Tall Boy Radio

#TBR241 - 9/11

We are joined by former NYPD officer, Author and Podcaster Vic Ferrari to hear his experiences of September 11th, 2001 and the days that followed. We watched in shock as the world changed in front of our eyes on the TV screen - so to hear his first hand experience of hearing what his thoughts were on hearing that the planes had struck the towers... or what it was like arriving at Ground Zero and the strange way in which he got there. Vic is as frank as he always is and it was fascinating to hear his take and to see how he deals with the things that he has encountered.

We felt after hearing these tales that we should lighten the mood with some tales from his bibliography published... and yet to be published.

Buy Vic's books here : Amazon.co.uk: Vic Ferrari: books, biography, latest update

Listen to Vic's podcast here : NYPD Through The Looking Glass | Podcast on Spotify

The opening music is "London Bayou" by Oscar Albis Rodrigues and the closing music is "BDS" by Lewis Pickford.

tallboyradio.com

Duration:: 1h 4m
Broadcast on:: 06 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

[Music] Welcome back to episode 241 of the Tallboy Radio Podcast and as we always say, who knows where it goes when the beer flows? Well, it's flowing all the way to the big apple tonight as we have one. Well, that's not one of our, let's just call it as it is, our favourite guest is back on the podcast. And without further ado, he needs no introduction but I didn't give him one anyway. All through some of the finest books you can buy on the internet, this is one. Every time he comes on, I order another one, so when we only need to do a couple more episodes and I'll have the full collection. Vic, how are you doing? Beans, how's it going? Thank you for inviting me again on now. It's the Tallboy Radio Podcast. It is, it is. And you know, Andy, Andy, myself, both at 6'5", he's a little bit of the boy, he was named that way. So that's, you know, Gaz is only tiny, he's just a pinch under 6'5", but we can, it's definitely Tallboy tonight, we'll call it as it is. Now, in the past, when we've had you on the podcast, you know, it's, it's always been fairly humorous to stuff that we've covered and maybe we'll get into that a little bit later. But first, one of the things we want to talk about, we had, well, you've put us in touch to be fair, we don't have to call you our booking agent away things ago with a number of guests. One of which was a gentleman by the name of John Foreso, and he talked to us, you know, so he, he did his bit about missing persons and internal affairs and it was all the fascinating lesson. But he then segued into his experience in 9/11, and literally his first-hand experience, because like yourself, he was a New York police officer at the time. He was based not too far away from the Twin Towers, as it were, and literally saw the jet trails of the second plane as it struck the building. So we're coming up now to the 23rd anniversary, but still, I think that imagery, it sticks with you, whether you were there or whether you witnessed it on television, wherever you were around the world. It was a very, very shocking day, and people called it the time, the day that the world changed, and I think that's true, isn't it? The world has changed a little bit since then, a lot of lots since then. Oh, absolutely. I mean, just for New York, it was never the same again after 9/11. Oh, no doubt, no doubt. So yeah, you were obviously a serving police officer at the time, which precinct were you based in then? So on 9/11, I was a detective in the NYPD's auto crime division. My office was in the Bronx, which is probably probably about 15 miles away, but for all intents and purposes, with traffic in New York, about an hour and a half away, it was a Tuesday. I remember that, and it was election day in New York. A lot of people forget that was the mayoral race in New York, and I was supposed to work the election detail that day. It was supposed to be at four in the morning. So in the NYPD, they have the police at the polling location. So you've got to be at some precinct in the middle of nowhere. You've got to get up at four in the morning. You've got to be at this precinct by five o'clock in the morning. And then you go someplace and it could be a school or a community center, and you basically keep the piece to make sure there's no problems at the polling location. So I had gotten the notification the week before, and what happened is I get a phone call on Friday from a district attorney and I had locked up this guy for a couple of stolen cars. And he was looking at jail time, and he was calling his jets on Rikers Island, which is the city jail, and he wanted to cooperate. So he pitched the idea that he knew an employee that worked in the Department of Motor Vehicles that was pushing out drivers licenses. So in New York to get a state of New York to get a driver's license, you go to DMV and you need identification to prove who you are so they want to see utility bill, a voter registration card, a birth certificate. Each document has a certain point system and you got to hit a certain point system for they can say, "Okay, you're Vic Ferrari. We're going to start the process." Well, in the old day, I don't know what goes on now, in the old days, what would happen is, if you knew somebody that worked at DMV, the person that wanted to drive his license would go with a friend, the friend would point out the DMV employee, they'd look at each other. You'd wait online until that person was available. You would go up with just paperwork. It could be anything. They would circle everything saying, "Yeah, you're Vic Ferrari." And then you'd be able to take the permit exam. If you pass the permit exam, then you take the driver's license exam, and then someone could be Vic Ferrari, whoever they wanted to be. It was a way of getting around the verification process. So anyway, this guy's in jail. He doesn't want to go to jail, and this is what he's got to give up. So what I did was, I told my supervisor, and he says, "Okay, we'll get somebody else to work for you on Tuesday. Just come in at seven o'clock in the morning and go to court." I said, "All right." So I come in at seven o'clock in the morning, and I was supposed to go with my sergeant down at Manhattan Criminal Court, and what happens is it's called "Queen for a Day." "Queen for a Day" is they pull the guy out of jail, and there's a meeting with detectives, the district attorney, and his defense attorney, and they hammer out a deal. I want to hear what you have to say, and if I think you're lying, that's it. "Queen for a Day," whatever he says at that meeting, unless it's involved a murder, can't be used against him. So, okay, we're going to have this profit session, and I get to work at seven o'clock in the morning in the Bronx office, and my sergeant's supposed to meet me. Now, you got to leave the Bronx office by 7.15, 7.30 to get to court by 9 a.m. It's by the time you battle traffic to get into Manhattan, find a parking space, the big pain in the ass. So, my sergeant's no way to be found, and I'm like, "Where is this guy? I'm calling his phone. He's not answering me back." Little after eight, he comes and breathes it into the office. I'm like, "John, what the fuck?" Like, we got to get down there. Yeah, he was just not a great guy, but just for whatever reason, he was not motivated. And as he's fought around the office, and I'm barking at him, "Come on." Our office was on the second floor of the housing police, the New York City housing police. So, what happens is one of the cops comes running upstairs, and he goes, "Put on the television, a plane just hit the World Trade Center." So, we put the television on, and we're watching it, and you got to remember, New York City, there's three major airports, Kennedy, LaGuardia, and Newark. So, we figured, and there's a couple of smaller airports, so we figured it was a private plane. Some guy that owns a Cessna had a heart attack and hit the side of the World Trade Center, because no one had come over. They just had a plane struck. And as we're watching this, here comes the second plane. We watched that, and we're like, "Holy shit, did I just see what I thought I just saw?" And everyone's going crazy on the TV. So, at that point, we knew it was terrorism. They told us, "Get into uniform and stand by." So, probably about noon, we were told, "Okay, we're going down. We're going down the West Side of Manhattan. We're going to meet up with some supervisor down there, just stand by." So, we all jumped, we all got into uniform, drove down the West Side Highway, and I remember just seeing people fleeing. Like, the closer you got to ground zero, the more people you see going in the opposite direction. You know, people in shape were running, people that were out of shape were just kind of lumbering along. You couldn't get a taxi, the buses. I mean, everybody just kind of ran for their life. When we got down there, there was paper blowing around all over the place. We parked on the West Side of Manhattan, like, I think it was on the West Side Highway. We got out and they really didn't. So, we were down there by about one o'clock, and they really didn't know what to do with us. And I remember they started handing out, we didn't get like professional masks, respirators. They kind of gave us those little paper things. If you're going to demo your bathroom over the weekend from Home Depot, you know, basically does nothing. But that's what they had, so that's what we put on. Somebody comment, someone came up with a bright eye. There was no rhyme or reason to what was going on down there. It was complete chaos. Someone came up with the idea to commandeer a tour bus. So, we all got onto a tour bus, and we're driving, getting closer in from the West Side. And I forget which building was the one that came down, the last one, seven world trade. I think it was. We drove past that, and it looked like something out of Universal Studios. There's like flames coming out of it. We're like, let's get the fuck away from this thing, right? So, we parked a couple of blocks away, and the next thing, you know, we hear the building come down. We're a couple of blocks away at this point, but we were close a little while earlier. We jumped out that bus, and we're running for our lives. Then what happened was they got us all together again, and they said, all right, I think it was Broadway. We're going to marches down Broadway. If anyone needs help, you know, assess the area, render aid. We're like, okay, but again, they didn't know what there was no plan. So, we're coming down Broadway and everything. The closer you got to ground zero, everything was covered in that toxic dust. And I mean, it wasn't just like a fine dusting. It was layers of crap. And I remember seeing hundreds, if not thousands of pairs of women's shoes. Because when women were fleeing the financial district, they can't run in heels. They just dumped their shoes. So, I remember seeing like high heel shoes, women's shoes everywhere. So, we got probably within a couple of blocks of ground zero, and it was hot, and we're breathing in this crap. And we saw a building, one of the large buildings in Manhattan, and the maintenance workers hadn't left. They stayed behind to, I guess, make sure nothing happened to the building. I don't know what they paid them that day, but they should have paid them double. And they let us in the building. And it was just us and the maintenance workers were the only ones in there. And they let us use the bathroom. They had water. They had snacks. So, we were hanging out. I'll never forget this. One of the maintenance workers was an Afghanistan guy. And he started telling us. I know who did this. And he went chapter and verse about how Osama bin Laden came from Saudi Arabia. He came into Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union. When they came in, I think it was in '75 or '76 to get them out. And then he never left. And he joined forces with the Taliban. I had heard about the Taliban blowing up monuments and stuff, but I didn't know to what degree this guy laid out chapter. Everything he said was right. So, after we cleaned up and everything and took a break, we continued down Broadway. And again, the closer you got to it, the more dust. And the closer you got to it, the darker it got. If that makes any sense, because you had all these particles in the air. So, it was like difficult for the sunlight to penetrate. So, it was kind of like the closer you got, you were going into like a twilight haze. You know, when they say like when a volcano blows into the air, you get these magnificent sunsets because of all the volcanic dust in the air. So, the closer we got, the darker it got. And it was only like two, three o'clock in the afternoon. I mean, it was September, so the sun wasn't going to go down until about seven o'clock at night, but it was dark. And I remember getting up to literally the pile, seeing a large section of that metal erector set like facade that had come down hundreds of feet and just basically cut through the sidewalk into the ground. I just kind of stand there. And I remember thinking to myself, I felt like Charlton Heston at the last scene of Planet of the Apes when he sees the Statue of Liberty head. And he's like, look, like I just couldn't, I felt like by that point in my career, I had 14 years in with the NYPD and I had seen many terrible things homicides and all sorts of stuff car accidents. But nothing could prepare me for that because I felt like a little boy, you know, when you're a kid and you see something that doesn't make sense and it's like, how did that just happen? It was a magic trick or something. You're not old enough to process something. That's kind of how I felt. I felt very vulnerable. While we're standing there, some guy walks by, I kid you not in a white spacesuit, like a Tyvek suit, and he's got this device that looks like a Geiger counter and we're like, who the fuck is this guy? Like, did he work for the federal government or was a guy from New Jersey that saw this horrific thing unfold ago? I got a Geiger counter in a spacesuit. Today's the day, I'm going to go over there, right? So there was no, they hadn't sealed off the perimeter yet. But it wasn't like anybody was, that was the only guy I saw that didn't belong. So we were down there from probably 1.30 in the afternoon. I got dismissed probably about 5.30, 6 o'clock the following morning. And they told us, listen, go home, take all your clothes off, either throw it out or wash it really well. We don't know what's in this stuff. That was my first hint that things were terribly wrong. And go back to work at 5 o'clock, you're going to do a 6 to 2, which is 5.30 pm till 2 in the morning. Go back to the Bronx office and wait for further instruction. So the final following day, it was funny because all the telephone communications basically got knocked down. Because of the cell sites, a lot of the cell towers were up on top of the World Trade Center. So I remember coming home and my parents, I lived in a building like two doors down from my father, like ambushing me in the doorway. You are right. And I was like, yeah, Dad, I'm all right. I'm fine. I'm fine. He wanted to talk. And I'm like, Dad, I got to take a shower. I got to get these clothes on. And I got to go to sleep. I said, I'll stop by the house before I go to work tomorrow. And that's what I did the following day. Went back to work. Rinse and repeat. Did that for a couple of days. And what's funny is, I just remember random crazy shit down there. So I'm not a smoker. Never was. And I remember guys I worked with that were heavy smokers went down there in this toxic dust, lighting up a cigarette, pulling down their mask, taking a cold, falling back and falling back. What the fuck today would be the day? If you were going to really consider stop smoking today is the day. It's down there for the first week or so, then they pulled us out because the NYPD is 40,000 members. So we went back to fighting crime, which crime was down. We thought that crime was going to explode because all the cops are down in Manhattan. I mean, you know, most of the NYPD was down there. Crime was down. It's like everybody, even the perps like everybody laid low for that week or two. Then they would. So I was back to my office for a while. Then they would bring us back to the pile. It was called the bucket brigade. So what they would do is they would line 40, 50 guys cops. We were like ants on a pile of sugar. So picture that. And we would just pass like those joint compound buckets, like a five gallon joint compound bucket with stuff. They'd fill it up. It would go down the line and then it would get sorted somewhere at the end of the line. And we all knew like by the second day, like no one, no one survived. Like if someone survived, it's an out and out miracle because it kind of, they were just crushed. If anybody was in that thing, it would be next to impossible to survive. And even if they weren't avoid, it would take weeks, if not months before. You know, I get with where the city was with this because everybody, I'm listening, if my parents were in there, I would want everything done to assure that maybe they could be found. But it was obvious that no one was getting out of there. And what wound up happening is after a couple of weeks or even a month, they said, all right, we got to start bringing in heavy equipment. We got to start bringing in cranes and boulders. We got to start getting some of this stuff out of here. And that's what they did. They started, you know, taking stuff out, put it in dump trucks, and then taking it. There's this out in Staten Island, which is all the boroughs in New York City. Staten Island is at the time was the most underdeveloped. I don't know about now, but there was this huge dump. You guys can Google it. It's called the Fresh Kills Dump. And they had just closed it like six months earlier. Well, they opened it back up and they started bringing all the debris out there. And then they had stations set up where the debris would go on conveyor belts. And then they had, you know, cops picking through it for IDs, jewelry, DNA, things like that, anything that was recoverable that could be linked to a person. Since I worked in auto crime, what they had me doing was my team, we would go out there. My unit was 120 people, so they would send five or 10 of us at a time. You know, we would rotate and you would go out there. And this dump is so high up because they've been piling garbage up for like 100 years. So you're like, you can see all the Staten Island up there. And it's like being on the surface of the moon. It's windy as hell. And if you're in a dump like that, it's all methane gas. So the whole thing smells like a big fart the whole time you're there. It's got the worst odor. And these dump trucks that they have there with like these earth movers that you would see like in Alaska. I mean, like a monster truck dump truck. I mean, you never, if this thing went over, you'd be a pancake. They never find you again. So what they had us doing was because we worked in auto crime as the vehicles were coming up from that went into the void. They were having us kind of open with the jaws of life and K tools to make sure no one perished inside the cars. They also have made that we work in the angle that maybe someone would start reporting a cause missing for insurance fraud. I never saw that, but that was the talk. But that's basically what I did after, you know, being at ground zero the initial day and then being on the pile at hand full of times. Most of my time was spent out of the dump. And, you know, before I forget this, like they always get the cops in the fireman. You know, they do. And, you know, thank you for your service. You know who really should get credit. Those construction workers. You had iron workers heavy equipment operators you never hear about them. That stuff would still be there. They wouldn't have the freedom tower up if it weren't for those guys and cops don't know how to get do that stuff. You know what I mean? These guys were with torches and cutting iron bars and stuff. So those construction workers. I mean, I have a lot of respect for them. And, you know, they're coming down with cancer and all these elements, all these ailments too. Yeah. Yeah, it's scary. You're quite quite right. There was a lot of unsung heroes I suppose created that day, you know, not through any choice of their own, but you know, just through necessity. So big titty who is a he's a fellow podcast of the titty and shine a show out of Oklahoma. He asked the questions. Well, he wants to know if you know a chat by the name of Dan Bongino. I do not know. I know who Dan Bongino is obviously. He's a former Queen's cop. He's a former Queen's cop. And then he did probably about four or five years and then he went. He had a career with the Secret Service. And now he's on, you know, he's on the talk show. I don't know him, but I know who he is. Cool. Cool. Just one year. So taking taking about their 20 initially happened when he driven in on the Tobas, which must be, I don't know, that must be an utterly bizarre experience when you think back on that. Well, what was going through your mind exactly. Oh, I was definitely nervous. You can't prepare for something like that. Listen, if you tell me that a guy ran in, there's a guy, you know, a person comes out of the house and says there's a burglar in my house. I got no qualms about going in there and looking for the guy and I had a clear rooms and, you know, it's going to be him and me or me and him and my partner and, you know, let the chips fall where they may. I know what I signed up for. That was different. I mean, that was that of anything. You know, I couldn't really wrap my head around what I was getting myself involved in and what I was going to see down there. I actually made it out in my mind. I thought it would be a lot. I mean, don't get me wrong. It was bad. But I thought I would see I would have saw bodies all over the place. I thought it would have looked like a war zone. It was more a tremendous building collapse, where there probably chances are there weren't any survivors. Yeah. Yeah, I can't. I mean, I can't even imagine seeing the images. You've got that distance between the screen. You know, it's, you know, it's like when you drive and in traffic and someone cuts you up, you say a few things that you would never say to their face if they were in front of you. You've got that element of distance. So there's that screen makes a hell of a difference. So experience that first hand, I can't even imagine. I visited New York, I think in 2005, and when I was there, it was still ground zero. They were building the monuments and the memorials to it. And even then it was a very, very surreal experience because I'd seen it all on the TV. I know what had happened there. And then just to see it there in front of my eyes, there was still a construction site back then, was utterly, utterly bizarre. And I struggled to wrap my head around it. And actually, I found while I was there, it seemed like it was a New York is an extremely busy city for those of you who've never visited it. But I'm sure you've seen it on the TV and have a good idea. But it seemed much quieter there afterwards. I don't know. It was a very, very surreal experience. What's it like for yourself? I don't know how many times you've been back there. What's it like revisiting that area? I retired in 2007, and I would go back and forth until my parents passed, and my mom was the last one she passed in 2010, and then I went back a couple more times to sort out their affairs. But I haven't been back to New York City. I live in Florida now. I haven't been back to New York City since 2013. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, a bit of a distance. And how often then, you know, obviously the events that you saw that day, like you say, you expected to see, you know, a battle zone, but, you know, I guess a building collapse in itself can be fairly shocking on the eye. How often do you think back to those events? Do you, I don't want to ask you, you get nightmares and stuff about it? No, I don't. No, no, no, I'll explain. I don't have nightmares. I don't have nightmares about anything of my career. I learned early on in my NYPD career that if you take this stuff home, and you let it get to you, it will just because I would see guys in the locker room and this is before 9/11. The guys that worked in busy precincts that were answering dirty calls a night during a terrible neighborhood, the people in the neighborhood hate you, and it would just eat at them and they would just miserable or broken people. And I said, I'm not letting that happen to me. So, as a rule of thumb, when I was done with something, not that I never thought about it again, but I kind of looked at myself as I got through it. Don't live in the past. Don't get me wrong. It's good to have a point of reference of what can happen to you, or maybe how to handle something, again, if something terrible happens, but you can't for me. I just kind of move on from it. I don't really think about it all that much unless someone brings it up, or it's on television. Sometimes it will bother me for whatever it's not all the time, but sometimes if they show the planes hitting, for a second, it pisses me off because it bothers me. I grew up in New York. I knew people that died that day. So, I knew a couple of the cops that died that day, not well, but I knew them. You know, and I had some people that I grew up with that perished in the Twin Towers. While I was down there, there was, all right, so like when you're near the pile, it just was random stuff on the ground. Like, you'd see a laptop or a piece of a desk, just broken stuff, but it was like, just random stuff, like a Hollywood set director couldn't have done it any better. And I remember just standing there and I grabbed a piece of paper. I don't remember if it was floating around or I picked it up off the ground. And I had never heard of Canifitz Gerald. Canifitz Gerald was a large Wall Street firm that operated their base. The headquarters was there. Basically, they lost most of their office, but I had never heard of it. And I just took the piece of paper and I looked at it and I put it in my pocket. And I still have it somewhere in the house. I wish I could find it. And then later on, I find out Canifitz Gerald, you know, a lot of people perished in there, including my friend's mother. So it's just, it's not that it doesn't bother me, but I don't have nightmares about it or anything. Well, that's good. I mean, that is good to hear. And I guess, like, you know, when you see the personal effects, I mean, the closest, you know, it's a far distance away from it. You know, it was visiting the Titanic experience where you see the things that have been pulled up, the personal effects of people who perished that day. And some of the ones that survived that, you know, their personal effects are on display. And again, I find that very, very strange. It seems to me something that should be with the family. I don't know. Maybe that's just me. So thinking back then to that guy that you were sheltering in the building with from Afghanistan, same as yourself. I think prior to that date in 2001, nobody really had a very good idea. Unless you've been in the army, unless you served out there, unless you're in military, what exactly was going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. That dude, when you think back to that guy, that that's, that's a real juxtaposition, isn't it? The someone with that level of knowledge and knew what was going on and knew about this guy beforehand. It doesn't make you wonder, you know, I mean, I know, obviously, the United States intelligence was aware of this guy and what he was up to, but nobody, nobody kind of know what he was planning that day and in the events that unfolded. You know, what? Well, you think that they should have, because I remember Osama bin Laden was placed on the FBI's most wanted list. I think it was 1998 or 1999 because they linked him to the embassy bombings in Tanzania. And I think Nairobi. So I had seen him on an FBI most wanted poster and I googled him and I said, all right, this is some badass from the Middle East that's looking to fuck with us. And I remember when this guy, and this guy, Afghanistan, the Afghani guy, he was passionate. Like, he was pissed because it bothered, I mean, if I was reading him correctly, it bothered him, because obviously he was still talking to people in his native homeland somehow. It bothered him that was what was going on with his family or people that he knew there. And then it bothered him that he comes to America to make a life for himself. And now he's getting fucked with by the same guy that basically is messing with his family in the United States. That's how I read it. Oh, yeah, not only that, I imagine, you know, for some, life got a little bit more difficult if you were a minority, I think, in certain areas. You know, I mean, you were viewed on the real suspicion. You know, the times after was when you were getting on a plane and you saw somebody who was dressed in sort of ethnic clothing, you were thinking, I, what's this light up to? You know, I mean, that level of suspicion was pointed at a lot of people that didn't deserve it. So I imagine it wasn't great for everyone. Oh, listen, I'll tell you a story. I don't know if I should, but probably six months after 9/11, I was on a flight and I was sitting just like two rows out of first class. I have a flu first class of my life. So I'm two rows out. I'm just behind. I just made it to the curtain. And there's a big guy sitting. I had an aisle seat and there's a big guy like a rugby player sitting on the other side of the side of me, right? Playing goes up. We're up maybe as soon as they put, you know, now you can move about the cabinet, right? Two seconds later, an Arabic looking guy gets up, walks right past me and the rugby player pushes the curtain open and goes into the bathroom. Now the bathroom was right next to the cockpit. And I look over at the rugby player and he looks at me. Nothing was said. We both nodded. If that fucking guy would have came out of the bathroom and made a left, we would have been all over him. You know what I mean? So, and, you know, was it justified? I don't know. It's six months ago. The guy, there's a bathroom back there. You know, they hadn't fortified the cockpits yet. Like, what, what, you know, my first initial is, why the fuck is this guy going to this bathroom? You know, so, you know, it definitely did change your mindset for a while. Oh, no, no, no, no. Just, just out of interest. I mean, like, you think of it as a very, very unique event. You know, I'm sure America is much more prepared nowadays and certainly the security chapter and he passed through any airport. Much more serious. Do you do you foresee anything like that happening again? Or do you think we've got? Yeah, you do. Oh, yeah. Oh, listen, we got an open border. I mean, I don't want to get into politics and stuff. I'm just going right and wrong. You got an open border. We've got guys military age pouring into the border. Nobody knows who they are. You know, are some of them, or most of them, hardworking people that want to make a better lives for themselves. Yeah. Are there people that are coming in here from different countries with training? Why wouldn't they? We would do it. You know, so I'm worried. Sure. Yeah, that's interesting. That is interesting. And I guess, you know, I don't know by your very nature, because of the career that you had that you're probably naturally suspicious anyway, because if you're not, then you're probably in the wrong job. Yeah, that's crazy. And like you said as well, about those officers who worked in very difficult areas and literally, you know, were despised for probably being a police officer. What was it like after them? Did you see a change in people's attitudes towards the New York City Police? That's funny. You should ask. So for the first month, we were heroes. So the first week, we were down there. We would take, so like the first week, we were down at ground zero after 9/11, we would take the West Side Highway back to the Bronx. And as we're going up the West Side Highway, I remember we had like a Dodge Caravan in the air condition didn't work. So we had the side door open. We're all in uniform and we're going down the West Side Highway. And there's people holding up signs and cheering and like, holy shit, I've never had this before in my life. We get up to the Bronx about 15 minutes later, a cab cuts us off and the guy doesn't realize we're the police and tells us to go fuck ourselves. I was like, well, we're back in the Bronx. We went from heroes to scumbags overnight. Typical. Typical. Man, that's crazy. So, yeah, so I'm just trying to think so. I'm trying to word my questions quite carefully. No, yeah, did you, that day then, obviously you say you didn't see anything to, well, it wasn't as bad as you thought it was going to be. Did you see anything shocking? When you were searching through those cars, did you find anything that was? I didn't, but I had a lot of friends that were on the bucket brigade that saw, you know, body parts and things. Wow, yeah. I was fortunate that I didn't. Yeah, yeah. I guess that is good fortune as well because, you know, that's the sort of stuff I'm guessing. Mind you, I'm sure some of the stuff you're showing your career are either side of that, you know what I mean, probably was fairly shocking as well. Well, you knew death was all around you because within a couple of days you could smell it. I mean, it was the putrid smell of death down there times 3000 or however many people perished that day because they were all basically crushed in there and, you know, it rained. Then it dried it rained and it dried and the smell of the sense of death was awful down there for a while. I can't even imagine that. What was it like then going back to you regular duties after, after doing that? What's it like then going back to the humdrum of, I don't know, I don't know what it was, it is humdrum. Actually, I bet it's quite interesting at the time to do it auto crime. Oh, it was, you know, I'd look forward to going back to my regular, you know, my regular schedule, my regular life, probably within six to nine months, probably nine months after 9/11. You had all this federal money floating around and they said, well, you know, maybe these cops saw something horrific. So what they would do is they would bring us down in groups of 10 or 20 like these group therapy sessions to see if anyone needed help. And here's the thing with, I know the New York City Police Department, I don't know about other police department. The New York City Police Department, if you show any signs of mental illness, the first thing they're going to do is take your guns from you. They're going to stamp your ID card that says no guns. They're going to pull you from your assignment and throw you in like the NYPD's version of Siberia. So the court section on midnight or the whites don't pound or just one of these hell holes until, and you're not going to get your guns back anytime soon. And you could languish in these, they actually make it worse if you have a problem. So I guess the point I'm trying to make is cops or NYPD members are very reluctant to come forward with their problems because the second they think no one wants that on their conscious that a cop blew his brains out or hurt someone else. You've had murder suicides as well. So they're bringing us down. I remember they brought, they brought my, I worked out of a satellite office. They brought like 10 of us, right? And we're driving down there like, what the fuck do they want to talk to us about? That's like nine months ago, like we're over this. And you know, they bring us in. You've got all these grief counselors and, you know, free coffee and finger sandwiches and stuff, trying to loosen us up. And they're sitting us around and they're really trying their best to drag this crap out of us. And no one's taught it was the, it was the hardest thing because no one's talking. And it's like, you know, like, Vic, you know, how was your experience? Like, oh, it wasn't good, but you know, just what I told you, I'm sleeping just fine. I'm fine with it. But how do you feel? I'm like, I feel fine. You know, it's, you know, I'm not a ghoul. It's not like I, you know, it didn't bother me at the time, but I've moved past it, you know, and when we left the grief counselors were more in grief than we were because we weren't given them anything. Yeah. Give them a hard time, exactly. So I'm trying to get them a hard time, but even if there was people there that wanted to talk to somebody, they're not doing it there. No, no, wow. Well, one thing I know about police officers, so my cousin's in, you know, he's a police officer in San Antonio, Texas. And I was over there last year and, you know, I met some of the guys he works with. And when you get those guys together, they sit around and they start telling tales and, you know, spinning the arms about stories and talking about people, you know, and what have you. When you guys, when you guys get together, you know, we, you know, with some of the people you used to work with them, probably when you chat with them on your podcast as well, which will, will give a shout out to a little while. Do you ever, do you ever talk about that day? If it comes up like we were talking about John Ferriso, who's a great guy, wrote a really good book. He has an entire chapter about that or in one of his books so he wanted to talk about that and I was fine with it. I think on my podcast I did an episode about, yeah, I have spoke about 9/11, but, you know, for me, I don't mind talking about it, but that doesn't define my career. I mean, I think that was involved in much more interesting things and I don't know. It's, I don't know, maybe I'm suppressing something, but I definitely, I'll talk about it, but it's not like the first thing that comes to mind if you were like, oh, give me a go-to and YPD story. That's not the first one I go to, I guess. No, no, anybody who's read your books, you've got quite a few stories in there, which are quite entertaining as well. I'm pretty asked then, you know, it'd love to hear about an L.D. Ablo story from you. I'm guessing Big Titty read my book, The NYPD's Flying Circus, Cops Crime and Chaos because that's my L.D. Ablo story. Actually, a good friend of mine worked with him, so if you want, I'll talk to him and see if I can get some stories from my next book. So L.D. Ablo was an Irish cop, but the Spanish cops called him L.D. Ablo because if he was a party, just a wild man, he'd have a couple of drinks and he was fun, but he could get you in a lot of trouble and we used to laugh, you'd either get divorced, go to the farm, which is the alcohol rehabilitation center, or convert to Christianity if you work with this guy enough time. And he was drinking in a midtown bar, getting licked up with a couple of girls, and you got those handsome cab operators, the guys that do the horse and buggy rides for like 400 bucks for 20 minutes in Central Park. The guy parks his horse out front of the bar, goes in to use the bathroom, and he's got the stove top hat and the velvet vest, and you know who he is. And L.D. Ablo sees him, he's drunk, he goes, "Hey, you mind if I take Secretariat for a ride?" And the guy goes, "Yeah, sure." So the guy goes in to take a piss and L.D. Ablo tells the girls, "Come on, ladies, he's an old friend of mine." And he loads the girls into the horse and carriage, kicks the blocks, grabs the whip, gives the horse a smack on the ass, and no way they go. And at first it's going well. The horse knows the ride and the horse is just in the circle and the block will then, you know, L.D. Ablo grew up in the Bronx. He didn't grow up in the country or Ireland and, you know, around horses. The horse realizes this guy doesn't know what he's doing and says, "Fuck this, I'm cutting through Central Park to go back to the barn to get some oats." The horse starts picking up speed and the horse starts blowing lights and the girls in the back of the horse and carriage are screaming. L.D. Ablo can't control this thing. Two other handsome cab operators go, "Hey, wait, that's Al's horse and carriage and that's not Al." So they start chasing it. So they get into Central Park and like they do with Yonkers Raceway or the Trotters. One got in front, one got in back, and whoa, they were able to slow this thing before, you know, the chariot flipped over. The handsome cab operators jump out. They start beating the shit out of Al's Lo. The girls take off into Central Park. They call their buddy. The buddy shows up. In Central Park you actually have a police station. There's a really good movie for your fans out there. It's called Cops and Robbers. It's a 1973 movie with Joe Bologna and Cliff Gorman. It's a really funny movie. And the last scene of the movie ends with a car chase in Central Park precinct. But anyway, there's a police station in Central Park. The Central Park precinct cops show up. You got L.D. Ablo is begging for his life. They've beaten the crap out of him. The handsome cab operator wants him arrested for the theft of his horse and buggy. And L.D. Ablo says, "Take me to an ATM. I'll take $500 out right now. Just don't press charge." The guy goes, "You'll do that?" He goes, "Yep." Went to an ATM. L.D. Ablo paid the guy off. And everybody went their own way. Like we said, L.D. Ablo must have had the Prince of Darkness working for him. Because if not, anyone else would have gotten fired or arrested. Yeah, he certainly had someone on his side whether it was God or not. Oh, God, no, it wasn't God. No, it wasn't God. No, I'm clearly not with anyone. I'm not blessed. So as we said, I've got a number of your books here, and one or two still left to buy, which I promise I will. Every time we get you on a buy a new book. So, yeah, you're working on a new one at the moment as well, which sounds like it's quite close to publication. Am I right? Is it what's it called? Is it presumption dysfunction? Yeah, NYPD presumption and dysfunction. I should have it out in late November. Cool. So, I guess it's the same sort of principle as your other books. Like, you know, a good, I always think it's a good toilet read, you know what I mean? It is. Yeah, you know what I mean? Just put through, read a few short stories. And, yeah, this is similar sort of principle to that, and yeah. Yeah, I'm not disciplined enough to write an entire novel, the beginning, middle end. So my books are just short chapters with short stories about things that happen, practical jokes, homicides, just whatever comes into my mind. I'm like, oh, all right, that's a great story. And I'll put it down in writing. I saw you reading Confessions of a Catholic High School graduate. You got any questions from that? No, literally this, this, I've been away, actually. I've just got back from Norway. And I ordered this. And I went, you know, as big to you, who's fond of a cruise. And I took my first cruise, and I refused to pay the £18 a day for the internet connection. So I ordered this when I was in Stavangi, and it arrived. So it literally arrived through the doors I got back. So I'm not even open this one up, as you can tell by this vibe. Yeah, very much looking forward to reading that. It's a little bit different from, obviously, you're the New York ones, which I have here as well, which are a little bit more. I appreciate it. Thank you. Oh, and I would do the great reads. They are great reads. And every time we get an author on, I always try and buy that book. In fact, the lady you put us in touch with recently, she's on in a couple of weeks time. And I think her book arrives tomorrow. Oh my God, she's going to be a great guest. I found her on a fluke. I went into Amazon and I just typed in NYPD authors. And she literally had just written her book. Fourth of July, it was published and found her through social media. And she goes, "Are you kidding me? You want me to be on your podcast?" I go, "You wrote a book, didn't you?" And she did disappoint. I mean, she's a former New York City Transit cop. She's got a million to one stories about the tunnels and all the crap that went down in there. And she also, in her career, she did the operation, losing proposition, which she dressed up like a prostitute. And cars are coming up to her and her experiences with that. She can tell a story. Yeah, cool. Looking forward to that one. Yeah, so her book turns up tomorrow as well, I think. So I'm looking forward to that. You know, we had John Faris so on. We, you know, it's a bit of a stretch. We had the guy. Ramesh. Yeah, his name and other. Yeah, Ramesh. Yeah, we had Ramesh on. Miami homicide detective. Boy, is he fascinating? Oh, yeah, he was. What's more interesting is his book is not available. His book is not available on Amazon UK. So when I ordered that one, the date I got, bearing in mind, I ordered that a couple of months ago, was August 12th to January 16th is when that one arrived. So at some point in that book, we'll arrive. And I'm looking forward to reading it when it does. And the cameraman as well, who you put us in touch with a guy who filmed the year. Geez, did you talk to him yet? Yeah, we had him on. I've got his book, you know, like... Great guy. Yeah, incredible. Yeah, he told some stories about Jamie Lee Kurtz. I'm not sure whether we should have shared them on the podcast or not. But he did anyway, God bless him. So you said yourself, you're working on a story that you're trying to put down on paper, then, that you wanted to try and, you know, put out today, see if you can get it compartmentalized. So it was ready for a book. Did you want to talk us through that one? Yeah, yeah. I'll see if I can work this out. I mean, it's a true story. So it's probably around 2000 or 2001. I'm in the office. I was working until 6 p.m. Phone rings about five. My lieutenant answers. He gets off the phone. He goes, I need you to go down to the Manhattan district attorney's office. There's a DA down there that needs our expertise in autotheft. And I'm looking at the clock. Now, I'm working until 6 p.m. I don't mind the overtime. Great. But I'm like, what district attorney is in his office at five o'clock, picks up the phone, reaches out to the autocrome. It's on a Friday saying to myself, this guy's got like no light. I said, yeah. So I took another detective. We go down there. Older gentlemen. In New York, each borough has a district attorney's office tasked with prosecuting crimes in the jurisdiction. And this is the way it works. You get these students, they get out of law school. They work for a district attorney's office. They usually like a three year commitment. They sign, right? I don't know how enforceable it is, but basically 99% of these attorneys will, but they're not pro police. They're not pro prosecutor. They're doing it for the experience. So what they do is they work as prosecutors for three years, then they immediately when their commitments over, they jump on the other side of the fence and they become defense attorneys because there's more money trying to keep somebody out of jail than there is putting someone in jail. So this guy, Bill Greenbound was a DA for like 20 something years. And he's got this case and he says, I go, well, what is this? He goes, well, let me give you the background on it. He says, this guy and a couple of women are cutting through a parking lot in Manhattan like an open parking lot. The owner of the parking lot is a rabbi. The rabbi is tired of people cutting through his parking lot to avoid a light. He jumps out and tells a guy, you can't do that. Guy stops the car, gets out of the car, punches the guy in the face. Rabbi falls back backwards, hits his head, dead. Guy gets back in the car and takes off. Someone gets the plate. The detectives make the arrest. They can't charge him with murder. I don't, to this day, I don't understand why, but they were charging him with, I think, either manslaughter or aggravated assault. It's not what I would have thought that they could charge him with, but he explained. So I said, okay, he goes, I go, what do you need me for? He says, well, when he was arrested or when they did a search warrant at his house or his car, whatever, he goes, we've got all this stuff with vehicle identification numbers and titles and car dealer places. I don't really know what to make of it. He goes, can you see if you can find an angle with this? I said, yeah, why? And he goes, well, he goes, he's going to take this to trial. He goes, if I can hang something else on him, it'll just make my case that much stronger. I said, I'll see what I can do. So I start, I take all this stuff back to my office and I'm thumbing through it and photocopies of it. And what I realize what this guy is doing is he's purchasing cars through straw men at auctions. So if a car gets into, so you have your car in the, I don't know, it isn't in the UK, but the United States, you have comprehensive insurance on your car. You got a brand new car and you crash it and the car is total. Say it burns. It's not coming back to life. The insurance company writes you a check. The insurance company takes that vehicle and then they auction it off for parts or whatever someone wants to do with it. What the bad guys do is they go to these auctions with these bogus licenses, they buy these wrecks and they take all the VIN numbers off the car. They dispose of the wreck, then they go steal a car and put all those numbers on it and sell them. Sometimes they keep them, sometimes they sell them. So I was able to trace a car that this guy sold to a location like an hour and a half away in upstate New York. So this DA is like, great, writes me a search warrant. I go up to Putnam County. I don't think these people had any idea they bought a stolen car. I felt bad for them. You know, I show up at their door on a Friday night, like, I got a search warrant for your car. Like, what did I do? I'm like, it's not you. It's how you got your car. Bring the car back. They changed the VIN numbers on it. I was able to ID it stolen. We pin it on this guy. So the guy takes a plea bargain, PS, and I don't know how much time he got, but he got some time. So anyway, I developed a friendship with this district attorney. And over the years, he would call me to do him favors. And I didn't mind because I found the guy interesting because he prosecuted so many famous cases in New York. He prosecuted cop killer cases, a terrorist case. A woman got pushed in front of a subway. He got a conviction. He was like an old time heavy hitter that he only did homicides or very controversial cases where they thought they might lose. He was that good. So his deal was he had like a Rolodex full of cops that he would contact to do these special assignment things when he thought they had an angle on something. I was very good at finding people that didn't want to be found. I used to, on like a side thing I would do, I would find fugitives. Even though it would drive my lieutenant crazy, he'd go, why are we looking for this guy? I'd go, because he's a car thief. And he's stealing cars and he's a fugitive. And if we could take him off the playing field, that puts our numbers down. So anyway, this DA calls me up and he says, I need you to find somebody. And I said a witness, he goes, no, he's kind of a murder suspect. I go, what are you talking about? So basically, he gives me this guy's name, Justin Bressman. And now let's back up. There's a guy out on Long Island, he owns a bunch of gyms and he's robbing armored cars. He's a successful businessman by day. By evening, he's robbing armored cars. This is in the mid 90s. And him and one of his friends, rob an armored car and they kill the armored car driver. Now that's big. In the United States, if you rob a bank or an armored car, now the FBI is involved. You rob a bank or an armored car and you kill somebody, they're going to scour the earth to get you. All right, so this gym owner says to himself, the guy I was with, if they saw a question in him, he's going to fall. So what he does is he invites this guy to his garage, shoots the guy, puts the guy's body in a tool chest, puts him on his boat, goes out into the Atlantic and dumps his body. Body pops up. While that's going on, this gym owner is involved with this other guy in some kind of shady business dealings. I don't know if this other guy is involved in bank robberies, but he's involved with shady business dealings. This guy decides, I'm going to tape record the gym owner and I'm going to extort him. This guy's dangerous. He's already killed an armored car driver and he's already killed one of his accomplices. Now this guy comes up with the bright idea, I'm going to tape him. And then he tries to blackmail him. So what the gym owner does is he gets in touch with the guy that I'm going to start looking for. This guy, Justin Bresman, and he says, I'll give you $35,000. This guy's got to go. This guy works at a construction site. He goes to work every morning at six o'clock in the morning. I'll get you a 22 silencer equipped pistol. It's the first thing in the morning. He gets his breakfast here. He knew his routine. When he comes out, all I need you to do is you know him. Say hi. He's going to let his guard down, shoot him and walk off at six o'clock in the morning. And that's what they did. He goes up to the guy, he goes, hey, and the guy goes, hey, what are you doing here? And the guy's got his lunch box in one hand and his breakfast another. When he goes to put it down to shake the guy's hand, the other guy puts his hand around him and shoots him in the face. He drops the guy to his knees. He walks off, right? Well now all of a sudden the guy that pulls the trigger, this Justin Bresman with the 22 pistol, he vanishes. So you know what happened? The gym only used him to kill the guy extorting him. And now this guy vanishes. So the district attorney says, we're looking for this guy for a homicide. He goes, but his father is telling anyone that'll listen that his kid is missing. And he goes, I don't know if the father is blowing a smoke screen or he's a concerned parent. So I said, all right. I says, what do you got? And he goes, all we got is his car turned up burnt in Brooklyn. And I think he lived in the Bronx. He goes, this is 20 years ago. So when I don't have the paperwork. So anyway, I said, well, what's the timeline on this? And he goes, well, he says, there's no rush. He said, but he goes, the FBI is looking to take this case away from me. So I said, then why do you want me to find this guy? Because if I can find this guy and charge him, the FBI, it'll be more difficult for them to take the case for me. I said, oh, all right, I understand. I had two weeks, like nothing. I mean, the guy was either dead or really good at being a fugitive, I could find nothing. Just he just vanished without a trade. So I report back to this district attorney and I said, listen, I'm sorry, but I got to get on with my life and do other things. He's not out. I was just taking a shot in the dark. I know you're good at finding people who probably is dead. He goes, I'm going to wind up giving this case to the FBI anyway. So this is around 2005, 2006. My friend retires. I retire in 2007 and I found out, sadly, about a year and a half, two years ago, this district attorney passed away. And I felt bad. Someone posted it on Facebook and it's like, geez, I really liked him. I would go by his office. I could listen to this guy talk for hours. So I says, well, what happened to Justin Bressman? Haven't thought of that name 15 years. I start buzzing around the internet. Turns out the gym owner got convicted for shooting his accomplice, shooting, killing the armored car driver. Who else did he kill? Two or three homicides, but would not give up what happened to this Justin Bressman. And to this day, it's an unsolved missing persons case. Wow. Well, I wonder if John Fresser ever came across that name. He was a missing person. You know, you would speak to him. So if you ever heard anything, he would have been around. Yeah. Yeah. Cause he John retired after me. I should, I should bounce that off. And that's actually a really good idea. Yeah, you might, you might have an addendum to that story when it makes a book. I'm fairly sure this guy, I mean, it would be next to impossible to live off the grid. Yeah, post 9/11. You know what I mean? And this, you know, and, you know, this guy was no stranger to danger. He shot somebody in the face. I don't think, you know, I think he just wanted, I probably, if I, if I could guess, he probably was paid half up front and then probably with the understanding, he would get the up and probably he was killed when he went to collect. This is just my opinion. He probably was killed when he went to collect the balance of the money. He lured him somewhere that he could control the environment and took him out and got rid of him. Well, there's some bad people in this world in there. Oh, yeah, it's been about people in this world. His guys just popped on to say, "Hi Vic. Hope you're well. Got it. I'm not with you there, but I'm sunning it up in Moloch. I told you it's Moloch or it began with an M anyway." So I was pretty, I was pretty spot on. So until the next time. So yeah, the guys again got the E card being here. And again, you know, as we always say, one of our, you know, our favourite guest I have on a podcast. And we look forward to having you on the next time. So just taking you back then, taking you back to your stories in 9/11 and in your memories of that. There was a famous case in England. There was a train crash and there was a guy who got caught chucking his suitcase or his briefcase into there to try and make it look like he had, you know, he was part of a problem. And he was trying to do one from his life as well. Did you come across any stories like that? Some people who claimed that they were there and they weren't? Oh, trying to pretend that they were involved in something that they weren't? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, not that can come off the top of my head, but that's what I was telling you. Like, there was the assumption that people were going to try to start reporting their cars missing. Yeah. They were actually there and they weren't. There was some scams. I don't remember them though, because it's 20-something years ago, but I know there were some scams going on about that. That's fine. People trying to collect insurance policies. Yeah. So just finally then, just on the last bit of 9/11 that I wanted to touch on before we say good night is conspiracy theories. When you hear the conspiracy theories around 9/11, how does that make you feel? You know, if you would have told me probably for the first 10 years after 9/11 that our government knew a lot more that was going on and blah, blah, blah, blah. I wouldn't have believed it. Just because of the white hot response after. I mean, literally, we were in Afghanistan within months, just, you know, pounding Torah Barra and all these cities and everything. The more as I get older, the more I read, the more videos I watch, do I think the United States played a hand in it? No, but I think they knew a hell of a lot more than they're willing to say. There's probably a lot of people that would be embarrassed. Probably people that were involved in the hijackings were assets or they believe them to be assets that played them. Yeah, yeah. It's a scary, it is a scary thought, you know, and I've heard a number of them, which most of which I do believe are nonsensical. And I think this is the same thing that with things like 9/11, it's the same as where, you know, I'm not comparing them to, obviously, but when Princess Diana perished in the car crash in Paris, it's difficult to accept that, you know, the paparazzi car can bash into a car, knock into a wall. And somebody that famous is sat in the back without a seat bottle and can end up perishing it is something as simple as a car accident. And it's difficult to accept that something like a group of evil minded men who want to make a point against the West and get on a plane while a number of planes as it was and crash them into buildings and cause absolute devastation. That explanation, for me, is too simplistic and that's the problem. People can't buy into it and just accept that is what happened. That is what happened and you get a number of theories that people put together about, you know, controlled explosions which are utter nonsense. But it's crazy. But yeah, the other side of it is, I suspect you're probably right on that. There are a number of people who didn't want to be embarrassed. And when I think about George Bush on that day, you know, and him getting the news as he's, as he's, you know, reading a story to a bunch of primary school kids, you know, I'm asking you what your thought processes. This is a man who needs to respond. I can't even imagine. And you know, I think you see the, you know, the cogs ticking in his head at that time. I can't even imagine what's going through his head at that moment in time. You know, well, I think he probably realized the world's going to change. You know, I know he knows within seconds they're whisking him out of there. He knows they go wheels up at a tamper or a Sarasota airport wherever they had air force one at the time. You know, it's the same thing as doing something. It's not the same thing, but you're doing a live podcast. And someone's throwing questions at you. And there's a live audience. And this is a friendly podcast. Right. I know you guys. I know you guys aren't going to try to embarrass me. And you know, I, you know, he, he's standing there. Whatever Cameron news outlet in the world there, he's reading a nursery book to a bunch of children. And he gets this dropped in his lap. I think he handled it well, considering whole things considered, you know. I think he did. I think he did a lot better than I would. I mean, I would have been like, what? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it is, you know, as we come, obviously, as we come up to now to September 11th, I think when we released when this episode goes out, it is round about that day, which is where we were recording. Now we have a couple of accounts ago, you know, I mean, so there's going to be an awful lot shared about that. And, you know, there's this program now on Netflix, which is very, you know, very, very in-depth look that everything that unfolded. Do you do you find yourself watching that? And, you know, do you, or is it one of those things that you think, no, I'm, you know, that was part of my past. I'll just leave it where it is. Yeah, I mean, if it's on and it's in front of me, yeah, I might watch it, but I have a short attention span these days. If something doesn't gather my interest in the first five or ten minutes, you know, and I get told, you got it. You got to just get through it. You got to get through it. I probably won't. You know what I mean? It's like I'm kind of on to different things. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So we're here around about the hour mark. The first thing we need to do, do you tell people where they can find your books and find where they can find your podcast as well? Because, you know, again, you know, as you can tell by the way, talks, you know, he was perfect for a podcast. We said this too, and when was the first time we had him on? You guys encouraged me. Yeah, yeah, we did. We encouraged a lot of people because, you know, they look at us and think, yeah, I can do better. Yeah. So tell us where you find your podcast and where we can find your books. Sure. So for my books, just go to Amazon, type in my name, Vic, Ferrari, like the car, where you can preview all my books for free, including NYPD Law and Disorder. For my podcast, it's called NYPD Through the Looking Glass Podcast. It's got the artwork from my book. It's available on YouTube, Spotify, and wherever you can find podcasts. And I bring on retired NYPD members and criminals, I mean, reform criminals and gangsters that tell their story. Yeah, and that's when you're not being a booking agent for this podcast. Listen, you guys have done more than enough for me, so I always return the favor. Oh, no, it's truly appreciated. It really, really is appreciated. I like to say, you know, some of the guys were on, like, say, John, when he came on and he spoke to us about his experience, sorry, in the New York police department and Ramesh in, you know, down there in Florida. Totally, you know, it's fascinating to us, you know, looking, because we have an idea. I mean, you know, it's largely based, like I said, I forget who I drew with, like, on the likes of TJ Hooker and stuff like that. That's our idea of the police force in America. So very, very, very misplaced are our ideas. That it's nice to have them put right. Anybody, anybody who is, you know, anywhere close to human has that morbid fascination with this kind of stuff with it. You know, the kind of stuff that can happen and hopefully will never happen to them. And then we hope that some of the stories that you share in your books and the stories that we talked about tonight in 9/11 happen to none of you out there. But, you know, we're bringing it to a conclusion. Would you like to say your goodbyes to our audience until, of course, the next town that we have you back on? Sure. Thank you. Tallboy radio podcast listeners for taking the time out to listen to my story. Indeed, indeed, and we'll thank you as well because we really appreciate you stopping by and the comments that you guys have left tonight and anybody who's watched. Anybody will tune in unless to when this is available on Spotify and all the other podcast platforms that we are available on. And we will be back next week when we are looking at cryptozoology. Do you have an interest in that mythical creatures? No. I can't have expected that answer. I got an Irish Wolfhound. That's a mythical enough creature for me. Yeah, I'll tell you what it is. Dougal, for that his name? No, Dougal passed six months ago. I got a female Irish Wolfhound that's eating me at a house and home. There you go. There you go. God bless him. So we will wish you a fun farewell and we will see you again. Well, next week, I suppose. [MUSIC] (gentle music) [BLANK_AUDIO]