• 1:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yep. I think a lot of those guys, the ones that are left anyways,

• 1:58Shawn Ryan?

  are going through some tough times with everything that's changing. And, man, it's just a shame what has happened over the past, what? Four or five years in law enforcement? Is that when it started? 2020. Defund the Police movement? Defund the Police, the, after the George Floyd incident is when.

• 2:25Speaker 05

  It just, it just spiraled downhill.

• 2:29Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that's uh, well, people are feeling it. People are seeing it. This is what happens when you shit on the cops. I mean.

• 2:39Speaker 05

  Crime is up nationwide.

• 2:40Shawn Ryan?

  It's crazy. I mean, I see these, I see these videos in, where is it? San Francisco where people are just looting.

• 2:47Speaker 05

  That's mind blowing.

• 2:48Shawn Ryan?

  They're losing, they're looting the department stores, Apple store. I mean, I've seen reels of them just walking in Apple stores and just.

• 2:57Speaker 05

  Jewelry stores, smashing glass and then just leaving.

• 3:01Shawn Ryan?

  It's crazy.

• 3:02Speaker 05

  That's not, somebody has to pay for that.

• 3:03Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:05Speaker 05

  I would be, I'd be infuriated if I was a owner of a store in one of those cities.

• 3:10Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, what do you even do as a cop? Honest question. What do you do as a law enforcement officer when that's happening?

• 3:15Speaker 05

  I feel so sorry, yeah.

• 3:17Shawn Ryan?

  If you try to, if you try to do anything, they're gonna send you to jail for enforcing the law.

• 3:21Speaker 05

  It's a, I feel so sorry for people, for law enforcement officers in those areas. Because, you know, God forbid, I had this conversation. Those guys, their job is to escape by any means necessary. They're very brave and they're bold. They have no respect. They're broad daylight smashing glass, grabbing thousands of dollars of merchandise and then leaving. We show up, what are we supposed to do? Ask them nicely?

• 3:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:52Speaker 05

  No, we have to chase them. We have to go hands on with them. And if they fight us and we have to use force, now the, the mayor or the, the governor, God forbid, or the police chief, they're gonna say, well, why didn't you let them go? Was the, is that a hill you wanna die on? Yeah, it is. Because you know what? I was hired to enforce the law, not different laws that you want me to enforce. I was hired and took a oath. To do my duty and to protect the laws and to protect innocent folks who are trying to make a living. Yes, did they physically harm anybody?

• 4:36Speaker 05

  No, but that store owner has to come out of pocket for that. You know, that hurts that family. That hurts the employees' families. They're not gonna get paid. Maybe they get laid off because of it. Maybe the store shuts down. It has a domino effect. Yes, they didn't hurt nobody physically, but somebody has to deal with that. How about the PTSD they just caused those people inside of there? They thought that they could have died. I mean, they're getting robbed.

• 5:03Shawn Ryan?

  That is a good point.

• 5:04Speaker 05

  Our job as law enforcement officers is absolutely, I'm gonna chase you down and you're going to jail. But unfortunately, those cops, this is their career too. This is how they feed their family. A lot of cops are not gonna go, if they don't have the backing, man, they're gonna sit there and watch it happen.

• 5:25Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I can't blame them. I mean-

• 5:30Speaker 05

  It puts food on their, on their table.

• 5:31Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, some of these, some, I, here's another question. I mean, a lot of, there was a lot of people on the band, on the bandwagon for defunding the police.

• 5:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:46Shawn Ryan?

  A ton of them. You know, now they're having to live in this shit. I mean, do you, do you feel bad for them? You don't have to answer-

• 5:59Speaker 05

  No, I don't feel bad for them. You know, it's, it's not fair to judge all of us off of one individual's actions. Let's take ownership that that man was also a criminal. Now, I don't-

• 6:16Speaker 05

  Believe that a knee should have been in his back. He's in handcuffs. You could have put hands on the shoulders. There's, there's three of you there. Somebody grab his feet. Somebody grab his shoulders until we can get a wrap to put him in. There's way better ways of handle that situation. But we all got judged based off of one police officer's action. Law enforcement officers were killed during those riots. Uh huh. People are more, still mourning their, their, their husbands and wives that were killed. Based off another person's actions and because you went out and said, defund the police. I think it's, I think it went national that the, most of the big movements of um, the uh, uh, BLM like spent the money that was donated to them on like houses and cars like. Yeah. They don't care about their people. I know.

• 7:00Speaker 05

  Now you're burning your own city down. That's hilarious. It's like, what are you doing? And, and, but I guess if you put it in a perspective as, police officers are like commercial airline pilots. You can't have a bad pilot. Cause if you have a bad pilot and he crashes and kills a bunch of people, people are gonna be like, well, those guys aren't trained at that airline. Yeah. You know, we're not gonna fly that airline no more. We can't have bad cops. And you know how you stop that? Is when good cops, whether you're young or not, you step up and you stop it immediately. You be brave and you be bold. And you stand for what you believe in, and that is doing the right thing. That's how you stop that. If I would have been there,

• 7:43Speaker 05

  I would ask him to get his knee off his back. And if he refused, I would have jerked him off of him and told him to just stand by the car. Somebody should have done that, but nobody did. Nobody was bold and brave. So now, four years later, now look at us. Crime is through the roof, murders throughout the country, robberies. Man, I'm gonna tell you something. Everybody shouldn't own a gun. My fastest response time as a police officer was like seven minutes. And now that we live in a time where criminals are braver than law enforcement officers? It's scary, man. It is. I carry, that's why I carry everywhere I go.

• 8:22Shawn Ryan?

  Me too, me too. I'm very thankful, though, for this town, though. Franklin, Williamson County. They do not fuck around here.

• 8:31Speaker 05

  Hell, I like this place, man. Did a little history last night laying in the bed, trying not to think about all the episode and all that, and uh, this is a very historical place.

• 8:39Shawn Ryan?

  Oh yeah.

• 8:40Speaker 05

  It's awesome.

• 8:41Shawn Ryan?

  Front lines of the Civil War, right there.

• 8:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:43Shawn Ryan?

  There's a Chick-fil-A down the road, pretty new. And when they broke ground there, they found the remains of like 12 soldiers from the Civil War.

• 8:53Speaker 05

  I love American history. I was reading and there was that old plantation house here that still has blood stains.

• 8:58Shawn Ryan?

  Oh yeah.

• 8:59Speaker 05

  On the floors from Confederate soldiers, because I guess they had turned it into a hospital. Man, that's so cool.

• 9:05Shawn Ryan?

  Lot of history here. But alright Blake, let's

• 9:08Speaker 05

  Let's do it.

• 9:09Shawn Ryan?

  Let's dive in. So, everybody gets an intro here. So Blake Cook.

• 9:15Speaker 05

  Can we start a prayer?

• 9:16Shawn Ryan?

  Would you like to start with the prayer?

• 9:17Speaker 05

  I would like to start with a prayer.

• 9:18Shawn Ryan?

  Let's do it.

• 9:19Speaker 05

  Dear Heavenly Father, God, I ask you, Lord, to be with us during this interview. Lord, I ask that um, you speak through me to whoever needs to receive this. God, I give you thanks for bringing Sean into my life. I give you thanks for allowing him and giving him this platform to use for the good.

• 9:43Speaker 05

  God, I'm so grateful for you.

• 9:47Speaker 05

  There's a song that says that evil, that the devil tries to bring evil, but you turn it for good. And I'm, I'm beyond blessed. Thank you, Lord, for everything you do for us. Lord, we give you the honor, the praise, the glory, and the love forever. Amen.

• 10:06Shawn Ryan?

  I would just like to add that I pray that this message that Blake is about to share with us goes exactly where it needs to go. I hope it is full of positivity for the current and future law enforcement officers that are about to serve and are serving in the United States and all across the world. Amen.

• 10:31Speaker 05

  Amen.

• 10:34Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you for that.

• 10:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 10:35Shawn Ryan?

  I feel good.

• 10:36Speaker 05

  Gotta give him the glory, man, because I'm telling you something. I'm not, I don't feel deserving of this, but I'm here because he wants me to be here.

• 10:45Shawn Ryan?

  Well, you do deserve it, man.

• 10:46Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 10:47Shawn Ryan?

  I hope you start thinking about that with everything you do. I, I think. I think there are a lot of people that never achieve what they want to achieve because they don't feel that they deserve it. And just knowing the little bit that I do know about you from, from reviewing the outline and digging into your background, you deserve every piece of good that's coming to you.

• 11:15Speaker 05

  Appreciate that.

• 11:16Shawn Ryan?

  So, and I'm sure that, uh, Jesus would say the same thing.

• 11:23Speaker 05

  Yeah. Jesus shows wild, wild man. It is true.

• 11:28Shawn Ryan?

  Blake Cook. Four years as Army Infantry in the 82nd Airborne Division. You are a Purple Heart recipient for an IED explosion in Afghanistan. You are a former gun, gang, and cartel detective and a SWAT team member in Fayetteville, North Carolina. You have attempted suicide more than once. You're a follower of Jesus Christ and recently baptized in 2023. Congratulations.

• 11:57Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 11:59Shawn Ryan?

  You are one year sober from alcohol. Congratulations. You received the 2018 Gang Unit of the Year Award. You are the recipient of the 2023 Investigative Achievement Award issued by the United States Attorney's Office. You are currently the LE Director of Operations and Lead CQB Instructor at Blue Varying Solutions. And you've been married for 12 and a half years and the father of one son who's 16 years old.

• 12:30Speaker 05

  It's me.

• 12:31Shawn Ryan?

  Quite the, quite the intro. How did you meet Kyle?

• 12:36Speaker 05

  Man, um, let's save that.

• 12:40Shawn Ryan?

  You want to save that?

• 12:41Speaker 05

  Let's save that.

• 12:42Shawn Ryan?

  All right.

• 12:42Speaker 05

  It's power because it's, um, it's a testimony, man, of, of the power that, um...

• 12:51Speaker 05

  Of God. I wanna, let's save that.

• 12:55Shawn Ryan?

  We'll save it. We'll save it.

• 12:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:58Shawn Ryan?

  So, I have a Patreon. I know you and Kyle do too, over a blue bearing, so everybody-

• 13:04Speaker 05

  I'm subscribed to your Patreon.

• 13:06Shawn Ryan?

  Go check that out. But, uh, we ask, so our Patreons, they've been with us forever. They're our top supporters. Without them, I wouldn't be sitting here, and, uh, neither would you be.

• 13:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 13:18Shawn Ryan?

  So, one of the things I do is I give them the opportunity to ask each guest a question. So, this is gonna be a heavy interview, so we pick something a little lighter.

• 13:30Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 13:30Shawn Ryan?

  Uh, this is from Luke. What is the most embarrassing thing that happened to you during your law enforcement career?

• 13:37Speaker 05

  Oh, dude. Oh, man. Uh, I have a good one for that one. Did a search warrant once. I own a gang house. It's a non-traditional gang, which means it wasn't a gang that was, uh, you know, it's like a neighborhood clique, right? Uh, the guy that we were going after, he was distributing stolen guns from soldiers to, to all the little hoodlums. So, we went and did a search warrant. Mom, I mean, just a horrible area in Fayetteville called Merkison Road. Um, so we go there, we execute the search warrant, the gang unit, not, not the tact team. And we're searching through everything, and that morning, my bungee on my radio pouch had broken. And I was like, ah, you know, whatever. It'll, it'll be fine.

• 14:20Speaker 05

  So, uh, we're about to wrap up. I'm searching a closet, and I bend down to grab something. And, uh, I guess it had fallen off. And, uh, I didn't know how it turned off. I'm in the house. And, uh, so, I'm, uh, we wrap up, we leave.

• 14:41Speaker 05

  Taking the evidence to, uh, to, to the station. And I'm driving down Merkison Road. And man, I hear, uh-

• 14:52Speaker 05

  Hey, Mr. Policeman. You left your walkie talkie in my house. And I'm like, I'm like, oh, man. Somebody's in trouble. What an idiot. What an idiot. I'm like, oh, man, somebody's about to be in a lot of trouble. And she is just on it. Next thing I know, both of my cell phones, my personal and my work number is ringing. I answer it. It's my supervisor and he's like, hey, man, hey, man, hey, check, check, see if you got your radio. I'm like, hey, dude, I got my radio, bro. I'm like, I got, I got my radio. Oh, shit. And he's like, no, no, for real, get hands on. I'm like, all right. So I'm driving, I'm feeling it, pull my vest up. I don't see it. My heart drops in my stomach. So I turn around, I pull over, I look, can't find it.

• 15:34Speaker 05

  I'm like, hey, that's my radio. And I whip that car around. And I am, I am blue license irons to this house. Cause she is on it. She is, she is talking shit. She is, she is just solid. Cause I mean, this is, this is not like a channel just for us. This is a channel for Oh, shit. That district. She's on the radio. She's on my radio that I dropped. My police radio. Oh, shit. I thought you meant this is the station calling you. No, no, no. On your cell phone. So she found my radio after we left the search warrant and turned it on. And was now was on that district station. Like dispatchers are trying to dispatch officers to calls. They can't because she's on it.

• 16:18Speaker 05

  Could you hear it in the car? I had an in-car radio. Oh, shit. That's why I started laughing. I was like, what an idiot. Somebody's in trouble. And then I whip that thing around. By the time I get back to the house, the whole hood's out there. Everybody. Man, I get out the car. She's holding that radio by the antenna. She goes, she goes.

• 16:45Speaker 05

  Piggy, piggy, piggy, piggy. Piggy, piggy, piggy, piggy. Sean, I felt this big. My tattoos didn't matter. My beard didn't matter. My long hair didn't matter. Nothing mattered. I was so humiliated. Had to walk over and was like, "Sorry about that." Got my radio, got back in my car. But man, I had, I told everybody the story. Every day, I would have Miss Piggy. I would take it down the next morning. It would go right back on my desk. It was so embarrassing. Because I mean, you're talking a channel for that district. Not just a channel for our unit, but for that district.

• 17:29Speaker 05

  So everybody, police chief, everybody in my chain of command, all the patrol officers who look up to us. I mean, it is what it is. I did it to it. You know, thank God I didn't get punished. Because they realized that I was humiliated. Because when I got out, I had to turn my body camera on. To make sure they didn't lie on me. So the whole interaction was on cam. The whole Miss Piggy, piggy, piggy.

• 17:53Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man.

• 17:54Speaker 05

  Everything. So they're like, "Man, we're not going to write you up for this one. We feel like that you're..." I'm like, "Hey, man, thanks. Yep, I'm really humiliated. And I'm sure I'm never going to live this down."

• 18:05Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 18:05Speaker 05

  But yeah, that's it, man. That's the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to me.

• 18:09Shawn Ryan?

  That's a good one.

• 18:10Speaker 05

  It was awful.

• 18:10Shawn Ryan?

  That's a good one.

• 18:11Speaker 05

  It was awful.

• 18:11Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, wow. Well, hey, before we dive in here, one last thing. Everybody gets a gift on the show. Any guesses?

• 18:24Speaker 05

  Gummy bears.

• 18:24Shawn Ryan?

  Man, I was hoping you wouldn't mess that one up.

• 18:27Speaker 05

  Man, I watch the episodes. Oh, these are awesome.

• 18:30Shawn Ryan?

  There they are. Legal in all 50 states still.

• 18:35Shawn Ryan?

  Probably shouldn't be with all the, uh, sugar and shit in there, but...

• 18:38Speaker 05

  (laugh) Sorry.

• 18:40Shawn Ryan?

  But hey, they taste amazing.

• 18:41Speaker 05

  I love gummy bears, man.

• 18:43Shawn Ryan?

  Cool. Yeah.

• 18:45Speaker 05

  Uh, thank you for that.

• 18:46Shawn Ryan?

  All right. All right, here's where it starts getting heavy. From here on out, but, uh, we'll take any humor. But, um, yeah, so, once again, Blake, we want to do a life story, so we always start at the very beginning. Where'd you grow up?

• 19:03Speaker 06

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 19:32Speaker 00

  Mr. President, my company tore me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  Digger got us into this mess. And Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 19:49Speaker 02

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stop, you freeze to death, that's what...

• 19:53Speaker 01

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  I'm not the first nanny.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a middle without parent.

• 20:03Speaker 05

  I grew up in a small town in West Virginia called Pombal, West Virginia. Um, thousand people max in my hometown, 18,000 in the county. So, uh, real small town. Um, everybody knew everybody. Uh, you know, the, you start, um, daycare with the same people that you graduate with. So, you know, for, for 13, 14 years, it's the same friends. It's the same people every day. Um, even in the summer, it's, we all lived next to each other. So it was a, it was, it was, it was a cool place to grow up. Windows open, doors open, ride your bikes wherever till whenever. You know, we didn't have crime, you know, just, just rednecks, you know?

• 20:46Speaker 05

  So it was a, it was a great place to grow up. Um, I grew up in a split house. You know, the, the only memory that I have of my mom and dad ever together. Uh, my mom was trying to leave and, uh, my dad was punching a hole in the wall, screaming and yelling. It's the only memory I have of them together. So they got a divorce when I was young, you know, three or four. And um, my dad built a house right next door. Right beside my mom. And um.

• 21:19Speaker 05

  That was kind of cool. Why'd they get divorced? Uh, my dad cheated. Yeah, so my mom had a lot of hatred towards him, but she ultimately left him because he was a cheater. He cheated on her, so. Were you close with both? I am, growing up, yeah, I was close with both. Um, my mom was phenomenal, man. Um. To this day, I still wish her Happy Father's Day. She did her best. She was young. She was. I think maybe twenty-one, twenty when she had us. I remember she'd take me to college with her, to community college, so she could get her degree. I remember, the only memory I have of it was. Your mom would take you to community college? Yeah. So that she could get her degree? She'd get her degree. And um.

• 22:05Speaker 05

  Brothers and sisters? I have a brother, I have an older brother. Um.

• 22:10Speaker 05

  He's uh, four years older than me. Um. I love him more than anything. He was uh, he's always protected me. Always. We're complete different. He's well-dressed, skinnier little fella, he's an attorney. Ah, here I am, looking like a convicted felon, but you know, ultimately, man, we, we, at the core, we're the same, we're the same person. He's, even to this day, he's uh, he still looks out for me. He's um, one of my biggest role models. So he's a phenomenal father, he's a great husband, he's just a great human, so. I have um, a half-sister and a half-brother from, from my dad's uh, you know, we don't consider, I don't consider them that, they're my brother and sister. But um, when my dad got remarried.

• 22:54Speaker 05

  Um, he started another family, but. My dad built a house right next to us. It was cool as a kid, because we would, for us, right, we would just go back and forth whenever. But man, it caused a lot of um.

• 23:10Speaker 05

  Drama, you could say, cause my mom and my stepmom didn't get along. And, uh, you know, there were, there was constant arguing in the driveways. Um, I remember, and, and, you know, I would say that, that they were more of the instigators on it. You know, my dad liked to, even though that they weren't together, like my dad still pushed my mom's buttons. Um, I remember one time I was going to school and, uh,

• 23:37Speaker 05

  and my stepmom or somebody had called down to the house. My mom said something to her on the phone and, and my mom was taking us to school. And my stepmom comes running out of the house, boom, boom, boom, down the stairs. And, uh, my mom's like, she, she worked out every day. She wasn't a typical woman. She was raising two boys and she worked out every day and, and she was a social worker. So she was constantly dealing with drug addicts and stuff anyways, so she stayed fit. And, uh, she had these heels on, man. I remember my stepmom getting to the bottom of her steps and, uh, my mom just snapped her up in a headlock. I'm like a kid watching this though. At, at, at a young kid, it's, now I laugh about it, right? But as a kid, it was kinda scary, you know?

• 24:20Speaker 05

  It's kinda like, what in the hell is going on? And then my dad come down, running down the stairs, you bitch, you better let her go, you better let her go. Man, he got close to my mom, my mom stuck them heels so far in his chest, just, uh, just took the breath out of him. And then, um, then they just ended up splitting ways and trying to call the police or whatever. But, you know, it was always some type of, of, you know, if they were both in the driveway together, it was always like anxiety, like, let's just hurry up and get in the car. You know, like my mom did a very good job at protecting us from it. But it was, it was always there. And, you know, as a kid, that can be very traumatizing to, to always have that anxiety of, let's just hurry up and get in the car. I hope mom and dad don't, don't talk.

• 25:05Speaker 05

  Like, like if we were going out to the car and they were going out in the car, like it was always just like, please, like, can we just not fight? And, and my, my mom was always the bigger person when we get in the car, but it was always something, man.

• 25:19Shawn Ryan?

  Why did they not get along? Was, was, is your stepmom who your father had been with?

• 25:24Speaker 05

  Man, that's, that's, um, you know, you know, yeah, like my stepmom, my stepmom, some weird shit. My stepmom was sixteen.

• 25:38Speaker 05

  When my dad started dating her. My dad was like in his thirties.

• 25:44Speaker 05

  So, it kind of tarnished our name a little bit. And now, thinking about my older brother. My older brother is only a few years younger than her. So, there was always that. There was always that, him and her, they never got along. There was one time Father's Day. Uh, we would always go up there, my mom would, because he had, he had every other weekend. So, we'd have to go stay with him. And my mom would, would leave, maybe go on vacation with her friends or something, maybe go out of town and, and we would stay with him. And, you know.

• 26:20Speaker 05

  My brother and my stepmom would always get into an argument. I mean, hell, she was only a few years older than him. Then my dad would always take her side. My dad, my whole life, has always taken women over us. Or, uh, you know. Always put women first over his children. And he, in, in Father's Day, I'll never forget this. Uh, Father's Day, she had said something to him, told him she was gonna whoop his ass or something. And my brother was like, dude, you're like two years, you're like three years older than me, four years older than me, what are you talking about? So, my brother picked up a, a two-liter of Mountain Dew and chucked it at her. And, uh. He came over and got me and was like, hey, we're gonna stay at the house. And, uh, they ended up calling the police on him.

• 27:01Speaker 05

  And there was a, a cop at the time named Jim Hall, who came up there and put my thirteen-year-old brother in handcuffs. Put him in the back of a cop car over that. You called the police on your own son.

• 27:15Speaker 05

  Because of, of something that he did, that you caused by marrying somebody that was only two years, three years older than him. And, uh, so it was constant, like, my mom would leave, we would go up to my dad's for a few hours. And then, me and my brother would go down to the house, because it was just, it was always something. It was always something. And, my brother would cook for us. He'd take care of us. And then when, you know, my mom, we would call my mom the, the day that she was coming back home. And we'd be like, hey, mom, we just came down to the house, we know you're coming home that day. And she had no idea that we were doing that. But, it was, he was, my brother was protecting me from, from the toxic environment.

• 27:56Speaker 05

  He's always protected me.

• 27:58Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 27:59Speaker 05

  And, you know, and I'm not saying that the whole childhood with my dad was bad because that would be a lie. You know, there were great times, you know, we would have Nerf gun wars and things like that, but, you know, and he was a good dad growing up. He would play basketball. He'd teach me how to play basketball and things like that, but, you know, there was always something, right? There was always something that would, that would happen, that would ruin it. Always. And,

• 28:26Speaker 05

  and it's just, and my mom did a great job at protecting us from that, too. She tried to limit our time as much as possible, but, you know, I'm not going to sit here and beat my dad down, but, because there were good times. He ran our, our community pool and he, he would take us down for night swims and, and, I mean, there were great, great things, but as we always felt like that we were just second. Because he had started a new family. And we were just secondary. And, and that was a lot of my childhood until I became a young teenager.

• 29:02Speaker 05

  You know, he, I was, I've been playing sports since I was young, like super young, and basketball was always my thing. And, you know, we won every, every, you know, as a kid, it was cool, but we won every county championship until I was in the eighth grade. And the only games that my dad would really attend were the ones that were impossible. You know, and, and then when I got into the eighth grade, there was a, we won our county championship basketball game and there was a guy in the stands that, that had known me forever. He said, hey, why don't you come try out for football? The way you move and how physical you are, you might be a great football player.

• 29:43Speaker 05

  I was like, man, I never played football. I don't want to get hit like that. I don't know if I'm tough like that. So my mom signed me up. And I started playing football and, and my first time ever on the field, man, one of my really good buddies, Nick Rizanico came over, hit me so hard, put me off my feet, took my, took my, my breath out. He's like, hey, man, welcome to high school football. I was like, dude, I gotta get in the weight room. I gotta get good. I suck. I suck at this. I'm out of my comfort zone. And then, man, I quit baseball. They only had me at baseball. They only kept me around. I sucked at baseball. My, uh, my older brother's name's JR. His best friend, Derek Bolt, Lily. They thought it would be funny.

• 30:27Speaker 05

  Derek was like six, two, in like eleven, twelve years old. Threw a fastball, hit me right in the neck. I wouldn't stay in a batter's box ever again. I didn't want to hit. I don't want you to hit me in the neck again. I don't want nothing to do with it. They kept me around because I was fast. And they could sub me in to run bases. And so finally, my freshman year, I was like, hey, Chief, I'm not playing baseball no more. He's like, why? I was like, look, me and you both know I suck. I'm gonna work out for football. And I dedicated like a lot of time in high school for football, working out in football. I was already pretty decent in basketball. And then, man, my junior year, I started getting really good at football. Really good. And then when I started getting good and my name started getting in the paper,

• 31:10Speaker 05

  then my dad started showing up to all my games. Then he wanted to come around. And then he really wanted to come around. My junior and senior year, we won back-to-back state championships in basketball. And then he really wanted to be around. Once we won the first one, he came, the second year, he came to all the games, came to all the football games. You know, he wanted to be there now, right? That's how I always felt.

• 31:33Shawn Ryan?

  Did you feel resentment because of that?

• 31:35Speaker 05

  I did, because like, it was kind of like.

• 31:37Shawn Ryan?

  At the time or looking back?

• 31:38Speaker 05

  No, at the time, I kind of did. And I told my mom this as a kid because like, the only times I ever saw you when I played basketball in middle school, in the eighth grade, and in the eighth grade, I'm what, thirteen, right? I'm starting to see things and understand things a little more, like, why are you only at home games? Is it because you don't want to pay the two-dollar entrance at the other, at the other games? And you get in free because he was a school teacher at the school? And.

• 32:06Shawn Ryan?

  He was a school teacher?

• 32:07Speaker 05

  At Palmville Middle School.

• 32:08Shawn Ryan?

  Then married a sixteen-year-old girl.

• 32:11Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Weird. Very weird. I didn't know any of this at the time, right? But my mom, again, she hid it from us because it was embarrassing, right? We live in a small town, everybody, everybody knows, knows that. It was, it's still to this day, it's embarrassing. Now that I'm, I'm an adult and I know that that's wrong, that's not right, like, you know, there's, there's even some hatred that I have, resentment that I have towards him. For giving us that bad name because we share the same last name. You know, like, I don't want people, fathers of my friends to think, man, I'm gonna grow up sick like that.

• 32:56Speaker 05

  Because that's wrong, it's sick, it's weird. It is what it is, it's weird. We come from a small town where everybody knows everybody. So, you know, when I started understanding these things, and then he started coming around in high school, when my name started getting out there in the papers and, and colleges started coming and looking, then it's like, hey, man, like, where were you at? Like, my earlier years? Now you want to travel two hours down the road to a football game and wear a shirt with my name on it? Like, hey, bro, my mom has been to every game, and my grandfather on my mom's side, and my grandmother have been to every game since I ever played.

• 33:41Speaker 05

  My mom showed up to an AAU game one time. Her friends had us, like, a birthday thing that they had planned out for. I guess she, we didn't think we were gonna be there all day playing because we kept winning and winning and winning. She canceled her plans so I could finish that game out. Like, she's been there since day one. Like, where have you been? Oh, now, now people are starting to know who I am here. Now people are like, wow, Blake's really good at this. Because, man, I exploded with football. Like, I found a passion for it. I was a slot, I was a wide receiver, and I was a, um, cornerback. My junior year, I had like thirteen, fourteen interceptions.

• 34:25Speaker 05

  My, my senior year, I, I broke the record for Yak yards, uh, yards after catch. I had like, I don't know, a seven, eighteen hundred? Like thirteen, fourteen touchdowns? There was one game where I had four touchdowns. And that was unheard of at that time. Because you're talking 2008 where people were still trying to run the ball. Everybody then now wanted to run the spread because then Pat White, Steve Slaton, West Virginia started throwing the ball more. And now we had some really, we had some new coaches come in that were like, hey, let's throw the ball. And their, their nephew was the quarterback, he'd moved, so they were obviously gonna let him throw the football. But, man, it was like everywhere I went. Like, high school was crazy because, like, I'm gonna be honest with you, Sean, I didn't do a single bit of homework.

• 35:09Speaker 05

  I don't know if I even did classwork. I just got pushed through. As an adult, I'm like, man, that's, I wish you would have pushed me to do better.

• 35:19Shawn Ryan?

  Let's rewind for a minute.

• 35:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 35:21Shawn Ryan?

  So, did you actually tell your dad that or?

• 35:24Speaker 05

  I never told my dad that.

• 35:26Shawn Ryan?

  You never told him that? That was in your head?

• 35:28Speaker 05

  It was always in my head.

• 35:29Shawn Ryan?

  It's all those questions?

• 35:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, just, you know, because it's my dad, man, I loved him. I didn't want him to feel like I was mad or disappointed.

• 35:39Speaker 05

  I loved him, he was my dad, and like I said, my childhood all the time wasn't all the time bad.

• 35:46Speaker 05

  You know, he, he did do things that was a great father, but there were things that like, you know, I have a sixteen year old son, right? I've raised him since he was three, his dad's nonexistent. I married my wife, she had a son. And I've, I've, um, I've raised him since he was three, as my own. He is my son. You'd never be able to convince me that he's not. I would never look at him and say, hey, man, remember that time I changed your tire? Hey, man, remember that time I did this for you and did that for you and did this and that? That was what it was like. It was always, hey, man, remember that time you ran out, ran out of gas on Salzo Mountain? Or ran out of gas on Salzo Mountain, I brought you gas? Yeah, that was that, yeah, dad, thanks, thanks for being a dad.

• 36:30Shawn Ryan?

  Your dad was keeping tabs?

• 36:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 36:33Speaker 05

  He's keeping tabs, to this day, and we'll get to that, to this day, he still keeps tabs.

• 36:39Speaker 05

  And it's like, man, you're my father. What are you talking about? You're supposed to do those things. I would give my life for my son. I'd never keep a tab on it, I'd be dead, but I'd never keep a tab on that. I hope that he would never be like, oh, wow, you know, like, that's what I'm supposed to do. And that's what I'm raising him as, is, hey, man, when you have a son or a daughter, you do things for them out of love. You'd never expect a thank you, ever. And so a lot of my childhood was, he would do something great for us, but we would be reminded.

• 37:14Speaker 05

  Like, okay, my mom never did that.

• 37:18Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think, why do you think he did that?

• 37:24Speaker 05

  I think he, I think he just wanted us.

• 37:29Speaker 05

  You know, I really think, and this is something I've dived into in my adult life is.

• 37:36Speaker 05

  I felt like he was always trying to compete with my mother.

• 37:41Speaker 05

  Cause she, she always did right by us. And but what he doesn't know is we never, we weren't thanking her either.

• 37:50Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think maybe he was dealing with his own guilt?

• 37:54Speaker 05

  I do.

• 37:56Shawn Ryan?

  He felt extremely.

• 37:57Speaker 05

  I've had a conversation later on in my adult life and he says he regrets cheating on my mom. And, uh, you know, I do, I feel like that he, he, he has his own demons. That he, uh, deals with, and I think that it is his guilt. Yeah, you did the right things, but ultimately I think at that age, he, he just wanted us to tell him how great he was. Uh, uh, maybe he didn't feel like he was great.

• 38:23Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I'm sure he.

• 38:27Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, all the clues are there. I mean, he built a house.

• 38:31Speaker 05

  He wanted to be in our life. He built a nice house. He did his best. He. He, you know, he, he, he worked as a manager at a swimming pool in the summertime. And he took us on vacation every summer to Myrtle Beach with that money, every summer. So he, he tried. It's just he always wanted the thank you. That we never gave him.

• 38:58Speaker 05

  I mean, I'm a kid, you know, like I have one parent who. Gives me the world with. With not ever thinking about it and I have another parent who has tried. And, and we're not given the thank you to.

• 39:10Shawn Ryan?

  And keeping tabs.

• 39:11Speaker 05

  He's keeping tabs. One's not, one is. You know, what am I supposed to do? My, I don't know. My mom doesn't keep tabs, but he is obviously keeping tabs. We're beyond grateful, right? I had a decent childhood, I'm not gonna say I didn't, but it was always like, he's always trying to compete with my mom. And my mom took us on vacations every year. And, you know, to like Mexico and Cancun and Disney World and it was always like he was trying to compete. My mom never like shoved it in his face, but he would always shove it back. Like, oh, I pay child support, uh, you know, I take the kids on a vacation every summer, like,

• 39:54Speaker 05

  it was always something like that, you know, it was always, it was always, you know, now that I'm older, I'm like, man, maybe I should have said thank you more. I don't know, I was a kid. I didn't know any better, I just thought dads do.

• 40:08Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 40:13Shawn Ryan?

  What's your relationship like with him now?

• 40:18Speaker 05

  Um.

• 40:21Speaker 05

  He's dying of drugs.

• 40:24Speaker 05

  I've spent my whole adult life fighting drugs and I'm losing my dad to it. Um, it's a non-existent relationship. I broke it off.

• 40:35Shawn Ryan?

  What kind of drugs?

• 40:36Speaker 05

  Heroin, meth, fentanyl, cocaine, delolites. Anything that's a drug that will get you high.

• 40:45Shawn Ryan?

  How did that happen?

• 40:46Speaker 05

  Um, when I was 14, he fell off a ladder.

• 40:51Speaker 05

  20, 30 foot ladder, changing a light bulb, like a floodlight. And, um, went to a doctor in a town in our county called Oceana. It's a nickname, Oxyana. He had a doctor who was prescribing OxyContin's like crazy. I guess he's in federal prison now, but he got addicted to OxyContin's. Wait, he got addicted to fentanyl patches for his back. Then it went to OxyContin's.

• 41:20Speaker 05

  So, and I think my dad's always fought depression too. A lot of times as kids, he would, he'd sleep all day while we were with him. We figured maybe he's just tired, right? He was a volunteer firefighter, he'd get caught out in the middle of the night, all that and, uh,

• 41:36Speaker 05

  but now that I'm older, I know what depression is. He definitely had depression. I think he battled his own demons every day.

• 41:45Speaker 05

  And ultimately, they got the best of him.

• 41:53Shawn Ryan?

  You know, you talk a lot about breakfast this morning, but a great prayer.

• 42:02Shawn Ryan?

  I tell you, you're a Christian with very strong faith.

• 42:10Shawn Ryan?

  Have you ever tried forgiveness?

• 42:13Speaker 05

  I have.

• 42:15Speaker 05

  So.

• 42:20Speaker 05

  Attempted to save his life.

• 42:24Speaker 05

  Medical, when I got out of law enforcement. So I found out that he was on drugs, right? So.

• 42:31Speaker 05

  Thanksgiving twenty eight, twenty eighteen.

• 42:36Speaker 05

  We're back home, we're in West Virginia, I'm at my mom's house. And my mom lives in a whole nother city, whole nother county now at this point, right? She moved to a bigger town of Beckley, West Virginia, it's got like thirty thousand people in it. So right outside of Charleston, West Virginia, about thirty minutes away. She don't even live near him anymore.

• 42:54Speaker 05

  So she got remarried and all that in my adult life, but.

• 43:01Speaker 05

  We went to visit him, me and my brother. My brother has a lot of resentment towards him. He's not, he's not alive in my brother's mind. My brother completely shut him off.

• 43:13Speaker 05

  My brother had warned me several times, my older brother, several times to be careful. And. My brother was mad that he was on drugs.

• 43:26Shawn Ryan?

  Be careful in what way?

• 43:28Speaker 05

  Like, he's toxic.

• 43:31Shawn Ryan?

  Manipulation?

• 43:32Speaker 05

  Manipulation. He's, he's going to put women in front of you, like, be careful with him.

• 43:38Shawn Ryan?

  What do you mean he's gonna put women in front of?

• 43:40Speaker 05

  Like, if I have an argument with my stepmom, remember, he had an argument with my stepmom at twelve years old, thirteen, and was put in handcuffs. My dad called the police on him and had a police officer put him in handcuffs. So I think my brother's always had resentment for that. It's terrifying at thirteen years old. Hell, it's terrifying at nine, watching your brother get arrested by, by your dad.

• 44:07Speaker 05

  That was traumatizing. And then finally, my mom rushed home and fixed the issue. But so my brother's always had some sort of resentment towards him. So my brother's like, we had found, we had heard that my dad got on drugs, like hard drugs in 2018. Cause he was, well, he was on drugs. Met this chick, got on drugs. Got away from this chick and got sober. 2016, 2017. My younger sister was in high school. So, and her mother, my stepmom, that we had the issues with, had cheated on my dad and left my dad. So my dad was trying to raise this high school girl on his own.

• 44:52Speaker 05

  He did a good job, but after she graduated, he met this other lady named Melissa. And Melissa comes from trash. She was an addict. And she got him hooked back on drugs. So my brother wanted to drive down to confront him about all this. See if he actually is on drugs. This is on Black Friday, day after Thanksgiving. So me and my brother, we drive down. Knock on the door, Melissa answers. She's high as a kite. Like, hey, my brother says, hey, is Jim here? That's my dad's name. She's like, yeah, let me go get him. He's downstairs sleeping. Like at seven o'clock, like in the afternoon.

• 45:37Speaker 05

  Like, what do you mean, he's sleeping? Whatever, he's old. Maybe he went to bed. He comes up the stairs. And it's the first time in my life I've ever seen my dad. So my dad didn't drink when we grew up. And I hardly ever heard him cuss. I will say that.

• 45:53Speaker 05

  But for the first time in my life, I saw my dad physically, but I didn't know who my dad was. He was so high.

• 46:09Speaker 05

  And he invited us in and my brother's like, hey, you're high right now. What are you talking about? And they get into a heated discussion. My dad gets livid. Somebody that is on drugs, whether, I think at the time it was just, um, I think cocaine and oxycodones is all he was on at that time. Cause he, he, he was on four DUIs for, um, driving while impaired from, um, not alcohol, but, but narcotics. So he'd already been arrested for like three or four DUIs for this. So we were, my brother was attempting to try to help him, but it went, went south. My dad filled with rage and he took off running back downstairs and I knew that's where he kept

• 46:53Speaker 05

  his revolver. Immediately grabbed my brother and we ran out the house, ran down the stairs, it's like 15 stairs. I run in my truck, open my door, I go to get my gun out. I'm like, he's gonna kill us. He is going to kill us. And, uh, man, he comes running out and I never saw the gun. I don't think I saw the gun. Everything was happening so fast. But the rage that he had, Sean, I, I went out that driveway at probably 50, 60 miles an hour. I thought he was gonna kill us. I thought he was gonna kill us. And then the whole 30, 40 minute drive home, um, remember brother didn't talk. Got back to my mom's house and everybody was already in bed at this point.

• 47:36Speaker 05

  And, man, I drank all night. I cried my eyes out. I went on his Facebook page, found photos of when we were younger. I just lost it. I had a mental breakdown. That's the first time I ever saw him high. And, uh, that was the biggest startup, that was the start of my downfall. That was it. That's what set the tone for the next several years of my life and what I was about to go through.

• 48:05Speaker 05

  So no, I, I have forgiven him once and, uh,

• 48:11Speaker 05

  I almost died from somebody else's drug addiction. I almost lost my family because somebody else's drug addiction. And I refuse to lose my family, or take my life from depression, or die from somebody else's drug addiction. I won't let it happen. I won't let it happen. That got me once. That got me twice. But never again. No, no, no, no. Your toxicity that you bring to the table, my childhood that you brought to the table, I'm not gonna let it flow into my family. I'm gonna protect my family.

• 48:48Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:49Speaker 05

  And my wife is so sweet, Sean. She, she tries and, you know, she's, because she saw my dad before he was on drugs. We got married in, uh, beginning of 2012. And we only knew each other for like 30 days. We've married almost 13 years. And we'll get to that. That's a whole, that's a whole nother story. But, you know, she has always tried to, because she's, she remembers him. Right? She remembers who Jim Cook was before drugs. I mean, and, uh, and, but now it's like, I don't even remember who that person was. I don't remember.

• 49:29Speaker 05

  I don't remember who he was because his addiction has been so bad on me that it's hard for me to even see the good anymore.

• 49:43Shawn Ryan?

  Maybe there isn't any.

• 49:45Speaker 05

  Sean, I don't think so.

• 49:48Shawn Ryan?

  You know, the only reason I was asking about forgiveness is, um, I've come to learn that it's for you, not for the person you're forgiving.

• 50:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:06Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I, um, I learned this from, I interviewed this guy Victor Marks.

• 50:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:14Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, it is without a doubt the most traumatizing childhood I have ever heard. I mean, it is. His dad made him shoot, kill a man, and shove him in a hole.

• 50:31Speaker 05

  That's horrible.

• 50:32Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. And, uh,

• 50:36Shawn Ryan?

  And that's that's how I grew up and and so he talks a lot about forgiveness. He's forgiven his dad. And um Yeah. And he called me up once. He called me. I had, back in my tactical training days, there was this well-known trainer. I won't say any names because I've forgiven him, but um

• 51:06Shawn Ryan?

  he

• 51:08Shawn Ryan?

  sued me.

• 51:11Shawn Ryan?

  And tried to take, tried to take everything. When I had not much to begin with. But

• 51:20Shawn Ryan?

  I was worried my home was gonna go. I was worried my wife was gonna go. And he just wouldn't stop with the lawsuits.

• 51:31Shawn Ryan?

  And um until we were able to prove that the whole case was a phony case and he was gonna have to repay me all of my legal fees, which completely broke me, man. And um, and uh

• 51:49Shawn Ryan?

  and so when he found that out, he quit suing me and, and whatever, this is I'm just kinda giving you the context. I didn't have the money to go back after him and continue the lawsuit, but

• 52:01Shawn Ryan?

  and so that just, honestly, that's why I left the tactical industry. I was like, you know what? Fuck this, man. I'm out. Yeah, who blames you? It's hard to trust people after that. But I carried this rage with me forever. And this, this is just like one example, but I'm telling you this because Victor Marx is who taught me forgiveness. And, and

• 52:23Shawn Ryan?

  and then I applied it to all these different aspects of my life and all these situations that I've been in with, you know, from military shit to agency shit to business stuff to friends, family. But this was the first, this was the first time I, that it actually sunk in and and the reason I'm bringing it up is I can see the rage. I can see it on you. And um I'm not

• 52:51Shawn Ryan?

  I'm not comparing stories. This is so much more insignificant than what you're talking about, but but he said, uh

• 53:02Shawn Ryan?

  He said he's friends with the person that sued me. And uh, said that they wanted me to forgive him. And I said, are you fucking calling me to ask me to forgive somebody? Because they're worried that my growth is, it's a different ballgame than it was 10 years ago. Yeah, yeah. You know? Yeah. Now. Way different playing field. They ran a whole smear campaign on me and everything and I was like, are you asking me to fucking forgive somebody who like tried to take everything from me? Smear my name, lied about my service, like, wanted to take it all. Yeah. And leave me in a fucking ditch?

• 53:48Shawn Ryan?

  Because he's worried that I'm gonna, I'm gonna do vengeance? And he said, yeah.

• 53:56Shawn Ryan?

  And I was like,

• 54:04Shawn Ryan?

  it's real hard to tell you no, knowing what you've been through. Yeah. And that you found forgiveness. And uh, I told him I would. I told him I never wanted to see him again. He wanted to talk to me. I said, we don't need to talk. I said, you can tell him I forgive him. And you can tell him that I'm not gonna do vengeance on him.

• 54:25Shawn Ryan?

  I'm above that shit. And man, just like fucking saying it to Victor. Probably felt good. Dude, it was like, cause every time that name got brought up, every time that name got brought up, it would just fucking trigger rage. Yeah. And then, and, and, in multiple people, you could, you could insert into that, oh, I hear this person's name, I feel rage. But that was the first time I learned it and it was like, it was like being let out of prison, man. Like it just, it was like, this shit doesn't bother me anymore. I dropped it. I'm never gonna talk to him again. I'm never gonna be around him again. At least if I can help it, but

• 55:11Shawn Ryan?

  it doesn't affect me anymore, man. I don't live in that prison of rage. Yeah. And I just hope that you can find that. And, and, and I am finding it, right? Because.

• 55:27Speaker 05

  If I'm gonna say that I'm a Christian, I need to act like a Christian. And, and it's hard, but

• 55:39Speaker 05

  parts of me is, is trying and

• 55:44Speaker 05

  you know, we'll get to the parts of, of

• 55:49Speaker 05

  the blah that I am, the way that I am that right now in this moment. And, and you're gonna be like, wow, I kinda understand. Because

• 56:02Speaker 05

  I, I tried so hard. And, um.

• 56:08Shawn Ryan?

  Blake, I'm not saying I don't understand.

• 56:10Speaker 05

  Oh, I know you understand, cuz you have your own trauma with it.

• 56:13Shawn Ryan?

  I just want you to

• 56:17Shawn Ryan?

  I think you're a really good person.

• 56:19Speaker 05

  I appreciate that.

• 56:19Shawn Ryan?

  And I just want you to be free. And that's the only reason I'm bringing it up.

• 56:23Speaker 05

  And, and that's what I need to work on because, uh, again, I wanna be free of somebody else's addiction.

• 56:31Speaker 05

  Cuz if I don't forgive him, then I'm, I'm, I'm just as, I'm addicted to, to hate towards him, like he's addicted to drugs. And until I can forgive him, I can let that go. You know, and you're right, man. I thought I forgave him, but I don't feel it now that I'm talking about it. I don't feel that I truly, I might have told people, yeah, I forgive him, but now that, now that I'm here in this moment and we're talking about it, cuz I don't really talk about it often. I'll be honest with you, I don't talk about it at all. I don't talk about it with my wife. My wife brings it up, I immediately go to shutdown mode. I would rather be angry and start an argument and piss her off than to, than to have her try to talk, talk about it.

• 57:18Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and the other thing is if you can take emotion out of this situation and actually look at it from a thirty thousand foot view

• 57:30Shawn Ryan?

  and just observe.

• 57:35Shawn Ryan?

  Look at what he's created for himself.

• 57:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 57:38Shawn Ryan?

  You know.

• 57:39Speaker 05

  I think a part of me is, is I just love him. And I'm, I hate that my niece doesn't get to experience a grandfather. I hate that my son doesn't get to experience, experience that. And um, to be honest with you, man, I really just miss having a dad. It's truly what it goes down to.

• 58:01Speaker 05

  It's just missing. And I've spent my whole adult career fighting evil and fighting drugs. I need to lose him to drugs.

• 58:12Speaker 05

  And that's hard. I sent out voicemails of, is when he was trying to, to, to do better. Hey, son, I just want to hear from you. I'm trying. And I just sent him a voicemail, you know? And so I have a lot of guilt for that, dude, like, I just, uh, maybe I could have done better. Maybe I failed him. Maybe he did addiction because I failed him. You know, maybe he's addicted because I wasn't there for him or I didn't say thank you. Or I didn't give him, um, what he was looking for. You know, that's, that's a tough pill to swallow. And it eats me every day.

• 58:57Speaker 05

  Because I do, man, I'm missing. He used to call me a shadow boy. There's no shadow anymore. And man, that fucking hurts.

• 59:10Speaker 05

  It hurts. I'm thirty-five years old, man, and, and the little boy inside of me still, still misses, you know? Misses his dad. When everybody else gave up, I still tried. Man, I got burned. I got burned. I almost lost everything.

• 59:32Speaker 05

  So.

• 59:35Speaker 05

  I'm trying, I really am. Maybe I need to go to therapy, you know?

• 59:39Shawn Ryan?

  Don't give up, man.

• 59:40Speaker 05

  I'm not, I'm not. I just need to take a break. And figure, uh, realize that I can't fix everything right now. You know, when I was in the gang unit, we were an easy button. Hey, man, go fix this, gang unit, fix this. I'm used to being an easy button. Fixing it right now. And, uh, but those right now's were only temporary fixes. Somebody else is gonna come in and take that guy's spot, or somebody else is gonna sell dope and guns out the house.

• 1:00:11Speaker 05

  Maybe that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to fix it right now, right? And, uh, I'm getting no results because you don't, you can't fix a, can't fix a sixty-seven-year-old man, a sixty-five-year-old man, that's been addicted to drugs for the last eight years.

• 1:00:28Shawn Ryan?

  You can't fix anything on anybody if they don't want to fix it themselves.

• 1:00:32Speaker 05

  And that's the problem, is he doesn't want it. He just doesn't want it. And I lied. I think a part, I think a part of him. And I got to experience that, right? So...

• 1:00:52Speaker 05

  Two thousand... Before I met Kyle.

• 1:00:57Speaker 05

  I was teaching on my own, I have my own company, Black Flag Solutions.

• 1:01:02Speaker 05

  Wanted to train SWAT teams, guys just didn't get the training that we had. Well, I love law enforcement, man. I love law enforcement so much, and I think the number one thing they lack is training. I was training people for free. Departments won't spend the money. My God, they'll go spend twenty thousand dollars to get new pencils that say, you know, Fayetteville Police Department. And not Fayetteville did this, it's just where I came from, but... They won't put money towards training. It's mind blowing. So I was like, I have to do something.

• 1:01:34Speaker 00

  Mr. President, my company foreme of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me.

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us out. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 1:01:50Speaker 02

  What would happen if I stopped going? You start, you freeze in there, that's what.

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:01:58Speaker 02

  I'm not the first then.

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  Digger. See the trailer online, only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R, under 17, not a minute without parent.

• 1:02:04Speaker 07

  Bonjour compadre, it's the.

• 1:02:06Speaker 02

  Priceline Negotiator.

• 1:02:08Speaker 07

  How do I negotiate so many great travel deals? My greatest gadget, the Priceline app. It's got hotel deals, flight deals, rental car deals, all of those deals in a bundle. Deals, game day deals, concert trip deals. No one deals more deals than Priceline. Hold your horses, there's more. The app lets you filter hotels by neighborhood, vibe, star level, and amenities like pools and spas and beachfronts. Wait, I'm not done. Stop cutting me off.

• 1:02:35Speaker 05

  And my wife was asking me to go do something because I was an alcoholic. So I was training in a team one day and my Aunt Judy calls me, my dad's sister. And she says, hey Blake, can I have a second? And I'm like, damn. She about to tell me my dad's dead. I've been waiting on that phone call every day. I have my phone in my hand all the time because I'm waiting on the call. I'm like, is he alive?

• 1:03:07Speaker 05

  She said, yeah, he's alive. I said, well, okay, what's going on? Why are you calling me? I'm in the middle of training. She said, he's dying.

• 1:03:16Speaker 05

  He's, he's laying in the bed at his house with Melissa, his stepmom. She's a really bad drug addict too. And she was so concerned that he's dying, that she called the police for help. Man, where I grew up, those boys don't know how to be cops. And we'll get into that. It's, they failed me.

• 1:03:39Speaker 05

  So I said, hey, I said, what do you mean? They said, well, he walked in, they saw needles and everything everywhere. I'm saying, they tried to do a.

• 1:03:48Speaker 05

  Uh, what do they call it, like a, um, like a self-check, like a hygiene check or whatever on a person? Well-being check. I said, he's on probation for hitting four cop cars on the side of the road, ha. But he's on like a probation, not in jail, but on probation. I'm like, is there needles in the house? Yeah, yeah, they said they saw needles. Okay? They need to take him to jail, get him out of the environment. Well, the, it was the police chief. There's only like three people in that apartment. Well, they say there's nothing they can do. I'm like, what are you talking about? He's a drug addict, syringes everywhere. He's on probation. It's drug paraphernalia. I don't care what it is.

• 1:04:32Speaker 05

  I don't care if it's one orange cap. Take him to jail, because if he goes to jail, they won't take him. They'll make him go to the hospital before they can intake him. So they'll force him to get medical. They're like, Blake, there's, they say there's nothing they can do. I'm livid. I'm like, what do you mean? There's nothing they can do. That's your job. You just don't know what to do is the problem. You don't know how to be a cop is the problem. So I'm like, I know he's a probation officer. So I call him up, I'm like, hey,

• 1:05:05Speaker 05

  my dad's dying, there's drug paraphernalia everywhere. The police chief went in there, saw it, nothing they can do. I'm like, can you go check on him tomorrow? He said, yeah. Went and checked on him, found all the needles, revoked his probation, took him in to his office. My dad calls me. He's like, um, I'm like, he's high as kite.

• 1:05:30Speaker 05

  I'm like, hey dad. He goes, Blake, you're gonna have to, you have to help me, they'll, so they'll listen to you. I'm like, hey man, you're going to jail.

• 1:05:37Speaker 05

  I don't wanna go to jail, I don't wanna go to jail. I'm like, hey man, you're going to jail. Like, I can't keep doing this with you. You're going to jail. So I hang his phone up. I have a breakdown. And I'm like, oh my God, Blake, if he goes to jail, then he's gonna get bare minimum care. He's gonna die.

• 1:05:59Speaker 05

  So I call, I call him back. Hey. I'm like, can he go get? I said, he's dying, he needs real medical help. Can we convince him to go to the hospital? Then he can go back on probation at, at the house or whatever. But let's see what's wrong with him. He said, yeah, we'll do that. Took him to the hospital, man, he was there two hours. They lifelined him to some hospital on Roanoke. Next day, he's having open heart surgery. He has done so much heroin and fentanyl that he has vegetation on his heart. He has what? Vegetation. What does that even mean? Mold. Because drug addicts use back, they don't use, they use faucet water with bacteria.

• 1:06:42Speaker 05

  So he had shot up so much that the bacteria in the water had went to his valve and started creating mold. That's how much heroin he was doing. Holy shit. So he had open heart surgery. He dies in surgery. They bring him back to life. They give him a second chance at life. Doctor calls me, he's like, hey, he's got like less than five percent chance to live. I'm like, cause I'd had a conversation with him. Uh, I had a conversation with him afterwards. They're like, he'll wake up, blah, blah, blah, but like, we're not sure. And he was mumbling.

• 1:07:27Speaker 05

  He's like, all I heard was cremate me and spread my ashes on the hill. The hill was, his house was built on a slope. And that was the hill, that's the hill that we played on as kids. And that's all I heard. And I was like, oh my God, he's gonna die. Like Nicole, he's gonna die. And, uh, dude, dude made a miracle to, like, he was a miracle. He woke up the next day. Infection, no infection. Vitals were good. Everything was good. So I told my wife, I said, this is my opportunity. This is January of 2023. It's my opportunity, honey, to save him. I financially can do it.

• 1:08:12Speaker 05

  I'm medically retired, I have the time. I have to go save him. So I packed some bags. Went to the hospital, walked in, didn't even know who he was. He's got no teeth. He's weighing at maybe a buck thirty. He's five, five ten, five eleven. Pale as can be. Looks like he's ninety some years old. Barely recognize him.

• 1:08:38Speaker 05

  He's talking to me and I'm talking to him and uh, man, I uh, I stayed there. I slept in my car, my truck. I slept with the hospital. I called my wife and I said, "Hey, he's agreed to let me help him."

• 1:08:55Speaker 05

  She said, "All right." Like, we have, you know, my stepmom tried to visit him. Melissa, she was kicked out of the hospital for doing heroin in the bathroom. So, I'm like, "Hey, she's got to go." She's living in his house. She's got to go.

• 1:09:13Speaker 05

  So what I did is I came up with a strategy is I created a renter's document

• 1:09:20Speaker 05

  and had my dad sign it and I paid him a dollar a month as a renter to allow me access into the house. Because if not, I'm just breaking into the house and she could call the police on me. But she can't no more because I have an actual contract signed by Jim Cook that I pay him a dollar a month for my room downstairs in the basement. So I can kick a door in, do whatever I want to to the house. I'm a renter. If I break something, I just gotta pay the landlord and that's him. Her name's not on the house. Just his.

• 1:09:52Speaker 05

  So man, I went down to this house. I was like, "Hey, here's a contract. I'm staying here." She's like, "I'm out. I'm leaving." I'm like, "Cool. That was easy."

• 1:10:02Speaker 05

  She gives me the keys. She calls some drug, the drug addict, pick her up. I go in the house.

• 1:10:07Speaker 05

  John, I've been into thousands of dope houses. Users, dealers, just disgusting people in general.

• 1:10:17Speaker 05

  The moment I walked in, I threw up. The smell.

• 1:10:22Speaker 05

  The dog was overdosing also, had withdrawals, not overdosing, had withdrawals from dope. It had diarrhea everywhere. There was a mop bucket full of water, diarrhea water, where she had tried to clean it up. But it's just sitting there for days. Diarrhea all over everything. The dog at one point had been chained to something in the door in a back bedroom with carpet. And there was just shit and pee everywhere.

• 1:10:53Speaker 05

  And I'd found out that the dog had been chewing on syringes. And it was getting high. And they haven't been using there because she'd been staying with somebody else. He's been in the hospital, so the dog's having withdrawals. I'm like, man, I gotta clean this house. I gotta clean this house. I spent thousands. My childhood best friend and my cousin on my dad's side. Name's Josh Lombo. Phenomenal human. Knew I was in town. I was actually staying with him, but I couldn't stay in the house. I would, I'd get sick. I'm on my hands and knees. Spent hundreds of dollars on cleanup stuff. I might shot back in diarrhea, ripping up carpet.

• 1:11:37Speaker 05

  He shows up and helps me clean this whole house. Most disgusting house I've ever been in. And we had it spotless. And she was gone. I was, I was still visiting my dad. I was making the house. I fixed the steps. I fixed, I went and bought him a bed to bring upstairs. I didn't want him sleeping on a dirty mattress. We got him brand new everything. And, um, she, um, sorry, I'm having some, getting kind of emotional.

• 1:12:21Speaker 05

  So I leave to go back home. This was about a month later. See my family, do some things. My dad's still in the hospital. They released him. I get home on a Friday. They released him that same Friday. They weren't supposed to. They weren't supposed to release him till the following weekend. I was gonna pick him up. She had somehow convinced somebody something. Something happened where they released him. So I went home, I was home. And my Aunt Judy calls me and says, hey, they released your dad. I'm like, oh, my God, I'm not there. What do you mean? I can't watch him. Like, he's gonna go back. He gets home that Friday night, drops him off. He gets home immediately.

• 1:13:05Speaker 05

  He'd been in contact with my stepmom since he's been in the hospital. He somehow got a cellphone and everything. And was able to get in contact with her. We didn't think they had any contact. I thought I had fixed that problem.

• 1:13:18Speaker 05

  He gets home and she pulls up maybe 10 minutes later, the neighbor says.

• 1:13:24Speaker 05

  About 30 minutes later, my dad's drug dealer Tammy, I'd figured out my dad's drug dealer. I got addresses, Sean, cars, mama's house, houses they were storing dope in. I had times of houses. I dedicated the whole month also to following her around, everywhere. I had built a case for the sheriff's office of Wyoming County. Everything they need. Tried to give it to their dope cop, crickets. Tried to give it to the sheriff, crickets. They wanted me out of that county so bad, because I was forcing them to do a job they didn't know how to do. And I was calling them out on it. "I have everything for you."

• 1:14:05Speaker 05

  Because their excuse was, is, you know, "We don't have enough information on her." "Cool, stand by." Boom, here's everything. Phone numbers, license plates, houses, everything you need. Her drop zones, the day that she gets her resupply, everything. I went to full, straight detective mode again, and got them everything in a big old folder. Pictures, took pictures of the cars, pictures of her, pictures of her mom, pictures of everybody, her dog. I had everything in there. They wouldn't touch it. Wouldn't touch it. They didn't want nothing to do with it, because that system down there is so corrupt. Where is this? It's in Wyoming County, West Virginia.

• 1:14:46Speaker 05

  It is the good old boy system. Who pays the most money is in charge. I couldn't get help from nobody. I went to the sheriff's office, to the sheriff himself, who's known me since I was a child. I was told he's just a drug addict.

• 1:15:02Speaker 05

  I understand that, guys, but here is your number one drug dealer in the county. This woman's not only serving him dope, but she is traveling from Pombal. So there's four towns in where I grew up. Pombal, Mullins, Bayonneville in Oceana. She would come once a week and do a round in every little town, and then go back home to Princeton. She didn't even live there. She drove 30 minutes away. I gave them everything. I mean, they told me to fuck off. They didn't want nothing to do with it. They wanted me out of there so bad.

• 1:15:37Speaker 05

  So that the night that they got home, my dad left with the drug dealer. The drug dealer came and picked him up.

• 1:15:44Speaker 05

  They came back home the next Saturday.

• 1:15:47Speaker 05

  Drug dealer stayed there a little bit and they went back to the drug dealer's house. And everybody on that, so the hill that I grew up on is, was primarily of my whole family. And, and the neighbors have known me since I was a kid. When I made, when I tried to move in and made my stepmother leave, dude, them old women on that hill baked me brownies and cookies and they were like, hey, thank you so much because it has just gotten so bad. So they were calling me and giving me updates and I'm like trying to get home. I'm like, I'm in, I'm in North Carolina at this point. So I'm like, man, I gotta figure out how to save my dad. So I called my dad up. Now Sundays came around. Sunday's here. And I'm like, hey dad, this is like Sunday night, 10 o'clock at night.

• 1:16:30Speaker 05

  I'm like, what are you doing? The neighbors are calling me. You weren't supposed to leave the house. She's not even, Melissa is not even supposed to be there. The drug dealer's been up and down the driveway. I was, dude, I was sending text messages out to deputies, to, to police officers. She's there right now. This is the car. Nothing, man. Crickets. So I'm like, I gotta get down there, dude. I gotta do something. So.

• 1:16:58Speaker 05

  I'm like, hey, she's got to go. I've already contacted your probation officer. They've already contacted your probation officer. Man, you're going to jail tomorrow. Like you have to, it's not, he thought I had some power. He was like, you need to fix this. I'm like, dude, what do you mean I need to fix? There's nothing I can do. Only thing, I'm trying to help you. I'm giving you a call right now, telling you that your probation officer is showing up tomorrow. She needs to be out of the house. He's like, all right, all right, we'll figure it out, figure it out. He had to call at four in the morning.

• 1:17:31Speaker 05

  From my dad's neighbor. She was a younger girl.

• 1:17:37Speaker 05

  And Melissa would go down and ask for a cigarette and, and, and they pretty much just pestered her. She lived in the house that we grew up in.

• 1:17:46Speaker 05

  And I'd been trying to help them get Melissa out of there too, and, and trying to help fix some things around their house because my dad was on drugs and the house was falling apart and they were renters. And she said, she called and she says, Blake, uh, Melissa called the cops on you. My, how did she call the cops on me? I am literally six hours away. She's like, they lied. They said that you were laying down the street with a sniper rifle.

• 1:18:12Speaker 05

  I was like, well, I'm home. She goes, well, well, the police officer took her to the master's office and she swore a domestic violence protective order out on you. I'm like, what? And my dad's beeping in. I'm like, I gotta go, my dad's calling me. Answered the phone.

• 1:18:33Speaker 05

  It's the last conversation I ever have with my father.

• 1:18:37Speaker 05

  He said, fuck you, you piece of shit. We took a DVPO out on you. I'm gonna go do my time in jail and there ain't shit you can do. You're a piece, piece of shit worthless son. Hung the phone up. So I'm like, what is going on? Now I have a DVPO taken out on me? That's, if found guilty of that? That's worse than being a convicted felon. So I'm like, immediately went into like, I gotta go stash my gun somewhere else. Cause then first thing they do when they serve you that is they take your guns. But luckily I was four states away and there's no communication with that crappy agency there.

• 1:19:20Speaker 05

  They didn't really, they don't even know how to handle that properly, thank God. It's like the, the one mess up where I took advantage of. She didn't have my address, so nobody could serve me anything.

• 1:19:31Speaker 05

  These dudes are calling me, asking me to come turn myself in. I'm like, dude, I don't know what you're talking about. See you later, alligator. So I got up with an attorney who was a friend of mine, Tim Lapartis, who...

• 1:19:43Speaker 05

  So my dad, so sorry I'm skipping. That Monday morning, my dad got arrested from probation. They took him to the courthouse. Some people in the courthouse know who I am. And went to talk to him and said, Jim, you have to drop this. He, he is a good person. He trains law enforcement. He's not gonna be able to do his job.

• 1:20:06Speaker 05

  My dad said, fuck that piece of shit.

• 1:20:10Speaker 05

  Didn't drop it. So I got up with Tim LaParras, who was my dad's really good friend growing up, who's an attorney there. Represented me for free. He helped me figure out a solution out. So I did some smart things while my dad was in the hospital. Alright, cuz he needed my help. Nobody else could help him except for me. I made him sign his social security checks over to my house. All of his retirement money went to my mailbox in North Carolina. So she didn't have access to it anymore.

• 1:20:42Speaker 05

  And if he did that, I would buy him dinner while he was in the hospital. I'd help take care of him. I'd clean his house, do whatever he needed me to do.

• 1:20:51Speaker 05

  Well, he did all this. And I was like, okay. I have an advantage here. She won't get any money for dope. It's the end of the month. She's not getting any money for dope. And she needs a fix. So I called her up, I said, hey.

• 1:21:10Speaker 05

  Tim LaParras was like, hey, let's, let's offer something. I said, alright. I was like, four hundred and fifty bucks, I don't know. I came up with a number, it was four fifty. And I said, hey. If you drop this.

• 1:21:23Speaker 05

  I'll pay you four hundred and fifty dollars. And every month, I'll mail my dad's checks to you so you can cash them. Because the little fast check general store, grocery store in our hometown was allowing her, knowing that my dad's in jail or in the hospital, sign the back of his checks and cash them. And then go buy dope with them. So, but they would get like a ten percent of the, of the whatever, three percent whatever. They were making money, they didn't care. So they allowed her to fraudently sign his checks and cash them.

• 1:21:57Speaker 05

  The whole town is crazy. So.

• 1:22:03Speaker 05

  She says, she goes, "Yeah, we could do that." I said, "Look, 'cause it's thousands of dollars in his retirement, social security." I'm like, "I don't care what you do with the money, I'll mail it to you every month. Soon as I get it, I'll mail it, overnight it." I'm panicking, Sean. I ain't slept in two days. Because what if she gets up there and BSs and some female judge believes her? And I get convicted? I'm done. I'm, I mean, there's, your guns are gone, everything. What am I gonna do? It's all I know is how to run a gun. It's all I've done my whole adult life. She said, "I'll do that under one condition."

• 1:22:48Speaker 05

  I said, "What?" "You have to write an apology letter to your dad's drug dealer." Because she knows you've been following her. Because I'd knocked on her door and asked her to stop selling my dad drugs and stuff. Pretty much terrorized her to run her away. I'm trying to save my dad's life. Didn't break the law, didn't do anything that I wasn't supposed to. I just made my presence known. And I said, "You want me to write a, an apology letter to my dad's drug dealer?" She said, "It's the only way that I'm gonna drop this." I was like, "Oh, man. Oh, man.

• 1:23:32Speaker 05

  What did I do?" I wrote a letter. I had a conversation with Kyle about this not too long ago. That letter was not to her. That letter was to myself. That was an apology to myself for acting the way that I had acted out of character, risking my family's future to do things that I shouldn't have been doing. So I wrote the letter and I sent it to her and they dropped it. It's the last conversation I ever had with my dad.

• 1:24:05Speaker 05

  Man, I'm sorry. So there's a little frustration in there. And, uh,

• 1:24:11Speaker 05

  I heard from him about, about a week ago. He got out of jail, spent a year in jail. He said, "Hey Blake, I love you."

• 1:24:20Speaker 05

  I didn't respond. "Hey, I just wanna know you're okay."

• 1:24:24Speaker 05

  And then two days ago, I got a text, I blocked the number. "I'd appreciate you letting me know that you're okay."

• 1:24:35Speaker 05

  I said, "I'm not going back to this. I'm not going back to this." Because after they dropped that DVPO, and after the justice system and law enforcement that I've dedicated so much time, I trained their little SWAT team for free. Fifteen, twenty times. Because I wanted to give back to my community that I grew up in. I have a small skill set. I have a passion for this, I wanna help you. But when I asked for help of just doing your job, it was crickets.

• 1:25:13Speaker 05

  I was trying to do the right thing. I was so close in my mind of helping him. And all I needed was a little help from the wall to do their job.

• 1:25:25Speaker 05

  And they failed me. Completely. So after they dropped that, I said, "Man, fuck law enforcement.

• 1:25:35Speaker 05

  Fuck this community."

• 1:25:38Speaker 05

  And I went straight alcoholic, man. I drank every day, all day. Hate. Pushed my family away. Passing out drunk in my backyard by a fire.

• 1:25:51Speaker 05

  And I'd finally realized

• 1:25:55Speaker 05

  that I'm never gonna get over this. And the only way to get over this is to take my life.

• 1:26:03Speaker 05

  That was in April. I knew my son's birthday was May 22nd.

• 1:26:09Speaker 05

  I said, "Man, I can't take my life before his birthday. I can't take that from him."

• 1:26:16Speaker 05

  And at the time, I'm not thinking straight, right? Whether I take it before or after, it's still gonna ruin his birthday, right? But I was trying to put his feelings first somehow and say, "I'm gonna wait." So that was about two weeks when I started really deciding that, you know, I'm dragging my family through the mud. I'm feeling like this. I can't. I need to set them free. I have failed. I am dead inside from my dad's addiction. Because I did, I tried. I tried to save him. And I failed. I failed miserably. And I thought that I actually had a chance to save him.

• 1:27:02Speaker 05

  And I was taking it out on my family by drinking, pushing them away, staying on my phone. So I was like, "Hey, man, it's time to prepare things for

• 1:27:17Speaker 05

  when you're gone." So,

• 1:27:22Speaker 05

  first thing, bills.

• 1:27:26Speaker 05

  I made sure everything was on auto draft on one card. Boom. Paperwork for the house, for the cars.

• 1:27:37Speaker 05

  Everything went in my safe, labeled to my wife. It said, "To my wife, here are the documents."

• 1:27:44Speaker 05

  Everything, life insurance, whatever. Everything that was important for my afterlife to help her

• 1:27:56Speaker 05

  have somewhat of a smooth transition, in my opinion, was there. May 22nd came, we were in Tennessee. Does she know this? She knows it now.

• 1:28:07Speaker 05

  I shared this story at her Blueberry and Couples Camp last year. It's the first time that anybody's ever heard it.

• 1:28:14Speaker 05

  I held that in for months before I ever spoke about it out loud. And May 22nd came, we were in Tennessee, visiting my brother, had my son's birthday with my family. We came back home.

• 1:28:30Speaker 05

  Got home, I texted Kyle. So I talked to Kyle previously on social media.

• 1:28:37Speaker 05

  When I was first went to

• 1:28:42Speaker 05

  help my dad and then I had to drive home to get resupply.

• 1:28:48Speaker 05

  His, this show gave me hope. I listened to his episode. I don't listen to, I don't listen. I'm not real big into listening to people's podcasts and stuff. If I listen to a podcast, it's like the legends of the old west. Billy the Kid, things like that. That's what I really like. But I was like, man, I need something that's, I'm tired of listening to music. I don't want to listen to music. I tried to listen to a couple of other people's, but I was just not mentally there. And there was something about Kyle's podcast. I talked to him a few times on Instagram, maybe one or two times. Remember I was transitioning from Glocks to Siggs. I knew that he had just started shooting Siggs. I was asking him some questions. Small Instagram talk. And I listened to the podcast and I heard his story, right? And I'll see him, I'm getting chills, man.

• 1:29:31Speaker 05

  And I was seeing what he was doing. I thought, oh my God, he was, he was addicted a little bit, right? Look at him now. I can save my dad. There's hope that people can be addicted and be saved. Cause in my whole law enforcement career, it was just drug addicts dying all the time, overdosing. It was horrible. But now there's one positive story of somebody that has overcame this. I can help my dad. And that's what gave me the motivation to, to do what I tried to do in those two or three months that I was there. So

• 1:30:04Speaker 05

  at the time I was training tactical teams through the colleges. So North Carolina, how that works is a college can, cause there's only like, for like training wise, you know, a college can host a course, have me come as, in as an instructor. It's free to law enforcement officers. And then the state reimbursed the college for paying me. It's a great system. So I was doing that through the colleges. And I was like, man, I love, I still love the law enforcement community, even though I was mad at the certain group that failed to do their job. I love cops, man. Uh, I think, I think what they do every day is courageous. And I was like, man.

• 1:30:50Speaker 05

  I'm gonna reach out to this guy. I'm gonna give, I'm gonna give him the advice on how to teach cops through the colleges. If they're gonna get any training, it might as well be by somebody like him. Because there's so many fake trainers out there, right? He's gotta be legit. He seems genuine. I reached out to him, May 23rd. I said, "Hey, man, do you have time for a quick phone call?" He was like, uh, sent me a picture. I still have it. It was, uh, uh, it was weights. And he's like, "Hey, I'm working out. I'll call you in a little bit." Or, "Can I call you a little bit?" I was like, "Yeah, man, absolutely." The day came. No phone call.

• 1:31:34Speaker 05

  May 24th came. Didn't know this at the time. I didn't even know this until when I talked about it at the couples camp. May 24th, 2012, is the day I got blown up. May 24th, 2023, is the day that I drove my truck. My service dog goes everywhere with me. I put her in a kennel. I kissed her. And, uh, I drove to Marshall's parking lot in Wilmington. Parked at the very end. And I rolled all my windows down. I wanted somebody to hear the gunshot. And I wanted somebody to call the police. And I wanted somebody to find me before the birds come in and eat me away.

• 1:32:19Speaker 05

  I, um, bowed my head on the steering wheel and I said, "God, please forgive me. I'm in pain. I don't want to go to hell. Please don't send me to hell for this. I'm just hurting." And, um, I said, "Amen." And, um, I went to grab the gun. My hand grabs the gun. My phone rings. I remember the last two digits of this number. Eight, two. This last two digits, Kyle's phone number, because I remembered he was in the 82nd. It was Kyle calling me.

• 1:33:03Speaker 05

  As I had my hand on the gun, grabbing it. He was calling me back.

• 1:33:11Speaker 05

  Squeaky wheel gets the grease. My phone made a noise.

• 1:33:17Speaker 05

  I grabbed my phone.

• 1:33:25Speaker 05

  I am so grateful

• 1:33:28Speaker 05

  for that phone call.

• 1:33:31Speaker 05

  Man, I am so grateful

• 1:33:36Speaker 05

  for that phone call, cuz the things I would've missed out on in life.

• 1:33:42Speaker 05

  Man, it just wasn't that bad.

• 1:33:45Speaker 05

  So,

• 1:33:48Speaker 05

  a big, beautiful man called me. I answered the phone, said hello. And he said, "Hey, man.

• 1:33:59Speaker 05

  Hey, man, sorry I didn't call you back yesterday." I said, "Hey, man, you're calling to have a great time."

• 1:34:04Speaker 05

  "You're calling to have a great time."

• 1:34:08Speaker 05

  He's like, "You busy?" I'm like, "Nope."

• 1:34:14Speaker 05

  "No, I'm not, man." He goes, "Hey, uh, yeah, yeah, I got your message." I was like, "Yeah."

• 1:34:22Speaker 05

  Started talking to him about the colleges.

• 1:34:25Speaker 05

  He's like, "Yeah, man, that sounds great, that sounds great." He goes, "Hey, do you know anybody that, uh, I just had a cancellation in my Protectoral Mindset course? Do you know anybody that you used to work with from on the team that would wanna come and take it?" I'm like, "I don't know anybody right now, like, I'm in the middle of something." Like, I'm like, "No, I don't." He goes, "Oh, all right, um, you wanna come take it?"

• 1:34:51Speaker 05

  I said, "You want me to come take your course?" "Bro, I'm about to, I'm about to kill myself right now." You said that? No, no, no, no. I didn't tell him. He didn't know this until months later. Till he heard it at the Couples Camp.

• 1:35:03Speaker 05

  I'm like, dude, in my mind, I'm like, "Bro, I'm about to kill myself. I'm not gonna tell you yes." But the other half of me was like...

• 1:35:12Speaker 05

  Gave me a little hope, gave me something to look forward to.

• 1:35:16Speaker 05

  Another, I love CQB, man. I love shooting. I love this industry. I tell you, I was like, yeah, man, I'll come take that course, dude. I'm the phone up, Sean. I was so excited. I was like, oh, my God, man, I'm gonna go take this two course. I've seen the videos. We had a mutual friend that had taken the course a month or two prior. That was like, it's the greatest course ever.

• 1:35:41Speaker 05

  I was like, man, I gotta go try it out.

• 1:35:45Speaker 05

  And, uh,

• 1:35:47Speaker 05

  man, I'd sold all my stuff, right? I didn't really have much. I was so mad at law enforcement. I was selling all my, all my things, giving it away. I drove over to OP Tactical in Raleigh. It's like one of the best, like, tactical stores. They have all the good name brand stuff. Man, I dropped a bunch of money, got belts, got all this stuff.

• 1:36:06Speaker 05

  I was like, man, I'm excited. I'm like, holy shit. I haven't felt like this since months. And, uh, showed up to the course. Bought all that stuff on Friday. Course was Saturday and Sunday. Showed up to the course Saturday morning.

• 1:36:23Speaker 05

  And, uh, I'm sitting in the back and we're introducing each ourselves. Introduced myself and calls like, hey, you know, Blake's here. Blake has his own training company too, so it's, it's, it's cool to have him here. And I'm like,

• 1:36:38Speaker 05

  like, all right. How are y'all doing? I'm, I'm truly a nobody, but how you doing? So, an hour, forty-five minutes in this course, man. I do some demos with him. You know, he's showing the students, uh, corner fed, what one and two looks like, and I'm running reps with him.

• 1:36:57Speaker 05

  You know, maybe he just felt that I was capable of, of helping him demo. So after that, he's like, hey,

• 1:37:05Speaker 05

  take this, take these six students to do corner fed with them. I'm gonna take these other six and do center fed. I'm like, what are you talking about, dude? Like,

• 1:37:17Speaker 05

  I have a Delta, a former unit guy.

• 1:37:21Speaker 05

  It's asking me to take six of his students that has entrusted in him with money.

• 1:37:29Speaker 05

  That, that he's trusting in me to, to be able to teach them.

• 1:37:35Speaker 05

  Even this little bit of knowledge.

• 1:37:38Speaker 05

  Gave me a little fire in my gut, right? Nervous. Probably didn't I'm capable of doing this. Why are you nervous? This is what you, you're good at this. I'm like, but I can't believe it. I'm like, sure dude. Yeah, whatever, whatever you need. Roger that. So we go over there and, and then we're switching and then. Spend the whole day I'm helping him teach. And then, um, the next morning. Second day of the course. Um, he's like, hey. I want you to run the first scenario. With, and then I want you to follow them with the students and kinda, kinda help guide them a little bit if they get stuck. I'm like, yeah, cool. Phenomenal course.

• 1:38:22Speaker 05

  So we're at the end of the course. And the students, I'm in the back sitting down as a student.

• 1:38:29Speaker 05

  And these, there's 12 students. I'm like the 13th. And these students are giving the pros and cons of the course, like kinda like closing statements, right? About every student is thanking Kyle, but thanking me for my knowledge. Every one. And I'm like. What is going on?

• 1:38:52Speaker 05

  I started feeling some self-worth again. I started feeling like maybe I'm, I'm worthy.

• 1:39:02Speaker 05

  Maybe I shouldn't die.

• 1:39:05Speaker 05

  Maybe there's a purpose for me here. Cause what really drew me into Kyle was as he started his course out is we're gonna talk about God and if you don't like it, you can get out. I was like, dude, that's how I feel too. But like, it's hard to, I'm in a bad spot right now, right? So, but the last students, like, yeah, Blake, thank you for everything. Thanks for your knowledge.

• 1:39:30Speaker 05

  Kyle's like, hey, man, you didn't notice this job interview, did you? I'm like, I got my own training company. What you talking about job interview? I started my own training company. We're competitors. No, not really, but you know, I'm like, in my mind, I'm like, man, I got my own training company. I'm not gonna come work for you. What are you talking about? And then we started talking at the end of that and then

• 1:39:54Speaker 05

  I saved my life. I've been with him ever since. And

• 1:40:02Speaker 05

  that was, that was the end of May.

• 1:40:05Speaker 05

  October 22nd, 2023, I was rebaptized.

• 1:40:09Speaker 05

  Cause God gave me a second chance. He put the right people on my path to save my life. And I will spend the rest of my life honoring him.

• 1:40:23Speaker 05

  And that's what I'm gonna do.

• 1:40:26Speaker 05

  Because he gave me another opportunity, which I feel like I didn't deserve.

• 1:40:34Speaker 05

  He took something that the devil meant for evil and he turned it to good.

• 1:40:39Speaker 05

  And he did it to save me.

• 1:40:43Speaker 05

  And had I met Kyle any sooner?

• 1:40:48Speaker 05

  I don't think we would have clicked the way we did. I don't think Kyle was, Kyle had just gotten back from his treatment.

• 1:40:54Speaker 05

  That he needed to receive me into his life.

• 1:41:00Speaker 05

  Timing is everything. And I don't believe the day that I grabbed a gun and my phone went off, I don't believe in coincidences anymore. I believe in God's timing. I believe he is the power. And he will guide you in the direction that you need to be, even when you feel like that you're carrying the load all by yourself. But guess what, brother? You're not. He's carrying you and he's carrying the load to help you get through it. And that's what he did. And that's how me and Kyle met.

• 1:41:30Speaker 05

  We've been running and gunning ever since. He's my brother, man. I love him more than anything in this world. I, I, I love that man and his family and Erica and his children. They are my family. And, uh,

• 1:41:44Speaker 05

  I'm just grateful for the opportunity to even... So I dropped my company.

• 1:41:51Speaker 05

  I prayed and prayed and prayed, man. I was like, man, what do I do? It's just, I've always wanted to work for myself.

• 1:41:58Speaker 05

  And

• 1:42:04Speaker 05

  and then prayers I kept, you know, where two or more gather, there I am. I can do it by myself. Or we can partner up with Kyle

• 1:42:14Speaker 05

  as a team.

• 1:42:16Speaker 05

  And use our platform to bring people closer to him. And that's what we're doing. We're also teaching you to be men. But more importantly, we want you to be Christian, man, and women. So the next generation sees what that looks like.

• 1:42:36Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:42:41Shawn Ryan?

  I definitely was not expecting to hear that.

• 1:42:44Speaker 05

  Saved my life. I'm beyond grateful, man. I am.

• 1:42:50Speaker 05

  The opportunities, man, uh, Sean is, is... You know, did it August last year. Couple of months after I met Kyle, we got hooked up with more primitive. We did this video shoot for him in Arizona. We're riding around in Helos.

• 1:43:07Speaker 05

  And I remember sitting there hanging off the side of it. Kyle's to my right. Two former, um, still Team Six guys on the, on the back end. And I'm like,

• 1:43:21Speaker 05

  what are you doing here? This is all God. I'm just a cop. I'm just a, at the end of the day, I'm just a cop. I have a former unit guy. And I have two

• 1:43:37Speaker 05

  former still Team Six guys behind me. And I'm the fourth man.

• 1:43:44Speaker 05

  God is good. And you submit to him. Fully submit to him. After everything I just went through. Here I am flying around on a, on a, on a little bird with...

• 1:44:01Speaker 05

  With these guys.

• 1:44:03Speaker 05

  And that was when I realized, man, this is all God. This is all God. Here I am.

• 1:44:17Speaker 05

  And here I am before you, Sean, on probably the most respected platform in the world, in my opinion. And I was just a cop.

• 1:44:28Speaker 05

  God is great. He will put you where you need to be, whether it's one person, or a hundred thousand, or a million,

• 1:44:38Speaker 05

  that can be saved by this message. Even if it's just one person, I am where I'm supposed to be on the day that I'm supposed to be here, with the person that I'm supposed to be with. And I truly believe that.

• 1:44:51Shawn Ryan?

  I believe that too.

• 1:45:01Speaker 05

  Powerful.

• 1:45:03Shawn Ryan?

  Very.

• 1:45:07Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:45:10Shawn Ryan?

  That, um...

• 1:45:16Shawn Ryan?

  What did Kyle do when he found out about that?

• 1:45:23Speaker 05

  So my wife, was the first time my wife ever heard about it.

• 1:45:25Shawn Ryan?

  That was the first time anybody had heard?

• 1:45:27Speaker 05

  Anybody had ever heard.

• 1:45:28Shawn Ryan?

  Anybody at all?

• 1:45:31Speaker 05

  It was the second night of the couple's scandal.

• 1:45:33Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 1:45:34Speaker 05

  Everybody was crying.

• 1:45:37Speaker 05

  I was crying, my wife was crying. Wife was a little upset with me.

• 1:45:43Speaker 05

  Cause she's a lot to handle. She come talk to me, I'm like, I wasn't thinking straight. I was thinking that I was saving y'all from me. Is what I was thinking. I'm saving you from the monster. I swore when I married you, I promised you nobody would ever hurt you again.

• 1:46:04Speaker 05

  And I'm, I'm saving you from, from me?

• 1:46:09Speaker 05

  I'm not, I'm not physically hurting her. I've never physically hurt, excuse me, physically ever hurt my wife. But I was emotionally hurting her

• 1:46:20Speaker 05

  by just being an asshole.

• 1:46:23Speaker 05

  Being a drunk.

• 1:46:29Speaker 05

  I was gonna save my family.

• 1:46:31Shawn Ryan?

  Does your son know?

• 1:46:35Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:46:37Shawn Ryan?

  He's going to now, isn't he?

• 1:46:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, he listens to your podcast.

• 1:46:42Shawn Ryan?

  How are you gonna handle that?

• 1:46:45Speaker 05

  Man, he's such a cool kid. He's so understanding.

• 1:46:51Speaker 05

  He is a...

• 1:46:59Speaker 05

  He is just such a good son.

• 1:47:07Speaker 05

  And we're gonna watch the episode together.

• 1:47:11Speaker 05

  And we're gonna have conversations.

• 1:47:14Speaker 05

  That's what I told him. He asked, "Can I watch the episode?"

• 1:47:19Speaker 05

  "Yes, but not on your own.

• 1:47:23Speaker 05

  I'll watch it with you."

• 1:47:26Speaker 05

  Because I don't want him to hear that and think

• 1:47:31Speaker 05

  that I was giving up on them. I wanted to protect them.

• 1:47:36Speaker 05

  I just wasn't thinking right at the time because I was mentally dying from somebody else's drug addiction.

• 1:47:44Speaker 05

  I'd put my dad in front of my family for the first time. Thought that I could save him because I can save anything. You know? And I failed. And I felt like a failure.

• 1:47:58Speaker 05

  And then I felt like a failure as a father for putting them second. And then still failing. And then now I'm failing at home after my failure of my father. It's time for me to go.

• 1:48:14Speaker 05

  But I think he's understanding enough to know because he has watched the...

• 1:48:22Speaker 05

  He watches everything I do.

• 1:48:25Speaker 05

  You know, man, I love that kid, man. He's my hero. He is.

• 1:48:33Speaker 05

  You know, his dad sucks. His real dad sucks. He's... He... And he knows this, but he smuggles drugs. With boats. He's a boat captain. Drops to Mexico and Florida all the time. He's been arrested. He's got a more rap... He's got a longer rap sheet than...

• 1:48:57Speaker 05

  About any criminal I've ever arrested. My son Googled his... He Googled his name one time. Found out that a month prior, he had been in a hostage situation in Myrtle Beach.

• 1:49:10Speaker 05

  Took his girlfriend hostage and threatened to kill the cops on an 18-hour standoff. So, you know, we have some conversations. We talk and, um... We're very open in our house about our emotions and feelings. And, uh...

• 1:49:27Speaker 05

  He's 16, but... And he's acts like a grown up. He's a phenomenal human. What's his name? His name's Henry Stacy Hayes. We used to call him Stacy. Got made fun of in high school, I think. So he goes by Henry, but I found out recently that Hank is short for Henry, so now I call him Hank. Sounds cool. He likes it. So you won't tell him this before he watches? We're gonna talk about it, yeah. I don't want him to be a shock. We're gonna sit down as a family and have the conversation of, hey... We're gonna listen to this show. We're gonna talk about this. And I'll explain to him everything that he's gonna hear

• 1:50:11Speaker 05

  that could harm him or hurt him. Or not hurt him, but he be confused on. I want him to hear it from me directly before the show comes out. How long have you known this is how you're gonna do it?

• 1:50:29Speaker 05

  Going to do what? Talk to him about this?

• 1:50:32Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:35Speaker 05

  Man, Sean, this is...

• 1:50:38Shawn Ryan?

  Did you know this before we spoke?

• 1:50:42Speaker 05

  I've never told nobody. And I knew he would never find out.

• 1:50:48Speaker 05

  But when he heard I was coming on the show, he was excited because he had watched some other episodes. And, uh...

• 1:50:55Speaker 05

  He's like, you know, "You're gonna talk about things I don't know?" I'm like, "Yeah." He's like, "What is it?" I'm like, "Well..."

• 1:51:03Speaker 05

  Kind of why I've been hesitant to ever do anything like this is because I don't want him to be confused. But he understands trauma. And he understands that, that

• 1:51:17Speaker 05

  relationship with my dad, he understands that PTSD from law enforcement, he understands my injury from when I was in the army. He understands that I, I have some trauma. And he does a great job at, at keeping me happy and keeping me active. He's a major part of who I am now. But I'm going to talk to him about it because I think he needs to hear it from me first rather than hearing it on a podcast as a family. We're gonna talk about it and we're gonna talk about this is what happened, this is why it happened. This is why I was upset. And he's so smart and understanding that I know that he's gonna understand.

• 1:52:02Speaker 05

  Because he's just, he's just like that. He's just a, he's a phenomenal person and he's understanding. And I don't think it's gonna be, you know, is it something that I did? That was my biggest worry was, you know, was it me and mom, you know? But no, man, it was just me. My own demons. Trying to save somebody that didn't want to be saved was hard. And then failing at that when you thought that you could? And he understands that, that we call, used to call him Papa Jim, my dad. He hasn't seen him in years. Since 2018. Well...

• 1:52:40Speaker 05

  He saw him two years ago.

• 1:52:44Speaker 05

  We were back home.

• 1:52:47Speaker 05

  And we met with my dad at a state park at a little restaurant.

• 1:52:53Speaker 05

  And my dad was like shaken and it looked horrible. And we had a long drive home and we explained it. And I told him that I'm not gonna expose him to pop all gym anymore to protect him. And he understood. He was a little kinda scared. Why he was like that and I was like, well, he's on drugs.

• 1:53:19Speaker 05

  You're fifteen, man. I can't, I can't hide it from you. He's on drugs. Cause you could just tell he's on drugs. I mean, scabs, shaking, mouth, doing all the things. You could just tell. So we had a long conversation.

• 1:53:35Speaker 05

  That whole day about, about that and he agreed that he doesn't wanna see that no more.

• 1:53:47Shawn Ryan?

  Are you expecting some tough questions?

• 1:53:50Speaker 05

  Yeah. He's intelligent.

• 1:53:52Shawn Ryan?

  What do you think the?

• 1:53:53Speaker 05

  I don't even know.

• 1:53:55Shawn Ryan?

  The first question will be?

• 1:53:57Speaker 05

  I don't even know.

• 1:54:01Speaker 05

  I'm scared. To be honest with you. I am scared of those, what those questions are gonna be.

• 1:54:10Speaker 05

  But I'm gonna answer them, answer them with honesty.

• 1:54:15Speaker 05

  It's out. I'm not gonna hide anything or try to make it sound better. It's out.

• 1:54:21Speaker 05

  Maybe he can take something away from this that, you know.

• 1:54:28Speaker 05

  One that God is good.

• 1:54:31Speaker 05

  That don't ever give up on life. Don't ever give up on yourself. And don't ever run when things get hard.

• 1:54:41Speaker 05

  Cause now he sees positive growth. He sees what we're doing now. He's already seen me at my worst. But I didn't give up by the grace of God. And things get better.

• 1:54:56Speaker 05

  Life is hard. But things always get better. At the end of every rainstorm. The sun comes out.

• 1:55:04Speaker 05

  You just gotta bear through the storm.

• 1:55:07Speaker 05

  And I hope that's what he learns from this.

• 1:55:10Speaker 05

  But he's gonna answer, he's gonna ask some tough questions.

• 1:55:14Shawn Ryan?

  There's a lot of lessons to learn from in this already. We're just getting started.

• 1:55:22Speaker 05

  Take a break.

• 1:55:23Shawn Ryan?

  Let's take a break.

• 1:55:24Speaker 05

  Take a break.

• 1:55:28Shawn Ryan?

  You alright Ben?

• 1:55:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm good. It feel good.

• 1:55:31Shawn Ryan?

  Some heavy stuff.

• 1:55:33Speaker 05

  Yeah. Feel good.

• 1:55:36Shawn Ryan?

  Good.

• 1:55:37Speaker 05

  First time I ever talked about it other than with my wife and Kyle. And Kyle's wife, Erica. So. Yeah, a lot of my followers on Instagram have a understanding of what I've been through.

• 1:55:50Speaker 05

  But they don't have a true understanding. Cause everything you post online can be. Made to look a little better, right? So.

• 1:55:59Speaker 05

  But you know. If you put yourself. Out there to, to. Fight evil. Or to do anything in that line of work. Trauma is gonna happen. We're not meant to see things that we've seen or do things that we've done. And that's, that's what I think he, he really understands is. I don't have a normal job, nor did I have a normal job, nor did I see normal things. And, and with that comes some trauma. So. Yeah, it felt good to get it out. Been holding that in for a long time. And I hope that it just reaches one person.

• 1:56:41Shawn Ryan?

  I think it's gonna reach a hell of a lot more than that.

• 1:56:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, you think so?

• 1:56:44Shawn Ryan?

  I know so.

• 1:56:46Speaker 05

  Feel good.

• 1:56:48Shawn Ryan?

  Blake. You gotta find forgiveness, man.

• 1:56:52Speaker 05

  I am.

• 1:56:53Shawn Ryan?

  I hope you do.

• 1:56:59Speaker 05

  I'm trying to figure out how to find forgiveness

• 1:57:04Speaker 05

  without physically telling him I forgive him. Because I don't want to talk to him.

• 1:57:10Shawn Ryan?

  It's for you, man. It's not for him.

• 1:57:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, maybe that's, you know, it's crazy you said it because you and my wife are having this conversation. She said the same thing.

• 1:57:21Speaker 05

  Maybe when I'm ready soon, so I can move on,

• 1:57:27Speaker 05

  I need to call him and say, "Look, I do love you. You are my father.

• 1:57:35Speaker 05

  And I forgive you, but I can't carry on this relationship." And I think maybe that's what needs to be said. Truly. But yeah, you're right. I need to forgive him.

• 1:57:49Speaker 05

  And I feel like I'm ready to forgive him.

• 1:57:52Speaker 05

  I'm just scared of

• 1:57:55Speaker 05

  his manipulation. He's already messaging me telling me he's sober. I'm eighteen months sober. Dog, that don't even make sense.

• 1:58:05Speaker 05

  You were only in jail for nine months and the last time I saw you, you were on drugs.

• 1:58:10Speaker 05

  Still with my stepmom, so I can't help him. She is, she is, um, I have videos of her, can't even put her shoes on. She is a, he's a bad drug addict. She is the worst drug addict I've ever seen. As long as he is with her, he'll never get clean. He'll never get clean. The moment he went to jail, she had some other dude living in the house begging him. She'll never get clean. And I'm so scared that that phone call for forgiveness is gonna lead to trying to save him again.

• 1:58:56Speaker 05

  That's what I'm scared of. Because where I am now and who I am now is not the same person I was. I'm a year sober from alcohol. I haven't had a drink or did I want to drink alcohol in this last year?

• 1:59:14Speaker 05

  Because I can feel God in my soul. And it's not that alcohol is bad. You're going to hell for drinking. Man, it just doesn't do well with me.

• 1:59:25Speaker 05

  It brings the worst out in me.

• 1:59:29Speaker 05

  And my problem is, is once I get that feeling

• 1:59:34Speaker 05

  of the buzz,

• 1:59:36Speaker 05

  dude, it's like riding a bull, man. I ain't stopping.

• 1:59:42Shawn Ryan?

  Maybe it doesn't have to be a call. Maybe it could be a written letter.

• 1:59:49Speaker 05

  I thought about it.

• 1:59:54Speaker 05

  I'm just gonna have to not put my return ad- they don't know, they don't know my address. Anytime I mail those other checks, I didn't put a return address, or I made one up. But there's no-

• 2:00:06Shawn Ryan?

  I think it does two things.

• 2:00:14Shawn Ryan?

  It allows your dad to die.

• 2:00:20Shawn Ryan?

  Knowing that you forgave him.

• 2:00:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:00:25Shawn Ryan?

  And it sets you free.

• 2:00:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:00:35Shawn Ryan?

  Let's take that break.

• 2:00:49Shawn Ryan?

  I'd like to invite you to gain access to an exclusive experience on Vigilance Elite Patreon. Our patrons are the driving force behind the success of this show and their support allows us to keep doing what we do. Depending on the tier you choose, you'll get access to benefits like behind the scenes footage before each interview, early access to episodes, end of the month live Zoom calls with me, exclusive merch, and more. Join us and become a patron starting at just $5 a month by visiting patreon.com/vigilanceelite. That's patreon.com/vigilanceelite.

• 2:01:30Speaker 00

  Mr. President, my company foreme of the explosion on our rig.

• 2:01:33Speaker 01

  On October 2nd.

• 2:01:34Speaker 00

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 2:01:39Speaker 01

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 2:01:46Speaker 02

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You're stalled, you're freezing to death, that's what.

• 2:01:50Speaker 01

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 2:01:54Speaker 02

  I'm not the first then.

• 2:01:55Speaker 01

  Digger, see the trailer online, only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R, under 17, not a minute without parent.

• 2:02:00Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Blake, we're back from the break, and, um...

• 2:02:06Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. I, uh...

• 2:02:11Shawn Ryan?

  Was not expecting to get that deep that fast, and, um...

• 2:02:14Speaker 05

  No, deep quick.

• 2:02:15Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I did, it did, it definitely did. I am curious, what did, um...

• 2:02:23Shawn Ryan?

  What did Kyle say when he heard that?

• 2:02:28Speaker 05

  He gave me the biggest hug. He was crying. And, uh... She told me he loved me. And, and said, "I want you to know that... As much as you needed me, I needed you in that exact moment."

• 2:02:44Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:02:45Speaker 05

  So, that was, uh...

• 2:02:49Speaker 05

  That was just good to hear.

• 2:02:52Speaker 05

  That was really good to hear.

• 2:02:53Shawn Ryan?

  How much time had passed since...

• 2:02:58Shawn Ryan?

  Between...

• 2:03:01Speaker 05

  Six months.

• 2:03:02Shawn Ryan?

  Six months, you'd known him for six months since that call?

• 2:03:04Speaker 05

  That was, uh, November. I think we did a couples camp in October or November. But that was May. May when it happened. He found out. And I think it was November.

• 2:03:19Shawn Ryan?

  That is definitely some divine intervention.

• 2:03:21Speaker 05

  Yeah. Truly was, by a high power.

• 2:03:26Shawn Ryan?

  Very amazing. Wow. Incredible.

• 2:03:32Shawn Ryan?

  Well, let's move, uh... Let's move into...

• 2:03:41Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:03:47Shawn Ryan?

  Let's move on past high school.

• 2:03:51Speaker 05

  Let's go to college.

• 2:03:52Shawn Ryan?

  Let's go to college.

• 2:03:53Speaker 05

  That was a ride.

• 2:03:54Shawn Ryan?

  Was it?

• 2:03:55Speaker 05

  That was a ride. Rode that train hard. So I got a football scholarship.

• 2:04:03Speaker 05

  And, uh,

• 2:04:06Speaker 05

  man, I was, I thought it was the greatest thing ever. So I got to Concord University, which is a school in West Virginia, southern West Virginia. And, um,

• 2:04:21Speaker 05

  I got there and coming from a small town, like, our partying was different, man. Our partying was in the fields, chucking Bud Light and drinking Bacardi 151 by fire. Right? It's more dudes than girls, whatever. You know, it's the country. I mean, I grew up with half, I grew up with everybody that was there anyways. I've known them my whole life. So I go to college, man, and, um, went, I went early for, for, uh, summer practice. It was kind of boring. It's just football all day. Meetings in the morning, meetings in the afternoon, practice in the morning, practice at night. I was like, oh God, this sucks. So then, the rest of the students started coming in. And, um, right as football was starting up,

• 2:05:08Speaker 05

  I went to my first massive college party. And it was in like an apartment complex. It was like all these apartments were having one big party. You could go from apartment to apartment. So I go down to this one guy's apartment and he's like, nah, man, football players aren't allowed in here. I'm like, get out of here, man. Get out of my way. Big boy. I mean, I thought I was something. I was, you couldn't tell me nothing. I was 18. I had a football scholarship. I was on the football team. I took two steps. This dude came up behind me and punched the living fire out of me. Boom, knocked me out, fell, down the steps. I woke up, my buddies were carrying me to the car and, uh, they went back into party and I laid in the car in pain.

• 2:05:52Speaker 05

  There's a small bone that's like right here that he had broken.

• 2:05:58Speaker 05

  And I had to go to the doctor the next morning and um

• 2:06:03Speaker 05

  had to go tell my football coach I can't play because I was at a party that I wasn't even supposed to be at, you know, we weren't supposed to party. He's like, oh, fine, you're not playing.

• 2:06:14Speaker 05

  He goes, um,

• 2:06:18Speaker 05

  you know, you're going to be red-shirted and, and, you know, don't even know if we're going to carry on your scholarship. Next year, I was like, all right, I understand, I understand, whatever.

• 2:06:28Speaker 05

  So, man, for the next like two or three months, I never went, I didn't go to one class. Not one class. I didn't even know where my class was. I knew where the food hall was and the gym. And I stayed in my room and played Xbox all the time. That was back when um, Call of Duty, when they had the zombies, the zombie game. Man, I was playing that all the time, partying at nighttime. Well, about November, well, October, right before Halloween, I go to my room and on my door is this letter from the college. I'm like, what is this? Take it off, go in my room, open it up, it's like, ah, uh, dear Mr. Cook,

• 2:07:12Speaker 05

  uh, you have zero attendance, your grade point average is zero. Um, we're informing you that if you don't bring your grades up, zero.

• 2:07:21Shawn Ryan?

  Literally zero?

• 2:07:22Speaker 05

  Zero.

• 2:07:23Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 2:07:25Speaker 05

  I didn't go to one class. And, uh, if you don't bring your, your grades up or make an effort, then we're, we're going to have to remove you from the college.

• 2:07:35Shawn Ryan?

  Well, that should be easy. There's nowhere to go but up.

• 2:07:38Speaker 05

  I was like, I read it, I was like,

• 2:07:43Speaker 05

  balled it up, Sean, in this most beautiful rounded, small little tennis ball.

• 2:07:51Speaker 05

  Kobe. Through the way, I said, they're not gonna kick me out of here. No child left behind. I'm like, dude, now I'm like, bro, it's not high school. You know what I'm saying?

• 2:08:04Speaker 05

  Dude. Month and a half later, we're coming up on Christmas break.

• 2:08:10Speaker 05

  People were standing by my door, go to my room, they're like, hey, Mr. Cook, how are you? I'm so and so, I'm in administrative office. I'm like, yeah, yeah, how are you all there? Did you get a letter? Yeah. You got a letter and you still didn't go to class? No. They were like, oh, cool. Make sure you leave nothing behind when you leave here for Christmas break. You're no longer enrolled here. I was like, oh, my God. I'm like, nah, let's work something out here, right? I can't go home. I'm embarrassed. My mom's gonna kill me. She's like, nah, man, you gotta go home. So I call my mom, I'm embarrassed. She's like, ah. She's like, oh, you idiot, blah, blah, blah. She's like, you know what? Everything's gonna be okay. She's just fine, I understand. Maybe you just couldn't handle,

• 2:08:52Speaker 05

  you know, a college, a university. I'm like, all right, Mom, yeah, you're just right. Can't. She's like, all right, cool. I'm gonna enroll you in a community college. We're gonna get your grades back up and then we're gonna go talk to them and see if we can get you back in there. I'm like, absolutely, Mom, that sounds like a great plan.

• 2:09:08Speaker 05

  I attended the first class for 15 minutes and I was like, this ain't for me. I got up, left my notebook and everything in there, told the teacher I was going to the bathroom, never came back. Well, my mom said that I couldn't find a party where I grew up. By this point, she was living in the little bit bigger city with like 20,000 people. What my mom didn't know is I could find a party in that city because Applebee's had happy hour at 12 o'clock. And I got drunk with a bunch of moms with their kids in the little carriers on the ground, like every day. So I didn't go to class. And my mom was infuriated.

• 2:09:53Speaker 05

  Cause she was, she had tried. I kept telling her, Mom, maybe school's not for me. I'll get a job, I'll take a break, I'll mature a little bit. She's like, oh, cool. She's like, let's try that. I was like, alright. So I stalled for like a year. I'd sleep all day, play Call of Duty all night. I'm like, hey, Mom, I'm gonna be a professional gamer. She's like, no, you gotta go get a real job. You're a loser. I'm like, no, I'm not. I'm working on a career. She's like, playing video games is not a career. So finally, one day, she comes home. And by this time, she'd met my stepdad. And my stepdad was trying to get me to go, like, he worked, he did something like delivering stuff for the coal mines. And he was like, hey,

• 2:10:38Speaker 05

  he took me to work with him one day. And I was like, oh, my God, this sucks. I don't want to do this. And finally, she came in and she's like, hey, you need to find a job or you're gonna have to go. I'm like, Mom, where am I gonna go? She's like, I don't know. You can't keep living here because I'm just supporting this. I'm like, okay, that's my mom. I'm the baby child. You're not kicking me out? You kidding me? My mom, Papa would light you up if you kicked me out of this house. That's her mom and dad. So I'm like, alright, whatever. So I'm playing video games. She calls me up and she's like, hey, you find a job? I'm like, I know, I'm gonna try Hibbit Sports up to that new shopping center complex. She's like, okay, alright.

• 2:11:22Speaker 05

  So I go up there and I'm like, oh, man, please give me a job. I'm like, I'm looking like a bag of ass, right? I got like sandals on and some gym shorts and a dirty shirt with Dorito cheese all over it and a hat backwards. I'm like, hey, man, you're hiring? They're like, oh, we're not hiring you. And I was like, oh, wow. I thought this was gonna be easy. So I go outside and I'm sitting on the bench. I'm like, oh, my God. She's really gonna kick you out of the house. Where are you gonna work? I'm like, I'm not going to McDonald's. I'm not, no. We'll figure this out. I hear this guy, he's like, hey, man, you okay? And I look up. He's kind of a bigger dude and he's got the old digital camo on.

• 2:12:08Speaker 05

  It said, "United States Army." I was like, "Ah, man, I'm not doing so good." My mom is about to kick me out of the house. "I need a job." He's like, "You need a job? How old are you?" I'm like, "Ah," at that point, I was 20. I'm like, "I'm 20." He goes, "Come on inside. Let me talk to you." He's like, "What do you do for fun?" And I'm like, "Man, I play Call of Duty." He was like, "Oh, yeah." He goes, "Let me talk to you about real-life Call of Duty. It's just like Call of Duty." And I was like, "Pfft." I was like, "Tch." "Just like Call of Duty?" I'm like, "I'm down." I'm like, "Let's go." We go inside. I do the little, like, computer ASVAB thing, got my score.

• 2:12:53Speaker 05

  He's like, "Oh." He's like, "What do you want to do?" I'm like, "I don't know." He goes, "How about the infantry?" I was like, "What's it like?" He goes, "Call of Duty, man." He goes, "Front lines." He goes, "Just like the game you play. All the cool gear." I was like, "Yeah, I want to do that." He's like, "All right, cool." Signed up, got a ship date for like, that was, ship date was in January or December of 2010. And, uh,

• 2:13:25Speaker 05

  I go home, my mom, I'm playing video games, and she goes, "You still here? Did you get a job?" I'm like, "I did." She goes, "Oh, man, I'm so proud of you." She goes, "What are you doing?" I'm like, "Momma, join the Army." She's like, "Oh, my God. I killed my baby. Tell him you can't go." I was like, "I don't think that's how that works, ma." I'm like, "I've already signed paperwork. I'm fully committed." She goes, "Oh, my God. I killed him." She's like all hysterical. I'm like, "No, no." And then my stepdad's like, "No, it'd be, it'd be, it's good for him. It'll be all right with him." My grandpa was in Vietnam. My grandpa called her and was like, "Tammy, he needs it." My uncle was in the Air Force. He needs it. He is a bum right now.

• 2:14:11Speaker 05

  He has no guidance.

• 2:14:14Speaker 05

  There's no discipline.

• 2:14:18Speaker 05

  Alright, cuz I'd been handed everything because of football. High school, like it's Friday, you have a game tonight, put your head down, take a nap. Basketball, Tuesday, Fridays, take a nap.

• 2:14:32Speaker 05

  You wanna go, "Hey, I'm kinda hungry. I can't play tonight on empty stomach." "Hey, well, go down to the cafeteria, see if they'll feed you." Like babied all through school. Didn't do anything in school. And um, so I, you know, I failed myself as a, as a young kid, but the people that were supposed to be molding me didn't do that either. So I had no drive, no discipline, no nothing. So I get sent to um, Fort Benning, Georgia. And I'm like, "Oh, my God. What did I sign up for?" Soon as I got off the bus, everybody's yelling, it's a complete chaos. People are holding bags over their heads. I'm like, "Come on."

• 2:15:18Speaker 05

  I ain't see this on Call of Duty. This wasn't on Call of Duty. No, it wasn't. Y'all supposed to hand me some sexy stuff. I got a bag and y'all are yelling at me. So um, I did basic, right? My recruiter didn't give me anything in my contract. Nothing. I didn't have anything.

• 2:15:37Speaker 05

  So about two months in it, I started asking people what they're doing. People are like, "Oh, man, I have, you know, the, the um, 18 x-rays, special forces. I got, I got airborne contract, I got this." And I'm like, "Man, I got nothing. I got nothing. I don't have anything." I'm like, you know, people got bonuses and I'm like,

• 2:15:58Speaker 05

  "If I ever go back home, I'm gonna fight this dude. He lied to me. It's not like Call of Duty. Everybody else in here are getting paid pretty good. I don't have anything in my contract." So about two months in basic, the drill instructor comes in. He's like reading off everybody's duty assignments of where they're going. You know, people with airborne contracts, some are going to Italy, some are going to Bragg. Obviously, the 18x guys are going to Bragg and they're like, "Korea."

• 2:16:24Speaker 05

  I'm like...

• 2:16:26Speaker 05

  Huh? What do you mean Korea? Like, I'm the youngest child. Like, when we went to like Chinese restaurants and stuff, my mom took me to McDonald's. I'm not gonna eat their food. I don't know what food they got there. But I'm gonna starve. What are we talking about? I can't go there. Are you absolutely kidding me? So I'm like, I'm panicking. I'm like, man. I'm like, some other guys are like, oh, man, South Korea, that's kind of cool. I'm like, that's not cool. Like, at this point, I was dedicated, right? I wanted to go fight bad guys. You know, once I put the uniform on, because I come from a family of military people,

• 2:17:09Speaker 05

  and I'm that generation. Now, my younger half-brother is now, he's in the 82nd, but I was the first one from, as the kids, to go do something. So I was listening to all like the Toby Keith music and stuff before I left, get myself all like hyped up, you know, the American soldiers. By this point, I was like, I was kind of in it, man. I was like, man, this is kind of interesting, whatever. But I wanted to go do something. I didn't just, I didn't know anything about what I was doing in the first place, but I know I didn't want to go to Korea because I knew the guys didn't deploy from Korea to go fight a war. And we were still in war, right? So if I'm here, let's go do it. I still had that. They were starting to mold me to understanding of my purpose, of why I'm here, right? I'm here to go fight a war, go fight bad guys.

• 2:17:54Speaker 05

  So I'm like, I go in there. That was on like a Friday. And Sunday, it's like relaxed day or whatever, cleaning guns, whatever we're doing. And I find my drill sergeant. I'm like, hey, sir, I'm like, Sergeant Rutherford. Hey, Sergeant Rutherford, or Drill Sergeant, can I talk to you? He's like, what you got? I'm like, hey, I can't go to Korea.

• 2:18:18Speaker 05

  He's like, wow, I'm like, one, like, for real. I don't eat any kind of food like that. He's like, shut up and get out of here, brother. I'm like, no, no, for real. I want to go do something.

• 2:18:30Speaker 05

  I want to go to war. You have to help me get somewhere that's going to deploy me. I didn't just sign up for this to have a job. Now I know my purpose. I understand why I'm here and I understand the importance of why I'm here. I understand that there are people who have died wearing this exact uniform that I'm wearing. I want a purpose.

• 2:18:48Speaker 05

  He goes,

• 2:18:50Speaker 05

  pulls out, he's like, what have you gotten on your last PT test? I'd maxed out three hundreds on all my PT tests. I actually trained for this. I didn't have a job, right? So I had six months to train. I trained every day. I ran all the time. I did everything I could. Because I'd been told that you can get contracts in basic. So I'm like, I want, I heard that I can get an airborne contract. He's like, look, you have three hundred on your next PT test. It was, it was coming up to be like the last PT test. Uh, before A I T. He's like, you get a three hundred on your PT test. And I'll give you an airborne contract. Because you have the highest score here. You've had consistent three hundreds.

• 2:19:34Speaker 05

  I'll give you an airborne contract. I was like, yeah, I was like, I can do that. PT test was coming up about three days, two days before the PT test. I came down with the flu.

• 2:19:48Speaker 05

  Diarrhea, throwing up. Feeling weak. I'm like, oh, man, dude. I'm really going to Korea. And the night of the, before the PT test, my bunkmate was like, hey, Cook. He goes, uh, I know you ain't been feeling well, but you want to buy something that'll give you energy? I'm like, what, what, what could you possibly have? Like packs of sugar? He stole like, he goes, no, no, no. I was able to get a five hour energy shot from, um, the commissary. I was like, yeah, I was like, how much? He's like, a hundred dollars. I was like, done, done. I'll get you the money when we get out. He goes, all right. And I'll rip that thing the next morning.

• 2:20:32Speaker 05

  Man, I was throwing up on that run. But I was so dedicated to get out of a deployment to Korea. Or uh, uh, stationed in Korea. That I maxed out that PT test. I got a three hundred. No shit. So, I mean, I, I'm pretty sure I'd shit myself on that run. I wasn't stopping. I wasn't stopping to puke. I had, I had to do this. Like, cause the pushups and setups were easy for me, but it was always the run that I always came so close to, to always passing to get to three hundred. It was always by like seconds. And I didn't have seconds to spare. And I was feeling horrible. So they, um, Rutherford held up to his end of the bargain and gave me an airborne contract.

• 2:21:18Speaker 05

  So um, got the orders. Everybody else, again, was pretty much going to Italy. Few were going to Bragg and they're like, hey, we'll get you to Bragg. I was like, man, that's great. I'll take Bragg. An hour and a half from Myrtle Beach. Four hours from home. Like, that's, that's, that's, okay. I can do that. I like that. And then I got to, you know, went to airborne school and um, man, it's just, just another, you know, month of just being treated like shit. And now I'm talking to guys there that are like, yeah, yeah. I'm like, oh, where y'all going? Like, oh, you know, we're going to RASP after this. And I'm like, well, what's that? They're like, oh, Ranger selection. I'm like, dude,

• 2:22:03Speaker 05

  how did I not get any of this? Like, I forgot what my ASVAB score was, but it, it was, it was high enough to get these qualifications. I don't know. I can't remember what it was.

• 2:22:16Speaker 05

  It was like, it was like, I don't know, like one on one or something like that. I'm not sure, but it was high enough to get these contracts. My recruiter just, I was easy.

• 2:22:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:26Speaker 05

  I was like a stray dog outside and he gave me a little puppy chow, a little, little food and I was happy. Or he gave me a job to, I didn't think of the bigger picture. And I was like, man, I gotta get there. You know, it sounds cool. You know, this is the kind of people I want to be with. So I get to the 82nd, get to brag.

• 2:22:47Speaker 05

  It was really cool, man. I was just like seeing all these like maroon berets and just the, kind of the vibe that people were putting out and I was like, God, this is, I like this place. This is cool. But when I got to my company, man, you just get treated like shit. There's like no true leaders at that time in the 82nd. Everybody just treats you like shit. There's nobody taking care of you. Nobody helping you or trying to be a leader. You got people that have never been leaders a day in their life, like E4, like the E4 mafia. Dude, those dudes would treat you, beat you down and treat you like shit. Physically hit you and treat you like shit. Then expect for you to have morale.

• 2:23:31Speaker 05

  And then the squad leaders would come down after doing nothing all day long. Instead of like going to do training, five o'clock comes around, it's time to go home. Hey, we gotta go do area beautification. That's just not what I signed up for. Not what I signed up for at all. This is ridiculous. I was like this, I can't. Cause at that point I was like 20 years, I can do 20 years. Retire at, at 40 years old. Yeah, I could do that. At this point, I, I, I'm like committed. I'm in this. I'm like, man, I'm the type of people I want to be around. But man, that, um.

• 2:24:09Speaker 05

  I was very proud of wearing my maroon beret in my 82nd patch. But it was like every day, bad leadership was sucking the morale out of me. I'm like, I want to do this, but I gotta, I gotta get out. I gotta go maybe try out for something else. And that was when I saw my first SF guy. I was wearing a gym and he was walking in, had a green beret. And I was like, man, what is that? He said, special forces. I looked it up. I was like, man, that's, I gotta get there. That's what I want to do. Um, I wanted to go be, I want to go to Ranger School, wanted to do this. And I had a horrible staff sergeant at the time.

• 2:24:48Speaker 05

  I mean, he was just a redneck from Louisiana that just was, he had failed selection like three times, failed Ranger School, didn't want any of his guys going anywhere. Right? Because if I pass Ranger School and I have a tab, what does he look like? Jealousy. He didn't want any of us going anywhere. Dude, I was smoking the MPT. They would punish me by like stupid punishments by trying to smoke me. I looked at it as a workout. Smoke me out for hours. That just means I don't go to the gym after this. I enjoy it. I'm working out. I enjoy working out. I was taking all that hatred that we had talked about and I would put it into working out. I enjoyed it. Pushups, front leaning rest, whatever.

• 2:25:33Speaker 05

  Cause guess what? You're not going to do it till I die. Eventually you have to stop. And I just got outlast you. And I can. But it was just all the time there. Just, there was no training. I think I did CQB like twice. Like the rest of it was walking around Area J in the woods, acting like we were taking contact. Like there's no real training. I'm like, man, this is, this is not, it's gotta be something better than this. Cause my motivation, I've been there for eight months and I'm like, ready to leave. I'm like, this sucks. I'm getting treated like shit every day just for being good at PT.

• 2:26:15Speaker 05

  Or like not being able to take the machine gun, like the, the 240 at a certain time while people are yelling at me. And while I'm doing jumping jacks, I can't take this machine gun apart fast enough. And neither could they. That's the problem. I was being asked to do things that they couldn't do.

• 2:26:33Speaker 05

  But because they had been there and they deployed some BS deployment to Iraq and didn't do anything, but said on a fob, "They were superior to us cherries." They thought they'd done something for their country. So instead of just taking us under our wings and teaching us the ways, you treated us like shit. You killed our motivation. "Hey, brother, we are your backup. We are the people that are gonna be fighting next to you. You don't want somebody next to you that hates you when you're trying to fight for your life, because if you get shot, I'm gonna have to help you." You don't want somebody that hates you to help you. So how about you build us up? But it never got to that point.

• 2:27:15Speaker 05

  It never, it just, I saw the first Green Beret and I was like, "That's what I wanna do. I wanna be that guy." I started looking into it. I'd see, I'd see somebody that was in SF and I'd ask them questions. They were, they were nice guys. "Hey, man, what's it like? Hey, you know, we do this, this, this." It's grown-up rules, big boy rules. I'm like, "Dude, I gotta get there." Because I spent like, my whole youth being a part of a really good team. Football, basketball. I always wanted to be the best. I wanted to be on the best team to win. And I wasn't on the best team to win.

• 2:27:57Speaker 05

  And I didn't wanna go to war not being on the best team. So I asked if I could go to the selection. No. I asked to go to Ranger School. No. We're locked in, we have, we have a deployment coming up. We have training coming up. We don't have guys to spare, we're already short. I'm like, "Man, you should want me to go do these things." Like, as a leader, I want you to be better. Because if you go and do these things and I, and I help build you up, then that's an, that's a, an example of what a good leader I am.

• 2:28:36Shawn Ryan?

  They probably didn't understand that because that's how their leaders were.

• 2:28:40Speaker 05

  You're exactly right. It is a domino effect. They've been treated like that forever. And then it just keeps going and going and going. I think it's making a change now.

• 2:28:52Speaker 05

  Mainly because of social media, right? I think a lot of these leaders have a lot of squad leaders on Bragg that follow us and want to be good to their dudes because they're learning from what we're doing. I think it is making a change, but back then, man, I hated going to work. I hated it. I couldn't get out of there because nobody wanted to send anybody because if you sent me and I actually came back with a tab, you know, and you didn't have one, like,

• 2:29:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:23Speaker 05

  It sucked, man. It sucked. And then finally, I gave up because they're like, well, we're locked in on an deployment. So about November of 2011, we were supposed to deploy to Afghanistan.

• 2:29:39Speaker 05

  We went to Louisiana. No, we were going to go to Louisiana. It's JRTC and it got canceled. Then the deployment got pushed. So we did a jump.

• 2:29:52Speaker 05

  Supposed to deploy like the following week. So I went in for a haircut at this place called Frederick's Salon in Fayetteville. And I went in there and this girl cut my hair.

• 2:30:06Speaker 05

  Did a great job talking to her. Super awesome person. Really connected with the person. Man, I thought she was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. Man, I thought she was beautiful. And

• 2:30:20Speaker 05

  I left to say goodbye and then we went to some other training. Oh, we went to Delano to train for about two weeks. And I came back and they were like, all right, guys, your deployment got pushed again to February.

• 2:30:34Speaker 05

  All right, whatever. So I went in for a haircut. And uh, my wife was the one that I connected with. She was like, hey, she, she just got out of a relationship. She's dating this guy that was in the Q course and he went to Germany and cheated on her and stuff. She wasn't looking for a relationship. Neither really was I.

• 2:30:54Speaker 05

  And she was like, hey, um, let's all go out tonight. I'mma, I'mma hook you up. The girl that was in the chair next to me, she thought you were cute. I'll set it up and we'll all just go out tonight. Bring some of your friends. I was like, yeah, that's awesome. Let's do that. And uh, we go to my, uh, my wife's apartment.

• 2:31:12Speaker 05

  And the girl never showed. So I was like, all right. So we all just started hanging out. And then me and my wife started hanging out.

• 2:31:23Speaker 05

  And uh, stayed all night with her. Didn't have sex. Thought that was awesome.

• 2:31:29Speaker 05

  Um,

• 2:31:31Speaker 05

  got married like forty one days later.

• 2:31:34Speaker 05

  Forty one days? Forty one days. Yeah. That date alone is crazy. January fourth, twenty twelve is when I got, uh, married. Well, we had just found out this past year, her grandparents were married January fourth. No way. I found out in a newspaper article that my aunt posted on Facebook that my dad's parents married January fourth. Wow. No idea. We had no idea. Wow. We have them, uh, hanging up in our house. Both of the articles. Hers is a wedding invitation. Mine's an article. Super crazy. Very cool. So how I met my son is about that third or fourth night I was over at her house and

• 2:32:16Speaker 05

  it was like in one of those old historical homes downtown Fable that they turned into like, uh, an apartment complex with like four apartments. They had a backyard. We had a fire going. She had her son. She said, hey, I'mma, he's in the bathtub. My mom's watching him. I'mma go put him, put him in bed. I was like, all right, cool. I'm sitting out by the fire. I'm by myself. I hear like little footprints. I'm like, oh, what is that? This kid runs over. He's like soaking wet.

• 2:32:42Speaker 05

  Says that's on my lap. Looks right at me, dad, in my face and says, I love you. I might.

• 2:32:51Speaker 05

  Whose kid is this? First of all. Whose kid is this? I'm a little freaked out. She's like, "Oh, my God. Stacy, Mom, you were supposed to watch him." She's like, "He just ran out." And, you know, she's got hip replacements. She can't really run after him. She's like, "I'm so sorry. I mean, he wasn't supposed to meet you." I was like, she's like, you know, because she didn't want him to meet me, obviously, because she don't want to traumatize him with, you know, some male at his house. And, um,

• 2:33:22Speaker 05

  I don't know. We got married 41 days later. And, uh, this instant, the instant, I just felt this instant love for them that I've never felt before. And, uh... What was your second interaction with him? With your son? Um, we had, uh, I came over. We had, I had breakfast with him and stuff. And then, um, about a week, I just, instead of staying at the barracks, I just stayed there at their house. And, uh... When did you start getting close to him? Almost immediately, honestly. Yeah. What drew you in?

• 2:34:05Speaker 05

  He was so loving. He is just, he was a good kid, but man, he was hell on wheels too, though. One time I had to discipline him. I was like, "Hey, go sit on your bed." He's like, "Little kid, man." He did some, he wasn't listening. Mama said, "Hey, man, go sit on your bed. You're in timeout." So he goes and sits on the bed. I hear him in there like messing with the bed. I'm like, "Hey,

• 2:34:33Speaker 05

  five more minutes just added." He looks at me dead in my face and goes, "Five more minutes." I was like,

• 2:34:44Speaker 05

  I was like, "Hey, I can't whip this. I can't whip him. She's gonna have to go in there and deal with that." I was like, "I'm about to lose it." She said, "What do you do?" She starts busting out laughing. I'm like, "No, man. Go in there and whoop, whoop that tail. What are you talking about?" So, you know, but we've had a great relationship since day one. Since, since day one. It is just... It's it's just like he's my child since day one. And I wasn't trying to be his dad. He already had one. I didn't know anything at the time. Like his dad was was, he knows this, but his dad was very abusive. Like when I met my wife, my wife had screws screwing her windshields down.

• 2:35:29Speaker 05

  Not windshields, sorry, her windows down and all of her on and all around the whole house, the whole apartment. She had like five or six locks on the inside of the doors, keeping them from being kicked in. So it was a always, I never knew at the time. I didn't know. I didn't know anything about that. I always thought it was weird. I thought, okay, well, maybe somebody previous to this. But yeah, the windows were locked, back door had same thing. It was a pretty bad situation that I came into, but I found it out weeks later. And I was like, Mama, she's like, she didn't tell me. Her mom told me. I confronted her about it. She's like, I I don't want you to leave.

• 2:36:13Speaker 05

  She's like, I'm I'm I'm sorry, but I I figured if I told you, you you would leave. You know, it's hard to find somebody as a single mom anyways, but it's really hard to find somebody that has a crazy abusive ex. I'm not going nowhere. But they don't, all I ask for from here on out is is honesty. And that's what our whole marriage has been, is honesty. And and that was a, we got married January 4th, 2012. Like 41 days later, went down, had a marriage at the courthouse, you know? Got married in a in a red button up with a cheetah print tie, you know? Some vans, man.

• 2:36:56Speaker 05

  And she she was, she's dressed up nice, had some had some guys from. The one leader that was phenomenal, um, two leaders. One was named Nick Fredsky. And the other one was named Dakota Dakota Cartes Santos, which ended up becoming one of my best friends. Really took me under his wing, phenomenal human being. He owns a gym now in Pennsylvania, phenomenal human. He was. Man, he kept me going every day. He was a phenomenal leader. And if he would have stayed in, he would have been a phenomenal leader. But he was there at my, um, at my little wedding. And, uh, you know, I didn't know any better or anything at the time.

• 2:37:39Speaker 05

  And I didn't tell anybody I got married. I didn't tell anybody. And, uh, so finally, the training came for JRTC, right? And I'm, uh, walking around Louisiana. My phone's just

• 2:37:59Speaker 05

  I'm like, dude, who is calling me? They've been calling me for 10 minutes. I throw it down. It's like, it's like 28 missed calls for mom. I'm like, dang. She found out.

• 2:38:13Speaker 05

  I'm like, dang, this is gonna be bad. So we carry on with the, with the little training exercise we were doing. We get back to the, um, little hooters and I call her and she's, she's like, my grandma, my grandma B, her mom, she should have been a CIA spy on Facebook. She could have found anything. She was the Facebook Farmville queen, man. She lived on it. She goes, well, well, mom said that on so and so, that so and so saw where you got married. She goes, are you married? I'm like, yes, I am. Yes, I am, mom.

• 2:38:55Speaker 05

  She goes, oh, my God. Oh, my God. You're an idiot. I'm like, they have a great relationship now. But, um, I was like, she goes, I had to find out through your grandmother on Facebook. I'm like, sorry about that. I was like, makes you feel any better. Nobody else knew unless you lived here. And, uh, so finally, man, we, we, we got through that. And then, um, I deployed at the end of February. So I met my wife, got married in 41 days, went to training for a month. Right after I got married and then deployed two weeks after I got home. Wow. So.

• 2:39:39Speaker 05

  How'd you propose to your wife? The private way, you know, um, there's a little bar restaurant downtown called Husk Hardware. It's the first place we ever went to. We, uh, we had dinner and we had a little, little thing in the corner. And, um, you know, took a knee, asked her to marry me and, uh, I was shaking so bad. I'm 21 years old. I had 22 at the time. I'm like, you know, couldn't, couldn't even get it out, right? And, uh, I just knew I loved her. That's, that's all I knew. I, I, I just knew that, man, I've, I, I don't even know, like, I've never even felt this, really, this kind of love, like,

• 2:40:26Speaker 05

  other than like my mom, like, but I feel like I almost love her more than my mom. I loved her so much.

• 2:40:34Speaker 05

  And, uh, yes, I proposed at a restaurant, right? And then we got super wasted, went to dollar night at Lido's downtown. Everything was a dollar. You know, we were high in life, you know, we were just living it up. She, at the time, she's older than me.

• 2:40:52Speaker 05

  She's a cougar, you know, she's 39, I'm 35. So, you know, she's, she's older. And, uh, you know, free haircuts for life though, but you know, whatever. It's a perk. But, um, I deployed and then a couple of weeks in deployment,

• 2:41:10Speaker 05

  my son's father found out that I was gone. He was, he was infuriated.

• 2:41:16Speaker 05

  He was livid at this point and, uh, cause he hadn't been, he hadn't even been around really, but he just shows up and tries to cause violence. When, when you were there? Never when I was there, but once he found out I left, it was game on. There's police reports, like when I became a cop afabo, I, I kind of looked into some addresses and stuff. He actually tried to cut a pipeline at that apartment and tried to blow the whole apartment up.

• 2:41:43Speaker 05

  What? Yeah, before I was around, like did some, Sean, some of the most horrific things I've ever heard of to her. And I don't want to say them because they're her stories, but it was gnarly. It was really bad. So she's like, Blake, you know, I don't know what to do. So call my mom. I, hey, Mom, I got a favor to ask you. I'm like, it's gonna be a hard favor, but um, I need Nicole and Stacy to come stay with you. I explained the situation. She said, tell them,

• 2:42:25Speaker 05

  come on. And uh, she took them in, took care of them, made sure they were safe. And uh, but my wife, every other weekend, my wife had to drive Fayetteville, five hour drive. She'd drive, drop Stacy off on Friday, drive back to West Virginia. Cause his grandfather, his real dad's dad had custody, not his dad. Cause it's part of the good old boy system. He had a bunch of money in Fayetteville, knew the judges and how that even worked out is backdoor

• 2:43:08Speaker 05

  deals. But she would turn around and drive five hours Sunday to go pick him up and then drive five hours back. She was driving 20 hours in a weekend. Wow. So, strong woman. But, you know, and my mom took him in and um, so it was just, you know, it's a standard deployment. It was, it was winter, it was starting to phase out of that winter time, right? We're starting to get into the fighting season that you always kind of hear about. Um, when we first got to um,

• 2:43:43Speaker 05

  Uh, FOB Warrior? The Polish were still there. And, uh, man, uh, Polish were crazy. Like, they were, they were somehow making, like, whiskey and, and, or whatever they were making. Like, them dudes were, them dudes were wild. Like, it was cool to see that. It was a cool experience. And, uh, you know, we, we, we were doing the exchange with them one time and we were on a route and there was an IED and it was close to, you know, we were like an hour away from, like, Surf and Turf, right? And, and dude, we're like, oh, you know, we'll call EOD to come out and look at this. Man, these dudes just start chucking grenades. They're just like, oh, we'll blow it up. I'm like, this is, this is not how we operate, right? That seems kind of dangerous. And they're like, oh, no, we gotta eat.

• 2:44:28Speaker 05

  We got Surf and Turf. So I was like, this is, what? This is wild. This is crazy. And, um, you know, so finally they ended up leaving. And then, you know, the rest of the big 80 seconds started coming in, right? Command Sergeant Major Love. Dude was a soup sandwich, man. And he was the head of, of everything. And it just got to the point where like, hey, man, we're at war. We get mortared every day. Like, why do I gotta wear a PT belt to go to the bathroom? Why do I gotta wear a PT belt to go to the chow hall? What are we doing here? And that was when I was like, I have to get out of the 80 second. Because this is, this is, this is crazy.

• 2:45:12Speaker 05

  I'm wearing a PT belt and I'm shaving in like horrible environments because I can't have like a little scruffle. Like, I'm shitting in MRE bags up at the outpost. Like, and I'm still having to shave up there. What is going on? It doesn't make sense. Everybody's stuck in this World War II. Guess what? That was great. They did great things. It's not World War II anymore. Right? It's a different environment. Y'all can loosen up a little bit. This is not that long ago. Like, that's a long time. We can chill out a little bit. I don't need to shave and shit in an MRE bag. Like, nobody's bothering us. It was just, everything was ridiculous. But...

• 2:46:00Speaker 05

  It was, it was fun, though. The, it started to really get to know the guys. We started forming as like a little team. We had gotten a new squad leader at the time. His name was Sergeant, Staff Sergeant Garcia Boches. He was like, he's had like all these jumps. He was a black hat for a while. He was, Pat Tillman was, went to his class in jump school. So he was a, a awesome guy, very old school, though. But he, he took, he looked out for us. And then before him, we had Nick Fredsky, who was, he, he deployed like seven or eight times, Afghanistan.

• 2:46:44Speaker 05

  Like in my eyes, he was like a legend. Like, man, this guy's still alive. He's got eight deployments in 10 years of his career. Like, he'd, he'd been deployed like all the time. And he was like, he was so chill. Like, we had him as a squad leader for like seven months. And man, he just taught you everything. Like, he just took care of you. He just taught you everything. But I still couldn't go anywhere because we're locked in on an appointment.

• 2:47:14Speaker 05

  So then he got sent to another company, I think, like Delta Company. And then we got Boches, which was awesome to have. And then we deployed. But, I mean, it is actually felt good because there are a lot of good young guys in the 82nd. There's a lot of, there's a lot of good dudes in the 82nd. You know, the, the conventional army has been overshadowed. People think it's not cool anymore, like being in the infantry, like standard infantry, because of social media, right? Social media now, when, when you think of something sexy, you think of beards and, and like plate carriers and cutoff t-shirts and, you know, the, the, the special operations community. Like, it's, it, it looks cool.

• 2:47:57Speaker 05

  And it's, you know, a lot of guys in the 82nd are, they're really good dudes. And I think they feel maybe over, overlooked. You know, maybe like, we're not as important anymore because we're just in the 82nd. I've heard guys tell me their story. Well, I was just in the 82nd. Hey, man, be proud. Yeah. Be proud of what you did. You're still in the infantry. You're still in the 82nd. You're still jumping out of planes. Be proud of what you... I'm so proud to be in the 82nd. I don't go around and try to act like I was in SF or anything. I'm proud of what I did. Because what I did set me up from where I'm at, for where I'm at now. That was where I was supposed to be. So I tell all those guys, anybody to this day in the 82nd, be proud of what you're doing.

• 2:48:42Speaker 05

  Your service is not overlooked. You guys, there's a lot of really good, young dudes who are, who are changing this. They're changing the 82nd. You know, I've been reached out by several guys, and I will go on posts and train any of those guys for free from the 82nd. Because I didn't get that. I didn't get any CQB training. Except for basic, and it was the whole like grab, lean rock, lean rock. Like, old school stuff. My heart is with them guys, man. If they ever need anything from me. Like, they, they message me all the time, and I will do whatever I can for you.

• 2:49:24Speaker 05

  If any training, any shooting, any advice for like, after the military, like, I got you. Because I'm proud of what, and I'm proud to know you. Be proud of your service.

• 2:49:37Speaker 05

  So...

• 2:49:39Speaker 05

  We had one of the SF groups, I don't know which one, that was on our, on FOB Warrior 2. So we'd see them around and... And they just had like a different life, right? Everything was just kind of carefree and, and big boy rules. You know, they're, they're treated like big boys because they're, they are. Right? They come from an amazing group, or amazing unit, or amazing team, and, and something about that, I was like, man, when I, when I leave here, I'm, I talk to Boches and, and he's like, I, he's like, I'll help you. He's like, we'll, we'll, we'll get all the paperwork done when we get back. We'll do everything. And I was so excited, man. I was like, so excited. And then, May 24th, 2012 came.

• 2:50:26Speaker 05

  We were, that week, we were the QRF. And whatever outposts that, that the SF unit had, they were taking contact. And we were going out to help them. The fastest road to, I've later found this out. The fastest road to them was, they labeled it as a black road. It hasn't been cleared of an IED in two weeks, but it was the fastest route to them.

• 2:50:55Speaker 05

  So, that's the one that our amazing leadership decided that we were gonna go take. And we hadn't turned off Highway 1, but maybe more than a half a mile. And I'm the gunner. And we're driving, and then it's so crazy, I even think about it now, it's so crazy. I saw this massive bright light.

• 2:51:24Speaker 05

  And then it was like, slow motion of seeing the dirt. I could see, like, piles of dirt. It was so crazy, like, slow, I never heard it. I just saw it, and I saw the dirt come up. And I felt this heat, pressure, push me back.

• 2:51:43Speaker 05

  And my backplate broke in half. And then I came forward and smashed the whole left side of my face on the buttstock of the 240.

• 2:51:54Speaker 05

  And I woke up, they said about 10 minutes later, on a gurney.

• 2:52:00Speaker 05

  I'm hearing people scream. I'm hearing people talk about the QRF that's coming for us, just got, ran over an IED. They're season all operations. I hear Apaches, hear something about ambushes. So the vehicle in front took, took the main blast, right? Our front half of our vehicle caught it, because it was like, kinda in between. But I got the, the back blast. The pressure's what got me. It pushed me back and broke my plate. And then I got slung forward, and then broke the whole left side of my face. I'll tell you this day, still have no feeling on the left side of my face. Damn. There's, it's, it's, you can look at my nose and tell that it's, it's broken. So I have no feeling anywhere over here. This is...

• 2:52:44Speaker 05

  They never fixed it, never gave me surgery for it, nothing. It's just, the nerves are gone. It's crazy. I can feel this side, but not this side. So if you ever see me with a face tattoo like Mike Tyson, it'll be on this side. Just saying, know that. Teardrops. But um, I remember laying on the gurney, and they're trying to get a bird in. Uh, man, one of my really good friends, he's calling in the nine line. His name's Josh Marshack.

• 2:53:11Shawn Ryan?

  Were you aware, or are you just conscious?

• 2:53:14Speaker 05

  I was, I was aware at this point. Um, I could feel bleeding. I could taste the blood. I just didn't know where it was coming from. And I actually have a scar on my head. It was a massive, it's a massive gash. That that's mainly where I was bleeding from. And, but I had no idea. I had a massive headache. My ears were ringing. And it was just tons of confusion. But I could, I could see Marshack next to me. And he's calling in the nine line. I'm kind of, I'm kind of hearing what he's saying. But like, I'm kind of going in and out too. And I love that dude to this day. Like, we still talk and I still think him. Anytime I see him, I hug him. Hey man, thanks for getting that nine line for me.

• 2:53:57Speaker 05

  Then a bird came down and they got me on the bird. And um, crazy story about that too. Um, they got me on the bird and I'm laying there. And man, my head's killing me, I'm bleeding. And on the ceiling is a flag. You know how some of them will put their team flag or whatever on the ceiling? Man, it was a Blackbeard flag. It was this guy. And I didn't know my injuries. I thought I was dying. The way everybody was acting, they're cutting clothes off on me. And uh, and I pass out. And uh, I wake up at the little medical spot on uh, FOB Warrior.

• 2:54:39Speaker 05

  And I got all these doctors around me, um, you know, asking me about feeling in my legs, my brain, my brain, I had a massive knot, like a huge knot. They're like, oh, you know, they're trying to do all these things, but they couldn't find me to bother them. Weather was so bad, whatever they call it, the, uh, sky was red, I don't know, whatever they call it, but, so I laid there for two days. Just, I remember laying there and, uh, we'll, we'll get to that in a second, but, so they give me some, some morphine, like I'm feeling kinda good. And I'm laying there and then the next morning, um, the commands aren't major.

• 2:55:22Speaker 05

  And the, um, the commander walks in and they're like, hey, uh, private cook, like, I need to talk to you about something. I'm like drugged up. I remember the conversation and they're like, hey, uh, um, we need you to call your wife. I'm like, okay. I'm like, yeah, that'd be great. Can I, I got a phone, I can call her? Like, cause I had like one of those little hodge phones that you could buy with the minutes. I was like, hey, somebody give me my phone. They're like, but here's, here's the problem is the 82nd and the family readiness group, called my wife that night. Told my wife that there was an accident and I was deceased.

• 2:56:07Speaker 05

  Are you fucking kidding me? Next to my mom. And your mom. And my mom. And there was about an hour from my call, from the call she received from the, from, from when I called her. They called her first, they called her first thing that morning, not that night, first thing that morning. And then I was able to call her an hour later. And she goes, her exact words was, who the fuck is this? I'm like, hey, it's me. I'm like, I sound funny because I'm on morphine, I'm not dead, I'm alive. I'll call you in a little bit. She's like so confused. I'm like, hey, I'm like, this is really me, I promise.

• 2:56:51Speaker 05

  They get on the phone, they're like, ma'am, Ms. Cook, we're sorry about this, like she is, he is alive. Um, nobody had died, but like- Holy shit. So for an hour, my wife and my mom thought I was dead. Like, how do you fuck that up? Because some army wife

• 2:57:14Speaker 05

  calls

• 2:57:17Speaker 05

  my wife and tells them news that shouldn't even been delivered to her.

• 2:57:23Speaker 05

  Why would you do that? It's not your responsibility.

• 2:57:27Speaker 05

  So, that was...

• 2:57:31Speaker 05

  I think that still bothers my wife, maybe, that she got that phone call? But, I can't even imagine, man, how she felt. So, but at least they were... They caught it fast enough to where it wasn't a day, right? Or hours. It was about an hour.

• 2:57:51Speaker 05

  And I think what happened is the lady that was head of the FRG told her husband that, "Hey, I called the wife. She's okay." It's like, well, hold on, nobody fucking died.

• 2:58:04Speaker 05

  He just got hurt really bad. So, we were able to clear that whole mess up. And, you know, which was caused anxiety for the whole rest of the deployment for my family. But, they finally get me to Boghrum. I get to Boghrum, and, you know, I have massive headaches. I don't feel well. I'm still throwing up. My legs are feeling weird. My back is like, super sore. And, I didn't break my back. Didn't have any spinal damage. I just had like, my whole back was black. I guess just nerve damage. So, they're like, "Hey, we can send you to Germany and then send you home."

• 2:58:48Speaker 05

  I'm like, "Hey..." Or, I'm like, "Can I stay?" They're like, "Well, that's... How do you feel?" I'm like, "I feel great." They can't send me home. That's an embarrassment. I failed at college. I'd failed my family about getting a job. Like, I'm on a continuous path of failing. If I go home early,

• 2:59:11Speaker 05

  I look like a bitch. I'm... I let my grandfather down. You know? I'm not dead, so why do I need to go home?

• 2:59:22Speaker 05

  So then they, they, they're like, that's fine, but you're not going to be operational for a little while. Take, take these ambians in the morning and at nighttime, sleep. I was taking like two ambians a day. One in the morning, I'd eat breakfast, take an ambian, go to sleep. I'd wake up, go eat dinner, take an ambian, go to sleep. Then, then I was like, oh, I need pain medicine. They'd give me oxycodones over there. I was like, I stayed high and tired. Then like I kicked all of it to the curb, cause, cause now people like are looking at me like I'm a pussy. Like, like they don't know the extent of my injuries. When I got back, I told them nothing was wrong.

• 3:00:03Speaker 05

  They don't know that I, I, I have some brain scans that, that, you know, they, they told me I was fine, but later on when I got back home, so I get back home and we, we do the deployment. I do a couple missions with them and then I get back home and we do a battalion run. I think I'm fine, I feel fine. I do the run, don't even remember the run. I remember walking out to the field, hearing uh, some AC DC, we're all lining up. And I remember drinking water. That was it. That's all I remember. So then I was like, man. How do you know you did the run? I don't know. How do you know you missed something?

• 3:00:45Speaker 05

  Because people had told me that I was, I ran, so I was in the formation. My shirt was wet. We had gray battalion shirts, my shirt was soaking wet. I thought maybe I was dreaming, I didn't know what was going on. People told me I'd ran, I don't remember the run, and my shirt's drenched. I mean, you're talking October, North Carolina, ABC humidity, I'm soaked. I thought, man, maybe I just blacked out. So, a couple of days go by, I start having these random nosebleeds, these massive headaches. My eyes like start hurting over here on the sides. I'm like, man, I don't feel right. Something, something's not right.

• 3:01:29Speaker 05

  I started getting like that, that feeling that we have when we stood up and your legs are tingling, that would come and go. I felt like my legs were always asleep. I'd be standing and I'd get this tingling and I'd have to lean on my wife. So, finally I go, I go to Walmart. And I asked to go to WAMAC. And I pretty much get told I'm a pussy, being a pussy. Suck it up.

• 3:01:53Speaker 05

  You're gonna be a sick hall ranger? I'm like, hey, man, like, um, I got hurt. Like, I'd like to get a follow-up. So finally, they let me get a follow-up. And, um, get these scans done, get a full-body scan.

• 3:02:08Speaker 05

  And end up being, um, committed to the hospital. I had some, some, I had swelling in my brain.

• 3:02:15Speaker 05

  And I had some, some optic nerve issues. And I had some nerve damage in my spine.

• 3:02:24Speaker 05

  So I'm in the, I stayed in the hospital for like a week. And then they, they, they get the swelling down, um.

• 3:02:32Speaker 05

  They, they bring in a doctor who enrolls me into the first WAMAC traumatic range injury pipeline. There's five of us.

• 3:02:43Speaker 05

  One guy killed himself, one guy dropped out, two guys dropped out. And two of us completed it, me and another guy completed it. So for two years, I did this pipeline. I met with a world-renowned brain doctor, can't remember his name, but me and my wife met with him once a month.

• 3:03:01Speaker 05

  To this day, Sean,

• 3:03:04Speaker 05

  I don't know why I was having the issues. It was never explained to me. Nobody ever got answers, nobody ever got anything. I had a doctor, a neurologist, told me that she thought I had STDs. What? Exactly. I got off the phone with my wife, I'm like, what?

• 3:03:25Speaker 05

  And then she ended up getting fired because she was sexually harassing patients. The whole system was broken. To this day, I still don't know what happened. I did speech, memory, and physical therapy every day for two years, or a year and a half.

• 3:03:42Speaker 05

  And I got transferred to the Warrior Transition Battalion because I had so many doctor's appointments. And I couldn't ever get an answer. The Army never wanted to admit that they messed up by letting me go back and not fixing me right then. Because that's on them, they let me go back. I'm sure that that doctor, when, one, didn't, that did the brain scans, there's no way you didn't find that my brain wasn't swelling. Had a nod out to here, and I was throwing up with nosebleeds.

• 3:04:09Speaker 05

  You just gave me Ambien.

• 3:04:12Speaker 05

  I don't know if there was like, hey, we can't send, just send people to Germany unless you're like actively dying. I don't know. I don't know. But to this day, I never got answers of what happened to me. I have a medical file that's this thick. I'm a hundred, total and permanent, but I never got answers. I could never get answers, ever. So for a year and a half, I did speech memory and physical therapy with no answers to what was wrong. But whatever they were doing was working. So after a year and a half, I felt normal. I had all these like, like shock therapies on my brain. I had these needles

• 3:04:52Speaker 05

  put all over. Had all these things done, but nobody ever told me why. Why I'm doing this. Like, oh, you know, you got a brain injury. It's just something we're doing. Something we're testing out. I'm like, I'm not a rat in a lab. What's wrong? What are you doing to fix me? Oh, you know, you have a great care team. They got it taken care of. Yeah, that's great. But what are they doing to fix me? Have they not explained this to you? No. Bring it up to them. I bring it up to them. Nothing. Nothing. It was, it was horrible. You want to know why guys are killing themselves? Because they can't get answers. You don't care. You're a civilian or you're in the military and, and, and you're not giving people the answers that they need because you don't care. Something's wrong

• 3:05:36Speaker 05

  with me. What is wrong with me? If the army fucked up, that's fine. I'm not going to blame the army. But nobody ever told me what was wrong. So I got released from the pipeline. I had this little ceremony, whatever. They're like, oh, this is successful. I'm like, cool. Send me back to my unit. Send me back. I can leave Warrior Battalion, go back to the 82nd. Get in the 82nd, everybody's like rigging up, getting all their stuff. They're like, hey, Cook. Hey, man. Glad you're back. Um, go get your ruck. Um, needs to be this way, blah, blah, blah. Or you got a combat jump tonight.

• 3:06:17Speaker 05

  And we're gonna walk back to the company and you're gonna jump to 240. I'm like, I just got back, like, I just walked in the company. I'm like, what do you mean? I'm not jumping. I just, I just did this for a year and a half. This was like the end of, the end of, um, the end of 2013. So about, about December of 2013. I'm like, I only have like six more months left in my contract. I'm like, I'm not jumping. They're like, oh, you're gonna jump.

• 3:06:50Speaker 05

  You're not with the World Transition Battalion anymore. You're gonna jump. I'm like, man, this is bullshit. This ain't right. First armed was mad. They're all mad because I went to the World Transition Battalion and got help that I needed. Whether I got told what was wrong or not, whatever they did worked. I felt better. I still have some stuttering when I get excited. If you watch any of our videos on Instagram when I'm like trying to teach, sometimes I'll stutter. But whatever they did, like, it was great and I'm, and I'm grateful for those people. But to this day, I'd still like to know. But, so I get rigged up. I got no option. I'm an E4. You know, like, can't argue. They're either gonna give me an Article 15 for disobeying orders.

• 3:07:36Speaker 05

  Six months before I get out, or I can just suck it up and jump. So I'm like, cool, whatever, I'll jump to 240. At this point, whatever.

• 3:07:45Speaker 05

  We jump. Jump out.

• 3:07:49Speaker 05

  Parachute opens. Everything's fine and dandy. Bam. Head busts right off the windshield of a Humvee. Smacked the Humvee on the ground.

• 3:08:01Speaker 05

  I woke up, ma'am, I don't know, maybe, I mean, it could, it could have been long. 30 seconds later.

• 3:08:07Speaker 05

  I'm like, damn, I got a headache. I'm like, dude, suck it up. Suck it up. Put my parachute up. Met up at, at, at the meetup point, rally point, and I'm laying on the ground and, and Sergeant Boches is right there and I'm just throwing up. I am just yakking. He goes, "Cook, what's wrong?" I said, "Hey, man, I hit my head off the Humvee." He shined a light and I, I was, I was bleeding down, down on my face. He's like, "You sure you hit your head?" I'm like, "Yeah, I'm throwing up." He's like, "Hey," he goes, "Go to the medical tent right now." He goes, "You only got six months left. Go to the medical tent right now." Went to the medical tent. Took me to the hospital.

• 3:08:50Speaker 05

  Same doctor in the ER. Um, super cool. Right back into the Warrior Transition Battalion the next day. Uh, they treated my concussion for about five months. And then they were like, "Hey, you seem fine. See you later. Go pick up your D..." I walked in, still thinking I had treatment. I still had like, a month left of my contract. And they were like, "Hey, um, you go pick up your, your DD 214 and, and take this leave." I was like, "Okay. Sounds great. Is, am I okay? Am I good to leave?" They go, "Yeah, your doctor's cleared off all your paperwork. We have all your paperwork." I'm like, "Nobody ran that by me? Nobody told me I was cleared?" No shit.

• 3:09:35Speaker 05

  I was like, "Let me see my paperwork." There it was. So they rushed you out? Rushed me right out. Pushed me right out the door. Went to, uh, a sports center. Picked up my DD 214 and I didn't do any, I didn't do any out-processing. Dude, I still have, I had, like, my helmet. I didn't do any out-processing. Never got a letter for, to bring it in, nothing. They rushed me right out. "See you later." And, uh...

• 3:10:07Speaker 05

  Man, that's why I do encourage people to, if you want to stay in this longer, try to get to those other units, man. Because I, I feel like you might get better treatment. Maybe it's different now, I mean, it's been, my god, it's been 12 years now, but to this day, I, I have no idea. I just know how I felt. I just know that I was put in this important uh, timeline. I know that I was sent to a, a battalion that was made so people can go to their appointments because they're messed up. And then I was rushed right on out.

• 3:10:46Speaker 05

  And I had two months of leave build up. So I took it. Damn. And um, still had memory issues. Couldn't remember anything, couldn't remember I put my keys. Couldn't remember nothing. And um,

• 3:11:02Speaker 05

  so I had applied. So I got out early, so that was, that was uh, like February or like March, March timeframe? I was like, man, what am I gonna do? It's like, what am I gonna do? Cause I didn't get out medically. Uh, don't have a degree, right? Didn't take that serious. Shooting a piece of paper in a trash can didn't work for me. What am I gonna do? I have a son and a wife. She works. She does hair, but she had to lose all of her clients when I deployed to move back home with my mom. So she's still trying to build her clientele up. She gave all of her clients away to, for safety.

• 3:11:47Speaker 05

  And now she's trying to build all of them back up. It's hard. So my man, I'm gonna um, oh, we were driving down Bragg Boulevard. And I saw this, this armored vehicle flying up the road, blue lights and sirens. It said Fayetteville Police Emergency Response Team. I was like, that's it, man. I'm gonna be that. How do I get there? So I walked to the police station, I walked in the police station, say, hey, I wanna be a cop. How do I sign up? Like, oh, you know, you gotta go over to the training center. So I started the process and, uh, did all the hiring process and then, you know, May came and I heard nothing.

• 3:12:31Speaker 05

  May and June, crickets. I'm like, man, I didn't, didn't get this job. Cause, you know, I had to tell them, you know, so in that time period when I fell out of college, you know, cause I was honest with them about everything, right? Smoked some, smoked some weed. My stepdad had hernia surgery. And when he was healed, I stole the rest of his Percocets and sold them for money. So I had to be truthful on all this. They give you a lie detector test. I was like, man, maybe they didn't really like that, you know? Maybe that was, maybe I should have tried to lie, I, I don't know. May- maybe they didn't like that.

• 3:13:14Speaker 05

  Man, like June, like in the June, they're like, hey, man, start BLAT next Monday. Start what? BLAT, basic law enforcement training. You're hired with Fayetteville Police Department. You start, you start BLAT next Monday. I was like, uh, they were like, we're gonna report, we'll get, send an email with all the instructions. I was like, am I hired? They're like, yeah. I was like, oh, man. Damn. Cool. Let's go be a cop, right? Um, I have no idea what to expect, but let's go be a cop. So first day in BLAT, you know, we go and we're, we're meeting with all the other people. There's, there's, um, we had like a large class, we had like eighteen, eighteen, eighteen to twenty of us.

• 3:13:59Speaker 05

  And, uh, we lost six in for testing purposes. But Fayetteville has their own basic law enforcement training. So everything is in-house. You don't have to, a lot of places, you go to college, go to BLAT, and then you're sponsored by an ag- agency that then picks you up afterwards. But Fayetteville's a really good department, cause Fayetteville's a very dangerous city. So they have their own instructors, their own BLAT onsite at the training center. We have a whole training center and, um, So I go to B-Lat and we're sitting down, they're doing orientation at City Hall, and then we do that, and then the next day, we report to the training center.

• 3:14:40Speaker 05

  Get to the training center and they're explaining everything and they're like, every Friday, we have a test on, I think there was a total of like 20 some tests, because it's all about like law, Fourth Amendment, like all the, everything, anything about being a cop. So they bring an instructor in on Monday, teach you for four days, and then Friday, you take an exam. You can only fail two, your third one, you're out. And I'm like, I go home and I'm like, honey, I'm screwed. I'm like, I can't remember, at this point, I can't remember, my memory is horrible.

• 3:15:20Speaker 05

  It's really bad. I'm like, there's no way I'm gonna be able to take, sit down and do this and go take a test. I already had like test anxiety. She's like, we're gonna get you through it. I'm like, she's like, I promise you, we're gonna get you through this. I'm like, alright, I'm gonna try it. So every Wednesday and Thursday night, my wife would come home from working 10 hours, help me make index cards. And she'd sit up all night flipping them for me, helping me study. All night, hours. We'd get up, 5 o'clock in the morning before a test, and she'd flip

• 3:16:04Speaker 05

  index cards. I was like top three in my class for academics, and there were some really intelligent people. I had like, I was getting almost, I never failed, I never failed one test. It's because my wife stuck by my side and came home after a long day of work, feeding our son, and then staying up and flipping index cards for me. And that's six months of doing that. Damn. So she was exhausted. I quit, Terry now, would never would have made it through B-Lat testing if it wasn't for her.

• 3:16:44Speaker 05

  Oh, it aught her and God. But man, like, she made sure that I was successful. So good woman. Oh, man. Yeah, yeah. Um, man, she was not gonna let me fail. Cause she had saw my life the last two years of how I was treated in the army. She wanted to go talk to all these chain of command. She was livid. I was like, no, leave it alone, leave it alone. She's like, I want answers. I'm like, I do too. I'm like, I don't wanna make nobody mad, Nicole. We don't understand, I don't wanna be punished. I'm afraid that if I roughed up too many feathers, they're just gonna send me back to my unit.

• 3:17:29Speaker 05

  Just discharge me and send me back to my unit. I'm like, just be quiet so I can just keep doing the treatment. Because if you start pissing off people, they're gonna send you, they're gonna send me back. They send me back, then you have nobody to irritate, except for that commander and first sergeant. And you're not their problem anymore. So she's like, okay, okay, okay. So she was already livid. I mean, she, dude, she had to help me shower. Like, there were times where my leg was, would just go numb. Like, just, like, not numb, like, not to where I couldn't feel them, but like, they were just asleep. And if I stepped, it hurt. It felt like knives were in my legs, only in my legs. Never my arms, never my upper body, always my legs.

• 3:18:13Speaker 05

  The only answer I got was nerve damage. And that it can take up to three to four years for nerves to heal themselves. And they're kinda like misfiring is what I was told. And that's what's happening. They're misfiring with my brain. And that's the feeling that I'm getting. Some BS answer. Not even a true medical answer. Sounded like talking about a car engine. Like, tell me what's wrong. But she never let me fail, man. So, six months, go to graduation. You know, she pins my badge on me. You know, I'm just so grateful that, that, that, that she took the time to do all this and, uh... Your wife pinned your badge on you? Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, it was awesome.

• 3:18:58Speaker 05

  It was, uh...

• 3:19:01Speaker 05

  Because she should have been worn a badge. By that point, she knew the law. She knew the law better than I did. You know, because it was, it was because she, she had to read

• 3:19:12Speaker 05

  the chapters and pick out what she believed to be important things. And, and while they were teaching, I would highlight things that they would be like, "Okay, you need to label the Sean Ryan Show, wink, wink. That might be a test question."

• 3:19:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:19:27Speaker 05

  But she would go through all the highlights and make the index cards for me, and I would make them too. And without, without that, man, there's, without her push, right? "Hey, man, don't give up. Don't give up. You're not broken." Because I, I could have laid around and made excuses. "Oh, the army said I was zipped up, right?"

• 3:19:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:19:43Speaker 05

  "Jacked up." You know? Because I wouldn't get any disability at the time. Nothing. Not, not, not a thing.

• 3:19:50Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding.

• 3:19:51Speaker 05

  Nothing. No medical, no nothing. So, um, she pins my badge on me and I get assigned to, Fayetteville's broken up into three districts. Hamilton, Central, Cross Creek.

• 3:20:07Speaker 05

  It's a city of like 300 some thousand people, plus all the craziness on Bragg, right? A lot of people don't understand, man, there's, there's more gang members on Fort Bragg than there is in the city of Fayetteville.

• 3:20:17Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding.

• 3:20:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, we'll get into that.

• 3:20:19Shawn Ryan?

  Well, before we do, before we get into your LA career, let's take a quick break.

• 3:20:24Speaker 05

  Let's do it.

• 3:20:28Shawn Ryan?

  I know everybody out there has to be just as frustrated as I am when it comes to the BS and the rhetoric that the mainstream media continuously tries to force-feed us. And I also know how frustrating it can be to try to find some type of a reliable news source. It's getting really hard to find the truth and what's going on in the country and in the world. And so, one thing we've done here at Sean Ryan Show is we are developing our newsletter.

• 3:20:58Shawn Ryan?

  And the first contributor to the newsletter that we have is a woman, former CIA targeter. Some of you may know her as Sarah Adams, call sign Superbad. She's made two different appearances here on the Sean Ryan Show. And some of the stuff that she has uncovered and broke on this show is just absolutely mind blowing. And so I've asked her if she would contribute to the newsletter and give us a weekly intelligence brief. So it's gonna be all things terrorists, how terrorists are coming up through the southern border, how they're entering the country, how they're traveling, what these different terrorist organizations throughout the world are up to. And here's the best part, the newsletter is actually

• 3:21:42Shawn Ryan?

  free. We're not gonna spam you. It's about one newsletter a week, maybe two, if we release two shows. The only other thing that's gonna be in there besides the intel brief is if we have a new product or something like that. But, like I said, it's a free CIA intelligence brief. Sign up, link's in the description or in the comments. We'll see you in the newsletter.

• 3:22:11Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Blake, we're back from the break. You just got through the police academy. Where are we going?

• 3:22:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, so like I said, my wife, my wife pinned me, right? So I'm super excited. Um, so I really feel like a cop. I got a badge, I got a gun, all the training that I feel like I need. Uh, so I get my assignment, you know, my assignment, Central District, uh, which is kind of the city's broken, like I said, into three. Central's the middle. So it's, uh, covers a lot of the really bad areas. It covers an area called Bonny Dune, uh, Massey Hill, a lot of, um, crime and gang members and, and all these things and, um...

• 3:22:53Shawn Ryan?

  What is Fayetteville? I've never been to Fayetteville.

• 3:22:55Speaker 05

  So Fayetteville is obviously a military town, but it's, it's, um, it's weird. It's, it's kinda nice, but it's kinda ghetto. It's, uh, it's, you know, like, the street that my wife grew up on was a really nice street. It's called Devon Street. It's one of the predominant areas in Fayetteville. Cause she's born and raised in Fayetteville.

• 3:23:18Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 3:23:19Speaker 05

  And, uh, the street behind it...

• 3:23:23Speaker 05

  Is one of the worst neighborhoods in the city. It's one of the worst roads on the city. And uh, you could be driving, nice, nice, nice, and then bam, ghetto. And then, nice, nice, nice. It's uh, it's crazy. There's the, I, I really, because I started out in this district, I got fascinated with gangs. Like, just how they operate, music, everything. So. Really? Yeah, I just, I just got obsessed learning everything I could about gangs. What kind of gangs?

• 3:24:04Speaker 05

  So we have Bloods, Crips, um, and we have MCs. And we have some cartel, um, the New Generation and Sinaloa Cartel's pretty predominant in the area. Sinaloa Cartel runs Myrtle Beach. No shit? Oh, absolutely. What do you mean by that? Runs Myrtle Beach? Like runs it. They are. Runs what? Like everything. Strip clubs, uh, drugs, anything that comes in and out of Myrtle Beach is Sinaloa Cartel. It used to, a long time ago, it used to be kinda like the Russian mafia. But something happened with the Sinaloa Cartel came in and just took over. Dominated it. Dominated it. So. Strip clubs, drugs.

• 3:24:47Speaker 05

  Probably all the stores, all the, so when I was younger, when I would go there. What do you mean, all the stores? Like Subway, remember how Subway used to, like Subway in Myrtle Beach, you would go there, it would be like foreign exchange units from Russia. The wings, the, all the stores were, had Russian. Now it's just a bunch of Hispanic people.

• 3:25:07Speaker 05

  Growing up, it was always, it was always Ru- Russian teenagers. Now it's not no more. Now it's, it's, it's Mexicans, Hispanics.

• 3:25:17Speaker 05

  So we train.

• 3:25:19Shawn Ryan?

  How do you know they're cartel? So what, the cartel bought the businesses?

• 3:25:23Speaker 05

  We just know that they operate out of Myrtle Beach. So anything in Myrtle Beach is probably like drug wise and guns is probably all being filtered through the cartel is what I mean. I'm not saying that they own the subways and things like that, but there's a increase of Hispanics in that area since the Sinaloa cartel has moved into that area. That makes any sense.

• 3:25:49Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 3:25:50Speaker 05

  So because they operate off I-95, right? So the halfway point from New York City and Miami, the halfway point is Fayetteville, North Carolina.

• 3:26:01Shawn Ryan?

  Is it really?

• 3:26:02Speaker 05

  You can take several exits in and out of our city off I-95 and disappear. They operate a lot in Lumberton, North Carolina, which is so it's a it's a it's called the Lumbee tribe. They're not they're not they're not a national tribe. I think Trump was trying to make it, but they're not. But there's a lot of land and they can disappear out that way. Like drugs and money and guns are just so predominant through Fayetteville and that Robinson County area because of 95.

• 3:26:33Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 3:26:34Speaker 05

  You can gump off I-95 and then boom.

• 3:26:36Shawn Ryan?

  So what was your first encounter with gangs? What what what what initially got you fascinated with that?

• 3:26:45Speaker 05

  There was this kid in Fayetteville called Kaboom Holy. I think his name was Andreas Flight. He was the leader of a non-traditional gang. So you have traditional, non-traditional. Traditional gangs are gangs like like Lil Wayne come came from, like Eastside Mauparu. That is a gang that is nationally known everywhere, sets everywhere. Non-traditional was like a neighborhood clique. So he had a non- clique called Money Gang, right? And they were a blood set.

• 3:27:18Shawn Ryan?

  How many people are we talking here? What's a non-traditional gang?

• 3:27:22Speaker 05

  Twenty, thirty.

• 3:27:23Shawn Ryan?

  Twenty, thirty people?

• 3:27:24Speaker 05

  Young, young teenagers who are violent.

• 3:27:27Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 3:27:28Speaker 05

  You know, it's the, you know, the, the serp.

• 3:27:31Shawn Ryan?

  Young like thirteen, fourteen?

• 3:27:33Speaker 05

  Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen.

• 3:27:35Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 3:27:35Speaker 05

  Seventeen, eighteen's kinda old.

• 3:27:37Shawn Ryan?

  Old?

• 3:27:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, that would be old, older. You're not, you're dealing with those high school kids.

• 3:27:42Shawn Ryan?

  So, well, hold on. We're, I'm really, I'm, you sound like the guy to talk to. So thirteen, fourteen's young, eighteen, nineteen's old. Where do they go when they're twenty?

• 3:27:57Speaker 05

  So a lot of times they'll start in non-traditional gangs. They'll get older, then they'll move on and try to get into another gang. Like, like if they're a non-traditional blood set, like Money Gang, they'll try to go, once they get older, they wanna away from that little clique. Or maybe several of them have died off and the gang has died off. They'll, they'll go, maybe they have a homie that's with Eastside Mob Piru or Sex, Money, Murder. Those are, those are traditional gangs. So Money, uh, Money Gang is a blood set, a non-traditional blood set. But once they kinda age out, maybe they don't wanna be a part of this clique anymore.

• 3:28:32Shawn Ryan?

  What do you mean a blood set?

• 3:28:34Speaker 05

  So you have Bloods and Crips, right? That's just who you are. And then there's different sets. Like a set is Sex, Money, Murder. That is a blood set. They're Bloods, but then you have Eastside Mob Piru.

• 3:28:49Shawn Ryan?

  So what is this shit like? The UFC feeder things?

• 3:28:51Speaker 05

  Dude, it's, it's.

• 3:28:52Shawn Ryan?

  Is that what it's like?

• 3:28:53Speaker 05

  It's very organized.

• 3:28:54Shawn Ryan?

  You're in the JV and now you're in the varsity?

• 3:28:56Speaker 05

  Pretty much.

• 3:28:57Shawn Ryan?

  You're in the?

• 3:28:58Speaker 05

  Do they have, they have?

• 3:28:59Shawn Ryan?

  Minor leagues?

• 3:28:59Speaker 05

  They have rules, babbles.

• 3:29:02Shawn Ryan?

  No shit?

• 3:29:02Speaker 05

  They have, it's, it's.

• 3:29:04Shawn Ryan?

  What kinda rules?

• 3:29:05Speaker 05

  Like, um, like you gotta be beat in for a certain amount of, like eight tray Crips. Um, uh, like they have to be beat in for eighty-three seconds, for eight three, right? Eight tray, three is tray. So you have to be beat into the gang, or if you're a chick, you can be raped into the gang.

• 3:29:24Shawn Ryan?

  You can be raped into the gang?

• 3:29:26Speaker 05

  Raped into the gang.

• 3:29:27Shawn Ryan?

  Women choose to be raped into a gang?

• 3:29:30Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 3:29:33Shawn Ryan?

  Why? What do they get out of that?

• 3:29:36Speaker 05

  They're obviously missing something at home. They wanna be a part of that gang. Like, uh-

• 3:29:40Shawn Ryan?

  What does that entail?

• 3:29:42Speaker 05

  So like, like, uh, uh, man, who's the, um-

• 3:29:45Shawn Ryan?

  What, they gotta fuck somebody, or they-

• 3:29:47Speaker 05

  Oh yeah, they get raped by like, multiple gang members.

• 3:29:50Shawn Ryan?

  But is it rape?

• 3:29:51Speaker 05

  Pretty much, yeah.

• 3:29:53Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it's consent-

• 3:29:54Speaker 05

  It's like beating her ass and they're fucking her. It's not like, we're all just gang banging you. They're like forcefully, like raping her. Like, maybe she, cause she's not like, maybe she don't want to be a part of it. Right? Maybe she might like, change her mind, but once you commit to it, you've committed to it. There's no backing out. Yeah, it's sex, but then if they don't want to and they try to back out, there is no backing out.

• 3:30:17Shawn Ryan?

  So what's their role once they're in the gang? Once they've been raped into the gang?

• 3:30:21Speaker 05

  Like, if they're a blood, they're a bloodette.

• 3:30:23Shawn Ryan?

  What is that? I mean, are they prostitutes? Are they actual gang members?

• 3:30:27Speaker 05

  They're gang members. They get to just hang out with the gang. They don't really do anything. They just hang out with the gang.

• 3:30:36Speaker 05

  It's, I'll show you some videos, but it's-

• 3:30:39Shawn Ryan?

  That's alright.

• 3:30:40Speaker 05

  It's, no, not of getting gang banged in, but, uh, but I mean, it's just, gangs are very interesting. So, if I go see, you know, you have to be Hispanic or black to be a blood. You can't be white. Any white guy that ever says they're a blood, they're a complete liar. So, in this day and age, if I see maybe a young thirteen, fourteen-year-old African-American kid, and he's wearing Chicago Bulls, and he can't tell me anybody on their current team,

• 3:31:10Speaker 05

  it's a validation point to be a blood. So I have to get three validation points to validate you on a sheet that gets submitted in to state that you're a gang member.

• 3:31:21Speaker 05

  But if you tell me you're a blood, or a Crip, I just need one other validation point. But a validation point is, a lot of, you see a lot of blood members wear Chicago Bulls.

• 3:31:33Shawn Ryan?

  Why?

• 3:31:34Speaker 05

  Cause Bull stands for Bloods usually live longer and stronger.

• 3:31:39Speaker 05

  You see a lot of eight tray Crips, eighty-three Crips, they wear the Texas Ranger hats. The hats are blue and there's a T on it. T stands for tray, eight tray. You see like, you ever seen the tattoos that say MOB and they're like, ah, money over bitches. Member of Blood. You see a lot of tattoos that are RR, that stands for Real Right. That means you've done something for the gang. You've done something maybe violent for the gang. There's, you know, the five pointed stars, six pointed stars. You ever see anybody with a Star David on them? You know, they're a gangster disciple. It's just so much. Bloods operate on the right side, so if they're flying a flag, which is a bandana,

• 3:32:24Speaker 05

  they're on the, everything should be on the right side. If they're a Crip, everything's on the left side. Now, a lot of the younger kids will, instead of carrying flags, they wear like red shoes or blue shoes. Vans is, is highly popular.

• 3:32:36Shawn Ryan?

  Are those, are these the two biggest gangs in the country?

• 3:32:39Speaker 05

  Bloods and Crips, yeah. You know, that's what you, because...

• 3:32:44Shawn Ryan?

  Still to this day?

• 3:32:45Speaker 05

  Yeah. Stoop Dogg, Crip, you know, Lil Wayne. You can watch, um, there's a music video with him and Bruno Mars. This mirror on the wall, whatever, the mirrors or whatever. If you actually watch the music video, Lil Wayne pays tons of respect to the Bloods. He shows all of his Blood tattoos, MOB, RR, five pointed stars, everything. A lot of them even have like red dreads. So, there's another set of Bloods called Sex, Money, Murder. They are a Blood set, but they were founded by a guy in like the sixties, Pistol Pete. They don't do this. This is Blood, right? They hold this up, this is Blood.

• 3:33:26Speaker 05

  You'll never see Crips operate on the, on the right side. Crips will always operate over here. So, they're a Blood set, but they show, they, they'll throw up two pistols to pay respect to Pistol Pete, and they operate off the color green. Because Pete loved money.

• 3:33:46Speaker 05

  Have you ever known Chicago Bulls to ever wear green?

• 3:33:50Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 3:33:51Speaker 05

  No. So why do they sell green jerseys and green hats?

• 3:33:55Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 3:33:56Speaker 05

  It's because they sell to the gang. They make a ton of money off of it.

• 3:34:00Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 3:34:02Speaker 05

  It's, man, it's, Bloods will never eat at Burger King because BK stands for Blood Killer. Like, it's a whole, whole bunch of rules that you would never even think of.

• 3:34:18Shawn Ryan?

  Are these guys always, are these two gangs always co-located with each other or they have specific territories?

• 3:34:23Speaker 05

  Uh, they have territories, neighborhoods, you know?

• 3:34:26Shawn Ryan?

  Within the city?

• 3:34:27Speaker 05

  Within the city.

• 3:34:28Shawn Ryan?

  So they'll be both gangs within the same city?

• 3:34:31Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. There's, then you have non-traditional gangs who have no authority or discipline because they're just a bunch of kids that want to make their presence known. They might attack a traditional blood set.

• 3:34:46Speaker 05

  Doesn't make any sense. The non-traditional gangs, Sean, scare me to death.

• 3:34:51Shawn Ryan?

  Why? More than the traditional ones?

• 3:34:53Speaker 05

  Because they're undisciplined. They're not answering anybody. They have no rules. They're not scared of us. Because why? Because they're fifteen and sixteen. I can't do nothing with them.

• 3:35:06Speaker 05

  Sixteen, or fifteen, fourteen and fifteen, I can't do nothing with them. Sixteen, you're mine. But I can't do nothing with you at fifteen or below. Man, like, they are, it just, so I watched this first video. My friend, one of my really good friends named Dave Franklin, huge mentor at the police department.

• 3:35:29Speaker 05

  He was in what was called GGVU at the time. It was called the Gang Gun Violence Unit. So he came in and taught a gang class while we were in B-Lit. That was one of the classes. And I watched this video. It was called Gun Weight. And it's a non-traditional gang, the Money Gang.

• 3:35:52Speaker 05

  And they're just in this shitty trailer, holding up guns, talking about the gun weight. Three of those kids in that video are dead from gang violence. Two of them are in prison and the leader's in and out of prison. It's just...

• 3:36:09Speaker 05

  Man, I, I, it's just so fascinating to me. I used to listen to the music. All the, all the rap music, just listening to terminology, how they talk, how they operate. Just, there's so many different things like, um, like Bloods, um, will, um,

• 3:36:31Speaker 05

  they'll make a sound. You hear a lot in like Lil Wayne's music videos.

• 3:36:37Speaker 05

  If they're in a large crowd full of other Blood gang members, that's signaling to them that 12 is around, because it sounds like police sirens.

• 3:36:48Speaker 05

  It's just so fascinating. And a lot of chicks really got into the, to the gangs because of, uh, Cardi B. Cardi B's a Blood. She used to have Blood, Blood Dreads, and she had the whole nine yards. She was a straight gangster. She had a whole music video where there's like, she's the OG.

• 3:37:10Speaker 05

  Back before she got super famous.

• 3:37:12Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:37:13Speaker 05

  Uh, it's, um.

• 3:37:16Shawn Ryan?

  So Cardi B is a Blood?

• 3:37:17Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:37:19Speaker 05

  Lil Wayne's a Blood. The song Red Nation. That, like, it talks about, uh, it pays respects, even like Ocho Cinco's, like, it gives him a shout-out. Doesn't mean he's a Blood, but means he's a affiliate. It's so interesting, man. Like, I used to be obsessed with watching, uh, because I knew this was what I wanted to do.

• 3:37:40Shawn Ryan?

  How many gangs are in Fayetteville?

• 3:37:42Speaker 05

  Oh, man. A lot.

• 3:37:45Shawn Ryan?

  Like, 20?

• 3:37:47Speaker 05

  More than 20.

• 3:37:48Shawn Ryan?

  50?

• 3:37:48Speaker 05

  Man, probably, probably 30, 40.

• 3:37:51Shawn Ryan?

  30, 40 gangs?

• 3:37:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:37:54Shawn Ryan?

  Are they all rivals?

• 3:37:56Speaker 05

  I don't think that they get along. I think Bloods trying to hang out with Bloods and Crips trying to hang out with Crips and GD's trying to hang-

• 3:38:02Shawn Ryan?

  Forty gangs in a town of, did you say 300,000?

• 3:38:06Speaker 05

  300,000.

• 3:38:07Shawn Ryan?

  And that's not a huge town.

• 3:38:10Speaker 05

  No.

• 3:38:10Shawn Ryan?

  Where do 40 gangs-

• 3:38:12Speaker 05

  Everywhere.

• 3:38:12Shawn Ryan?

  -go without running into each other?

• 3:38:14Speaker 05

  They're everywhere. They're everywhere. Like-

• 3:38:18Shawn Ryan?

  Are any of them friendly? Do the MCs get along with the Bloods or the Crips?

• 3:38:23Speaker 05

  They don't even really mess with them. The MCs don't get into that.

• 3:38:31Speaker 05

  They have their own rival.

• 3:38:32Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, you've got cartels, you've got the Bloods and the Crips.

• 3:38:37Speaker 05

  Gangster disciples, Latin Kings.

• 3:38:41Shawn Ryan?

  You got all this shit in one area.

• 3:38:42Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, we got Crips, Bloods, Latin Kings, gangster disciples, uh, folk nation, Hells Angels, and like four or five other, um, motorcycle gangs, but all of those.

• 3:38:58Shawn Ryan?

  How do you categorize them?

• 3:39:01Speaker 05

  Research. We, a lot of them will, will emit, a lot of them will see on their Facebook page, hand signals, um, tattoos.

• 3:39:09Shawn Ryan?

  How do they not step on each other in a town of 300,000?

• 3:39:12Speaker 05

  They do. They'll never admit it, but.

• 3:39:15Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, what do they do? Prostitution, run drugs?

• 3:39:18Speaker 05

  A lot of it's running drugs.

• 3:39:20Shawn Ryan?

  Run guns.

• 3:39:21Speaker 05

  Run guns and run drugs and just be, they're just outlaws. They just, they have, they just shoot each other. Like, nobody fights anymore. It's just shooting. Um, the money gang, they had a, um, I forgot, I forgot, they brought in a boy from Charlotte. Man, he, he, he sucked. I can't remember his name, but he, he has been arrested several times for sex trafficking. He was a big sex trafficker. Um, God, I can't even remember his, his name on YouTube. They have all these videos out there, man. Like, there's a one

• 3:40:03Speaker 05

  gang in Fayetteville called the Rue Gang. We completely dismantled them. They made a video that said, "Fuck the police, shoot anything blue," holding rifles, convicted felons, and this idiot at a surplus store sold all of it to them for a music video, plate carriers, and then gave them patches to wear. They were raided by Homeland Security, had stolen secret radios.

• 3:40:33Speaker 05

  Had twenty-two Ops Corps maritime helmets that belonged to SEAL Team Six. What? Twenty-two of those. How'd they get them? Supply guys, bring them there and sell them to him. Oh shit. He's gone. They raided him. I think he still has a store, but he's pending federal charges unless he snitched, which I'm sure he probably did. But that other gang is gone. Like, we dismantled them. They were, two brothers were the leaders. And ecstasy, or Xanax bars, were their big things. We did a search warrant on their house, couldn't find anything in their house.

• 3:41:16Speaker 05

  Went out to their storage unit, started digging through boxes, big old heavy boxes. I'm like, what is in these? Opened them up, cereal boxes. I'm like, this is weird. Opened up the cereal boxes, bags, cereal bags, full of Xanax bars. Holy shit. Probably thousands. I don't know, I think about twenty, thirty thousand. Just thousands. I mean, they kinda keep, they all kinda keep to themselves until at some point they cross paths. Or they had beef. Social media beef is the worst. People get mowdied on social media and then they go shoot houses up.

• 3:41:56Speaker 05

  Nobody fights anymore. It's shooting and killing. It's, man, it feels wild, Sean. Is it really? When the sun goes down, it is. You get like a very eerie feeling. Cause that's when all the goons come out. They all come out to play. And it is like, any car you stop, you might be in a, you might be in a gunfight. Cause they don't respect law enforcement. Especially after the past administrators, chiefs and stuff that we've had. Yeah. Like, they just don't respect it. And, uh, man, it's, uh, it's very, very interesting just how they operate. Cause we'll find their bibles and we'll study them and, you know, a lot of them can't stay off

• 3:42:41Speaker 05

  social media, right? A lot of them will always be on social media throwing up gang signs. So we'll go find them. We do investigate investigative stops on them, find guns. Man, the year that we got gang year of the year, man, we got, I don't know, like four or five hundred guns that year. Just guns everywhere. And that's, a lot of it is because soldiers leave their cars in their apartment complexes unlocked with guns in them. And these kids, these gang members go around pulling, pulling car handles. And then, man, they can get twenty, thirty guns a night. And then the soldiers threw his gun box away and doesn't even know his serial number. So he can't, sometimes can't even charge him with stolen firearm.

• 3:43:26Speaker 05

  Because they don't have the serial number. And they'll tell him, hey, when you get it, call it in so we can put it in the system. And they never do. It's, um, man, I've had some close calls in that city. That city never sleeps. We've had broad daylight shootings. Wendy's parking lot, one o'clock in the afternoon, three people dead in a parking spot. It's crazy. Damn. I mean, I pulled up to that scene. And they're like, oh, the car left. And I didn't see it. And I saw three bodies. I get out. It's three young black African Americans dead over drug deal.

• 3:44:09Speaker 05

  It's just broad daylight. Had one guy, another one. Broad daylight, smoky bones. Outside Cross Creek Mall. He was shot five times with a judge, the four ten shell. I didn't know he was black or white until I felt his dreads. I was plugging bullet holes. Damn. He survived. He survived? Yeah. I couldn't tell his skin color because he was covered in red. He was so bloody. He survived. He's paralyzed, but he survived. It is, it is wild. It was, it was, it was a wild ride, man. And there's nowhere else I'd rather have been a cop, though. Than that city. That city gave me every opportunity to do everything I wanted. It was a, it was a, it was a fun place to work.

• 3:44:53Shawn Ryan?

  Sounds like it.

• 3:44:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, if you want to be a cop, man, and, I mean, maybe not in today's time, maybe not now, because you got proactive versus reactive. Now so many cops are, want to be reactive.

• 3:45:07Shawn Ryan?

  You got through the academy, you went on patrol. How long did it take you to get into the gang stuff?

• 3:45:13Speaker 05

  Oh, man, uh. About three years.

• 3:45:20Shawn Ryan?

  Three years?

• 3:45:21Speaker 05

  It's a spot nobody wanted to leave.

• 3:45:24Shawn Ryan?

  The, the gang unit?

• 3:45:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, nobody, nobody wants to leave that unit.

• 3:45:28Shawn Ryan?

  Everybody wants to be in the, in the gang.

• 3:45:30Speaker 05

  Everybody wants to be in the gang unit.

• 3:45:31Shawn Ryan?

  Why?

• 3:45:32Speaker 05

  It's fun. You're like cowboys.

• 3:45:35Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 3:45:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, you're not like the narcs where you, you know, the narcs couldn't show their faces. And, uh, you know, we wear plain clothes. I had made my hair down and past my shoulders. A beard down to here, just out there getting after it, man, fighting crime. You know, there were times where we, where we weren't seen at all. And then there were times where we would go out at nighttime and just go to work. Didn't have, didn't take calls, did what we wanted. And we made a difference. You want to make a difference in your city and stop crime? You go get you about seven good dudes who want to fight crime. Tell them good luck and give them a good supervisor.

• 3:46:21Shawn Ryan?

  How would you do that today? Is it even possible?

• 3:46:24Speaker 05

  It is possible. It is very possible. We have to figure out, the problem is, is we have to figure out, how do we keep good, young cops from leaving to go do another job? Shitty cops are staying in and getting promoted.

• 3:46:38Shawn Ryan?

  Well, how do you think that happens? How do you get good, young cops to stay in the force with the shit leadership that we see today?

• 3:46:46Speaker 05

  I think that the, the good, because there is good leadership out there.

• 3:46:51Shawn Ryan?

  Where? Other than here?

• 3:46:53Speaker 05

  I think in a lot of agencies, there are good leadership that have made it to the, to an executive level. But they're too afraid to speak out because they're outnumbered. I think those people have to have backbone. I think we have to figure out that this person is a shitty leader and they need to be demoted. You know, if you have officers, like when I left, when I medically retired, 108 left.

• 3:47:21Shawn Ryan?

  Let's talk about your career. I mean, when we spoke on the phone for the first time, you had a lot of frustrations.

• 3:47:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, a lot of frustration. It's my first call ever, day one. I am, I got pinned the day before and now I've reported to my duty. I get with my FTO and we're going over all the things. 7:30 in the morning, my first call. Call comes out, missing kid. Cool, it's a great one to go to. It's a great one to learn from, right off the gate. Missing kids, they come up all the time. So, a lot of them are runaways. A lot of them are just hiding in closets, don't want to go to school, parents just can't find them. Whatever, they're not actually missing, they're just running away.

• 3:48:13Speaker 05

  So, we get there and the mother is just, she's really like distressed. I don't know what she's supposed to look like, it's my first call ever. She's like, "I can't find my son, I don't know where he's at. I've searched the whole house, I just haven't looked in the basement." They're like, "Well, has he ever had any behavior of running away? No, he just doesn't like going to school." Like, "All right, man, we'll search the house again." Search the whole house, nothing. Open up the basement door, started walking down the steps. I see two little bare feet. Maybe about a foot, foot and a half off the ground. And I'm like...

• 3:48:58Speaker 05

  Wow, I already know what this is. I get all the way down to the basement, my FTO is behind me. He took an extension cord, tied it to a water pipe, multiple pipes, and hung himself. So we're sitting there, and I'm day one, man, first call. My FTO is such a coward. He said, "Hey, can you go up and tell that mother that her son is deceased?" And we found him. "Why don't you go do that? I'm in training. This is my first day, I'm not even supposed to do nothing, I'm just watching you." "No, no, you ain't gonna do that. I'm telling you, you ain't gonna do it." "All right, Roger that."

• 3:49:43Speaker 05

  So I go up there, she's standing in the kitchen, she leaned up against the counter, and I'm like, "Hey ma'am, uh, I'm sorry to tell you, but your son is in the basement, and he's no longer alive." She let out a scream, Sean, that I still hear every night. I watched her open her mouth and scream, and when she opened her mouth and screamed, I watched her soul leave her body. And, uh, I go back downstairs, she's screaming. Finally, the, her sister gets there, she's comforting her.

• 3:50:24Speaker 05

  I'm holding the kid's legs, FTO cuts, cuts, cuts the extension cord off, he had like one of the serrated knives, and cut him down, we laid him on the ground, um, did all the things, called the detectives. Next rotation came, next rotation is, is, uh, uh, kinda like towing, like, like for tow trucks, if we need a tow truck, it's the next on rotation, but we have a, we have a morgue service, so they're in a rotation. So, next rotation means whoever the morgue service is up to come get the body, that's, that comes, so we holler for next, call for next rotation for, for morgue. They come too, and they, they get the body, and, you know, we go throwing out the day,

• 3:51:08Speaker 05

  like, the next call, man, was, uh, after that, the next call was some old lady complaining.

• 3:51:18Speaker 05

  And she was mad that the neighbor's cat was on her car. Realistically, she was lonely.

• 3:51:26Speaker 05

  Just wanted somebody to have coffee with at nine o'clock in the morning.

• 3:51:31Shawn Ryan?

  So you go from?

• 3:51:33Speaker 05

  Go from a dead twelve year old.

• 3:51:35Shawn Ryan?

  Cutting a dead twelve year old who hung himself.

• 3:51:38Speaker 05

  To an eighty year old lady. He wants to file a complaint or write, she wants a police report for her neighbor's cat that's on her car. Causing damage.

• 3:51:49Speaker 05

  And I have to be able to give her

• 3:51:53Speaker 05

  every bit of me that I can because she's, she's calling me. She's calling me for a service, it's my job. I can't go there and just give her half ass. I have to switch off what just happened. That, what I just went through doesn't matter anymore. That's done.

• 3:52:10Speaker 05

  Kick it out.

• 3:52:11Shawn Ryan?

  How do you do that?

• 3:52:13Speaker 05

  Try not to think about it. Focus on, man, the queue is so busy, the queue and the, the calls. They're just stacked.

• 3:52:23Speaker 05

  There'll be fifteen, twenty calls pending. They all go by priority. You don't have time to think about what you just went through because the next thing that you're going to go through might be just as bad. The next call might be your life. Can't think about that. You can't dwell on that, kid. That's horrible. But how do I know the next call is me not dealing with somebody that's going to try to kill me? I have to be mentally sharp to deal with the next call. Once you get in your car and that call's over,

• 3:52:52Speaker 05

  put your head on the steering wheel, let out a big old nice scream and push on.

• 3:52:59Speaker 05

  Because, guess what? The next call is somebody else is having their very worst moment of their life that you are responding to. Every call is somebody's worst moment of their life. And every call, you should treat it as if it's your first call of the day. Because they deserve that. They're calling you at their worst time. I never got a phone call for somebody to come tell me I was doing a great job or somebody to cook me food or pat me on the back. Every call for ten hours is somebody's worst moment. Somebody's dead. Somebody's about to kill themselves. A robbery, a murder.

• 3:53:41Speaker 05

  Mental patient standing in his garage naked with a butcher knife. To granny, want to have a cup of coffee.

• 3:53:50Speaker 05

  It's insane. And there's no.

• 3:53:55Speaker 05

  There is no shutting it off. I still think about all of it. There are cops that have been way through more than me. I don't know. All I did was, the next call could be life ending for me, so I need to be switched on. That call no longer exists. It goes away. It's just a report number.

• 3:54:15Speaker 05

  And then you deal with it and you get home by drinking. Or lashing out at your family. And then you wake up the next day and you go to work and you treat people at work better than you treated your family because you can't show up to work angry. You can't lash out at people at work. They'll put you on administrative leave and take your gun, make you go get help.

• 3:54:35Speaker 05

  Can't shut it off. Fake a smile every day. And you give people the best version of yourself because they need you in that moment. Whether it might not be a big event to you, it might be stupid to you, you might think this is a stupid call, but man, they're on, they called 911. Police. Because they're having such a bad moment. They need you at your best. Forget about the next call. It's time to move on. This is what I always got told. So at the end of that shift, I walked in.

• 3:55:06Speaker 05

  And my sergeant's sitting there with his legs up, shoes off.

• 3:55:11Speaker 05

  Said, Cook, how was it? My God, it sucked. First call of the day, kid hung himself.

• 3:55:18Speaker 05

  It's a lot. Starts laughing. He's like, suck it up. Welcome to being a cop.

• 3:55:26Speaker 05

  I was like, what? What?

• 3:55:30Speaker 05

  And then it just.

• 3:55:33Speaker 05

  For the next, you know, two and a half years. It was a ride, man. Every day, like. Bro, if you're not checked in, when you check in for service, if you're not mentally checked in. You could die. You could die. There were times where, because let's say you're being proactive.

• 3:55:55Speaker 05

  You know, it's a scary feeling walking up to a car that you just pulled over. Especially if you can't see inside of it. You know, a lot of people ask, why do cops touch the back of the car? For DNA. For if we're shot and killed, right then, right there, our fingerprints on the back of that car. So when they find it, they can for sure say, that is the vehicle, there's Cook's fingerprints.

• 3:56:21Speaker 05

  It's scary. Oh shit, I didn't know that. Man, every traffic stop that I walked up to, that I couldn't see into the car, or my spidey senses kicked in. I mean, people, people ask, you know, why are cops so aggressive when they get up to the car? Because when they touch the back of your car from the front of their windshield, do you know what they're thinking about? Am I about to take rounds through the windshield? Am I about to get shot? When the window comes down and it's, it's old Miss Betty and she's all nice and sweet.

• 3:56:51Speaker 05

  It's a good feeling. Now, she can still kill you, right? You still gotta be elevated a little bit, but it's a good feeling. Because every car I ever approached, I just waited for rounds to come through the windshield.

• 3:57:07Speaker 05

  If you had rounds come through the windshield? I've, I've never.

• 3:57:12Speaker 05

  Luckily, I've never. I've seen a lot of videos where it has happened. It just never happened to me. And I had a OG gang member in Bonnie Dune tell me one time. He say, man, you know, I see a lot of people in the neighborhood treat you different. He's like, you ever wonder why? I'm like, I don't know, man. Because you're, you present yourself well. Your uniform is obviously tailored to your body.

• 3:57:42Speaker 05

  You're fit, your hair looks good, your belt looks good. Everything about you says, I don't want to fuck with you. I can't run from you, I can't fight you, you're gonna kill me. But I'll run from him because he's fat and sloppy.

• 3:57:58Speaker 05

  That's a big deterrent.

• 3:58:01Speaker 05

  My uniform was fresh every day, I had three uniforms. I wore the same uniform. I wore, day one, I wore my first uniform, and then I would wear that again on my fourth day. But day one, two, and three, I always had fresh uniforms. On my day off, the first thing I did is I took them to one of the shops and had them pressed. They were all tailored to my body.

• 3:58:22Speaker 05

  Because I wanted to present myself as if you fuck with me, I'm gonna kill you. If you try to kill me, I'm gonna kill you. You're not gonna kill me today. I'm the wrong one. I'm gonna do everything lawful. I'm gonna do everything I can as a professional to keep you alive during our interaction. But the moment you try to take me off this earth, buddy, I'm coming. And it ain't gonna end well for you. I'll give you the utmost respect. Everybody I encountered, I treated it as if it was my mother, my father, my brother, and my sister. I treated them as a family member and as a United States, American citizen. Because they deserved that. Now, the moment you cross that line,

• 3:59:00Speaker 05

  then we're going. We're doing it. Whatever you wanna do, but you better be ready, cuz I'm ready.

• 3:59:06Speaker 05

  And I, I try to harp that to law enforcement, to, hey, man, like, use this as a motivation. Get in shape. Go to the gym, man.

• 3:59:15Speaker 05

  Quit eating bad on duty, like,

• 3:59:18Speaker 05

  be presentable. That will keep you alive. If, bad guys, right? I heard you, um, asked, um, uh, Sheriff, uh, Mark Lamb. Yeah, Sheriff Mark Lamb, love that dude. What's a good, you know, way to prevent people from, you know, entering in your home, and, you know, things like that? You know, security cameras, anything that, bad guys will not, you'll never become a victim if they feel like that there will be any resistance. They only pick easy targets, man. Wolves don't attack

• 3:59:55Speaker 05

  other wolves. They attack sheep. They kill animals that can't protect themselves. A single, right? If it's a single wolf, they're not gonna go try to kill a grizzly by themselves. They know they're gonna lose. So they'd just rather go get the sheep.

• 4:00:09Speaker 05

  I wanted to present myself as if you mess with me, you're getting all of me. And it's not gonna end well. And that's how people, if they just put just ADT stickers on glass, that's a deterrent. Floodlights. Anything that they feel like they're gonna get caught at all, they won't mess with it.

• 4:00:31Speaker 05

  It's only easy targets they prey on. Same with law enforcement. Yeah, you have a gun. People look like a bag of ass, you probably can't shoot it. So they're going to test you. I never got tested. I got tested, no, take that back. I've been tested twice.

• 4:00:48Speaker 05

  One dude was like 6'6", 280.

• 4:00:52Speaker 05

  Brother, I just held on. That was it. It's all you could do. Slam me up against my hood of my car. And I just, I just maintained control much as I could until somebody else came and helped me. But very few times I've, I've been tested. And it's because every day at work, there was nothing on me that looked ragged. Let's talk about that scenario. How did that start? Traffic stop. Dude had, dude had, um, um, outstanding robbery warrant. Pulled him over outside the hospital, Cape Fear Valley Road.

• 4:01:25Speaker 05

  Soon as we stopped, car door opens. I get out. He takes off running. He is on me before I know it. I'm, I'm fighting him. He's fighting me. Dude's picking me up like a rag doll. Throwing me on, threw me on the hood of the car. And I'm just holding on. Finally, we make it on the ground. I don't have a lot of jujitsu knowledge at all, but I did mess around with it. So I do, I do, I did know like some, um, control techniques to try to control him. Especially keeping him off my gun. That was my biggest worry was my gun. Um, he actually got hands on my gun. But

• 4:02:09Speaker 05

  I had my level three Safari Land holster that had the hood. And he didn't know how to operate, work that. He knew the button, but he couldn't get my hood. So that holds for save my life. Always have your hood up. You see a lot of officers, they put the hood down to get shots off faster. Just go train. That's it. Cause that saved my life. Then luckily, um, my zone partner BJ Bullard showed up and just came up from behind and just one good hit. Boy went down and that was it. End of the fight. Cause now it's two on one. Chances are over. He felt a little resistance. A little, I can't compete

• 4:02:48Speaker 05

  against two. And he gave up. You know, it's because BJ was a proactive, he was a proactive. He, he, he, he wasn't the first to always initiate, but he would always back you up. He was a good country boy. And he went to the academy with me. So, you know, it's, it's, um, I've, I've seen videos where cops just stand there and watch their, their buddies get beat up. I don't know how you do that. Cause if BJ would have watched me get beat up that day, yeah, we would have had to have shot that dude. And then what would that have been?

• 4:03:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:03:32Speaker 05

  I shot an unarmed black man. And that always goes through your head. Especially after, um, um, the boy in Louisiana, I think that, that they killed, the Darren Wilson got killed. That started all this years ago, like 2014.

• 4:03:50Shawn Ryan?

  What happened there?

• 4:03:52Speaker 05

  Remember he like robbed the gas station and the officer got out with him and they got into a tussle and he shot and killed him inside the vehicle or something. It was a Mike Brown. Remember Mike Brown?

• 4:04:00Shawn Ryan?

  That was St. Louis.

• 4:04:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, St. Louis. Yeah. So Mike Brown.

• 4:04:03Shawn Ryan?

  I used to live there.

• 4:04:04Speaker 05

  After that, like, man, like, I'm white. It sucks. You know, if I should, I know I'm black dude. Cause guess what, man? These can kill you. If you're 6'6", 290, I'm 5'10", 215.

• 4:04:21Speaker 05

  Would a reasonable person believe that if you got the best of me, you could take my gun out and kill me? Yeah. Now I'm shooting an unarmed dude. That's what the news is gonna put out. West Virginia boy. Shoots and kills an unarmed dude. Like, the news is awful.

• 4:04:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:04:41Speaker 05

  And, uh, they're a major reason why cops are getting out too, by telling lies. Who are they gonna call?

• 4:04:50Speaker 05

  They never thought about that. These big cities never thought about that. Who y'all gonna call when these criminals go wild? Crime doesn't stop.

• 4:05:00Speaker 05

  But police officers will quit. Criminals won't quit. That's all they know. Why would I continue to get treated like shit for

• 4:05:09Speaker 05

  that forty-three thousand dollars a year?

• 4:05:12Shawn Ryan?

  Did you get treated like shit?

• 4:05:17Shawn Ryan?

  Let me rephrase that. Did your apartment, did your department have your back?

• 4:05:22Speaker 05

  No.

• 4:05:24Speaker 05

  No, man. No. Some did. Most didn't.

• 4:05:31Shawn Ryan?

  What's the first incident you were in when you realized that?

• 4:05:36Speaker 05

  So I, I had one supervisor named Kerry Young, man, phenomenal dude. He always had my back when I was on patrol. I mean, I, it takes like two or three people. Um, right out the gate, he had my back. Um,

• 4:05:52Speaker 05

  there was one incident

• 4:05:56Speaker 05

  that there was a disturbance inside of a restaurant when I was on patrol during the day.

• 4:06:03Speaker 05

  Dude had made a comment right before we got there that he was gonna go to his truck and get a gun.

• 4:06:12Speaker 05

  We show up, he's still in, Texas Roadhouse, or Logan's Roadhouse. We go inside, he's still in there, him and this other family went at it.

• 4:06:22Speaker 05

  He goes, "I'm gonna kill you." I've already had two people tell me that, said he was gonna go get a gun.

• 4:06:28Speaker 05

  So he runs out to his truck. I watch him run out the door, and so I've run after, after him. He goes, opens up his door, gets in a posture as if he's grabbing something under the seat. I draw my gun. I give him commands.

• 4:06:43Speaker 05

  I got three days off for that. He had a gun. I was too aggressive.

• 4:06:51Shawn Ryan?

  He had a gun.

• 4:06:52Speaker 05

  He had a gun under his feet. He just never presented it. Because he didn't present it, why did I draw my gun? Why didn't I use de-escalation skills? I don't know, bro. Because I didn't want to get shot first. How about that? That was when I realized, wow, things are bad.

• 4:07:10Shawn Ryan?

  How early in your career was that?

• 4:07:12Speaker 05

  Year and a half.

• 4:07:13Shawn Ryan?

  That was a year and a half into your career? And you had how long of a career? 10 years? 12 years?

• 4:07:19Speaker 05

  Eight.

• 4:07:20Shawn Ryan?

  Eight years?

• 4:07:21Speaker 05

  And I had one time where I was fighting a guy. We'll get into that, but that was when I was in the gang unit. I mean, if you cuss on body camera in a high-stress situation, you're getting 10 hours off. You're getting written up. So, a lot of people don't know this. This has become a nationwide thing. If I point my gun at you, that is a use of force. I get written up for that. Might not catch days off, but let's say a year goes down the road and I pulled my gun 50 times that year. Dude, I could pull my gun three times in a shift. We're dealing with people. I've had people jump out of a bay with swords

• 4:08:06Speaker 05

  serving involuntary commitment paperwork that their family couldn't deal with them anymore. So, I have to go in and deal with them and put them in handcuffs and take them to the mental section at the hospital. I mean, I have almost I had a guy who was shooting blow darts. So, Fable used to have a mental institution. They shut it down. And just, see y'all later. Thanks for staying. Send them all back out in the wild. My first week, I had a call. Guy named Alan in his garage, butt naked, circle drawn in the garage with chalk. He's got a trash can in the middle of the garage. People were running by. I called and said he's blowing blow darts at him.

• 4:08:53Speaker 05

  So I'm like, oh, it's a mental, mental patient. I gave him the, I'll, I'll get him, I'll convince him to go to the hospital. I'm gonna hit Chipotle after this. This is easy. I like these calls. As I'm coming around the corner, I hear dispatch, she's like, you know, now he's in the garage with a knife. Man, I hit the corner, dude. This dude's standing there butt naked. This big, massive butcher knife. He's like, "Come in the dungeon, motherfucker." And I'm like, "Uh, no, sir." I'm like, "Let's drop that." And he's like, "No, no, no." He's like, "Fuck you, come in the dungeon." And finally, my backup comes, like, seconds later. So now we're both lethal, right?

• 4:09:38Speaker 05

  Because we don't know what he's about to do. People don't understand, tasers only work if you're in a distance. Like, if I shot you with a taser right here, it wouldn't work. I had to be like seven feet back to get the spread to split the hemisphere. One has to go in the upper torso and the other one has to go in the body to get exactly what you need. If I shoot both here, that's why you still see people being able to reach it out. It doesn't do what it's supposed to do. That's why cops, they shoot tasers from feet away. It doesn't work. I was too far back from my taser and I didn't want to get close enough to him so it works. Because if I get closer to him and he charges at me and then Regat shoots him, what did I create? Why did you go up there?

• 4:10:21Speaker 05

  To taze him so we didn't have to shoot him? So, we're out there 45 minutes, me and him, me and Regat. This dude's coming in and out of his house. Finally getting him to put the knife down in the middle of the garage. And he runs over and he crouches down behind like a city trash can on wheels. We're like, "What's he doing?" And he's like back and forth, using the trash can as like a barricade. And he's talking to Regott. And then he starts talking to me. And Regott yells at him and he turns a little further. What he had had, he had taped on the back of the trash can. A little 10 inch blow dart gun. And he was putting darts in it.

• 4:11:06Speaker 05

  As he was talking to us. To shoot us with them. And when Regott yelled at him and I saw him do that. I holstered, pulled my taser out, upside down. Shot it. One went in his head, the other one went in the wall. He turns around. Tries to dive on the knife. I turn the taser off, turn it back on, initiates a second cartridge. Shoot it again. One misses, the other one hits him in the head. Done. He starts like seizing out and everything. Hits his head, cuts his head wide open, he's bleeding everywhere, get him in handcuffs. Later we found out that he, he um. He had dirty blood. And he was stabbing himself with the needles. And was trying to shoot people with them to give him his dirty blood.

• 4:11:51Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit. Was he HIV positive or something?

• 4:11:54Speaker 05

  Oh yeah.

• 4:11:55Shawn Ryan?

  So he was trying to fucking give other people HIV?

• 4:11:58Speaker 05

  It's crazy. He was, he was gone. So. Got him in handcuffs, he was, found out he'd been drinking and he was on cocaine. But they were upset with me. Because he split his head wide open. I'm like, he's alive. What do you mean? And that was like a big ordeal.

• 4:12:21Shawn Ryan?

  That was a big ordeal?

• 4:12:22Speaker 05

  Like, oh, they're gonna sue us. I'm like, for what? You're welcome.

• 4:12:28Shawn Ryan?

  So what, what, I mean, do they give you a suggestion like, okay, well. What would?

• 4:12:35Speaker 05

  There's no suggestion.

• 4:12:36Shawn Ryan?

  What were you supposed to do?

• 4:12:38Speaker 05

  They don't know the answer. The problem with agencies. Is.

• 4:12:44Shawn Ryan?

  Shitty leadership, right?

• 4:12:45Speaker 05

  Shitty leadership. Because in their mind, we had this guy named James Nollet. Man, he ended up being our assistant chief, he ran everybody away. He was horrible. Probably, in my opinion, maybe the worst human on the face of the earth. He was a horrible person. Not just a bad leader, but a horrible person. Man, this dude would punish people.

• 4:13:08Speaker 05

  Because he thought by punishing people, it made him a good leader and that he would get promoted. This dude made it all the way up to assistant chief.

• 4:13:19Speaker 05

  Here's the reason why I left.

• 4:13:22Speaker 05

  I mean,

• 4:13:24Speaker 05

  officers are doing their job.

• 4:13:27Speaker 05

  And they're getting written up for it. I ended up not caring about getting written up because I, at that point, I'd applied and got my VA disability. You wanna get, you wanna, you wanna give me a week off? I'd take a vacation and post it all over Facebook.

• 4:13:45Speaker 05

  I don't care. I'm getting paid. But imagine some of these guys who are a father,

• 4:13:52Speaker 05

  a three and a wife. They're making eleven hundred dollars a paycheck. And they're getting, talked about getting two days off. Why would you be proactive? So now I gotta feed a family of four on a seven hundred dollar check? Cause you gave me two hours off or, or you gave me two days off. So why would you be proactive?

• 4:14:16Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:14:18Speaker 05

  I can't blame them.

• 4:14:21Shawn Ryan?

  I,

• 4:14:22Speaker 05

  We have to hold leadership accountable.

• 4:14:25Shawn Ryan?

  I don't, I don't blame them either. I mean, I see this shit all over, you know, social and the news and people raiding the mall and people, I mean, now you go on, what, California, even everything, literally the entire store is behind those little key things.

• 4:14:42Speaker 05

  We were in,

• 4:14:43Shawn Ryan?

  And I'm, I just, I'm,

• 4:14:45Speaker 05

  We were in California.

• 4:14:46Shawn Ryan?

  I don't blame the cops at all. I blame the people that live there.

• 4:14:48Speaker 05

  I needed deodorant at Target.

• 4:14:50Shawn Ryan?

  You wanted to defund them? You got what the fuck you asked for? Now you can live in this shit.

• 4:14:55Speaker 05

  California is wild. I went to Target, get deodorant, had to find a sales associate to come and unlock a case so I can get a thing of deodorant.

• 4:15:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:15:04Speaker 05

  They're like, yeah, sorry, they steal everything. I'm like, that's crazy. But

• 4:15:10Speaker 05

  the problem is, is if they get a use of force with these people, they're gonna get in trouble by the chain of command because the chain of command says, well, that's not a hill that we don't wanna die on. You know, just let them take it and we'll take the report. That's not right. That's not right. It's not right to the people that own that store.

• 4:15:32Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think this shit's gonna change?

• 4:15:39Speaker 05

  The only way it can change, in my opinion, is if Trump gets re-elected, or if Trump gets put back in office. Well, I'm with you on that, but even, even so, I mean... It's a, it does, when he was in office,

• 4:15:57Speaker 05

  things changed. I don't know what happened, but there was a little bit of a span there, where cops were being cops again. It's, I don't know what it was,

• 4:16:11Speaker 05

  but during the, I was a cop for two years during the Obama administration, and it was different. They had a liberal chief, like, who like, said that we were pulling over too many black people. It's another thing, Sean, I got in trouble. So anytime you do a traffic stop, you gotta do a, a, a traffic stop incident thing, where you put in male, female, black, white, they just search the car, "What did you find?" I used to get in trouble

• 4:16:44Speaker 05

  and have to go do racist classes because I was pulling over too many black people, but my district was all African-Americans.

• 4:16:57Speaker 05

  Like, so what did I do? Stop stopping cars. I let known drug dealers drive past me because I'd already stopped too many black people. And it's piss leadership. It's because instead of having a backbone and being a man,

• 4:17:18Speaker 05

  they would rather throw you under the bus and make themselves look good.

• 4:17:23Speaker 05

  We disciplined him, don't worry. Instead of saying, "Hey,

• 4:17:28Speaker 05

  Blake is assigned to an area full of African-Americans, he's probably gonna have a higher traffic stop rating for those kind of people."

• 4:17:41Speaker 05

  Like,

• 4:17:43Speaker 05

  I have heard people say, "Go stop more white people."

• 4:17:48Speaker 05

  What does that even mean? Go violate somebody's right? Stop them because they're white now?

• 4:17:55Speaker 05

  That's the leadership mentality that we're having nationwide.

• 4:18:00Speaker 05

  It don't even make sense.

• 4:18:04Shawn Ryan?

  How would you even, I mean, how would you begin to fix this? A serious question.

• 4:18:11Speaker 05

  Man.

• 4:18:15Speaker 05

  I don't know, Sean. I really don't. Because, like-

• 4:18:20Shawn Ryan?

  It's gotta be

• 4:18:23Speaker 05

  the-

• 4:18:23Shawn Ryan?

  on every single person's mind who wears a badge. Every single one of them has to know about this shit.

• 4:18:35Speaker 05

  Oh, they do. I've had so many people ask me if I can be their voice. "Please, put this out. Hey, this happened. Do this." "Hey, like, can you put this out on your social?" Like, they can't go vocal about it, right? Because they're gonna be punished. They're terrified. It's, the good leaders have to somehow get a backbone.

• 4:19:02Shawn Ryan?

  If they don't have a backbone, then they're not a good leader.

• 4:19:05Speaker 05

  That's true, man. You're right.

• 4:19:09Speaker 05

  So, yeah, we have very few good leaders in. I mean, the-

• 4:19:12Shawn Ryan?

  I don't give a shit where they came from, what the fuck they did. If you get up there and you don't have a backbone, you're a piece of shit. And that's-

• 4:19:23Speaker 05

  I agree.

• 4:19:23Shawn Ryan?

  Seen it in the military, too. These guys that have these phenomenal careers, and then they get up top and they turn into a complete piece of shit.

• 4:19:32Speaker 05

  They're just chasing money. They're chasing, now they're on a salary. And they're trying to max out their time so now they can get promoted and then max out that time and get promoted so their retirement looks good.

• 4:19:44Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 4:19:45Speaker 05

  So they make more money in retirement. And it's, it's so much easier to write us up than stick up for us. So, like, when I was in the gang unit, we were the, we were the easy button.

• 4:20:03Speaker 05

  We were the button that, for an example, brand-new female officer out in an area called Bonny Dune. She was doing real police work. She had a good sergeant. They were letting her do good police work. She was disrupting this non-traditional gangs' operation.

• 4:20:22Speaker 05

  They started getting tired of her. She did a traffic stop one time. Pulled over a kid, had a gun in the car. Gun was in the passenger seat. She arrested him. He was a convicted felon. She knew that. All the people out of this little apartment complex came out and swarmed her. Somebody ended up taking the gun out the seat.

• 4:20:49Speaker 05

  Told her they were gonna kill her.

• 4:20:52Speaker 05

  So they said, "Hey, there's a female cop. Her life's being threatened. We need to go out and make our presence known. Coming from the top."

• 4:21:03Speaker 05

  I'm like, "Who's this coming from? Coming from the top."

• 4:21:07Speaker 05

  "Cool. I'll stop what I'm doing." We went out there, drove around the complex.

• 4:21:14Speaker 05

  I'm like, "Cool. I need to stop a car here." So I waited till I saw a traffic violation. Saw a traffic violation. Lit them up. Happened to be right in front of the apartment complex.

• 4:21:26Speaker 05

  As I get out the car, and thirty, forty people were coming out.

• 4:21:32Speaker 05

  I'm like, "Oh, no." I'm like, "Hey, we don't look like the regular fucking police. We don't act like it. Get your asses back inside, or you can get some of this too."

• 4:21:45Speaker 05

  They're like, "Cook?" I was like, "Yeah." So this is the gang unit. They call us like Charger Boys. That was a name that carried on from when they were GGVU. Everybody was scared of the Charger Boys. And, uh, we gave a head nod and went back inside.

• 4:22:02Speaker 05

  Problem solved. The Uber driver, it was an Uber driver that we stopped. Black kid. Said that I called people coming out of the apartment complex the N-word. Called and complained, so an investigation happened. I had my body camera on 24/7. I will say whatever. I will say whatever with my camera or with my camera off. Whatever I say with it off, I'll say with it on. I don't change. It's just who I am. I said, "Go ahead and review it." Went in, set it in, it uploaded. Didn't happen. But we had a major at the time, a Major Whitaker. He was racist. He was a black dude. He was racist.

• 4:22:46Speaker 05

  He hated white police officers. In my opinion. Just my opinion. He was not proactive. He was a horrible cop throughout his career. And he didn't like the way I talked to people in that neighborhood. He thought I was talking to them like that because they were black. So they called me in the office. In his office. Like, "Hey, we refused this footage. Major Whitaker wants to have a conversation with you." I'm like, "Dude." Okay, I cussed. Sorry. Like, when you're in those environments, you speak their language. You don't tell them, "Please get inside." They don't understand that. They didn't grow up with that verbiage. "Hey, get the fuck inside." "Okay, cool." "Sorry."

• 4:23:30Speaker 05

  "It's not the regular police, we're going back inside." So I get in there and they're all in there. And he's like, um, talking about, "Well, we didn't like how you talked to people in that neighborhood. You know, it's a minority neighborhood. Um, you know, the times that we're living in, you could have been a little nicer." I'm like, I'm like looking over at my leadership like, "Does anybody want to tell them why I was there? Do you even know why I was out there? A female cop is being threatened that they were going to kill her." I'm like looking at my leadership like...

• 4:24:10Speaker 05

  Y'all wanna... Y'all didn't tell him? Y'all didn't brief him on this?

• 4:24:16Speaker 05

  Cause in his mind, I'm out there just freelancing. The people that see me out there have... Everybody being quiet, crickets, hands in the pockets.

• 4:24:27Speaker 05

  He's like, "Cool. What would you have said if you were in Van Story's Hill?" Van Story was a really nice neighborhood in Fayetteville. And, uh, a group of four or five white women came out drinking wine. And you were on a traffic stop. What would you tell them?

• 4:24:48Speaker 05

  Again, I'm looking at my leadership like, "This dude's trying to bait me in on a race question." They're looking at me, I'm like, "I'll tell them, get the fuck back inside. We need the regular police." Nothing changes. Don't make this a race thing. And my leadership, like, they're like, "Oh." I'm like, "Don't... How about you be a man and say you sent us out there?"

• 4:25:14Speaker 05

  The people that came in and told us to go out there didn't say a word.

• 4:25:17Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 4:25:18Speaker 05

  Nobody spoke up and said, "Hey, we sent them out there because X, Y, and Z."

• 4:25:25Shawn Ryan?

  Cause they were threatening to kill a female officer?

• 4:25:27Speaker 05

  Female police officer.

• 4:25:30Speaker 05

  Nobody said a word.

• 4:25:33Shawn Ryan?

  Why?

• 4:25:34Speaker 05

  Cause they're cowards.

• 4:25:37Speaker 05

  Cause they don't wanna take the responsibility that they sent us out there. Cause it looks bad on them and everybody's trying to get promoted.

• 4:25:43Shawn Ryan?

  How the fuck does it look bad if they sent you out there because they're about to have...

• 4:25:47Speaker 05

  Cause they don't wanna take responsibility.

• 4:25:48Shawn Ryan?

  Because a female officer was about to get murdered?

• 4:25:51Speaker 05

  They don't wanna take responsibility.

• 4:25:54Speaker 05

  Nobody wants to take accountability of sending people out to do things when it comes down to... Now, when it's good, if it's good, it's good. Hey, we sent them out there. That was on me. Monday morning, uh, um, we do the, uh, crime stats come out, right? "Oh, it's lower. Yep, I sent the guys out there. We took care of that." But when shit hits the fan, you're on your own. And when the waiter brings the bill to pay, ain't nobody else paying it but you. Everybody else done walked out. That's a major issue that we have.

• 4:26:25Speaker 05

  And I had that happen to me so many times that it just became normal.

• 4:26:30Shawn Ryan?

  Is that why you left?

• 4:26:33Speaker 05

  I left.

• 4:26:36Speaker 05

  I left because they had us out in an area.

• 4:26:43Speaker 05

  It was a predominant gang area, drug area. And I watched a car go by.

• 4:26:52Speaker 05

  And I realized that the driver was a guy I had dealt with before named Joshua Hill.

• 4:26:59Speaker 05

  Known to have guns, known to sell guns, known to be a big dope boy. Not just little street stuff. You know, kilos of fentanyl, kilos of cocaine. He was, he was, he was, he was this beautiful Charger man.

• 4:27:16Speaker 05

  Just chrome paint job, big rims. So I get behind him and he takes off. I'll take off with him. No lights, no sirens, take off with him. Finally, turn my blue lights and sirens on, he goes faster. So I'm like, okay.

• 4:27:36Speaker 05

  I'm gonna turn my blue lights and sirens off, I'm still following you, brother. And then he realizes he can't shake me, we didn't go far, maybe 200 yards, he pulls over.

• 4:27:47Speaker 05

  So I throw my car in park.

• 4:27:50Speaker 05

  I'm like, alright, he's not jumping out. Nothing's going on.

• 4:27:57Speaker 05

  Took a deep breath and I was like, treat it like a regular traffic stop. Don't act like it just almost turned into something.

• 4:28:05Speaker 05

  So I go up to the car.

• 4:28:08Speaker 05

  Rolls his window down. Man, I see the bag. His car, he's just thumping.

• 4:28:16Speaker 05

  Sweating profusely. Can't even talk, he's breathing so hard. I'm like, hey sir, I'm Texas cop with Fayetteville Police Department, the reason why I pulled you over is we have a new chief. You have really dark window tint, man. Uh, window tint's the flavor of the month. I'm gonna, I need drills, I'm gonna scratch off a warning ticket. And I'm hungry, I'm gonna go to Chipotle, okay, we're gonna make this quick. So I'm like, alright, cool, like, where's everybody at, you know? And I didn't put, I didn't get enough time to put it on the radio yet. Cause he kept, we kept playing the games and I was trying to get it out, but I couldn't. Cause he stopped too soon, so I get back in my car, put it out.

• 4:28:54Speaker 05

  And a K-9 officer shows up.

• 4:28:57Speaker 05

  And I was hoping for one of the gang guys, but the K-9 came up, which was great because he's backing me up. Look up his history, man, it's just gun charges. He's going away for a while. I didn't see a gun. When I went back and watched my body camera, you can see it clear as day, sitting right here, I just got focused on the bag, the dope. My attention went straight to the dope. I smell it. I know I'm gonna search the car and I know what I need to find is in that bag. So I'm watching the bag. Don't even see a gun, don't even see the Glock. Now, it's a black gun with black center dash, right? So.

• 4:29:44Speaker 05

  We go up to the car, I'm like, hey man, I'm gonna pull him out. He's like, alright. I'm like, hey, Mr. Hill, need you to step out of the vehicle. Before I walked back, I'd actually had him take his keys out and put them on the dash. Something I always did if I knew that I was on search of car. So because of this reason, when I walked back up and asked him to step out of the vehicle, he said no. Opened the door, he grabs the door, he shuts the door. Now he's trying to throw it and drive. But he doesn't know that his keys are on the dash. We had turned the car off and I made him put the keys on the dash. His Uta Loop, now his mind went to, I gotta get out of here. So I opened up the door again, I dive in to get him.

• 4:30:28Speaker 05

  He reaches down, he goes to pull out a Glock. Glock hits the steering wheel, I grab the hold of the Glock. If you look right here on my hand, I have two scars. You see them? That's from his front sight post trying to rip it out of my hand. Man, I'm hitting him with elbows, I'm hitting him with, uh, um, I can't shoot him, I'm left-handed.

• 4:30:51Speaker 05

  My gun's over here. I have a hold of his gun with my left hand, pinned down. I'm hitting him. I started beating him over the head with it, shatters, nothing. He knows, he's going to jail forever. Man, I'm like, I'm getting tired. K-9 officer was trying to get in, but he can't. And, uh, which I wish he would've went around, but it was a pretty crazy incident. Man, um.

• 4:31:18Speaker 05

  The passenger door opened. I can't say his name because he does federal work, but the most big, beautiful country boy ever that was on our gang unit opens up the door and just punches this dude, man. And we fall out. Get him in handcuffs, no more issues after that. His gun had his sweat dripping off the handle. Took pictures and videos of everything. So, cool, it's a useful force, right? Because he got hurt, I hit him a couple of times. He got scraped up on the ground. People are outside filming, right? Because we're in a predominant minority neighborhood

• 4:32:00Speaker 05

  and here we are pulling out this dude. Roughing him up a little bit because he had a gun. So we go back to the station and upload my body cam. I'm typing my report. Body camera uploads. I'm allowed to watch my body camera to write my report accurately. So I'm writing my report. And I write it out, submit it in. Everything's good. Come to work next morning. And I'd already, before I get to this, I'd already tried to leave Fayetteville once. And we'll get to that after this. So the next morning, the report comes out.

• 4:32:45Speaker 05

  Or I get to the office. They come to my desk. "Hey, they need you in I.A.'s office." I'm like, "Okay." Yeah, I mean, I did hit the dude, right? So I'm sure I need to sign internal affairs paperwork saying that I'm being investigated. So I go in and I go to make a write into the sergeant's office. And they're like, "No, no, no, we're in this room." "What room?" "The room that has the camera with the red light on it right now? That means it's recorded?" They're like, "Yeah." I'm like, "Oh, okay." It's kind of serious. So I get in there, they're talking.

• 4:33:30Speaker 05

  They're like, "Hey, on your body camera, you stated that you thought he had a gun. You never stated that he had a gun, but you wrote on your report that you observed the gun."

• 4:33:44Speaker 05

  We believe that you lied on your report.

• 4:33:47Speaker 05

  I'm like, well, hold on. First of all, I was fighting for my life.

• 4:33:53Speaker 05

  My Oodle Loop was all jacked up. And I was trying to yell that he had a gun. But I couldn't get past the initial traffic stop when I was like, man, he's got a, I think he has a gun. He has to have a gun. It has to be one in here. But my Oodle Loop was so messed up, I just kept yelling, I think he has a gun instead of gun. I made a mistake. Nothing unlawful about what I did. I watched my body camera. I wrote a good report.

• 4:34:21Speaker 05

  I stated in my report that I thought he had a gun until I observed a gun. But they were trying to twist it around because that assistant chief wanted me out of that unit. James Delet.

• 4:34:36Speaker 05

  So he was pressuring of why I said I thought I had a gun and tried to make it seem like I was lying.

• 4:34:46Speaker 05

  I got so emotional.

• 4:34:47Shawn Ryan?

  The gun was in the body cam footage, correct?

• 4:34:50Speaker 05

  Yes, and we had photos of the gun. The gun was put in evidence. The gun was taken with his DNA on it.

• 4:34:57Shawn Ryan?

  All sliced up.

• 4:34:58Speaker 05

  I'm bleeding. The gun with his DNA on it is in evidence on body camera. And we took crime scene photos.

• 4:35:12Speaker 05

  What are you, what are y'all talking about?

• 4:35:16Speaker 05

  So they wanted to suspend me.

• 4:35:19Shawn Ryan?

  For

• 4:35:21Shawn Ryan?

  for what?

• 4:35:22Speaker 05

  Because it would have sounded bad on CNN.

• 4:35:25Shawn Ryan?

  That's, that's the, that's.

• 4:35:26Speaker 05

  If I would have shot him, it would have sounded bad on CNN and I was too aggressive.

• 4:35:29Shawn Ryan?

  See, I don't, what the fuck do we even, like, why do, why is there even a Fayetteville Police Department? What's the, honest question?

• 4:35:36Speaker 05

  So there is a.

• 4:35:37Shawn Ryan?

  Honest question.

• 4:35:37Speaker 05

  So Chief.

• 4:35:38Shawn Ryan?

  What the fuck is the point?

• 4:35:39Speaker 05

  So Chief Braden is there now.

• 4:35:43Speaker 05

  Chief Brayden is the only, one of the few that has a backbone. There are several others that he's promoted that have backbones and they're making better choices. Chief Brayden is a, is a crime fighter. The dude still wears tactical pants. He's been on SWAT team his whole career. Took eight rounds on a search warrant. He is, that, he is a, he is a crime fighter and he's the police chief there. He's doing the best he can and he's promoting the right people. He's just now fighting city council. Why are we pulling over black people? Like, I don't know. Maybe because their tags are dead. Why are we arresting more black people?

• 4:36:27Speaker 05

  Maybe because they're dealing drugs. I, I, I don't know. I just know that a crime is being committed and we are taking that person to jail, no matter what the color is. So he has shaped the police department back. He's, the tac team is doing more search warrants now than ever. They are back to trying to be crime fighters, but he's just getting so much pushing out from, city council has too much power. They have too much power. Because for them to be able to-

• 4:36:58Shawn Ryan?

  What are the, do the, how do the citizens combat this kind of shit?

• 4:37:02Speaker 05

  I don't know, man. I don't think enough give a shit, to be honest. I don't think they're aware. You're not aware if you don't attend the meetings and nobody attends those meetings.

• 4:37:15Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I mean, they might be aware that their city is being overrun by gangs.

• 4:37:21Speaker 05

  It's, but they put out, we don't have a gang problem. The city council does. We do have a gang problem. But I will say, Sean, Brayden is, is doing a, I would, I would go back-

• 4:37:38Speaker 05

  And work at the Fayetteville Police Department right now. I would. Under Chief Braden is the only person I would. Now, there are still some cowards in that leadership, but there are more people now with backbones that are on specialized units and were proactive police officers that are making a difference there now. The biggest problem they're facing now is trying to get city council to raise their pay. I'll work at Fayetteville when you can go work at Cary for 20,000 more dollars and it's a way nicer city. But Chief fought for them and did get them a pay raise. So, he's doing the things. There are still some police departments that have great leadership. They're just...

• 4:38:22Shawn Ryan?

  I don't doubt that, and I'm not saying...

• 4:38:24Speaker 05

  Far and in between.

• 4:38:25Shawn Ryan?

  What I'm saying, with the other chief, what is the point of having a police department?

• 4:38:34Speaker 05

  I don't know, man.

• 4:38:34Shawn Ryan?

  What is the point?

• 4:38:35Speaker 05

  The chief that I worked under, that was the assistant chief, James Litt. The main chief, her name was Tina Hawkins. She tricked us. She got hired and started buying our tact team everything. And then it was like she flipped a switch overnight. More people left because of her than anything. Dude, her last year as a cop, she was at a bar, a gang bar, on Owen Drive in Fayetteville, North Carolina, left with the mayor, two minutes later had a homicide. Her vehicle was in front of the building. She showed up two hours

• 4:39:19Speaker 05

  later, had a police officer come pick her up because they assumed that she was drunk, showed up at the crime scene. One of the homicide detectives said, "Hey, chief, I'm here to brief you." She said, "Hey, I'm here to get my car." She had sunglasses on and a wig. They said, "We can't take your car." She moved him out of the way, went and took her vehicle that was taped off in the middle of a crime scene and drove it off.

• 4:39:45Speaker 05

  The bar had cocaine in it. The bar was a, it was a homecoming weekend for Fayetteville State University, which is Fayetteville's, there's two colleges, three colleges. Methodist, Fayetteville Community College, and then Fayetteville State University, which is a all-black college. It was their homecoming. They had a massive party there with gang members. Apparently, I wasn't there, there was drugs all over the bar that our police chief was at. They paid her $250,000. She claimed some racist, that she was mistreated because of her race. And then she went back down to Atlanta. Our city manager was only there because he got a DUI in a county that she worked in,

• 4:40:30Speaker 05

  and she got him out the DUI. And then he hired her when he got hired in Fayetteville. She wasn't even in the running. He brought her back in the running. It's that kind of stuff that has gone unnoticed. And why people are leaving. That's the shitty leadership I'm talking about. So after they told me that it would have sounded bad on CNN, I lost it. I was so mad.

• 4:40:59Shawn Ryan?

  You were gonna talk about something that happened a couple of weeks prior.

• 4:41:03Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was trying to leave Fayetteville. And this is the first time this has ever been heard, other than my wife and a few other people. Nobody at the department ever knew why I came back. I lied and said the trooper, the guy decided not to go to the troopers. So I decided I had to leave Fayetteville. Because they were just, man, it was just like one incident after another. Just horrible leadership. They were telling us to go do something. I'd point my gun, and then I'd get written up. I'm like, I can't sustain here. I can't work here anymore.

• 4:41:45Speaker 05

  My mental health is damn near gone. And I'm drinking all the time. All night long, I'm drinking.

• 4:41:54Speaker 05

  So I applied for a police department where I live now called Riceville Beach.

• 4:42:00Speaker 05

  Went in for an interview. I answered like four questions and they were like, hey, you're hired. Just don't do nothing stupid in between now and when you can move up here. I was like, oh, absolutely. Man, the following weekend. Like, that was on Thursday. Yeah, the following weekend. Saturday.

• 4:42:21Speaker 05

  There's an island called Palm Tree Island. It's got a fake palm tree. It's, you can go out, pull the boats up and swim. It's super fun. It was July 4th weekend. Went out to the island with some, with some friends. I was just drinking, man. I drank a whole fifth of Fireball. Just, I was, at that point, I'm drinking out of rage. Just pure rage.

• 4:42:45Speaker 05

  Um, cause they didn't want to face the reality that I have to still go back to work. Deal with bad leadership. It got to the point, Sean, where I didn't even want to go to work. I couldn't go to sleep because the anxiety was so bad about knowing that when I get to work tomorrow, somebody's going to task me with something. And then they're going to write me up for it. If it doesn't go smooth. So. Man, I drank this whole bottle. Back when my wife was drinking too. She was drunk. And the people we came on the boat with. Left.

• 4:43:19Speaker 05

  Left. Left us on an island. Sure, there was a bunch of people. I was drunk. I didn't know anybody.

• 4:43:26Speaker 05

  So, the island is, is a, it's in the intercostal waterway, but it's. It's maybe 50 yards. From the shoreline. But it's deep. And it's a high boat, boat area. So my wife say, hey, we're going to swim. I'm like, yeah, we got another option. So we swam. I'm like, I'm a decent swimmer, but drunk. It's kind of hard, especially with the current, right? Low tide was coming in, so the current was pushing out. And I felt like I was drowning. We got all the way to the, to the, we make it across, we get to the dock. You know, I'm just a country boy from West Virginia, right? I don't know about all the barkles and everything on the docks. I grab a hold of the dock. Current's coming out, current sweep takes my legs out and just slices my legs.

• 4:44:12Speaker 05

  I'm like, dang. So get out and I look down and I'm just bleeding. Shit. I'm just, my whole legs is covered in blood. And I'm like, oh my God, we gotta get back to the house. Like, I'm not supposed to be out here acting a fool. And now I'm standing on a dock with blood everywhere. And I'm hammered, shithouse, not hammered, shithouse. So we take off walking and we're not familiar with the area. And we're drunk. My wife's like, hey, we gotta go this way. I'm like, no, we have to go this way. This is the way to the house. She's like, no. So we get in this massive verbal argument on the side of the road. Cars everywhere, it's July 4th.

• 4:44:56Speaker 05

  I'm screaming, she's screaming. I'm like, fine, go that way, I'm going this way.

• 4:45:02Speaker 05

  She, she goes that way, I go this way. Man, 45 seconds later, I hear it.

• 4:45:13Speaker 05

  I turn around.

• 4:45:16Speaker 05

  Dude drawing down on me. Show me your hands. I'm like, okay. Comes over and handcuffed me. He's like, where's she at? I'm like, who?

• 4:45:30Speaker 05

  He's like, the lady you were arguing with. I'm like, this is my wife. She walked that way, I'm walking this way. We're trying to figure out who gets to the house first. Puts me in the back of a cop car.

• 4:45:44Speaker 05

  The rest of the cops show up, they know who I am. They ask the dude what happened. They went and found my wife.

• 4:45:52Speaker 05

  She's like, nothing happened. They come back to him and they're like, why did you put him in handcuffs?

• 4:45:59Speaker 05

  He's a cop in Fayetteville. He didn't do nothing wrong. Now he's in the back of a cop car in handcuffs.

• 4:46:06Speaker 05

  Takes me out, they all apologize.

• 4:46:11Speaker 05

  Even take me to the, to the house.

• 4:46:14Speaker 05

  It, uh.

• 4:46:16Speaker 05

  I got a call Monday morning, not hired.

• 4:46:20Speaker 05

  So I tried to leave. And, uh. I failed.

• 4:46:26Speaker 05

  So. Now I'm thinking, man, well. They all knew I was leaving. I told him I'd gotten the job that Thursday and I was gonna prepare to leave.

• 4:46:38Speaker 05

  I think, oh, my God, dude. I. If they find out about it.

• 4:46:46Speaker 05

  I'm gonna get disciplinary action and probably taken off the gang unit.

• 4:46:52Speaker 05

  How do I tell them I'm not going to this department anymore? Came up with a lie. I said, hey, the guy that was leaving to go to highway patrol didn't get the job in highway patrol, so he went back to the job and they're not feeling it. They did offer me a reserve job for now. But I told them that if I can't get a full-time job, I can't commit to that. And that bought me about a month until this incident occurred. That I just explained with fighting for the gun. And then, once that happened. I had an emotional breakdown. I was like, I can't leave this place. I'm stuck here. I'm getting treated, I'm getting shit on right now in a, in our room that's being interviewed because I fought a guy for a gun the day before and it would look bad on CNN. Well, guess what, asshole?

• 4:47:36Speaker 05

  What about my family? Cause the fact of the matter is, if I would've died on that Friday.

• 4:47:45Speaker 05

  They would've had a nice memorial service, people would agree, they would've put these beautiful flowers and wreaths on my car. Had a memorial service Saturday, funeral on Monday, and before the flowers died on my vehicle Monday morning. They would be swiped off and it would be reissued out. My desk would be cleared and I would be some stupid picture on a wall. And the next generations of police officer would walk by and just know that's just some guy that died here. And the only people grieving me for the rest of my life would be my wife and son.

• 4:48:18Speaker 05

  That's the truth. You don't ever put an agency before your family because the agency moves on. Your family doesn't. They grieve you forever. The agency does some bullshit stuff for a couple of days. And then don't even communicate with your family anymore.

• 4:48:35Speaker 05

  Your badge gets reissued out. Everything. Like you didn't exist except for the pitcher that collects dust in a hallway. That people don't even know who you are.

• 4:48:46Speaker 05

  So I got up. I completely excused myself from this. After they told me it would have sounded bad on CNN, I didn't hear anything. I walked, I stood up. Went to the bathroom. Outside the gang unit office, it's a single bathroom. Locked the door, sat down on the ground and just cried my eyes out.

• 4:49:07Speaker 05

  I said, I can't do this. Cause I knew that from here on out.

• 4:49:13Speaker 05

  I would never be able to make a decision to protect myself. In the event of a deadly force encounter. Cause I'll always think about, am I gonna get in trouble?

• 4:49:26Speaker 05

  And I can't do that. I can't put my family through it. I wasn't feeling well, man. Called. My friend who was my, uh, my family doctor.

• 4:49:36Speaker 05

  And I went and saw her. I just left, I left the department. Went and saw her. I guess they're still waiting for me and I, I don't know. She said, come in immediately. I went and saw her, sat down. She said, Blake, you don't look good. I'm like, what do you mean? She goes, no, like I see it. You don't look good. Her husband was a retired Green Beret and she knows the look. And, uh. She just talked to me and I talked to her and. She put me on medical leave, the, um, I always mess it up. FM. LFA, whatever that is, it's the medical leave, like the people take when they have babies and stuff. Always mess that up. But Kyle's gonna laugh at that because I always mess it up. But.

• 4:50:22Speaker 05

  She said, hey, you, you can't do this job no more.

• 4:50:26Speaker 05

  She goes, "It's gonna, it's gonna take your life." I'm just crying, man, because I love this job. It's the highlight of my life. I was in it, man, I was, I was in it. I didn't get the opportunity to go SF. And here I am in this specialized unit that is just big boy rules. Something I always wanted was, and we were killing it. And, um, man.

• 4:50:55Speaker 05

  She gave me my paperwork and I went back to the department.

• 4:50:59Speaker 05

  They're like, "Oh, where'd you go?" I was like, "Hey, I'm out.

• 4:51:04Speaker 05

  I'm not doing this no more." They're all mouths all dropped down.

• 4:51:10Speaker 05

  I'm like, "Y'all fucking did this to me."

• 4:51:15Speaker 05

  I loved this job.

• 4:51:18Speaker 05

  I'd have died for any of y'all. I loved this job more than everybody in this building. And he stole my passion from me. Because you failed to be a good leader.

• 4:51:30Speaker 05

  James Nollet stole the passion of law enforcement out of me. Sucked it out of me. Because he thought that was gonna help him be promoted.

• 4:51:40Speaker 05

  Stole it from me, man. I love law enforcement. That's why I love working at Blueberry. I love what I do now. We give so much to the community, to law enforcement. All of our training courses are incredible. Because we're passionate about what we do. I've had somebody ask me, "Blake, why do you still give back to the community?"

• 4:52:03Speaker 05

  You were completely screwed over. Because I love you. And I love everybody that wakes up every morning and puts a badge on. And I'll say this.

• 4:52:13Speaker 05

  Think about it like this. All the tier one guys. All the specialized military units. They go do the most dangerous jobs in the world. The most secretest, dangerous jobs in the world. But the difference, they get to get on an airplane and come back to the United States of America.

• 4:52:33Speaker 05

  Police officers are deployed 365 days a year, seven days a week, in a city that they have to work in. You want to talk about paranoia?

• 4:52:42Speaker 05

  I can't even go to Best Buy with my son without being bumped into somebody that I arrested for a drug charge. And I don't know if he's gonna kill me right here, right now.

• 4:52:54Speaker 05

  That's paranoia. Law enforcement's take their life, I believe, because of paranoia. Hundred and eighty-five law enforcement officers killed themselves in 2023. Hundred and thirty-six died in the line of duty. Why are we having more officers dying by self-inflicted gunshot wounds than they are fighting crime? It's because the leadership is pushing us to the point where we would rather kill ourselves than have to see your fucking face in the morning. That's the problem. And it needs to be addressed nationwide. The DOJ needs to do something about it. Somebody needs to do something. It's getting out of control. And bad leaders need to be held accountable. They need to be fired. Man, I'm passionate about this.

• 4:53:40Speaker 05

  Because I feel sorry for them, because there are some good-ass cops out there, man, that are still believing the right, still doing the right thing. But when the time comes and there's a little hiccup in what they're doing, they're thrown to the wolves. And their families have to suffer because it comes out of a paycheck. That's bullshit. If you get in an officer-involved shooting, they put your ass in a closet. Whether you're good or not, if it's a good shooting, they put your ass in the closet, get you a new gun, and they make you watch body camera footage. Nobody checks on you. They put you in the worst job possible. Man, it's, things need to be done better. People need to speak up.

• 4:54:24Speaker 05

  You know how you change this, Sean? Fucking officers need to step up and speak up. Because as a unit, as a whole, they can get some stuff done. You might be scared alone, but, man, form you a group. And, and, and, and make sure that that bad leader gets out of there. Or you walk out. Because they want that bad leader, or they want to lose a hundred people?

• 4:54:52Speaker 05

  I tried to bring this to Gina Hawkins' attention. She called me when she found out I was leaving. Begged me to come in for an interview the day after. She said, "Please come in. We don't want you to leave." I said, "Chief, I'm out." I'm like, "Your leadership is fucking horrible. The people we have under you, horrible." She said, "Still come in and talk to me. Come on, Blake." I said, "All right. I'll give you an exit interview." I came in there, I sat down, started telling their issues. She didn't want to hear it, man. She didn't want to hear. She took off for every one of those dudes. I said, "That's the problem. That's why I'm leaving." I said, "You don't even know it yet, but you're about to have a mass exit."

• 4:55:36Speaker 05

  Like, it's crazy. The riots? Why would anybody want to be a cop after the riots? The city we lived in, they were burning them all down. Our SWAT team was riding around in unmarked cars, and it looked like... What's the movie where they have like 24 hours to kill people? You know what I'm talking about? Ah, what is that movie?

• 4:56:07Shawn Ryan?

  Hunger Games?

• 4:56:08Speaker 05

  No, no, they have 24 hours to kill people. It's legal, all crime is legal for 24 hours. Can't think of the name. If I wasn't on here, I'd spell it off. But man, that's what it was like. People doing donuts in the middle of major intersections, shooting guns in the air. People shooting glass out of convenience stores. Raiding Walmarts, shooting guns. Employees in Walmart. Calling for help because they can't leave. That is a hostage rescue at this point. They're being held there by gunfire.

• 4:56:47Speaker 05

  We're not entering Walmart. We advised them, they needed to shut down. What?

• 4:56:54Speaker 05

  We gotta do something.

• 4:56:57Speaker 05

  Like, Academy Sports Fayetteville, it took us two year, a year to recover from, from what happened there.

• 4:57:07Speaker 05

  Two patrol officers watched a vehicle, watched four gentlemen run out of Academy Sports like for the fifth time, carrying boatloads of guns, throwing them in the vehicle. They recovered like fifteen guns in the parking lot. Cause they, they dropped. Got behind him, was gonna stop him and James Nolet told him, let him go. We have the license plate, we'll find the guns.

• 4:57:31Speaker 05

  Mind blowing.

• 4:57:34Speaker 05

  Purge, that's the movie. The Purge. I've never seen anything like it in my life. That incident happened in Walmart. Man, I remember sitting in the vehicle and my eyes were so watering because I was so mad.

• 4:57:47Speaker 05

  I was like, everybody's like, oh, well, we can't, you know, like, no, man, somebody right then should have made a decision.

• 4:57:54Speaker 05

  Like, there are people that need to be saved.

• 4:57:59Speaker 05

  Go in the back. Let's go pull the people out. Drive on, those people need our help. They just, they said, let them burn it down.

• 4:58:11Speaker 05

  The residents of Fayetteville under her leadership should have been infuriated. There's, there's radio calls of her saying, stand down. James Nolet, Assistant Chief, car too, stand down. Your city's burning down.

• 4:58:27Speaker 05

  People's lives are at stake. What are we doing?

• 4:58:32Speaker 05

  It reminded me of the scene Sean from 13 Hours.

• 4:58:37Speaker 05

  Remember when they're waiting to be released and they're just watching the embassy being burned? And nobody will send them? That's what it reminded me of. They're burning their market house down. Which is like this historic building with the historian guy inside of it.

• 4:58:56Speaker 05

  Let it burn.

• 4:59:00Speaker 05

  There's somebody inside of there.

• 4:59:03Speaker 05

  He ended up getting out, but what do you mean, let it burn?

• 4:59:12Speaker 05

  I just had so much that I couldn't do it anymore.

• 4:59:19Speaker 05

  And I can't even imagine these massive cities. Cops getting, you see, there was a video recently out in DC. Cop getting drugged through the street. Still on his cellphone. Dude. If I saw my partner getting drugged like that.

• 4:59:37Speaker 05

  Bro, I'm gonna go get two or three people and we gonna come in like, like the Wolfpack from WWF. We coming in hot. We gonna, we gonna lay the law down. But they can't. People are scared. They watched their buddy be drugged off. Because they're scared. You shouldn't even been there.

• 4:59:58Speaker 05

  It's, um...

• 5:00:02Speaker 05

  I love the people, man, who are out fighting every day. I really do. I'm their voice for them. I will continue to support them. Because there's a lot of good, young cops out there, but man. You have to come together as a whole.

• 5:00:18Shawn Ryan?

  What would you... This is infuriating.

• 5:00:23Shawn Ryan?

  I can't even imagine how you feel, because I'm infuriated.

• 5:00:29Shawn Ryan?

  Bud.

• 5:00:35Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, what do you say to these guys?

• 5:00:41Shawn Ryan?

  The young guys?

• 5:00:42Speaker 05

  Hey, man. Focus on why you're doing it.

• 5:00:47Speaker 05

  Because it's not for money. It's your calling, that you feel like that you're being called to do.

• 5:00:53Speaker 05

  Focus on the positive impacts that you're making on people's lives. That's what kept me there so long. When I was in the gang unit, we would go do search warrants. And I would, there would be kids without beds.

• 5:01:08Speaker 05

  The next morning, I would go to the mattress warehouse and buy mattresses, and then deliver them to that house for those kids. I've taken vans off my feet. I used to keep boxes of vans in my feet of different sizes to give out to kids who didn't have shoes. I have pictures of all this. I used to find the, what I would feel like a kid in the neighborhood, in a neighborhood who just wasn't in a gang but wanted to affiliate with a gang, who just was on a bad path. And I'd say, hey, man, look, I'm not asking for passing grade, or I'm not asking for As and Bs in schools. Bring me passing grades, I'll buy you Kevin Gate concert tickets when it comes to Fayetteville. I'll buy you skateboards. I'll buy you a bicycle.

• 5:01:53Speaker 05

  Bicycles are huge. It gives them the ability to go get a job, gives them the ability to escape their situation. That's why, like, we have a bike drive at Jimmy's at Riceville Beach. It's a bike drive. We raised two or three thousand bikes in thirty days. Brand new bikes, not used bikes. We raised these bikes and we give them, we give them out at Christmas to kids who get nothing for Christmas. Cause a bicycle to a teenager that's living a horrible life is a way for them to escape, to go get a job, go do something, instead of just walking around. I have a huge passion with this bike drive.

• 5:02:35Speaker 05

  I have a huge passion with, I used to buy kids bikes all the time. It's because I'm giving them the ability to get away from what their environment is producing for them. I'm giving them something, some motivation. I used to buy skateboards all the time. We have a skate shop in Fayetteville, man, and they were so awesome. They would sell me boards at fifty percent off. And I'd, I'd go to the neighborhood and I'd give it to the kid. Or if there was a kid that we did a search warrant on that was traumatized, I'd, I'd go play basketball with them. There's a, there's one picture, man, it's my favorite picture, it's hanging up in my house. It's the gang unit. We just went in a neighborhood, we played basketball with all these kids. They were terrified of police.

• 5:03:18Speaker 05

  It's Massey Hills, one of the worst neighborhoods. And they were damn sure terrified, dudes with beards and long hair. Because that's normally people that are coming to take their parents away for a while, right? We're the Jump Out Boys. And, uh...

• 5:03:34Speaker 05

  Just got out and started playing basketball with them one day. I used to do it all the time on the road. Just play basketball with them and there was this picture of this kid. He's sitting on my shoulders. He's messing with my hat and his brothers and sisters are here and the gang unit's here. And uh, it meant so much to those kids, man, to see that we're humans. Law enforcement officers are humans. The problem is that citizens see us at their worst moments. They'll never see us at their best moments. So if their worst moment, we're either good or evil. It doesn't matter. They still don't get to see us as humans. You know, when I go home and I take off that vest,

• 5:04:17Speaker 05

  I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm a son, I'm a brother.

• 5:04:22Speaker 05

  I'm a human. I used to have shit thrown on me when I was on patrol.

• 5:04:29Speaker 05

  Crazy lady shit in her hand and threw it on me.

• 5:04:34Speaker 05

  All I did was ask her to get out of the road.

• 5:04:38Speaker 05

  People don't understand that.

• 5:04:41Speaker 05

  So when people like are wondering why officers are aggressive, you're just seeing them in that capacity. You don't know what they just came from. They're humans. Find them outside this. They'll joke with you, they'll have a beer with you, they'll hang out with you. They're just normal people. They have a job and an oath to protect.

• 5:05:05Speaker 05

  That's it.

• 5:05:10Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, man.

• 5:05:15Speaker 05

  Just stay motivated.

• 5:05:18Speaker 05

  Do it for the right reasons and be a good cop. And know that you're impacting somebody's life. Whether it's one person

• 5:05:26Speaker 05

  or it's a hundred people. You're impacting somebody's life. You have the ability to reach somebody at their worst moment and try to make it a smidge better by just your presence. That's the key, man, of being a good cop.

• 5:05:44Speaker 05

  Try to make somebody's worst moment a tad bit better. How would you want a cop to approach you at your worst moment?

• 5:05:53Speaker 05

  That's it, man. You do that, you're gonna be okay. You'll have a good career. But when it's time to go to work,

• 5:06:01Speaker 05

  it's time to go to work. It's time to be the police when it's time to be the police.

• 5:06:06Speaker 05

  But you gotta be able to switch it up and switch it down. It's the biggest thing about CQB is when known to throttle it up and throttle it down. That's what makes a professional. You know, I truly believe that a professional law enforcement officer is not one that gets in shootings. I was fortunate of eight years to not get into, I didn't ever pull the trigger.

• 5:06:27Speaker 05

  That is because I did everything

• 5:06:30Speaker 05

  as a professional. There's nothing more professional than going into a crazy environment and not having to kill somebody. Having to talk them out of their worst moment. Having to have better tactics than the bad guy to get them in handcuffs.

• 5:06:44Speaker 05

  That is being a professional. That is what should set you aside from everybody else. Is being able to go do what I consider to be the country's most dangerous job and not ever pull the trigger.

• 5:06:56Speaker 05

  Because you have better tactics, you're out thinking, and you have the ability to talk somebody down at their worst moment.

• 5:07:03Speaker 05

  That's what makes a good cop, Sean.

• 5:07:06Speaker 05

  Is, that's what makes a professional, in my opinion.

• 5:07:11Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. That's damn good advice, brother.

• 5:07:16Speaker 05

  I try to live by that, man. I did. I really did.

• 5:07:21Speaker 05

  I wanted to make an impact.

• 5:07:24Speaker 05

  It's all I wanted to do.

• 5:07:27Shawn Ryan?

  Well, it sounds like you made a hell of an impact.

• 5:07:30Speaker 05

  I like to think I did.

• 5:07:33Speaker 05

  I really do.

• 5:07:35Shawn Ryan?

  But there's a lot of people that, that know you did.

• 5:07:38Speaker 05

  I appreciate that. It means a lot, honestly.

• 5:07:42Shawn Ryan?

  You're welcome.

• 5:07:42Speaker 05

  I tried.

• 5:07:44Shawn Ryan?

  Well, Blake, we're wrapping up the interview.

• 5:07:48Shawn Ryan?

  But, um,

• 5:07:51Shawn Ryan?

  and man, I'll tell you, it's been a real honor.

• 5:07:54Speaker 05

  It's been a pleasure to be able to sit here and and share this story. You know, a lot of things, man, I've never even said out loud. So, thank you for having me on the show and using this platform and, man, if it just helps one person, that's all that matters.

• 5:08:17Shawn Ryan?

  It's gonna help a lot of people. And, um, man, seriously, I just... I'm so glad Kyle, you know, connected us. And, um, it sounds like Blue Bearing Solutions is doing just amazing stuff. And, um, all that stuff will be linked below if you guys wanna follow Kyle and Blake and, uh, take some courses, but...

• 5:08:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, like, I think my biggest...

• 5:08:43Shawn Ryan?

  More important than business, I just, I just wanna say thank you, man.

• 5:08:47Speaker 05

  Oh, thank you, Sean.

• 5:08:48Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you for the service you've done and, and, um... Man, just thank you for law enforcement everywhere. I know that community's going through a a real fucking tough time right now. And, uh, there's a lot of us that, that appreciate it, that appreciate the service, that wish Ellie the best and, and, um... We support you. We do. And, um, I hope they hear that.

• 5:09:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think that's the most important thing for them to hear, is that stay off the news, stay off social media, because people support you.

• 5:09:42Shawn Ryan?

  And I'll say something too, to... I always do it, but, um... Man, if you are, for the listeners, if you are... If you do support, and we all do, anybody that watches this channel supports law enforcement, man, just take five seconds out of your day and say thank you.

• 5:10:07Speaker 05

  That's huge.

• 5:10:08Shawn Ryan?

  Wish them safety.

• 5:10:09Speaker 05

  I appreciated every person that stopped me and said thank you. It was the only positive thing I ever got during that 10-hour shift.

• 5:10:22Shawn Ryan?

  I do have one last question.

• 5:10:24Speaker 05

  All right.

• 5:10:28Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it sounds like your mom has been there for you and, I mean, she's always been there.

• 5:10:38Shawn Ryan?

  Sounds like a very, very strong woman and, uh,

• 5:10:44Shawn Ryan?

  is she gonna watch this?

• 5:10:46Speaker 05

  I'm sure.

• 5:10:48Shawn Ryan?

  You got anything to say?

• 5:10:54Speaker 05

  I would not be who I am without her. She never gave up on me.

• 5:11:00Speaker 05

  She's been my mom and my dad. She's been my biggest supporter.

• 5:11:06Speaker 05

  I love you. And I'm so grateful that God gave me you, gave you as my mother.

• 5:11:17Speaker 05

  Thank you for never giving up on me.

• 5:11:24Shawn Ryan?

  Good for you, man.

• 5:11:26Shawn Ryan?

  I wish you the best of luck and, um, I'm just very thankful that we met.

• 5:11:32Speaker 05

  I'm beyond grateful.