Tall Boy Radio

#TBR237 - The Best of the Black Stuff

Guinness. It's synonymous with the word stout.... but is it the best and could we pick it out of a line up. 11% of beer sold in the UK is Guinness - so it's no wonder that a couple of beers have gone up against it recently. We blind taste test the classic Guinness and a couple of upstarts : Conor McGregor's Forged Irish Stout and BrewDog's Black Heart... and just for good measure, we see if we can spot the Guinness Zero too. We also rate them and pick our favourite whilst intermingling the conversation with facts, stories and conjecture. Finally, after seeing the Gonster (A Guinness and Monster cocktail) on the Guinness Community Facebook page -ahem, amongst other things- we give that a go to - is it Genius or a Monstrosity? The opening music is "London Bayou" by Oscar Albis Rodrigues and the closing music is "BDS" by Lewis Pickford. tallboyradio.com

Duration:: 1h 6m
Broadcast on:: 11 Aug 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

[Music] Welcome back to episode 236 of the Tallboy Radio podcast and as we always say who knows where it goes when the beer flows well let me tell you this it flows all the way to the USA once more as we have a guest who's going to be joining us to tell us about his rather illustrious career but before that his man who's yet to have his illustrious career are we doing? Even in all even in the world yeah thanks for that intro as ever with best friends like that who needs enemies I suppose I don't know really looking forward to this episode I say it most times when we have guests on our podcast and particularly guests that are first timers really really looking forward to just picking this guy's brains about his career and what are you seeing what he's got up to so yeah I'd say no doubt a few left turns along the way and we'll see where we go indeed indeed so then over to our guest I apologize if I pronounce your name wrong as I so frequently do people's names Ramesh how are you doing? You got it perfect I mean after all you guys live in England where all the Indians are so yeah it's good to be with you guys it's nothing like a tall boy in the middle of the day 100% yeah 100% so you had a well you well you got a couple of careers we'll get to those really but obviously you've written a book recently called badge time gun life and death life and death journeys of a Miami detective I have to say whenever we get an author on the podcast I will order the book and try and read it first I've ordered yours but unfortunately it's not available on Amazon in the UK but it is in the US so it is it's making its way from the US as we speak and I will share it out on our podcast channels when it arrives so do you want to tell us a little bit about what you did which departments you in and how you got into the police force? Sure well I got into the police force at a pretty early age I was I was just a mere green lad of 21 and it was something that really wasn't in my in my in my thinking process until I was about 19 and a half I started off with a small police department it was a very it was kind of like an inner city atmosphere it was it was a very high crime area so it was a great place to start your career as a uniform patrol officer because there was never a dull moment so after a year there I left and went to another department a slightly larger department that's where I got interested in in doing investigative work I was watching some homicide detectives work and I decided that's what I wanted to do so I had to make yet another move because that police department didn't offer that kind of opportunity so I went to our county Miami-Dade County which was a department of about I think they're up to about 3,500 sworn officers now and I was able to do a couple more years in uniform and finally got my coveted transfer to homicide wow is that I mean it sounds that sounds exciting well I don't want to picture that I'm picturing my ami vice and that kind of stuff but is it that Salibris is that where everybody wants to be I don't think everybody wants to be an homicide but you know when I chose to go in the law enforcement I really didn't realize what kind of a collision course I was going on because Miami was changing very drastically the cocaine cartels were ramping up in a big way and Miami was kind of transitioning from kind of a sleepy fun kind of town where people you know were engaged in and boating and relaxing sports like that into a kind of a war zone and it happened it seemed to happen very very quickly so those of us who got into law enforcement at that time came out of the academy and at the ground running well yeah I bet no I just I was just gonna ask you know you said that you sort of made the transition basically from what we were called sort of Bobby on the beat sort of you know walking the streets and so on into more sort of investigative work do you miss did you miss it initially did you miss sort of being out on the street did you miss the sort of um the sort of walk in the streets doing the beat as such or was it very very easy decision for you to go into that investigative work now I really didn't miss it it was a pretty easy decision I was very very happy I was thrilled when I got the notification that it was going to homicide and and you know when you're working homicide or any other investigative entity like that you're going to be out on the street but in a different in a different role in a different realm you're going to be knocking on lots of doors talking to lots of people so I cherish my days in uniform I think you know everybody should spend at least two or three years in uniform before they choose to go to detectives yeah yeah I can imagine that is probably sort of where you you learn the probably learn about the streets are all about my question is then you know when you think of homicides and what about you guys I watched a lot of sort of murder documentaries on tv and I find them fascinating just it's it's a real insight into the human mind and you know and the different routes that it can take you down for one reason or another I'd like to know what it's like but I don't know if I want to know what it's like maybe from from your version not me experienced at first hand what it's like walking into a crime scene you know where something well someone's life has been ended and you know the and the world's of their loved ones have changed yeah and whoever's perpetrating it their life changed as well for the worse what's that like experiencing that yeah as you said there's a lot of different things going on right and there's a lot of effects up on all the people involved but as a detective when you go on the scene you're you're very keenly focused you're very focused on what you need to do you're kind of you know there's kind of this cheerleader inside you saying you know let's get it right let's get everything right let's make sure we're not missing anything and at the same time somewhere along the line your brain is processing what can be some pretty gruesome things and some pretty horrible things right so there's a lot to it there is a lot to it but you don't have time it's kind of hard to explain you don't really have time to sit there and cover your mouth and say oh my god look at this this is horrible yeah you know you recognize it but you also realize that you can't get overwhelmed by it you have to be um you have to treat the bodies as evidence uh and you have to just do the job and be diligent about what you're doing yeah and i suppose you know you hear the phrase a lot when you watch the things on tv you know right the clock is ticking so you go there and literally the clock and and i don't know the stats and you you might know the stats in terms of you know if you don't solve the crime within a period of time 24 hours 48 hours 72 hours obviously your chance then of doing that decreases significantly sort of thing so i suppose it's one of those is that it's a moment that you train for you think right all you're training is putting to play there and and one question i i have and is not quite is to replay but when you first go to the scene is the light i've got to check this i've got to check this i've got it or is it literally just like you go into the scene and you let your eye cast around and then you almost process and you go through you know what what you think is the right thing or is it almost a bit like a playbook when you know you check for this and check for this and check and and how does that work i'm fascinated with that yeah it's a great question there there definitely is a procedure right we we're notified we meaning the homicide detectives are usually notified by uniform they get a call of a dead body or a shooting or whatever it may be so our first order of business is to meet with them outside the crime scene and say what do we got tell me what you saw just tell me what you know have you spoken to neighbors do we have witnesses what's going on and we try and get kind of the lay of the land before we actually go in and one of the one of the things that was very helpful to us that we're very fortunate to have was a system where we worked on a squad so you never went to a homicide scene by yourself you had a squad of usually three other detectives working with you right and in that way you know one of those people was going to be designated as the lead investigator so you know let's say that you know the three of us are on that squad and i'm the lead and i'm gonna go okay beans i want you to start on the area canvas and gazor want you to help me with the scene it's a big scene or talk to that witness down the street or whatever it is so you start to divvy up the responsibilities and try and get things done more quickly i mean you don't you never want to rush things but as you said you do have time is kind of your enemy so you want to try and get that lead sheet filled up with with good things that you how to keep doing and hopefully lead you to the to to the pot of gold as it were right wow how many how many cases were you typically working at any one time well in the 80s it was very very busy and we really didn't have adequate manpower so we were we were working a lot so i would say in 1985 when i got to homicide we were getting about 31 to 33 homicides a month that's one a day and those had to be those had to be disseminated amongst several squads so it was a rotational basis yeah so we got okay we got one today now it's squad b's turn and they get one and it's squad c's turn in the middle of all that you have suicides and accidentals that were responsible for handling so it it got at times got almost chaotic but we had good supervisors we had a good system and we worked a lot over time we worked a lot of hours away from home to get to get these cases worked so you know i worked hundreds and hundreds of cases because you always worked on your your partner's case or your squad member's case also no wow it's a lot indeed it is and and thank you Stuart for your question and just a question that he's just asked do you over time become desensitized when it comes to certain incidents and i suppose that's a great question if you do see though you know if you are subjected to the same excuses or is it is there a desensitized sort of that that you go through and and not you become blase because that's completely wrong phrase but is it just it right i'm not going to be shocked anymore i'm just going to go about the job definitely i mean you can't work this job from even six or eight months and not have some sort of desensitization desensitization because it's it's not something that most human beings are prepared for even even though you know you know you have a mindset of a police detective and all those things it's it's a jarring thing sometimes to see a child dead for example or or see just a completely innocent woman that was surprised by a robber laying on the floor of her kitchen you know bleeding all over the place and and the groceries are spilled all over you go my god that's my that's my wife or my or my mom or my sister you know that there's a very familiar look to these people that you you go into their homes and see them dead so yes you definitely get affected um and and there's two sides to that coin it's necessary for you to be able to do your job you have to you have to have the protection that layer of yeah of sensitivity turned off and and so i think everybody deals with it in a different way but it does affect you absolutely does and i suppose as you say you have to turn it off because i suppose if you don't then your objectivity might start to then not be where it needs to be and you're not quite focused on where you need to because you you're having all these thoughts about what you're actually visually seeing in front of you and maybe the the impact of that on x y and z but from a i suppose from a from a detective point where you have to be so um objective in what it is that you're trying to get to because yes somebody's lost their life but actually you're then going to try and find out who that person was that that and and so there's that objectivity i suppose on getting to him without turning off your sensitivity you might not have that correct i mean you you have to remain objective you have to guard against um jumping to any conclusions um some things might look like something somebody might tell you all this is a suicide it might not be so you have to try and and be very objective and and just let the facts and the evidence take you where they're going to take you yeah there are there are any cases that have stood with you though you know i mean so you were tired now there must be cases that you think back on that that you you know you just can't shake or maybe you didn't solve i think every detective we've ever spoken to says is that one case that he just couldn't solve it really bugs him oh absolutely um i think the first one that comes to mind for me was this man 53-year-old man who was a co-owner of a heavy equipment company they leased cranes and things like that to construction companies and he was found shot in the back of the head in the trailer of his his office trailer so on the on the work work premises where the company was we worked that case very very hard um and i developed what i believe is a suspect i believe is the killer the problem was we just couldn't build it up probable clause to legally arrest him so that one always bothered me um i was i was very in touch with the widow in that case and we actually became friends over the years and you know my thing was even when i retired i call the i called up the office and said hey guys pick this up and see if you can do something with it because i would love to close this and get the goods on this guy before the widow passes away but unfortunately that never happened uh and yeah if everybody has one of those or more than one of those right i mean that must be hard and i said i that was one of the questions obviously i was going to sort of chat about was when you work in a case because you you see on tv and you see these sort of obviously actors but betraying detectives and they go to bed and they go to sleep and then they can't sleep how much of that can you detach yourself because for me it's like if i'm working homicide and i've got a murder case and it's a new case and it would i be able to sleep it just things going over your mind have i missed something did i do it right is there anything else like how do you shut off from that i'm not saying it's a nine to five job but i haven't shot from that because to me that'd be like a 24 hours a day seven days a week thing until i solved it and then you move on how do you detach yourself from that it's not easily um and and so that might be the reason why we cops have a very high divorce rate um uh high alcohol is a great and and you know it's it's tough it's tough dealing with that and it's it's different than uniform in the sense that you know when you work uniform you know you go from seeing just you go from call to call and um at the end of the day you turn in your paperwork and you're done yeah and and the next day is a bunch of new calls you're going to go to an homicide like as you said you're always you've always got unfinished business you've always got leads to follow up on you've always got these questions nagging you about about you know are we doing it the right way or have we done enough with it should i interview this guy that guy that's where i think it's helpful to know that when i go to work i've got to spot a guys that i can bounce things off of and we can help each other out with those questions but yeah it's hard yeah uh and i guess it helps like you say with the squad you've got the same group of people going through the same thing the same experience in the same cases so you've got people who know exactly how you're feeling i bet you build some camaraderie then with those officers that you work with oh yeah uh you know some of the closest friends in my life are the guys that i worked with for for those 22 years in homicide and you know we're we consider each other brothers for for the till the end it really is they're not not a corny thing to say but um we depend on each other so much and we worked with each other in so many trying situations and i look i can hop on a plane and go to chicago and meet a homicide detective in chicago and there will be an instant familiarity there yeah i mean i may not even know the guy's name but because we all do the same kind of work and it's very unique work yeah it is it is it is a very unique way it's something something i can't quite get my head around guys i don't know about you it must be do you do you do you feel that level of responsibility that you you know when you're trying to solve this for the loved ones do you do you feel that weight on your shoulders for sure hundred percent um you know you're working those cases really for the family members that are left behind and and that becomes crystal clear when you meet with them because we're the ones that had to knock on the door and give them the bad news we're the ones that had to sit there and deliver the bad news and i'll tell you what that's way more difficult than working a gory crime scene or decomposed body that's just physical unpleasantness when you deal with these people and have to tell them the shocking news uh and then kind of hold their hand through the whole thing there's a bond that is created there too uh hopefully because sometimes they're your best source of information in many cases um so yeah you do feel a sense of responsibility and uh you know it's very satisfying when you can when you hear a jury say we find the defendant guilty you know and you can see you know they come up and give you a hug or say thank you it means the world yeah that's amazing so one of the things we often hear then about sort of horrific crimes like that is and maybe i watch too many crime documentaries i don't know but you always you more often than not it appears that the the perpetrator is known to the victim is that the case that is the case most of the time i think most homicides most homicides are correct are done by people who aren't necessarily hardened criminals yeah they're kind of everyday folks who have a lot of problems maybe a drug and alcohol problems they have anger problems they don't know how to resolve things without violence and they let their emotions get the better of them that's the majority of homicides um and yeah you do have homicides that are created by um hardened arm robbers and people like that narcotics dealers but for the most part um yeah you know your average your average uh homicide subject is somebody that um you wouldn't be able to pick out of a crowd necessarily yeah that's what one thing i was gonna ask and i've asked a couple of other sort of detectives that have been on have you ever been involved in in a serial killer case or as opposed to a almost a one off hat you know has there been that that that serial killer and you've had to effectively sort of chase them track them down and they'd be the committed to series of crimes over a number months or a number of weeks or even a number of years you know and and if so obviously without betraying any confidences or anything like that you know just just talk us through that process yeah well once once it becomes evident that we have somebody doing multiple murders um over a period of time um everything goes into kind of high gear and a lot more people become involved right so you know usually there's a task force that's formed with other agencies like the state agency we have in in florida is the florida department of law enforcement FTLE they'll have their agents working on the task force the FBI will always get themselves involved you know they never met a camera they didn't like and and you know so they they will definitely get involved they listen there's a lot of great a lot a lot of great FBI agents are working with okay so uh but it but that part is true um and and so you know you'll have all of a sudden you'll have this big bureaucratic creature that's been formed and and there's a lot to manage that too which falls upon the supervisor personnel but i think as the lead investigator if you're the lead investigator in a serial murder the pressure is very much on um you know these cases are on the news media every day and uh the the pressure from above is is pretty great um but most most of us would be uh relegated to uh support doing whatever leads they give you come in and they go hey check this out or go talk to this person or get these records or whatever it is yeah and there's there are a lot of and if that is the case because you get impression on from watching tv in true crime things that this does happen the jurisdictional aspect of no no that's not that was your case now but no no and that that's now ours and we're taking over and we're running the show and and is there any sort of angst between obviously the the lead detective at the time and then these guys that were almost like parachuted in on the task force it doesn't happen as often as hard Hollywood would would have you believe right okay really doesn't um there's really there's no such thing as as for example the FBI coming in and going okay we're taking this over all right they they normally don't handle murders anyway so you know they only handle homicides that involve that uh that happen on some federal territory or federal facility or something like that yeah so we dealt with them um kind of on a cooperative basis when it came to mutual witnesses or mutual targets that we were looking at for example they might be working a big interstate fraud or interstate trucking uh case and then you know there's a murder involved in that so now we have to cooperate and communicate with each other but it very rarely does anybody come in and say hey that's our jurisdiction jurisdiction is is pretty clear cut yeah yeah yeah the stew has been in touch again he wants to ask a question he says have you ever dealt with any famous cases yeah i have um i worked on a couple of them we had um well to start with we had the columbian cartel murders which most of them were were in Miami uh and most of them were were actually connected to Griselda Blanco and her group of people uh the godmother of cocaine i think netflix recently had a show about that so i worked on that i actually um worked with um Griselda Blanco's hitman when he turned into a state witness for us again served um had a lot of contact with him i worked on the uh whitey vulture case um up in boston and was part of that task force because one of their murders was in miami and i ended up inheriting that murder after the uh elite investigator had retired um and that kind of thing broke open in the late 90s and we got involved in that and worked a long time on that as well yeah wow that's pretty brazilian a question i'm down to asking and and in a way i hope the answer is no but in a way i've sort of hope it's yes as well have you ever been sort of in the line of why there is such a have you had sort of occasions where you've been sort of jotter or have you ever had to sort of rage your gun to somebody else um and shot at twice um both times were in uniform um and one of them was uh during a riot situation um where we had you know we had um we had these race riots going on and it was just chaos um so i got i got those two two uh attempts on my life out of the way in my first year so hopefully thankfully i didn't or happened again um drawn my gun to get control of somebody several times yeah that that's not terribly uncommon if you're making an arrest and you feel like the person's armed or you know you're you're serving an arrest warrant and you know the guy is a killer for example uh sure what's just you know rather than sort of the drawing the gun style of it that first part where you say i don't know i think if i've been shot at twice in the first year of my career i've been thinking rid of the career yeah i would yeah i'm not right it would cross my mind it would definitely cross my mind well what's that like what's that like knowing that you're under fire do you go home and think that could have been it today yeah you know i've contemplated that more than once um you know the the riots were such such a chaotic time that um you know you go home and and you know you were talking earlier about going to sleep uh it takes several several tall voice and a few cigarettes to get to sleep uh after after a night like that um yeah so you know it's it's you don't dwell on it but yeah there's times you realize and especially when you've seen other uh mates as it were getting killed on the job and other officers dying in the line of duty um you can't help but think back on the times that came close did you see much of that then did you see uh i don't i don't want to pull up any sort of painful memories but did you did you see any of you you know you fella waft hit and damaged in the line of duty yes um i saw several i would say two or three officers that were wounded uh that were there were friends of mine that i worked with um a couple of uh two of my good friends i'm sorry one of my very good friends was killed in the line of duty during a bank robbery um and then we had one of our the son of one of our lieutenants and homicide who was working uniform got killed one night and i worked on that case uh so you know if you work in this line in this line of work for for as long as i did it's bound to happen you're going to come across it yeah yeah i imagine if you was very very different to the lives that we lead isn't it yeah very very different to the lives that we lead it's fairly enough so we had a guest on last week when it is the day view sometimes or usually presents the podcast where this can't be with us tonight unfortunately he uh his brother his brother moved to the states last what 20 years now he's been living there and we spoke to him about what it's like with firearms and what his opinion is on firearms and and you know obviously it's a different take uh a different take when you brought up in England so Stuart is intrigued he'd like to know what what was what what firearm were you issued what firearm did he use well when i came out of the police academy they issued us um Ruger um stainless seals 38 38 caliber revolvers we were we shot revolvers back in 1979 and we never we didn't go to semi-automatic weapons until about the mid to late 80s um and at that time they allowed us to carry any nine millimeter firearm that we could qualify at the range with so um i carried Smith & Wesson 5906 for most of my career it's just about all of my career yeah right and just i mean one thing that obviously he has sort of caught the attention probably of the the global news but in the UK in particular is obviously the issues which surrounding Trump recently and the assassination attempt and and obviously the fact he got injured and got nicked on the ear and stuff what have you ever been a involved in anything sort of politically motivated like that and also i suppose the second part of the question is what's it like in America now post Trump a sort of assassination attempt because from the UK it now looks like he's an absolute if he wasn't before he's now even more issuing to get the job basically so i suppose it's two two part question really first one have you ever been involved in anything politically motivated nor intimidated like that and then the second thing is what is it like in the states at the moment with after the Trump attempt i have not personally been involved in any politically motivated homicides right we did have a number of those in the late 70s and early 80s that that were that involved that involved Cuban operatives and people involved in organizations that were trying to celebrate Cuba and things like that there were some of those things we had some bombings in the late 70s in Miami but that was before i came that was before i came on the job and as far as the the atmosphere here in the United States i think everybody's still engaged in a lot of rhetoric back and forth and and i think that i think it's fair to say that that Trump's followers are even more encouraged and empowered by what happened you know personally i just think it's it's horribly sad that that any candidate has to has to dodge a bullet or get shot in the year or whatever it is we're not supposed to be that kind of a nation and and so it's it's it's an embarrassment in my opinion that it has to happen yeah and and you know to be fair i think bardin came out and sort of said that you know politically whether you agree or disagree you know nobody should as you've just said there you know nobody should be in a position where they're having to sort of dodge a bullet if and and let's not forget that actually somebody did lose their life you know and yeah and that's the that's the absolute travesty in it i suppose and it leads me onto a question and i'm absolutely fascinated by this and and i ask most Americans when when they come onto the podcast sort of where where where do you sit where's what's your stance on the sort of the gun laws and the gun lobby and and and where are you in that because a lot of Americans are like we have the right to take up arms to defend ourselves but then a lot of people are saying but the fact there's so many guns in circulation that's the issue in itself so i'm just a from i suppose from a from a from an american citizen point of view but be more so from a from a cop point of view i suppose where where's your thoughts on that complicated question but that's okay you know sorry personally that's right um it's complicated issue i don't think it's that simple an issue i believe that people have that second amendment right at freedom to own firearms by the same token i think that there are there are laws or absence of laws in in some areas in some states that make it uh too easy for people to attain firearms and i think we have a mental health issue in this problem in this in this country and and i think to me um having investigated lots of murders and lots of crimes if someone wants to hurt you or kill you they're going to do it whether they get a gun or a knife or a baseball bat whatever they're going to do it and if someone wants to get a firearm you can outlaw it all day long they're going to get a firearm because the black market is there and it's always been there and it will always be there so i i don't see um banning firearms as as the answer i think that instead we need to work on on on better educating society so that you know we have we have a more sane populace yeah that's a lot to be said yeah i i couldn't disagree with that as soon as you you strip something away you you're almost and and you make it you sort of you criminalize it it just goes underground and then it just the black market flourishes and and and as you said you know if if you want to do something you want to get your hands on something there are ways and means you're going to do that so you you i suppose almost legislatively if that's even a word you know make it tight make sure that the legality of owning various things is is tight and and it goes to the right people as you said you know the mental health issue is is a significant one and and i think you put the right checks in place to check that people are right to own the firearm in the first place etc etc etc so i and i think that that's for me that that's a great answer and i think that that would be my stance on it is don't get rid of them completely because people are still going to get them but just make sure that the right people have the right capacity to own them if that's the case i suppose yeah i think i think also the the shooting uh the assassination attempt on trump it's kind of a microcosm of of my answer because yeah the guy had an AR 15 but first of all we should have prevented him from climbing on that roof why was that you know why wasn't that prevented um and and i'm not i'm not just blatantly throwing blame on the secret service i've never been a secret service agent their job is very difficult but you know in the same realm you know there we have lots and lots of guns in this country if you ban guns tomorrow there's still hundreds of thousands of guns out there in communities so instead we have to we have to try and keep people from using them irresponsibly and that's almost impossible right it's almost impossible and unless you end up with a police state where you're searching people on the highway and pulling over their cars and we don't live like that no no one of the things we need to do while you're here as well is give a quick shout out to Vick Ferrari you put you put you in touch with us god bless him i said we're gonna have to give him credit fucking agent if he keeps getting it's always against i know he'll be out for commission soon he will be he will be yeah we have to hook up and god bless him we'll have to give him off so one of the other guys he put us in touch with as well was a guy called John Foreso who's a new york police officer and he worked in internal and fair fair so obviously he made himself quite unpopular for a spell but did you did you see much did you see okay you got to be careful your answers i guess i'm pointing on the spot here did you see which corrosion did you see what's you know well hollywood let's just believe there's always bad cops did you see much of that well yeah we saw some um you know we had we had a case where um it was actually a pretty huge case in south florida or city my city of miami police officers now that's a different department from the one i worked i worked in the county uh city Miami officers were ripping off drug dealers and ended up killing three of them and that was a massive investigation um i i came in on the tail end of it um after after it happened just before i got to homicide but that that was an investigation that that lasted years and ended up with i think 12 or 13 officers getting indicted and ultimately convicted um and then you know there's always small-scale stuff i mean you know police officers are human beings and they're gonna they're gonna screw up they're going to try and get over the system some of them um i would like to think that law enforcement has less of that um element than than the rest of society but um yeah there was always something going on i mean i i worked a case one time where um we we we got a confession from a guy that did that was participated in an armed robbery turned out to be a murder and during this confession he said hey i know of uh of a cop who's tipping off people uh to search warrants so you know then we had to go to internal affairs and talk to talk to them about that and pretty much introduce them to our to our suspect there and so yeah those things are always ongoing and it's um it's unfortunate when i hear stories about cops that just do really stupid things to try and get around the rules and that's uh it's a shame because it makes us all look bad yeah yeah yeah i can imagine i can imagine well one question uh so and it goes back to what you mentioned earlier about um and i think you said almost when you first rejoined and you went down to florida and to me the route from south america through into north america and and the drugs trade and and and everything that goes you know what i'm interested in and we always get the impression that florida was actually a key state and that was a major route into into america sort of thing um was it predominantly from from south america so you mentioned like the clumbian cartels and this you know was it predominantly from south america that that you were dealing with or with with their aspects from elsewhere and and what was that process of trying to just root out and i suppose the routes that they were taking and and and obviously the people behind it just a little bit background on that really right well florida was the perfect spot um for for entry of of anything coming from south america and yes it was predominantly in the eighties particularly uh the cocaine uh the cocaine cartels were all based in colombia um you know Bolivia was involved to a certain extent with some of the the farming and the and the and you know the uh the processing and all those things um yeah but but most of that was coming from colombia there were there were staging points all over the caribbean in latin america there were freighters that would stop in Honduras and pick up things or deliver things to Honduras to smaller vessels and you know you've got it was wide open and before law enforcement really got a chance to catch up and get any traction on it it was it was coming in everywhere and if you if you look at the south if you look at the coast of florida we've got hundreds maybe thousands of miles of coast land coastline uh completely uncharted coastline that you know any looks and crannies where you can get in with a small boat and yeah it was all over the place wow and and what sort of and you might not know the answer to this but what sort of figures you you do i mean i'm it's oh i'm assuming you're talking like multiple hundreds of millions of dollars of turn over just literally just flooding into the states i suppose oh definitely um that it was staggering how much money was was coming into the streets of miami and um if you've ever watched the the show coke in cowboys um if you haven't seen that i recommend it um one of them i think it was john robert smother guys interviewed in that show he said you know we were pulling in a couple million dollars a week wow and this is and this is in the eighties and you know just kind of you got to sit there get your calculator out and start saying that don't even know what that looks like i mean as some of these guys were talking i think it was again roberts who said i had money stacked in my two car garage to the ceiling and i ran out of space so so yeah it was just it was just ridiculous how much how much money was on the street and you know that that really gave rise to a lot of cottage cottage industry crime because when you have that much cash in the street you've got a lot more rip-offs and and these people knew that kilos were coming in and being sold for 40 50 60 000 a kilo so why don't we just rip this guy off and kill him let's tell he's got a million dollars sitting in his car let's go let's take him out wow and that happened a lot wow imagine imagine us it's it's it's a lifestyle you have to understand that our very leafy little town that we live here in chesia that we can't even begin to get uh heads around wow so it was the the atmosphere in miami at that time was you know and again in your neighborhood or even before all this started you're driving down the street and you see a car with both doors open and you go oh gosh i hope nobody's hurt let me stop and see if the guy maybe these guys have an heart attack or he's having car problems yeah in miami the first thing that we would think was oh crap what's going on here is this is this a shooting is this a robbery what's happening that's the first thing that crossed our minds so we all got very very cynical very quickly over there and i suppose and i don't know you know you mentioned sort of pre this cocaine influx and stuff that florida was a pretty sort of chill place it was a party place and you'd go and do water sports and and a family orientated when when the yes i suppose when the cocaine came in there would be an influx of some major crime petty crime on the back of that but was there a sense that lots of people were just having a great time and there was a it was almost become party central and there was lots and lots of money and a real affluence of of people not say well yeah basically showing off you know it's like look at me you know i've got the money and and and i suppose the whole vibe of the city would have but the state i suppose would have just changed completely it really was what you said is very true that you know cocaine especially in a powdered form where which is really how it was being sold and delivered most of the time was a cool chic thing to have right and and and what they talk about you know these stories of people snorting coke off the table tops in restaurants it's true there were certain places that you could do that without anybody saying a word and but you know and that was the kind of the glitz and glamour and if you know if you were a young guy and you had a bottle of coke you know you might you might get really get on with the ladies that night you know so it was it was that kind of thing but the other side of that was very ugly the very the other side was when people started managing the changing the powdered form into a paste form which we call free-basing it was called free-basing back then and it later turned into crack cocaine it was really kind of the same stuff that's highly highly addictive and that was that was what we saw more in the ghettos and that was where we saw people turning into zombies and and just and and the crime was going up out through the roof and you know young women were turning into prostitution just so they could support their habits and it changed it changed a lot of neighborhoods it wasn't all glitz and glamour at all no no you can imagine you can't imagine but yeah gee was it does affect people's life terrible i have to say that hearing all this and knowing that you did you know your job for as long as you did do it there must have been parts for enjoyers i'm sure there are parts you didn't enjoy i'll be curious to know what they were what was your favorite part of the job what was your least favorite part of the job? Favorite part of the job in terms of homicide investigation i guess would be um that that thrill that that feeling you got when your your case start taking on momentum when you started getting okay this guy now we got this guy to focus on it looks like he's our guy and we got enough to get a search warrant and boom we go do the search warrant and we're we're finding the goods we're finding a gun that's a thrill that's it's a slow thrill but you know the excitement starts to mount and there's nothing like that when you finally can put the cuffs on them and and get them charged um that's a good feeling um i guess also the camaraderie as you spoke of before of being able to experience that with your squad members makes that extra special it's a team effort yeah so um yeah so that's that's i think what i enjoyed the most about detective work yeah and you mentioned there it like the thrill is a little bit of a slow burner almost but it has to have a bit of a case where i suppose you know not necessarily out of thin air but you know you find the smoking bullet or you find the smoking gun or whatever it is and you think ah you know that that moment and you might go for a search you think that that's it and i suppose that surgery is relentless like yes we've got him now that's the nail in the coffin that we need that's the beyond reasonable doubt or whatever you know and i suppose that must be like an amazing feeling where you put all this time and effort in and and then all of a sudden you get the piece of evidence that you need or you get the witness statement or whatever it may be you go bang boom that that's that's it that must be feeling amazing it is um you know it's it's um and you you mentioned you know witness statements and when you get a confession from somebody as well that's just a there's a tremendous feeling of accomplishment um and and we got to do that a lot uh and and when that momentum is happening and your your case is starting to really get this pickup steam um you look at the clock and you go holy crap we've been working 22 hours they didn't even realize it really wow you know and and only later do you get tired when you get home uh yeah but then you you know back then we were young you know we could four hours sleeping we'd be back to work getting back on the case so there was always something to do and do american cops drink as much coffee as everybody makes out that they drink because like on tv you just eat constantly drinking coffee uh yeah i would say that's that's um that's accurate video you took these stories that you over your career and obviously you put them in a book badge tie and go on life and death journeys of a miami detective you want to tell us a little bit about the book you know the the work that you put into it and maybe some of your favorite stories that are in it yeah the book um you know i always like to write i was used to write when i was a kid it's just something that i always like to do it was my outlet i guess it's a so you know a year or two into police work i knew i was going to be writing about it i didn't really have any designs on a book per se but i used to write down i would just take notes sometimes i would come home and just wow that case was incredible and i'd write down some notes keep it in a notebook and uh it wasn't till after i retired that i thought you know i really need to start working on a book yeah and it was an off and on procedure it was you know i would get busy with other things i was always working or working full-time as a teacher uh and and so it took eight years of you know starting and stopping editing and re-editing took pretty much eight years to get it done so it felt good to finally do that it was like closing a case boom yeah yeah i bet i bet at least you asked me your favorite stories i thought or at least give people a little bit of a taster if they do go and purchase the book yeah and and you know there was a point where i had to stop writing because i realized god this book is getting long and it's getting too big so i didn't i didn't really include a lot of stories but the ones i think the ones that stand out um i i told you about the one where we never were able to solve the um the death of that uh heavy equipment guy um and and i didn't mind writing about the failures we had to i didn't want to just have a book full of successes i wanted i wanted people to read and understand what the process was and what it felt like what it felt like to do that job um that was one that took up i think a better part of a chapter there um i had a case where um we found a crashed airplane out in the Everglades and a guy a guy's body about 300 yards north of the plane covered with branches and and so you know that was that was 1985 uh or 86 rather and um it took about two weeks we were trying to identify this guy it turned out to be a high school friend of mine and and so that was um that was a case that really took up a lot of my energy and focus and we were we uncovered a group of smugglers and um it was a very difficult case we never were we were able to identify a lot of people but never able to charge them with the actual felony murder or manslaughter involved uh in in what we pretty sure was a smuggling smuggling venture so um but that was a unique situation for me to be investigating um the death of a friend and uh it was sad but you know it was also um there was a certain energy i put into that um there's others there was a case um i don't want to give away too much but there was a case that uh well we found a guy shot in the head um kind of on the edge of town and um that involved the death of a kitten um and and the motive was actually someone's kitten was killed and i'm not going to say how it's a very unusual story and it takes up uh i think an entire chapter of the book actually so there's a bunch of stories like that they i tried to pick out the most um compelling ones the most the ones that were the most bizarre uh that you know kind of those you can't make this stop up kind of yes yeah yeah i can imagine i can imagine like i say we will share the a link to this book to where you can push it like say during the uk you can purchase it but i can tell you from an experience takes a little while to get there but it is amazon prime day today folks so if you are watching get involved jump on amazon and pick this book or god did you have a question that's all yeah no it was just more really um you know you mentioned in the book that you didn't just want to do this sort of story after story you wanted to tell i suppose in a way um how heavy it weighs on you as a person when you're trying to and and that's very personable um sort of approach to the book and it's not all oh well there was this case and this silly thing happened and this silly thing happened and not silly that's the wrong phrase but you know um you know a strange or weird case i suppose more the human faction how much it weighed upon you and actually the fact that you put a couple in there that actually didn't get to solve and and what that meant to you and and not the baggage as such but how heavy it weighs upon you that must be in a way a little bit liberating future right about it but also from the readers point of view quite chastising just in terms of how much it affected you and and actually then thinking about the human cost and the cost it is to you in terms of walking around with the knowledge that you didn't quite get to the point where you wanted to get to so i'm just fascinated that you decided to put that in the book which is from my point being amazing because it's that personable approach to it and and what it meant to you as a person yeah i mean you know the purpose of the book was not to uh look at me rah rah was a detective you know that i wanted people to see the realities of the job i wanted i wanted to kind of peel back the turn pull back the curtain and show show people stuff that they don't see in hollywood that's never portrayed in hollywood um give a give a very quick example um we had to take jewelry off of bodies before they got transported to the morgue that was the procedure you never transported you never let the morgue take the the medical examiner take the body with any jewelry on it but sometimes these were these were decomposed bodies and it was not the most pleasant task in the world to be taking off an necklace and the pair of earrings from a decomposed body uh and then you then you had to return those those items to the family that was the detective's job this is something you never see on tv or in hollywood so we had a tradition it wasn't written down anywhere but the tradition was you washed off that jewelry you scrubbed it clean before you gave it back to those people yeah out of respect and i can tell you there were times you'd go in the men's room and here would be a couple of detectives standing at a sink with a toothbrush brushing a bracelet getting the skin and hair off a bracelet and making sure it didn't smell that bad before we gave it back to the families and and so that was that was something that i don't know if you find that kind of a kind of atmosphere or that kind of endeavor in any other kind of work but we were driven by um by trying to satisfy the families in that way and trying to show respect to the families as much as we could and a sense of what is right and just and respectful and the things you've just said and you know and if you were to see that in a hollywood film or documentary whatever you perhaps would see the body with the with the jewelry and then and then you would see it being handed back to the family but you wouldn't see the process in between that of actually the detectives taking the time to actually ensure that that respect is there and and that processes as continued so you might see the endpoint of them going oh thank you very much for turning the ring or whatever but you don't see they they would never show that so that i mean i didn't know that no i i i genuinely didn't know that and that's that i suppose just goes to show how in a way how invested some people would become in their case and and and as opposed doing the right thing and doing the right thing by the right people fair play i thought you know a couple of people have told me that um i had a kind of yesterday tell me you know there should be turned into a movie miniseries and i was very flattered by that but it got me thinking and i thought to myself i suddenly flashed into the opening scene and the opening scene is a detective wearing a tie standing over a sink brushing a piece of jewelry or the toothbrush and and and that would people would be going what on earth is happening here yeah but that but that's you know that's just emblematic of of the other side the on the unseen side of that kind of work yes sure absolutely so i mean that's that would be the opening scene to that book when we were made into a movie but this isn't the first book you've written is it you know do you want to tell us about the title of the other book that you wrote yeah the other one is is really so different than than that signed on it it was really written um believe it or not as a handbook a guide how to book for private investigators because when i um when i retired from police work i opened my own private investigation agency i had some people working for me and i noticed one of them was was not really up to speed on writing reports that well so i i put together a i put together a quick little two-page thing for him on how to write a good report and then i thought you know i should put together a training thing for these detectives and that just turned into a book i just went into that it's called the 10 most apps to be a great detective and um it's a very short book it's it's not uh in any way like best-time gun it's a completely different voice i tell you what i'll be keeping an eye on but that sounds interesting yeah absolutely yeah yeah 100 percent yeah did you want to tell us a little bit then about just briefly before you go nine books secure and investigations then you have your own p.i business now you know tell us tell us about the insails right well again um you know hollywood and and and social media would have you believe that you know private investigators are always sculking around in bushes and chasing cheating cheating uh spouses and all that and and i guess there's a certain amount of that um most most work that private investigators do is pretty upfront um you know you're working for personal injury attorneys they're always looking for you know they need a witness statement or they need to find some some paperwork or they need they need information and so uh it's not all cloak and dagger type stuff uh it's pretty much whatever these attorneys need to put their cases together and they don't have the time or the or the legal basis to do it they can't interview witnesses themselves um because they can't be you know there's laws about that so um yeah i've done a fair amount of that i've scaled back uh recently because i've been teaching full time uh and enjoying that so i don't i don't take a lot of cases anymore but i still have the company i what just just a question there what is it that you teach in so i'm teaching high school believe it or not i'm teaching here and i don't know if they have this in in england but uh we actually have a criminal justice curriculum in uh florida public school so i teach criminal justice and you know i get to teach them about investigations about police departments how they work about how our courts work and all that so i enjoy that i really do enjoy that well yeah we we don't we don't have that sort of curriculum over here i suppose yes we we do quite a lot on we've had a crime and punishment we might do so that you did the uk legislative system and all of that but in terms of getting in and it being part of the sort of the the state curriculum we we don't have that so i was just fascinated by what it was and i wonder whether or not it would be something sort of cop based as opposed to i don't know you're going to go and teach art or something because that was like a thing growing up or whatever i don't know i was just listening because you mentioned it a couple of times that you now teach so and it's something obviously you clearly enjoy now i do and i and i also work for a company that maybe three or four times a year um i teach uh law enforcement accredited classes for law enforcement regional law enforcement i teach on a set investigation and interview techniques so those of you know um it's a company that that you know that connects with law enforcement in service training so i so those those have since covid those have gone mostly mostly remote you know fair play it seems you're high school studies i know somebody would have enjoyed that but your daughter Amy wouldn't oh yeah my sort of um my oldest daughter she's 19 she and i sort of joke she'll be a serial killer or she'll be a cop you know she absolutely loves true crime she's she's studying criminology at university and um she sort of said i'd love to go with the FBI and and i was like well there's a problem with that you've got to be american citizens unless you're gonna go over there and you know you're gonna put you know she's fascinated by the uh i suppose the profiling and and what makes a person do what they do so i suppose that nature knew what what is it what are the decisions that make it is it is environmental as a social what are the reasons that those people make those decisions to do those things um and she's honestly she's fascinated she's um a holiday at the moment but otherwise she'd have probably been texting me saying oh my god that's this um and i know when viet came on she listened to a couple of episodes of it because honestly she's like he's my new favorite guy sort of thing um but yeah she's she's absolutely like fascinated with any true crime on on Netflix or anything to do right serial killers or like homicide cases she's absolutely all over so yeah she would she would have loved that course that you're doing and listen yeah i was gonna say Amy i teed him up to us you happy birthday but he didn't do it anyway so i wish you happy birthday for sure well she's probably after a birthday because she's actually she's actually in sort of a konodo so it's actually sort of tomorrow now where she is but yes Amy if you are listening then i hope you have a fantastic birthday oh it's my son's birthday too so there we go oh oh there there you go then you're gonna wish him happy birthday since he missed you many many many happy returns and i hope you have a fantastic day oh yeah fair play fair play fair play so we're round about the iomart now so do you want to sum it up for us do you want to leave a final thought but definitely definitely tell people where they can pick up your board sure um final thoughts i think we just finished talking about teaching and one of the things i enjoyed about teaching is the students come in with a lot of myths and a lot of misperceptions again you know you've heard me talk about hollywood and and and how how people are conditioned to think a certain way about law enforcement about our courts and unfortunately our our students our young people don't know uh that much about it they don't have adequate enough information to be good knowledgeable citizens to make good decisions when they go to the voting polls i like to think that i'm a part of that right i like to think that them understanding our constitution and the way our courts work is important to them so in the same way the reason i bring that up that's that's partially the the voice in my book as well i think most people don't really understand the inner workings of a police department and investigative unit like homicide and why should they it's not it's not portrayed that well and and it's not portrayed that accurately in hollywood so so i'm proud of that fact that i that i have that out there that people can can hopefully learn from it as well besides being entertained um i put a lot of my personal uh anecdotes from my childhood in the book as well i don't want to get too long winded here but um there was a lot of incidents and lessons i learned as a kid that seemed to crop up as an adult and so i tied those in in the book so there's several flashbacks to that um that ended up being kind of the uh the theme of the book in a way um but anyway i you know i really enjoyed our talk and i hope your your audience uh was able to get something out of it and enjoyed it and the book is called Batch Dye and Gun life and death journeys of a Miami detective it's on amazon uh as a uh e-book or paper back you can also get it at barnsandnoble.com i don't know if you have that there if you can get that in england barnsandnoble.com the bookstore uh and and a local bookstore here in miami just agreed to carry the book and uh so i'm pretty excited about that we're going to be doing a book signing uh in a couple of weeks that's cool that's amazing yeah yeah definitely definitely guys what sum it up for us dudes oh look i said it right at the start you know i love i love episodes where we have um guests on new guests um it's been an absolute pleasure um chatting um i've loved every minute of it it's an hour and four and hour five minutes in it's flown by it and there's so many other questions we could have asked you know there's so many different things we could have gone down have music could have gone down we say this to i say we say it to all of our guests we don't say it's all of our guests because some of them are crap if i'm honest but um you know um and you you've not been one them obviously but you know we we'd love to have your back on again just to explore just different aspects of the job and and what it what it meant and we we said the same to Vic and we always were getting Vic back on we're giving another shout out uh look if you've ever you know if you ever did want to come back on we would love to have you back on again um well thank you i would i would love to do it again yeah you know it's been an absolute joy from from my point of view um and i can't thank you enough for so spending the time i know you're busy moving house and this that and the other so uh again we really really appreciate it and i can't wait till the next time yeah my my pleasure and and next time i'll have my beer yes you guys may be thirsty so yeah two in the afternoon or whatever it is over you're probably a bit early where it's just you for us it's like eight in the evening so we're on vacation still yeah okay there you go yeah so that wraps it up for us again head over to amazon.com if you're here in the UK you can order it it will get delivered especially on prime there is no delivery charge for that you can get it on the paperback version or you can get it in kindle which unfortunately i don't have so i've ordered the paperback and i cannot tell you how much i am looking forward to reading it when it does arrive so thank you very much remesh we've really enjoyed it thank you i'll act at what cast says you know you welcome on anytime we'd love to have you back on again the stuff that you know that we would love to ask you we just simply haven't had time but again thank you to you thank you to vick for making this happen again god bless you we appreciate it and we will see you next week when we will we talk about something entirely different again thank you guys