NYPD Detective on Murder, Mobsters & Old New York | Jason Allison

The Team House

Jason Allison, a former NYPD detective and author of the noir novel 'The Killing Yards,' shares his experiences growing up in the Bronx duri

Key takeaways

• The 1980s and 1990s in New York were marked by extreme urban decay, high crime rates, and visible street-level prostitution—far from the nostalgic image many have today.
• Personal experiences as a young white kid in a predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood shaped Allison's perspective on race, identity, and belonging.

Main topics

• NYPD career and detective work
• Life growing up in the Bronx during the 1980s

Notable quotes

"I was the only white kid on my block. And we lived, it was me, my mom, and her parents. So it was three generations in one bath walk up."

"There were prostitutes walking the streets. It was like 10 in the morning. Unabated. Just sex workers going at it."

Conclusion

Jason Allison reflects on how his life as a Bronx-born cop and club scene observer shaped his noir novel 'The

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Hey, folks, I'm Jack Murphy. This is the team house. And I'm here with our guest today, Jason Allison. He's the author of The Killing Yards, which will probably be out as you guys are seeing this. September 22nd is a release date. It is a noir detective novel. I mean, it involves the police, but it also involves the 1990s club scene, the Russian mafia. the israeli mafia i mean everybody's got a hand hand in these clubs and there's a pretty epic uh conspiracy that unfolds in in the book um i really enjoyed it uh i thought that uh you know it's interesting that you set this in the 1990s and i grew up as a kid in the 90s um and now i'm seeing my generation have this very like nostalgic view of the 90s which it really is nostalgia it's like it wasn't as great as you think it was guys Speaker 1 (0:53) Um, you, you're a little bit older than me and you were, you know, a professional or an adult and then becoming an NYPD detective. So you have a little bit of a different sort of perspective on the nineties, I think, than many people my age do. Yeah. I mean, I, I grew up in the Bronx. Where'd you grow up? In a sleepy hollow, New York. Oh, okay. I lived not too far from you for a long time. Um, but yeah, like I grew up in the Bronx and I'm 50 now. So in like, I became a cop in 1998. Speaker 1 (1:22) And before that, though, in addition to being a cop in this city and a detective, I was a club kid. So you were living that bohemian New York City lifestyle? No, I was the bridge and tunnel trash that was trying to get into the clubs that couldn't get into the clubs because I was never cool because I didn't drink and I didn't do drugs. But the good thing about that is I was able to watch all the stuff that other people did. And so you kind of remember it. when you're young, you know, whatever you're doing when you're young, it kind of becomes formative, right? Sure. Like, I don't know how old you are. I think I heard on an episode you were like 19 when you joined the military. So that becomes like. Speaker 1 (2:02) that's concrete now for you that error for the rest of your life and that error for me was concrete and also I don't like doing research very much and I don't know like for your novel I don't know how much research you had to do because I think my envision of you is that it's all in your head for that novel yeah I it wasn't research intensive and I also got to the point as a writer where I realized like if I'm really digging into the literature trying to find details to put in the book I'm probably overwhelming most of the readers like that. It's more than they want. I just saw an Instagram reel with Harlan Coben. He writes suspense and he's talking about, I hate research and I advise his writers not to do research. And he said that the reason why is because the more research you do, the more you want to put it in the book. Right. And so it kind of slows everything down. Speaker 1 (2:52) So I mean, I like doing research and it's a big part of my other job in journalism. But I get what he's saying. Like you have to be very careful about that. I think when you're writing a novel, I know a lot of stuff. Right. And are you just using the book to show off how much stuff, you know, right. You know, as opposed to like telling a story and doing something for the reader or whatever the case. Yeah. Well, we'll get into it deeper. But, you know, you spent how many years on the police force? 20 years in one day. Wow. And mostly as a detective. Yeah, probably about 16 years doing investigations. Less than two years in uniform. I learned early on that I wanted to get out of uniform. Stop humping the radio. And I've noticed, and we were talking before we started, like... Speaker 1 (3:50) There seems to be a common through line with the guys and women that you have on that in the military that wanted to do like Rangers or Green Berets or special ops or whatever the case might be. And it's because you don't want to do the boring stuff. Sure. Yeah, that's true. And so like I wasn't good at anything. I wasn't a great student. I was not a good athlete. Wasn't cool. And so I realized that like if you volunteer for stuff, sometimes they give it to you. So I got out of uniform shortly after 9-11. So tell us a little bit like where you grew up in the city, right? In the Bronx, yeah. Yeah. So give us the non-nostalgic, unvarnished view of growing up in the Bronx in the 1980s. What was that like? Non-nostalgic view is I was the only white kid on my block. And we lived, it was me, my mom, and her parents. So it was three generations in one bath walk up. Speaker 1 (4:46) And I don't say that to like play like a poverty card, but just that like that's just the way it was. And at the time when you're growing up, you don't know you're poor. Sure. But looking back now, I'm like, oh, man, we were poor. I mean, the Bronx in like the 70s, like parts of it looked like Berlin after the war. Yeah. So there was the first. The first command I went to, where I lived, I'm not claiming that I grew up in the hardened streets of the worst neighborhood in the Bronx and I survived. That's not true. I grew up in a neighborhood called Kingsbridge, which wasn't bad. I had a good time. I had a lot of friends, all different kinds of people. I had very few issues. The only reason why I said about being the only white kid is that's just how it was. Sure. And now I live in a place in Massachusetts where I don't see anyone who isn't white. And so... Speaker 1 (5:35) You do start to get to realize maybe this comes with age. It's like when you are on the other end of that and you're the only person who looks different, that affects how you engage with people and that affects how you view the world. Sure. And I hope that it's made me softer and more understanding in my old age. I don't know if it has, but I try. But yeah, the first command I worked in, which was the 4-1, famously or infamously, you ever hear of the movie Fort Apache, The Bronx? I've heard of it. Paul Newman, Ken Wall, based on a real story. It was called Little House on the Prairie. And famously, the station house is still standing, 1086 Simpson Street, because it was the only building on this block that wasn't rubble. Speaker 1 (6:19) And like I, I, I, I listen to your episodes, I watch your episodes and guys are talking about like, you know, places in Afghanistan or Iraq that were just leveled and it's just rubble and K and destruction. And it's like, yeah, if you go back and you look at photos of the Bronx in the seventies, it was a, it was a hellish place, man. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and I mean the 1980s New York was also like. The city was going bankrupt and went bankrupt in the 70s, right? Yeah. Ford to next Ford to city dropped dead when they were looking for a bailout. And then, I mean, tons of crime, street prostitution, things that are kind of like, I mean. Speaker 1 (7:01) I'll ask you a little bit about that later, about how crime has changed in the city. But I mean, 1980s into the 1990s, I mean, the city was different. It was a little seedier. It was much seedier. Yeah. And I try to get that out in the novel. But I remember, like, there's an incident that stays with me. We were going on a field trip to the Intrepid. Yeah. Which was the, if you were a boy. Yeah, it was awesome. It was the coolest museum in the city. And we were on a yellow school bus driving through Manhattan. We were on the west side out by the Hudson Yards. Speaker 1 (7:30) And there were prostitutes walking the streets. It was like 10 in the morning. Unabated. Just sex workers going at it. And our teacher said to us, like, I forget how old I was, but it was grade school. And she said, now you boys know not to talk to these women, right? And I'm like, well, I don't talk to any women because I'm like, I don't know, 10. These girls are married to the streets. Yeah, but these women specifically, I'm like, they dress differently. They're intimidating. I'm not ready for this yet. But that stays with you. And to this day, that image of the prosts walking the streets untouched, unchecked, that made it into the book. But that made it into your memory of what the city was. And yeah, it was a much grimier place. Maybe not. Speaker 1 (8:19) Like gentrification has a lot of negatives. And I think it's overwhelmingly negative, mostly because it pushes working class people out of places where they can live. But at the same time, like I remember a guy getting shot around the corner from where I lived. I didn't see it. We came across the aftermath, but the dude's lying there bleeding out. And I don't know if he lived or not. And uniforms are waiting for a bus to roll up. And I'm like, huh. We didn't see that all the time, but it was much more frequent then than it is today. Speaker 1 (8:51) And so you're a kid now, I mean, as you become a teenager and into your early 20s in the 1990s, right? Yeah. And by that point, I mean, the city was still changing. I mean, and as you talk about in this book, you know, Giuliani and the tough on crime and all that stuff is starting to come around. But I mean, the other side of it, too, is that AIDS really wiped out the sex working, like down in Times Square and all of that. was a part of it. Um, what, I mean, what were you experiencing? You know, I mean like so much of that I get from. Speaker 1 (9:27) kind of, I was living through it, but you don't know in the moment. And there's some cop stuff. Yeah, you're really young. You're right. You don't know what you're living through while you're living through it. And it took me a very long time to realize how damaging the AIDS crisis was to this city. Yeah, yeah. To like the artists and the music scene. The gay community. The club scene, the gay community. Yeah, it really wept out. Sex workers, prostitutes. Like, it was... life-changing and I think the other thing that people don't realize that might be hard to envision now in New York City that you know just elected a Democratic socialist mayor is that only in 1994 New York City elected a Republican hardliner law-and-order guy who has since become a little crazy Looney Tunes Okay, maybe a lot crazy, but like Rudy Giuliani was a law and he was a US prosecutor. He was a US attorney Speaker 1 (10:18) Wanted to go after the mafia. Wanted to go after the mafia. There was a whole theory of criminal justice back then called broken windows. Yeah. Want to tell people about that? Yes. That's where like stop and frisk comes from and stuff, right? Right. So stop and frisk comes from a court case called Terry v. Ohio. And it authorizes a police officer who has not probable cause but reasonable suspicion that a person is about to. has just, or is about to, or is in the commission of a crime. And you can stop that person and make inquiries. And that, based on the inquiries, might go up, and you might search a guy, you might toss him, you might arrest him, depending on what you find, or it might go down. You might be like, oh, this dude's just coming back from getting himself a beer at the bogey. Speaker 1 (11:04) And what happened in New York City is the broken windows theory. And I'm going to I'm sure the the intellectuals will explain it better than me. But basically, the theory is, is that if you have a building in an urban setting and kids are just taking up rocks and winging rocks at the windows and those windows break and no one replaces the windows, it creates an air of lawlessness and disorder. And a big thing that Giuliani ran on was this notion of the city as a place of disorder. Speaker 1 (11:32) It is a city of chaos. And before... He wasn't totally wrong. Wasn't totally wrong. Before him, you've heard the term fear city. Yeah. Okay, so in the 70s, they were giving out the... I think it was the police union. I hope I'm getting this right. I think it was the PBA was giving out flyers at the Port Authority bus terminal to people getting off the bus that said, welcome to fear city. Because the place, the city of like... Speaker 1 (11:58) Have you ever seen Taxi Driver? Yeah, you did not cut through Central Park in the 1980s at night. No, like that was not a thing. Even into when I started going out, there were blocks. If you walked in Manhattan, there were blocks that you skipped. If you needed to get Crosstown, it's like, all right, we can't go down 31st, but 29th is good. We can go down 29th. And it was this weird sort of knowledge that like before the internet, before social media, you don't know how you knew this, but everyone kind of knew it. It was almost like the zeitgeist. Speaker 1 (12:27) Like, you don't go down that block. It's culture. Yeah, it's just the culture. And yeah, so the city elected Giuliani, who ran on a law and order platform, who instigated a riot in City Hall Park involving off-duty police officers. And the whole thing, take the bridge, because there were a bunch of cops who basically stormed the Brooklyn Bridge to take it over. And so the on-duty cops who were trying to police this off-duty cop event, they're not really putting their hands on anyone. And so that became a whole thing. And there were a whole bunch of guys disciplined administratively, but no one was arrested. But yeah, the city elected a guy. That's how bad it was, to give you some perspective. There were 2,100 people murdered in 1992. I think this year so far, there's like 149. Wow. That's a lot of bodies, man. Speaker 1 (13:20) And that doesn't count the non-fatals. The ODs and stuff like that. Yeah, that doesn't count that. When I say non-fatals, I mean like everyone who gets shot who survives. Like that's a whole other category. And I think a big thing, this is another issue with the drop in homicides, and we're getting ahead of ourselves, but the advent of battlefield medicine coming into urban hospitals is incredible. Yeah, it's keeping people alive. It took a long time to get cops to carry tourniquets, man. Speaker 1 (13:48) Longer than it should have. But they do it now. So I'm out eight years. And it's changed a lot. Even in that eight years. I'm ancient now. But like I never. No one I knew carried any sort of medical supplies. The whole thing was. You know God forbid your boy gets hurt. You throw him in the RMP. And you get him to Lincoln. And then as soon as you get stabilized. You get him the hell out of Lincoln. Because you don't want to spend any more time in Lincoln than you have to. But they will save you. If you're shot they will save you. You get upstairs they'll kill you. Speaker 1 (14:19) What was the club scene like in the 1990s as you're a young guy trying to get into these exclusive joints? So I made it into Tunnel a few times. I made it into Limelight, I think, once. It was selective. Like, you know, it was the whole... It wasn't quite Studio 54, which I think most people have an image of sort of these pictures. If you go back, you can find them online of like Steve Rebell and Ian Schrager, who... own the place, basically picking who they want from the crowd. Oh, based on looks or knowledge? Yeah, it was like, you have a look, you're in. You have a look, you're in. And some of the other clubs got like that to an extent, but you could get in. The problem I always had, like women could get in much easier. But if you were dudes, they wanted the ratio right. And so if you're a bunch of guys going out, if there's six or seven of you, Speaker 1 (15:18) You're waiting. Exactly. Bouncers don't want to be dealing with you guys coming in when they could have like four or five ladies that are going to be coming in. Man, I'm trying to pull up an article I saw. I think it was in New York Magazine. I'm not finding it, though. But it was about a female club owner in the 90s, and she set up this super exclusive place. There's only 20 tables inside. I was just going to ask if you knew that one or not. I didn't. A lot of my club knowledge, like I went to these places, like I said, I was never cool. There's no stolen club valor from me, okay? But... Speaker 1 (15:57) I, my first wife, cause cops and military, God, I have at least two wives. Sometimes, sometimes three. We should all be so lucky. Um, hopefully I won't be that lucky. I love my wife very much. Um, my first wife was in the, the club industry. Okay, cool. And she was a publicist for, and I think she still is for big time DJs. Like I've had Christmas dinner with international DJs. And I got to see how these clubs run. And this is more into the mid 2000s, like 2005, 2006, around there. So it's, the scene has changed a little bit. It's a little more corporate. It's a little more professional. But the nature of running a club hadn't changed. And that's where I picked up a lot of, like I said, because I don't like doing research. So I'm just going to pull from what I know. But yeah, the... Speaker 1 (16:50) The people that run the clubs are fascinating people, man. They're businessmen and women, but it's a really strange industry and it's very bunkered. Everyone knows each other. You can't screw anyone over because everyone, you know, you can't, you got to honor your contracts. But just like filling these clubs, especially before social media, the notion of like street teams of giving, you get like a bunch of young kids, you pay them however much you pay them, go put up flyers. Speaker 1 (17:19) Go put up posters on like construction sites at three in the morning. And that's how they got the word out. You know, this neighborhood we're in right now, it's actually a big club scene. There's all these like warehouses here, clubs and raves and stuff like that. So there's a club. This is what happens when you get old and you forget names. But there's a club where a guy died recently. And then there was a report. And I think it's in Brooklyn. I think it's in this neighborhood where there was a couple of gay club goers died. Speaker 1 (17:47) And they weren't sure if it's like a serial killer. Oh, is that like Mirage? Yes, Mirage. Yeah, yeah. That's it. Yeah, that's right down here. It's over by Newtown Creek is where people keep drowning. That's exactly it. Yeah, and there are these allegations that there's like a serial killer on the loose because, you know, a lot of these kids would have to climb over like six, seven foot tall fences to get into the canal in the middle of the night. Like, you're already tripping balls. Are you really doing that or not? Right. Speaker 1 (18:15) But apparently it keeps happening. Yeah, it's weird. Like there were very few later when I worked homicides, I learned that they're at least in New York for whatever reason. And there's been studies done on this that not a lot of serial killers in New York. Son of Sam famously. But that seemed to be a phenomenon in more rural areas. And now the whole idea is that like serial killers exist, but DNA and cameras and ubiquitous surveillance stop them before they. The serial kill part, they're just killers. Right, right. So, but yeah, man, the club scene was always just a place of intentional depravity. And like anything went very, you know, fall of Rome stuff. And I dug it and I was jealous of it. Because I didn't drink and I was shy and I wasn't good with girls. Speaker 1 (19:03) I would see people, I didn't even want to dance because you have that image. Like if you're, if you're, if you're sober all the time, you're like, oh, you look stupid. Don't do this. Don't do this. And so I was always a guy on a wall, but you would get to see everyone like letting loose. And you're like, man, I wish I could be like them. That's what I got out of it. I just picture in my mind that club scene in American Psycho. It's not far from it. I think in the novel, you know, because the movie, I love the novel and the movie. Yeah, for different reasons. Yeah. And I'm pretty sure they go to Tunnel in the novel. I don't know if it's specifically identified in the movie. But Tunnel was owned by Peter Gation, who owned most of, he owned Limelight, he owned Club USA. I think he owned Palladium. But he was a Canadian. Speaker 1 (19:48) French-Canadian who ended up getting evicted from the United States of America for, I think, tax evasion. But the story, like some of the stuff that happens in the novel is kind of inspired by what he went through, where they went after him for running an open-air drug market. And he went to trial in the Eastern District, and he won at trial, and he got his place back. But then, you know, the lifespan of clubs is just so fast. They fire, and then they burn bright, and then they die. Speaker 1 (20:16) And this is also the era where like all that stuff is picking up in like the meatpacking district and everything, right? Yeah. So tunnel, I keep mentioning that because that's like the anchor and also that's kind of where I place my fictional version of tunnel in the novel. But that was on like 27th and 12th. Okay. Right on the water. And meatpacking starts a little bit south of that. And meatpacking ends up kind of becoming a little more, a lot more bougie. Down the line. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1 (20:44) Soho house and everything. It's such a joke. But there's like that gap. Like I have this huge cultural gap where like when I was a civilian. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was not cool, but I was aware of what was. And then you become a cop and you're put into a time capsule. Yeah, and I don't know if it's like that in the military. Maybe it isn't. No, it totally is. Okay. But we become institutionalized and you just become cloistered from the rest of the world. And there are guys who go out, like I went out even as a cop, but it was different. Yeah. Yeah, you're seeing the city differently. And that's the thing, like, you know, because we're shooting this in Brooklyn. I came down here. I don't live here anymore. But when I used to live in the city, I was always on edge. And not for, like, situational awareness. Like, you have a lot of guys we were joking before about, like, Speaker 1 (21:33) I've never shot a gun. I've never shot anyone. And you have every other guest that's been in this chair talking about. So we were getting in a firefight and I'm like, shit, I can't mess with that. I got nothing. But like you're always on edge. You're always just in case because something like Times Square could go off like what happened yesterday or two days ago. So you're aware of it and then you retire and you go through that transition to civilian life. And now I come back and I'm like. Now I can just enjoy the city and I can view it as like, oh, it's artsy and there's interesting people and it takes on a different tone. Speaker 1 (22:10) Owner alert. This episode is sponsored by Blue Chew. Guys, what do women want and need? Stability, reliability. Be her rock with Blue Chew. They're sponsoring the episode today. 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Like I said, I've listened to a bunch of your episodes. It seems like there are guys that like, there seems to be like a through line, not with everyone, but with a lot of people, how they grew up and how they find themselves in these elite regiments in the military, is that there's very few people who grew up. in like a six bedroom house that become enlisted people in the military. And I think the notion was for me as a kid is police work seemed interesting. You were outdoors. It was different every day. The pay was good and the benefits like health insurance and there was a pension and you could leave at the end. Speaker 1 (25:59) And I found that interesting just from like, what else am I going to do? I went to college, which I have a degree in criminal justice, which might as well like fucking water balloon. They might have given me at the end because it's about that useless. I can't do anything with a criminal justice major other than be a cop. But yeah, I took I took that. I came out of college because you needed two years of college at the time. I don't know if you still need it. But I did see today on the train ride down that the NYPD just raised the age that you can take the test to become a cop to 42. Yeah, I think it was 37 was like this city entrance exam. It was 30. It was when I came on, it was 35. And my company sergeant was 37. And he got a he got an extension or he got graced into the into it because he was in the military. Those guys. Speaker 1 (26:56) And he was also an artilleryman in the military, which meant, and I don't want to shout, but everything that he said was very loud. And so the whole time, nine months in the academy, and he's six inches away from me, and he's going, we're going to lunch now. I'm like, oh my God, military men. Don't ever be in the artillery. But yeah, they raised it to 42. So I think that speaks to maybe recruitment issues. So you go to the police academy and, uh, I mean, what was your first assignment in NYPD? You were a beat cop. Yeah. I, uh, well, um, I was in uniform. I was in patrol. We call them, you're running a sector car. So I don't know how deep into the weeds you want to go in this stuff, but like every, every city is broken up into 76 precincts and every precinct is broken up into sectors, patrol sectors. And theoretically. Speaker 1 (27:52) You're supposed to ride around your sector all day long. And so we use a different phonetic alphabet than you guys. We have Adam Boy, Charlie David. So you would get a sector. And again, in theory, you would have one sector car per sector. And in reality, it's like, all right, a roll call. Murphy, you're 4-1 Adam Boy, Charlie David, Eddie Frank Ida. Because you can only turn out two cars for a precinct that's like two miles square. But yeah, I was in uniform. I got bumped to midnights pretty quick because someone else needed four to twelves, which when you're young, that's what you want because you get off of work at 1130. You go to the bars or the clubs. We call them four to fours. And then you come back, you get to sleep all day and you come back at four. And for a young guy, that's awesome. Speaker 1 (28:41) So they sent me to Midnight's, which I hated at the time. But in hindsight, it was a blessing because no one wants to do work on the Midnight's. Almost everyone's trying to sleep. And the precinct I went to, which was Little House on the Prairie, Fort Apache, it got decimated by the feds in the early 90s. So the place was dead. I remember... looking up at the board, and this was the same thing where I became a detective in a squad, which was the adjoining precinct, and they would say, up on the board, on a whiteboard, it would say the homicides 15 years ago, 10 years ago, 5 years ago, last year, this year. And they would always track those numbers. And the homicides 15 years ago were like 79. And this is in two square miles. And then the homicides when I got there were like 6. Speaker 1 (29:32) So the place was dead. And what did the feds clean the place out for? Rico, they come in and the FBI and the DEA, because all the violence was drug-related. So there's like Serpico shit going on in this precinct back in the day. Oh, yeah. I mean, that was famously, he worked, Frank Serpico worked in the, I think it was called like the plainclothes unit. I forget what it was called, but it became after the Serpico. And the sort of the commission that came out of that, they reorganized or renamed it. It became the Organized Crime Control Bureau. And part of that was narcotics fell under that. And the majority of the violence, especially in the early 90s, was driven by crack. And the crack wars in the 90s are what drove those 2,000, 2,100 homicides a year. Speaker 1 (30:21) And so eventually, because it's always like, what's the flare up? What's the issue? And then eventually they bring assets to bear on that issue. And so the feds came in, DEA, FBI, and they rounded up people. They recode a shit ton of people. And, you know, the crime fell off. Because the other thing you learn is that 95% of the crime is committed by like 5% of the people. Like the thing that kept me warm at night is that most people go to work and come home and they're trying to get by. Yeah, they're not going to swing an axe into your back or something. No. But that 5% can wreak havoc. And they did. And so, yeah, I was in uniform. I got an opportunity to like... Speaker 1 (31:08) you know, make some robbery collars. And that's about all you could hope for when you're in uniform, maybe some stolen cars, GLAs. And we had a big issue with street racing. It was very fast and furious back then because it was industrial. And on like Saturday night, we'd get like four to 500 cars rolling in. Holy shit. Where was this again? This was in Hunts Point. Okay. That's where I was a cop in the 4-1. And because also famously talking about before. Speaker 1 (31:37) The Hookers on Hunts Point on HBO. I don't know if you ever heard of it or saw it. That was a documentary show where they would interview. They would essentially do ride-alongs with like prostitutes working Hunts Point. And that was our precinct at that time. Because there were areas that were industrial that after like, you know, 12 o'clock got taken over by, you know, the street racers and the prosts and the pimps. And everyone coming in. to, you know, get a rub and tug. So we would just have cars circling the block and circling the block and you get all these guys coming home. They're in suits and ties and they're like driving home to Scarsdale and it's like making a pit stop. Yeah. Yeah. I got to take care of something. It's, I have a friend who works in an industry that will remain nameless for this purpose. But I mean, just again, like how things have changed in the city. Speaker 1 (32:30) A buddy of mine was explaining how in his industry, in this business, Midtown Manhattan executive business executives working in those sky rises. He was like, it is totally normal for those dudes to go and like bang a Russian hooker in one of these massage parlors and then just come back to work and then go home to their family at the end of the day. Like that just happens all the time. And I mean, it's interesting how like all that stuff has kind of been pushed off the streets. It's still there. It's just not visible. Yeah, I think the Internet's made that a lot different, too, now in terms of what you can order up. Sure. And I guess that's good because the whole thing is like, if you ever watch The Wire. Yeah. Okay, so The Wire is tremendous in terms of how it depicts an urban. Speaker 1 (33:17) organism kind of functioning because they went after everyone in the wire in terms of like calling out hypocrisy and nonsense. And, you know, there's a I forget what season it is, but they create Amsterdam. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Which is essentially like we're going to let people get high, but only in this area. And the idea is that then you can kind of argue or politicians can argue that, look, drug arrests are going down here and violence is going down here when in fact all you're doing is kind of concentrating it in a certain area. And I think that sort of they play with the numbers like CompStat. And if you've ever heard of that, it's essentially a numbers driven system to address crime. But CompStat statistics can be manipulated. Is this where like the quotas come out of? Speaker 1 (34:05) The quotas that didn't exist, but they did. So quotas are weird, right? Because like, I was never told you have to produce anything. But by the same token, okay, so I don't know, this is where like, you kind of both sides an issue, right? Majority of cops I know, don't want to do a thing. And I will go to my grave saying that. And I'm not saying like I'm better than that. It's just like the majority of cops that I knew wanted to do their eight hours and 35 minutes and they wanted to go home. And maybe they had other gigs, but they didn't want to make collars. They didn't want to write summonses. And I didn't want to write summonses either because for the most part they're asking you to like summons the working guy and girl for like rolling through a stop sign, which I had sergeants order me to do numerous times. And that's not cool. Speaker 1 (34:57) But it's a money, it's a revenue generating. Yeah, you want to go after criminals, not write tickets. Right, and we had on the day tour in the 4-1 when I was a cop, there were guys assigned to those, you don't see them anymore, but those three-wheel scooters. Oh yeah, the meter maids. So we had like uniform armed POs, members of the service, that had to write 50 parkers a day. Holy shit. Five zero, and they did that to keep their gig. And the gig was you work, you come in at like 5.30, you go home at 2, and you're off Saturday and Sunday. And when you dangle a carrot like that in front of someone, it motivates. Speaker 1 (35:36) Yeah, I mean, it's still like that, I think. And I mean, I've seen even they got members of the New York City Parks Department out writing tickets for people in the morning. Like for what? Parked on the wrong side of the street. Alternate side. Oh, for like parkers? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's I mean, I can not to jump ahead, but they were towing. I was a union delegate for a little while for the DEA, for the detectives union, and they were towing unmarked cars. belonging to like these are department autos that are double parked at courthouses because people were complaining that around the courthouse especially in the bronx bronx courthouse is in a fairly busy area and you would get cops who would double park out there and so for a while ieb started towing these cars here's the problem with that Speaker 1 (36:25) Sometimes,