1160: Tegan Broadwater | How a White Cop Infiltrated the Crips Part One

1160: Tegan Broadwater | How a White Cop Infiltrated the Crips Part One

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Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers, even the occasional rocket scientists, neuroscientists, music mogul, or tech luminary.

And if you're new to the show or you wanna tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on topics like persuasion and negotiation, psychology and geopolitics, disinformation, China, North Korea, crime, and cults and more. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show.

Just visit Jordan harbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today on the show, former undercover cop, Tegan Broadwater, who infiltrated the infamous Crips Street gang. We dive into the drug war and how we [00:01:00] are not going to arrest our way out of the dope problem. We also explore undercover tactics and strategies, close calls that almost cost him his life, becoming close friends with gang members, building trust, building rapport, and how he dealt with a leak inside his own police department.

This is a really good solid two part episode here that I know you'll enjoy. Here we go. Part one with Teagan. Broadwater. Yeah. 'cause that's one of those jobs where everybody says, various interviews have been like, my stress was so high, one of my teeth started falling out, and where my stress was so high, uh, blood work said I was going to basically die young because my cortisol was through the roof or had no cortisol or whatever it was.

My stress level was so high I was addicted to hydroxy cup, and it's just one legal substance after another. And that's the stuff they can say on air because they don't wanna lose their job or their pension like I was on meth. I'm sure that some of these guys probably do get hooked on that stuff.

Tegan Broadwater: Yeah, some of them, there's some rogue undercovers and there's some straight up trained everything by the book Undercovers.

I've [00:02:00] talked to a number of them and there's been a bunch of books out there too. Some of those are also trashed, but when I did my research, I figured it was kind of a cop out, no pun intended, to get yourself to do the dope and then get stuck on it. I don't get it. I just thought, man, the easiest way to get in is to just be willing to say, okay, well then that's fine.

I'm gonna go down the street, find somebody else to do business with, and if you're really cornered, I just set myself up a little background to where I literally would go show up downtown courthouse every Saturday for a few minutes and be seen with everybody that's standing in line on probation to go take their piss test.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, and it's smart.

Tegan Broadwater: Yeah. And I'd say, well, I'm not going back because of you. 'cause you want to gimme some kind of test. And then people can vouch, they've seen me there before.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. They'll say, yeah. Oh, I saw 'em waiting in line the other day actually, because I had to take my test. That's smart. So you just show up at the courthouse, Hey Joe, just drink a coffee.

Go back out the front door. Pretend like you took a piss test and everybody assumes

Tegan Broadwater: it good. It was a kind of a mass waiting room. It wasn't literally a [00:03:00] line so I could be there and then walk back to the bathroom or whatever. People would just kind of see that I'm there but not know what to order. I'm going, that's smart.

Jordan Harbinger: That's clever man. You got a, a few clever little bits in the book and we'll get to that. Did they train you to do that or did you just think about doing that?

Tegan Broadwater: Man, I didn't have any training of which is, that seems dangerous. It's the best and worst part about it really is because I really just had to wing it.

But I really did a ton of research. I read and spoke to people about how they did things and and everything else, and that's why I said it seemed so contrived the way everybody did it, because I don't think there were enough people that are truly trained. You know, the Scott Paynes and the FBI training programs and stuff like that.

I learned from those. Then you have the other guys just go off on a wild hair and kind of disappear and come back and they're addicted to stuff because they were just willing to do whatever to get through the case. I wouldn't have been willing to throw the case away, but I just, sometimes I was overly creative to a fault where I just had too many little things I was trying to plan, but I leveraged that in order to get [00:04:00] around some of those pitfalls that I see everybody else falling into.

Jordan Harbinger: In fact, almost every A TF and FBI agent has told me that they don't do the drugs and they're cornered. They have ways of fake doing the drugs, which they won't discuss on the show because the upside is minimal. We just get a little curiosity bump and, uh, criminals find out how people pretend to do drugs, but then the reason is not just so that you don't get addicted.

I was surprised to find out that the, I guess it's no surprise being a former practicing attorney that attorneys go, you're a druggie too. You did a bunch of drugs with him, and then the jury, if there are a bunch of puritans will go, you're just as bad as the criminals. How do you remember that? You were high on meth at the time.

He made me do it. Not a great look, not a great excuse. Makes

Tegan Broadwater: defense a little more easy. For sure. Yeah. And it's not just credibility. Again, it's state of mind at that point. Like, okay, you did it. Now you're under the influence of something that's been proven, blah, blah, blah. Which is why you're even in this also.

[00:05:00] Uh,

Jordan Harbinger: I think it's outrageous. Government conduct is one of the defenses. So it'll say something like, well, this officer made my client do drugs. No, he didn't. He Did you do the drugs? Yeah, I did, but I did 'em after him. Well, okay, now it's your word against his. But if you say, I didn't even do the drugs. He did the drugs.

He had drugs in his system. When he did the test, I didn't have any drugs in my system. Okay, well then they weren't doing drugs together. One guy was doing drugs and the other guy was pretending to because he's a police officer. But if both of you are high outta your minds on meth that you just baked in a trailer, the gap between you and the criminal starts to shrink quite a bit.

Tegan Broadwater: Yeah. Yeah. And especially these days when people don't trust cops. Anyway, so

Jordan Harbinger: yeah, I wondered about that. I wonder, does it make undercover work easier that people don't trust cops? 'cause the criminals never trusted cops. But now if they see you all that guys all as just as bad as them, maybe it's not as hard.

Tegan Broadwater: Well, I imagine it's on the prosecutorial end really where that would come out, I think. Because when you have cases like mine where you know you got these hand-to-hand and [00:06:00] firsthand accounts of things that were saying that were incriminating, and mine was obviously I used a dope, but it was a gang case.

So even a lot of the things that they would say incriminating to me that were used as evidence were things that I didn't drag out of them, but they just had to challenge my credibility on the stand. Most people plead out when they realize, oh, the dude that I've been hanging out with for eight months is this guy, or however long they've known me.

Then they just know the writing's on the wall. They gotta deal with it. But yeah, the ones that challenge it are their attorneys are gonna just challenge my credibility as a person and professionally

Jordan Harbinger: as well. That makes sense. I wanna back up the truck a little. One of the first things you say in the book actually is that you can't eradicate dope.

This is probably a silly question, but what do you mean by that? Isn't that what we're trying to do out there is eradicate

Tegan Broadwater: drugs? No. If you have a reasonable view on how things go, then you would at least think that we're working toward getting better enforcement and less drugs that hit the street. Less addiction, less issues like that.

But [00:07:00] I don't even see it that way unfortunately. I see that you have narcos working their asses off and guys going in undercover, guys going across the border and trying to deal with cartels or everything else so that we can keep the wheel spinning and keep it from getting worse. So I think we're essentially putting people in harm's way for the benefit of treading water, not seeing it get worse,

Jordan Harbinger: and I don't know if that's working.

I mean, I see fentanyl and stuff, and fentanyl deaths are down in the last 12 months, which is, I don't know.

Tegan Broadwater: Well, that kind of changed the game just because it's so lethal and you get. Surprised people that are taking the drugs are ignorant to it or don't care or prefer it. I mean that the people in the street versus people like us who just look at it and be like, oh my gosh, this is gonna be the worst thing.

If it's LA Fentanyl, then a user's like, oh no, it's great. The scariest thing about

Jordan Harbinger: fentanyl is one, how lethal is, like you said, but two, where it really freaks me out is I see people that I know that are like, Hey, my friend's having a going away party. These are not people who normally do drugs [00:08:00] or it's like a bunch of lawyers or something like that, and somebody just buys cocaine, but they get it from their cousin's friend instead of their usual guy and has fentanyl and they're dead.

Yeah, and that's scary because certain people who use drugs recreationally like to think, look man, I'm spending $500 on these drugs. It's for a party. I do this once a year. We don't overdo it. Those people are now dying from drug overdoses, from fentanyl, and I. The gross truth about it is people care more when it's like recreational, high performing drug users than when it's somebody who has spiraled out of control for the last five years.

Going from a back injury to taking heroin to then doing fentanyl in the street and has been homeless for three years. It sucks. And people will can send me the Nest DS emails they want. But it's true. Society just cares about those people. That's crazy. Which is a shame.

Tegan Broadwater: Those are the innocence.

Jordan Harbinger: Those, that's true.

People aren't

Tegan Broadwater: even really taking it on purpose.

Jordan Harbinger: That's a good point. A lot of the drug users that I've known, because they were college wrestlers and did something weird to their back, started taking pills after [00:09:00] a surgery, their pill prescription got cut off, but they were already hooked on this pain meds.

So they started buying it on the street and then when their source ran out, they started doing heroin, which they didn't wanna do. They just wanted their doctor to keep prescribing 'em, but the doctor wouldn't. 'cause it's been five years or something and they have to act criminally in order to get what they need.

And then they're hooked on fentanyl and they're like, what the hell? I was a division one wrestler.

Tegan Broadwater: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: How am I a junkie now? Yeah, that's the scariest part of this for a lot of people. 'cause it's easy to say this is someone else's problem. But as somebody who does exercise every day, I'm like, I would take a pain pill if I slipped a disc.

Oh wait. I could become a junkie in about three years through the exact same process. And it's one of those things where once the consequences become possible for you, it's, it's a much bigger problem now. Now we better pay attention to this. Of course it might affect me. Yeah.

Tegan Broadwater: That's everybody though, is it?

That makes me feel better. Everybody lives in their own little tunnel and like I said, they'll bitch about politics or whatever until there's some kind of benefit for them. Then they'll pick that candidate even if they're a complete idiot. Otherwise. Yeah, I can't [00:10:00] imagine what you're talking about right now.

Jordan Harbinger: Nevermind. I don't wanna get into this. Yeah. Um, so dealers, you say in the book, never do business from their house. I would be a terrible drug dealer because made sense to me. But I probably would've just invited people into my backyard to sell drugs. I'm in the right business. Maybe you are. Yes. But some of these guys had you in their house.

So what does that tell you when somebody's like, Hey, come on over, and you're like, oh, he actually lives here.

Tegan Broadwater: Yeah, it's a super, uh, show of trust, obviously, because usually, like I said, they don't invite you to the place where they rest their head. There's too much to lose, even though essentially it's the one environmental aspect that they can control when you think of it from a strategic security standpoint.

But it's also where they're most vulnerable because you see where they live, where you can catch 'em at any given time on any given day because they've gotta sleep at some point and they just don't wanna show people that, or they just do their business elsewhere, so they're not showing off their kids or their girlfriends or whatever it is.

But yeah, for somebody. In my [00:11:00] case in particular, it was a big gesture of trust to say, come over to the house or whatever. 'cause typically they would just meet you somewhere, or I'd be parked out in the driveway, hit 'em up, somebody else would come out and do some kind of proxy handoff type thing or whatever.

And so I had done so many of that in reverse that I think they just knew I was extra cautious and just had developed trust by then. That's just one of those big signs to me like, oh man, this guy trusts me enough to come to his actual house.

Jordan Harbinger: It seems like a bad idea for them to put their guard down like that.

Is that a mistake on their part or is it a business decision to say, I'm gonna show this guy that I trust him enough to bring him into my house and it might benefit our

Tegan Broadwater: business relationship? That's a good question. I don't know if they were motivated by anything other than at that point they trusted me, so it was laziness.

Well, convene says straight

Jordan Harbinger: up to

Tegan Broadwater: me. That's what I was wondering.

Jordan Harbinger: Is it a concerted decision? Like I'm gonna have my closest contacts over. You see the Godfather, they invite all the guys to the daughter's wedding and it's like, look, we're social, we're friends. You're close enough to my family. It's my daughter's wedding.

It's a whole [00:12:00] thing. You're invited. It seems like gangster version of that is look, sit in my kitchen while my wife makes us some eggs and we'll do the deal there. Right now you're in the inner circle, but it sounds like what you're saying is the guy was like. I don't wanna drive all the way downtown, just it's fine.

Come to my house. Yeah.

Tegan Broadwater: And that's a presumption on my part. They still played the movie role. I'd walk in, they'd close the burglar bar cage and lock it and shut the door and then he'd sit back on his couch with a couple 40 fives pointed out. Like it's some kind of, okay. Um, we will start rolling on this, but I just attributed to that it still was a leap of faith though, in their part.

Yeah. 'cause it said in practice, even with people that were fellow gang members, they didn't do as much of that. I would say I was the only non-G gang member that I knew of that was actually in somebody's house wheeling and dealing at that point.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Tell me how the Crips do business. 'cause it actually sounds quite a bit like a real business where they open up a test market, they run.

There are guys in there, and then suddenly they go, oh, this is a serious money maker. We gotta get an [00:13:00] experienced branch manager to go run these few blocks. It sounds kinda like that.

Tegan Broadwater: It sort of is. Yeah. It's sophisticated enough to where you think that they have an appreciable talent to actually run a business, but at the same time, they're street thugs.

So there's, these are 25 to 29 year olds trying to do a thing, but they're still street thugs. So in terms of their common sense is a little bit limited because their goals are to support the gangs. They're still so selfish that they're infighting amongst different sets within the same gang and things like that.

If they were really that prolific at running a business, then you wouldn't have different sets within the Crip organization. You'd have Crips as a whole. They could conquer quite a bit, but they're so fragmented. You just take on one aspect of it and take those down. You have a bunch of people there. Then you take other ones down and you can actually get sometimes other sets of Crips to help you infiltrate.

Different sets for the sake of territorial command or whatever.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's interesting. 'cause [00:14:00] of course, from the outside we think, oh, there's Crips and there's Bloods, Crips are all on the same team. The Bloods are all on the same team, and it's like pretty serious business. But it sounds like almost from block to block, it's like those guys don't get along with those other guys.

And those guys don't get along with those other guys. And these guys are doing business with the Bloods, but those guys won't do business with the other Crips. And it's like, well, what the hell's the point then? Why wear the blue? Why have the colors, why have the jersey? Why have it doesn't mean anything?

You're still shooting each other. Well,

Tegan Broadwater: yeah. And the best thing to compare to is again, that common enemy concept, is that when there is a threat from bloods or law enforcement, they will collaborate a lot more. 'cause then you know, hey, this is some kind of threat and blah, blah, blah. And they'll get together and do more in that aspect.

But yeah, in terms of just doing the business, they would set up houses like they'd have, somebody's got a real estate license. And he would set up all these rentals and then put some chicks in there that have an id, and they would sit in there and then the dealers would send their crews in and they'd have these mid-level guys running the house.

Somebody would make a drop under the engine compartment, [00:15:00] uh, the hood of the car that's in the backyard, and then they'd sell that throughout the day. They'd break it up and sell it. They've got somebody that cooks it in a separate place. So they're making all these drops at these different houses and they put all these little worker bees to go in there and distribute it throughout the day.

So even if you hit a house, typical narcotics operations or trying to even get the gangs through narcotics, which I was doing, you'd knock a house down, you can try to get some intel, but you're still getting. Low level people, and then you've got somebody that actually is the renter in the home that isn't associated with the people.

So the renter's shielded there in terms of prosecution. And then you've got dudes that certainly don't live there. So finding mail, and if they have drugs in there but they're not in actual possession, it makes it a real difficult case to make each time. It was just a pain in the ass for me. I was hitting houses to try to hit the same people three and four times so that I could then call the district attorney's office and say, alright, this case that you have on so-and-so, I know that you're gonna plead it out because this is how you do it.

But there's three other [00:16:00] ones, and I think they're attached to some different prosecutors in the same office. And maybe you could create a case out of all these and actually give these people some time.

Jordan Harbinger: I

Tegan Broadwater: see.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It's probably harder to prove you didn't know what was going on when there's three separate cases on your property.

Yeah. With different people that you have known associations with. We can go and prove this or you can stay in jail for six months 'cause we're gonna find out that you did this. But yeah, if it's just one guy did a drug deal in your

Tegan Broadwater: driveway, but you find him, he swears he doesn't live there and I don't have anything to do with this.

And then three other times, law enforcement finds you there at three other dates with dope and guns in proximity. Then circumstantial, you have something you would know

Jordan Harbinger: starts to look bad at some point when it keeps happening. Wow. You have the worst luck, man. You keep getting arrested with drugs and guns near you all the time.

They're never yours. That are never yours. It's insane. Wow. You should probably keep better company. You said the key skills are count and kill. This is probably a dumb question, but I don't care. Is every gang member violent? Because it seems like they have to be, but it also seems like if you [00:17:00] wanna run a business, shouldn't you find smart people to do it?

Tegan Broadwater: I don't know. Well, the tag on that question is profound of course, but I think no is the answer. But it depends on to what extent if you work for a company that essentially. Makes its, hey, on the backend, bullying people into doing business, and it's some kind of illegal whatever, and you work for that company.

Knowing that that goes on, there's some culpability that goes on, but obviously there are extremes in how people act in terms of who's the most violent, who's just a kind of a connector. There's always those guys that I would run into that just know all these fools, but aren't really at a level to where they can just make a perfect introduction in terms of enforcement, a lot of those guys that are the most violent end up either knocked out in prison or running the show if they're smart.

My kingpin was involved in several murders, but was out and had gotten smart and was running stuff to where this dude's never [00:18:00] got his hands on anything. So he's running from a ghost. Everybody knows who he is, but he's not driving to houses and delivering stuff. He's dealing with the Mexican Connect, pulling in 250 KA week, moving product in this one part of town.

It's just pretty unbelievable.

Jordan Harbinger: Is that his operating capital or is that his profit? 250 KA week. That was his profit. Wow. So these guys are making a million dollars in profit. How much do you think these kingpins are personally

Tegan Broadwater: taking in? That's a great question. 'cause when you talk about how organized the business is, these guys at the top got really smart.

There's a reason why you're involved in several murders and you're a strong arm and you're smart enough to be a leader, but you're not driving a fricking Porsche around with Yeah. 21 inch wheels and whatever. Yeah. Drawing attention to yourself. Sure. So these guys are living in modest houses, driving okay cars and just doing their thing.

And the lower on the totem pole you get, the more you see the money being squandered. [00:19:00] We had an informant in one of my cases where we ended up paying him like 50 K for all of his help. He'd helped us for several months doing this one case and took him two months to spend the 50 K. And this is a guy that lives in a rental in the hood, and it was just a shame.

He bought two cars that ended up getting loaned out and stolen, and then he bought a kilo and he's, I was like, dude, when you get to that point, you're like, yes, there's a level of sophistication, but ultimately they're not applying themselves to really learn how to run a true business. They just outpower each other along every part of the path and then don't really have that financial responsibility unless you're one of those kingpins.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it seems like these kingpin guys are, it's almost like they're smart enough or maybe they're just violent enough. Shouldn't they be making enough money and going, alright if I can't buy expensive things? 'cause it puts me on the radar too much. I gotta stash this money. Eventually I can retire. I mean, is there any success story of anybody who's just like, worked really hard, made a bunch of money, and then was like, I'm gonna go [00:20:00] live in the suburbs of Atlanta in a really nice house and pretend I made it all from this car wash.

There has to be, come on man. Yeah, there has

Tegan Broadwater: to be. And I was, I swore because of the amount of money that was coming in, I swore that when my kingpin went down, that money was somewhere. We were raiding little storage places that we found in associates names. Everything that was completely empty, looked, cleaned out, and all of a sudden his wife is starting to deal with these same people at the same level and picking up where he left off, I think kept thinking, man, she's not equipped to do this.

No. And within a couple of months of the roundup, 'cause they hadn't even transferred or completely tried and sent to their long-term federal facility, she got whacked. And so I'm thinking, okay, now the money's really somewhere. Because sure, at one point you thought, well, he's handing her the reins and she's gonna continue this business.

Then there's still active money somewhere. But when she's gone, that's sitting somewhere. It's not like she handed it off to somebody 'cause she didn't expect to die that night. [00:21:00] So I think there still might be some money somewhere. But it, as you know too, it's difficult. You go do 30 years in Fed and then get out and all of a sudden dig up some kind of treasure and then pretend you're gonna live an honest living and start with that kind of money.

That's also really a sophisticated process.

Jordan Harbinger: You've gotta launder it somehow, but then also not have it be in your name so that when you get out of prison, you can access it and it doesn't get seized.

Tegan Broadwater: Yeah, that's a sophisticated move. And again, at every level you're talking about something else. And again, this was a big city gang they were trying to infiltrate, so that was their primary method of.

I don't have to have a job because I'm part of the market here. But it wasn't like some kind of ingenious thing where they're just doing the dope game and somebody at the top is just doing their thing and then stepping out and bugging, taking their winnings and moving to another country or something.

It just didn't work like that 'cause they were all homies Still.

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Again, the course is totally free over@sixminutenetworking.com. Now back to Teagan Broadwater. I think a lot of people are probably wondering how a white dude infiltrates the Crips. How does that happen? Because at first when I heard about your story, I was like, Tegan Broadwater not a typical name for. A black dude, but what do I know?

Tegan Broadwater: That sounds kind of Nordic suspiciously Little bit.

Jordan Harbinger: But then I don't know. What do I know? And then I talked to you on the phone and I was like, I'm suspecting that this person might actually be Caucasian. And then you said, yeah, but not a lot of people expected a white dude to infiltrate the Crips. And I was like, okay, okay.

There's a story here.

Tegan Broadwater: Yeah, of course. And that's really the beauty of undercover is I think the studying that I did and the cases that I read about and the people that I talked to in terms of how they managed to succeed in cases and failing cases. Yeah. Everybody kept saying, you've gotta modify your behavior and try to fit into this group and that group.

And it was difficult for me to even get into the narcotics unit or to do some of that stuff because I'm just a big [00:26:00] white stiff. Yeah. And then like we have these poor minority neighborhoods that are having all these crime issues and we need somebody that can fit into the profile or whatever. And I'm like, man, that's just not how it works.

So yeah,

Jordan Harbinger: try talking with a New Jersey accent and then they'll trust you. I mean it, she seems like it's too tall of an order. Everyone in the Crips and Bloods, do you have to be African

Tegan Broadwater: American or is it not? Uh, they've, they've made some exceptions. I don't know if it's widely accepted, but again, they have so many sects throughout a lot of those things that you'll find some Hispanic folks, occasionally find some white folks.

But I would say 95, 90 6% okay. African American. But if I showed up fat wearing gold and tats all over my face and some missing teeth and maybe some teardrops, I probably could have tried to get an association. But that wasn't my, really, my goal anyway, I almost got more information. I. Fitting in by standing out.

'cause I thought, I'm not just white. I'm white. You're glowing. I'm white.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Tegan Broadwater: So I just thought, man, your refrigerator liked, gives you a sunburn. So [00:27:00] I came in as a guy from South Texas and Austin area where my connection had been busted by the feds and I was moving into a new area just 'cause to get away from the heat, but keep my game going so that it appeared as though I was a big time player coming into a new town.

So making these little inquiries were reasonable, but also wasn't making buys from the small time guys. So the easiest way for me to start was to go down onto the blocks and take somebody with me that did fit a little bit more over the profile and say, I'm new to town, but I'm not here to play. This isn't my game.

I do powder cocaine. I don't do any hard stuff or whatever, but I'm just hooking my boy up over here. He is trying to get his game going and I would make it all about him that ask me a bunch of questions. I'm not gonna ask you questions. You don't have to ask me. Now. This is all about him. You can ask him the questions that you want.

And I'd pull in and he would make an order for some crack cocaine, and then they would come over and bring it to him, and then I would hand him the money and we'd make that transaction. That way I'm pretending like I'm trying to be the one that's being [00:28:00] extra cautious. I see. I'm gonna fight your cautiousness with my cautiousness saying Look smart.

Yeah. I'm actually not ready to do this because my game is way above your head.

Jordan Harbinger: So are you kind of pretending you're bank rolling? This young dude? Yeah. It's almost like poker, right? So you get a poker player who's pretty good, but he's 25. And then you get some guy, like some tech bro, who goes, I'm not that good at poker, but I do have $500,000 and you can use it.

And then we split the winnings or however that works. Yeah, that's almost like what you're doing with drugs And the person that you're bringing around, is this somebody that's just been arrested before and that's why they're working with you? Or is it another undercover?

Tegan Broadwater: Yeah, in this case it's exactly what it was.

It was somebody that was trying to work a case off. Those are really hit and miss. But this was a perfect way for me to get in. 'cause then I could be seen at least doing something where everything went without a hitch. And I was also being uber cautious. 'cause normally in the blocks that we're talking about, where they called the fishbowl, those little six square block area.

I mean, you know, even white people coming down there to do any business. I see. It was [00:29:00] just, it was a gang haven. And the only other people in there that weren't gang affiliated were just trying to make it. But had to live with all this violence in a prostitute hotel at the end of one of the entrances.

One way in, one way out. So I just thought, everyone thought it was presumptuous anyway, that I even had the plan. My boss laughed, my informant laughed or sipping whiskey at Eats. Really? He just laughed his ass off. It's not a good sign. You know what? The city council and the chief of police and the mayor, it all said, alright, this is a nuisance.

This area is a big problem. Sure. And we need to do something about it. And so they started doing all the typical things, jump outs and writing warrants and hitting try holds. What's a, what's a jump out? Just. Driving an unmarked van into the thing and all of a sudden, you know, 10 cops bail out and just try to grab everybody that's running and that doesn't sound super effective.

But what do I know? You'd be surprised. And when you're talking low levels, you can get somebody that's got something in their pocket that's running and you end up finding 'em. They'll give up something. Oh, I see what you mean. Yeah. This is like the Giuliani stop and frisk type of stuff. Yeah. You pull up and then you just [00:30:00] top out of the van.

When everybody starts running, you're saying stop because you know that it's an active drug selling area and then people are running so you have a reason to at least stop them and ask questions. At that point anyway, none of that stuff was working 'cause it, there was too much information back in there to where there was too much heat.

Why

Jordan Harbinger: did they

Tegan Broadwater: call it the

Jordan Harbinger: fishbowl?

Tegan Broadwater: Law enforcement deemed it the fishbowl because every time you went in, we went in too deep if you're answering calls down there or whatever. 'cause it was just a super violent area in a generally violent part of town. It was just a really. Focused part of where? Where is this?

Literally in the United States? It is in southeast Dallas-Fort Worth area. I see. Okay. Yeah. Every city has a similar area. Fort Worth is what, the 10th largest city in the us. And everything is predicated upon the way that the practices are handed down when they started here and la and once you get through the prison systems, then that's where you accumulate more intel.

Wow. Interesting. More people that you can put out on the streets and you can take this set and now start a Texas [00:31:00] chapter essentially and do that kind of thing.

Jordan Harbinger: I see. Well, it all originated here in Los Angeles. I guess that's not a huge surprise. No, of

Tegan Broadwater: course

Jordan Harbinger: not. Yeah. Capital. Right. So there's regular families living in this area, which is, of course there are because it's a neighborhood, but.

Who lives there. The kids can't walk to school, I

Tegan Broadwater: assume in a place like this. No. And at some point people are like so offput by gang violence and stuff like let 'em go kill each other. That's fine if there's no collateral damage. The fact is you have people that have been living there for generations and they're old and poor and just trying to make it and they can't just up and move.

So it's not as simple as that. And then you've got these kids that are leaving the home and living six deep with an aunt next door and all of a sudden they get a quick way to make a buck and then they turn into something. But by the time they're in their mid twenties, they be part of the enterprise and it's just bringing this nuisance and danger around all these other people.

They're trying to raise kids and do whatever they can. And that's really the motivation anyway in this whole thing as that's why I swore to my wife, this is gonna take me three [00:32:00] months, I think, to get through it. I already had my target list, thought I could get this knocked out in three months and at least make some good cases and get these people out of that part of the neighborhood and clean it up and see if they'll sell the houses off and then leave the people that are just trying to survive.

Sure. I think it's the misconception about any poor part of town is where the crime is very high. It's still a very small percentage of people who are committing the crime. That's sad. Yeah. Yeah. '

Jordan Harbinger: cause like you said, there's a lot of people who have young kids and then there's old folks who can't move and they're just stuck with all these.

Guys who were 25 years old shooting each other. Yeah. And the bullets going through your living room window while you're eating dinner. It's ridiculous. Yeah. To say the least. And these guys are so violent. I mean, you mentioned in the book people are getting executed 'cause somebody sticks a rifle up their ass and fires and it's just like super sociopathic sounding.

Tegan Broadwater: Yeah. That was one of the guys that was a part of the Crips, but again, was robbing other Crips. He was just going against the whole code. So he eventually [00:33:00] robbed one of the upper echelon guys' parents. Geez. And tried to get them to search in the attic, one of the dads in a wheelchair and everything. It was a really pathetic scenario.

Geez. Just super, super brazen about the way he went about things. And they didn't just kill him, they,

Jordan Harbinger: oh, so he deserved it I guess. Nevermind man. I'm fine with it. I guess so. Yeah. Okay.

Tegan Broadwater: Essentially was a gang beef. But you do see somebody that's out on the street and I would get a lot of it. 'cause they're just testing me too.

They just think I was naive in the beginning until they thought that I was some kind of big timer. They'd say, man, I got this kilo 11 K, you can get it. And I'm thinking, who'd you steal that from? Yeah. 'cause it says it too cheap. Is that what that is? Yeah. That's somebody that steals your car and then tries to resell it at a 10th of the value just to unload it.

No thanks.

Jordan Harbinger: You said by the time you were doing undercover work or you wanted to do undercover work and infiltrate the Crips, you had executed 500 warrants. I,

Tegan Broadwater: I'm gonna assume that's a lot. 'cause it sounds like a lot. That was part of my motivation to get into the narcotics unit because again, I'd been turned [00:34:00] down three times.

I didn't get into the fourth time. My interviews went great. I knew all the laws and so all I could do in order to really get it with the issues that they had, and they were looking for a profile is to just outperform and show that I can accomplish this stuff. Anyway, so then I show up and I say, I have six informants on the books.

I've done this many buys. You know, I've done this many warrants, you know, so I would do these small time warrants. I got a team, this SWAT certified, and we'd go do our patrol stuff and then after patrol. I would show them where I'd made the buys during their shift and then we'd go hit a house and then tear everything and find all the evidence and whatever.

And there were just small time dope houses that narcs didn't want to hit 'cause they're looking for bigger stuff. But it was a good experience for me. 'cause again, it's, we're using hand me down squat stuff is all expired and trying to, if you

Jordan Harbinger: get shot, this might just disintegrate. So try to take a shot.

What expires? Obviously we

Tegan Broadwater: didn't take it too seriously.

Jordan Harbinger: It's really cool. Use it. Yeah. We didn't read

Tegan Broadwater: the

Jordan Harbinger: labels.

Tegan Broadwater: Yeah, it was obviously not the steel plates, but apparently they replaced all their [00:35:00] stuff and then we took these old used up helmets and whatever. Let's a stain on mic. Have one, don't worry about it.

This the old van, sometimes the van would break down halfway on your way to the location. This piece of junk vans, we didn't have much of a budget to work with, but again, I was just efficient at making either covered buys using an informant or. Learning how to do a little bit more undercover on a small scale, doing little small deals and then getting into those houses later to build evidence.

But just the fact that you can drive a van up and get in the stick and execute it a dynamic search warrant, kick the door down and do it was great experience. And that was part of the inspiration too.

Jordan Harbinger: I'm just imagining you have a bunch of guys laid out in the front lawn with the handcuffs on and the guy's like, Hey, the van won't start again.

It's like, call a couple Uber xls, get these guys booked. Who's got a minivan at home? Take the car seats out. Bring it over here. Way more embarrassing. Oh man. Like why are there so many Cheerios on the floor of this cop car? Don't worry about it. Shut up. That's practically what it was.

Tegan Broadwater: Seriously bad. I don't know where they even got it from, but they were like, here, y'all can use this.

'cause [00:36:00] we were doing a good job. Hitting these places on a regular basis. And the fact I would go in and make buys on Monday, write the warrant, hit the place on Tuesday, do the catch up stuff, and file the paperwork for my next one on Wednesday, and hit another house on Thursday. And to the point where the hood came to me and my informants were like, Hey, they call it Task Force Tuesdays and Thursdays.

I'm like, I'm like, oh, really? Is my that predictable? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So that's when we were doing just the small time stuff, but I was just trying to hit as many places as I could. Again, just to, when I go in for my interview, I can say, okay, I've got a couple hundred warrants I've done and this is the case.

This is what we've gleaned from those cases. These are my informants. I've learned how to work them, and I'm not working in a bright white neighborhood just trying to bust TCU kids. I just showed that you don't have to fit a profile necessarily to TCU is

Jordan Harbinger: college kids. Yeah. I would imagine busting a college kid is like, I.

The rookie job like, all right, find some guy who sells weed and also delivers sandwiches. See if you can actually make an arrest.

Tegan Broadwater: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: As long as you find [00:37:00] ketamine in the sandwich, maybe that'd be a good case. Yeah. My buddy who I grew up with, he used to deliver sandwiches and he would also sell marijuana.

So he was like a good gig for him because he's driving around all day and he's got sandwiches in the car and it's not like really suspicious if he's going walking around buildings. 'cause he is the Jimmy John's guy for God's sake. Of course he's yeah. Plausible deniability. Yeah. So sometimes people would order sandwiches and he'd be like, he'd show up and they'd be like, all right Mark, we want an eighth and thank you.

Got my Hunter's club, you know? And he is like, of course, he's probably like a lawyer now, actually a good guy. But he told me he got caught once and the way that he got caught was he had stopped selling weed. He didn't wanna run into any trouble and he was graduating. He didn't really need the money anymore.

He was gonna get a real job. That was the plan all along. It is for a lot of college kids who sell weed. Sure. And somebody was like, I really need it. I really need it. I really need it. You're the only guy I know. I really need it. And just kept pestering him. And he was like, fine, I can get you an eighth of good stuff.

Just tell me where to drop it off. And [00:38:00] that guy, he was like rolling over on him and basically, yeah, he was a snitch. 'cause he had gotten caught doing something else. I can't remember what it is. And so he was like, the rule is if you're in the game, you're in the game. 'cause then you're being careful. And he's like, 'cause he thought about it a lot when he was doing his probation.

The reason I got caught was I didn't take any of my usual precautions at all with transportation vetting, making sure this whole thing seemed legit. And he's like 20, 20 hindsight the whole thing stunk to high hell, I just didn't pay attention. 'cause he was like done with it and let his guard down fully.

And so he's like, when I was actively doing this, I never would've fallen for this particular trick. I don't remember all the circumstances. I thought that was kind of interesting. Yeah, because I suppose it makes sense. Some of the guys that you busted, like the guy who had you over to his house, if he was really thinking he probably wouldn't have had you over to his house.

He would've been like, no, I have these rules for a reason. They're there for a reason. That's a reason. It's a rule. Maybe I don't want the cop in the kitchen. Oh, Teagan's not a cop. Ah. The one time I make an exception.

Tegan Broadwater: [00:39:00] Yeah, it's the guy. And those are interesting 'cause those are a little bit. Sniffing entrapment when you really are like, nah, I'm completely retired.

And you're like, come on man, just one more time. Just do it. I know you're not doing it anymore. I mean, that's a little bit of a different situation. And it wasn't a cop, it was a snitch anyway, but

Jordan Harbinger: I can't remember exactly, but I think it was a snitch. I think it was just like, okay, well you're gonna be on probation.

He didn't try to fight it. This is entrapment. It was like an eighth of marijuana for God's sake. This is such a small amount of marijuana. I think a prosecutor would've gone, why am I freaking looking at this? Even in Ann Arbor, Michigan, it's, what are we doing here?

Tegan Broadwater: But that was a while ago too. The nineties.

Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people don't recognize how badly marijuana was looked upon back in the nineties. And you go back to the sixties and there's people doing 20 year stints for a half a pound of marijuana. I mean, it's. Obviously the culture has just shifted. Even in places like Texas and Florida where they'll be the last to get on board, they still don't really enforce a lot of stuff 'cause they just don't play unless you walk around with weight, obviously.

But you know somebody like that. And interestingly, the [00:40:00] way you describe the college kid is a lot of how these, whether they be gang bangers or just drug dealers in this poor neighborhood, fall into the same situation. 'cause they'll say, Hey man, you know, I'm 19 years old, I'm just trying to make it, I need to get through this.

But they can't afford a college. They're just trying to save up to do this. But what's readily available is crack. And they can make it be even, even more. And it makes you wonder, well, if crack were available in some of the ritzy more places, you could do weed and make a little bit. But if you decided you wanted to do crack also, like there's 200 people around here that would totally buy it from you, would you do that for a, you know, risk The felony, knowing that there were plenty of people on your neighborhood blocks that would.

Feed you that money. Yeah. It makes it an interesting thing for an immature kid who just, it's a thought experiment, man. Look back in the nineties,

Jordan Harbinger: cocaine was bad, but there were still kids who were from New York and stuff who were like, it's not that bad. My parents do it. You know, whatever. And so you'd go to these parties with these New York kids, this is Ann Arbor, Michigan, and they would have cocaine.

And I was like, [00:41:00] I don't wanna be anywhere near this stuff. And then when I went and moved to New York after college, I was like, oh, they're not kidding. This stuff is just like everywhere. And there's a lot of casual users. Even in the nineties, when was this? This is like 2000, 2001 by the time I graduated.

Oh wow. That's crazy. And New York had a lot of casual users. I worked on Wall Street. So guys would, I'd be like, I am so tired, I gotta go buy a Red Bull. And they're like, that ain't shit. Try this. Yeah. And I'm like, you're a fifth year associate at a firm. Why do you have this in your desk? And he is like, well, try it.

And then you'll know why I have it in my desk. Because at 11:00 PM on a Sunday when you've been working for seven days. It beats rep Superman, by the way. Yeah. You wanna finish this brief or not pal? And I'm like, okay. So in Ann Arbor, there were kids that were doing it. And I remember my friend Jason was like, I got this cocaine.

And I was like, oh, I don't want any part of this. And I was like, why did you get this? And he goes, Larry. And I go, we only know one guy named Larry. So, which Larry? And he is like, Larry. And I'm like, the physics major is a guy who's got like a PhD thing going at Caltech after [00:42:00] this. And he is like, yeah. And I couldn't believe it because it wasn't like junkies who were rolled up in a gutter who were screwing up their lives.

It was like the guy who's in medical school is also the cocaine dealer.

Tegan Broadwater: Man, that's so whack though too. He's really putting his entire future at risk.

Jordan Harbinger: Dumb ass kid stuff where the consequences are just illusory and you can't quite wrap your mind around it. But yeah, it was exactly

Tegan Broadwater: that and it ends up being a felony.

Even after you get out, you're still screwed. You can't go back and try it again. I mean, you're done. It's probably really hard to get a job as a tenured professor if you have a cocaine felony on your record, even if it was 30 years ago. I mean it's, it's pretty amazing how punishing those felonies can be.

Yeah, that's

Jordan Harbinger: terrifying. 'cause a lot of these guys were perfectly nice, normal guys. They just liked to dabble in a little bit of the white powder. And I remember being like terrified of this stuff. 'cause I grew up in the eighties and nineties where this is your brain on drugs. Any questions? And it's, oh, I don't want that to happen to me.

Yeah. I have plenty of questions. Yeah, I have a lot of questions, but I don't want this guy to answer him 'cause he is freaking me out with his frying pan. [00:43:00] Now it's time for me to sling some dope deals on the fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Audible.

People always ask me how I managed to get through so much content, especially since I prep for every interview. I'm talking two to three books a week, and it's all thanks to Audible. I've got Audible in my ears while I'm getting my 10,000 steps in running errands, even doing stuff around the house. I don't mess with physical books anymore at all.

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If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support our amazing sponsors. They make the show possible. All of the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the podcast are searchable and clickable on the website at Jordan harbinger.com/deals.

If you can't find a code you're not sure if the code exists, definitely email usJordan@jordanharbinger.com. I'm happy to surface codes for you. It is that important that you support those who support the show. Now for the rest of part one, with Teagan Broadwater water, I understand you think a lot of the advice given to undercover is nonsense.

I touched on this at the top of the show. One of the tips is make your car dirty, get an earring. Was he gonna talk with an accent? And I'm thinking, this can't be real. Is this really what people are learning? You said you had no training, so I don't know what's worse that training or no training [00:47:00]

Tegan Broadwater: for me. I honestly just, what I've learned from the people who are really successful in real long-term undercover work, which is different than going to buy a something and then make it a buy bust, are that you keep a personality type that is really close to your own.

I. Yeah. And I think it was just proven of the fact that when I was trying to get in the narcotics unit and I was figuring out how to make these buys and figuring out how to convince people to do what it was, it was just all about leveraging my own personalities instead of trying to memorize 50 different things.

And then when they start asking you these 20 questions, you're messing 'em up. 'cause you're trying to remember who you're supposed to be and all this kind of stuff. It makes it worse. Yeah. In an exigent circumstance. I don't wanna have to think of A through Z. Yeah, yeah. You wanna be congruent under stress, right?

Yeah. So I want to know that these things are high and tight and I just can worry about A through C and make some strategic choices at that point. And then, so I just give myself less to think about. 'cause it's stressful. Even in a successful deal or a successful day hangout, it's still stress.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:48:00] If I'm an undercover, I change my name.

But I'm still from a suburb of Detroit. I still moved to California. I still did a little bit of time when I lived in New York. Maybe I wasn't a lawyer in New York, but maybe I was. I don't know, working at a bar that I hung out at a lot in New York that's no longer open. Something like that. That way, if I have to recall it where I say, yeah, when I lived in New York and the guy's like, wait, I thought you said you lived in California.

This doesn't make sense. Oh no, I lived in New York before. Yeah. And I don't have to change my story. It's actually my story. It just with a little 15%

Tegan Broadwater: bullshit. And that's when it would even come into play. 'cause what I found before I got into it, I had everything set up. My backstory's kind of set. I've got these IDs and I just kept thinking.

I dunno when I'm gonna use an ID anyway. These people ask to see my id. I'm gonna be like, you freaking kidding me. You wanna see my Id see your, before

Jordan Harbinger: I sell you this ki of uncut cocaine, I need to see some identification to make sure you're over 18. Really? I mean

Tegan Broadwater: really it's interesting 'cause obviously all that stuff gets handled and there's been scenarios where people have been shaken down and they're in a place where they can't leave and they've gotta recite stuff and it's just kind of the way you're stuck.

So it's [00:49:00] necessary. But in general, if you're playing that game, a lot of these guys amongst themselves, I don't really know what this dude's full name is. I know he is this and, but I've known him since first grade, but I really don't know his whole name. His name is whatever is Jackbox, but I don't know what if his real name is John.

Jordan Harbinger: Right. I never knew that.

Tegan Broadwater: Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, so, so for them to start asking, that's another way that I got in a lot easier is when they start giving me the 20 questions, I would immediately just resort to man. I don't mind answering a little bit, but we're not going here. I'm a professional and you obviously haven't done this enough to understand how this works and it doesn't work by me giving you a bunch of information.

You don't ask me anything. If you wanna do business, cool. If you don't want a business, also cool. 'cause I got other places that I

Jordan Harbinger: can go do

Tegan Broadwater: business.

Jordan Harbinger: I could see the ID thing coming in a little bit. Like you deliver the information in a way where the person thinks they're clever for getting it. Like maybe you need to chop a little bit off of a brick.

So you take out your ID and he notices it has your fake name on it, and then it's like, oh, his name is Tegan Narrow Water. I love it. Huh? I

Tegan Broadwater: love

Jordan Harbinger: it. Is that a realistic

Tegan Broadwater: Yeah. It sounds like a really creative [00:50:00] kind of way to just do something subtly to just bolster your own Yeah. Identities. You leave it on the

Jordan Harbinger: table when you look at it, and then you take it.

Okay. And then you pick your idea up and it's, of course he's eyeballing it, but you're just pretending you don't notice that. Yeah. Yeah. That's the kind of thing I feel like, yeah. I like thinking through this stuff. It's fun. Yeah. The part that wouldn't be fun for me is wondering if I'm gonna get shot. Yes.

That's the part that doesn't sound as fun. I know

Tegan Broadwater: I compare it to like jumping out of a plane with a parachute and you're not sure how to work it, but you just figure it out. Once you're outta the plane, you gotta figure it out. Once I got into the case, a lot of those things that I ran into, I couldn't anticipate, but I knew that a lot of the typical things might happen.

Somebody's gonna brandish a gun, somebody's gonna pull a gun on me or whatever, try to search me. They're gonna ask to do dope. All those things. I would run through as much of it as I could and try to figure out how can I manage to maneuver through those situations ahead of time. Yeah. So that, again, I don't get caught flatfooted and stutter over myself trying to think of what I'm supposed to say because I've thought through a lot of those

Jordan Harbinger: scenarios.

There's a point at which some [00:51:00] guy says like, brandishes a gun. He says, you want some of this, and you're just like, whatever, fool and roll your eyes. What are you actually thinking in that moment? 'cause I would not be thinking whatever fool. Idiot. You know, I'd be like, oh my God, this guy's threatening me with a weapon.

Tegan Broadwater: Yeah, well of course you are. And if you're talking about the guy that walking out in front of

Jordan Harbinger: the car. Yeah, yeah. So like how do you train yourself to do that without worry? Like, oh, he might actually shoot me when I'm like, whatever, sucker.

Tegan Broadwater: That's why I wonder if a lot of people could do a lot of this stuff.

You have to stay cool. I was staying cool. But of course, in your mind, you're running through scenarios. 'cause I'm thinking, I'm basically sitting on my piece because it's out of a holster, but sitting under my thigh. Right. But obviously if he's already brandishing something, I'm not gonna get it in time.

So I've gotta start thinking strategically about how I'm gonna do stuff. But typically you just want to engage in some kind of conversation and figure out what he wants. 'cause again, he's just talking to a bunch of bullshit at this point anyway. So you're like. Again, I'm supposed to be coming in as somebody bigger and better than these guys are used to 'cause I'm new, but [00:52:00] man, I've been through this game before, right?

And you guys are the novices. So I'm just playing it off like that. But yes, my brain is running through 800 things because again, I'm stuck there and thinking, okay, well I'm half trapped in this thing, but if I can talk to him, maneuver myself out of the card where we can be mono, e mono, that's great. But then if that's the case and I end up having a piece prepared and he's got eight other dudes that are also standing here, that's also not advantageous to be out of the car.

You and just gonna to run over this dude. That's where some of your training does come in, those scenarios where you've run, where people are coming up and doing these fake deals at the window and telling you to try to figure out what you're gonna do and you try to shoot somebody and you get wax bullets, tering all over the back of your neck, which don't feel good.

Oh

Jordan Harbinger: wow. That's a real thing. And

Tegan Broadwater: I wax bullets. I never thought about that. Oh dude. They'll leave good old Weps too. Yeah. You wear protective equipment, they get through the little crevices and Yeah, and do some, yeah. It's like

Jordan Harbinger: paintball where you're like, I thought I was wearing a protective neck gator.

Like, no, man. Not from five feet away. Yeah. When the guy hits it [00:53:00] five times in a row. Yeah. There was something in the book that I didn't fully understand, so you go and buy drugs and the guy I think is trying to sell you crack, and you're like, no, I don't wanna buy crack. My guess was that you wanted to find powdered cocaine, because that's the expensive ingredient in

Tegan Broadwater: crack.

It's essentially cocaine before it's cooked down into crack. And essentially crack is like a purified high in a really fast high. And that's what went into the poor neighborhoods through the eighties when it was created. But my objective in that instance was to try to move beyond the crack. 'cause what I wanted were the suppliers.

So I want, when you come in with bricks of cocaine, you're not buying bricks of crack. You're creating the crack from those bricks. So it's like baking powder and it's like crappy bite the grocery store. Yeah. And cocaine. Yeah. So they, they step on it or make it pure, however, they're gonna break it down.

But my objective at that point was to move past them because you're dealing with crack. By the time somebody's bought it, they've already [00:54:00] sent it to a house to cook. They've broke it into a hundred pieces and now you're giving it to me. I'm not interested in that. So by not being interested, first of all, culturally it made sense because, you know, I don't really have a game where people are looking for hard is what they would call it at the time.

Hard is crack or hard is cocaine, hard? Is crack. The powder was the cocaine powder. And then my objective again was, you need to introduce me to the guy you get it from ultimately

Jordan Harbinger: because if you're getting it after it's been cooked, this guy's an underling from the cook who's an underling from the guy who gets the cocaine.

You're skipping whatever three levels by refusing to deal with crack, which is gross anyways. But like you said, culturally it's sort of, you're not a druggie, you're not a user because you don't want crack, you want cocaine. It's Oh, so he's gonna cook it. Or he uses cocaine or his people that he sells to use cocaine so they have more money.

Because crack is just cheaper cocaine basically at that point, right?

Tegan Broadwater: Yeah. Well, it all breaks down into, you turn a hundred dollars into a million dollars pretty quick when you break it down into all those pieces like you [00:55:00] would anything else. You sell a car part by part, it's a lot of work, but once you sell it part by part, it's worth a lot more than just buying the car in the first place.

So it's same concept, but my objective, again, it was difficult in a drug case. It would be something that I could try to just work straight up that chain. But the problem was for me that even when I had somebody that was helping me get what I needed, I still had to figure out a way around that to go to somebody else, because this wasn't a drug case, it was a gang case.

So I'm thinking, okay, I've got all these gang members that are all connected and affiliated, and they're doing this business. This guy's kind of doing me righteous. He's getting powder, but I still need to move on to somebody. So I'm trying to find excuses to say, man, I can't trust you anymore, and move on to somebody else who he's affiliated with and still not have somebody get totally pissed off.

Because I'm trying to create a case where I'm locked and in a bunch of gang members, not necessarily just, oh, I finally got the dope I want, and we can close the door. Now,

Jordan Harbinger: do some of these folks think that if you ask a [00:56:00] cop if they're a cop, they have to answer truthfully. This is like a Hollywood movie thing, right?

I remember in the movie, blow Peewee Herman, whatever his real name is, I. Says, are you a cop? You have to say yes if you are. If not, it's entrapment and it's a joke because that's not true, right? That's not true. Yeah, yeah, of course it's not. So do you benefit from Hollywood

Tegan Broadwater: movies, miseducating people? I both benefit and lose some traction.

And the benefit was things like that. 'cause that was still the world on the street. They would ask you. I would ask them. I would leverage that same thing. Hey, are you a cop? You know, you gotta tell me. I would say the same thing to people that I was meeting. 'cause I had to pretend to be very suspicious too, because I'm supposed to be the guy.

Contrary to that though, at the period of time, which I was doing, this was the 2005 through 2008 and this particular case. There wasn't super sophisticated equipment. There was new equipment coming out, but it wasn't super reliable. And so when it comes to the wires you wear, they tape it to your chest in the movies and all this kind of stuff.

Yeah, yeah. Put on a t-shirt, that's what it was.

Jordan Harbinger: That sucks.

Tegan Broadwater: [00:57:00] Yeah, it totally sucks. 'cause it's like a tape recorder on your Yeah. Chest. Can you please do better than this? Oh, that's scary. So I never wore a wire for that reason. Yeah. Because I thought that's the most obvious freaking thing ever. All you have to do is even just messing around.

Just kinda shove me and be goofing around and figure out that what's going on here?

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, hold on a second.

Tegan Broadwater: Yeah, that's terrifying. I tried all kinds of other things that had some things that were on key chains and I used my phone at the time, the phone was just had a limited amount of space. You get 60 seconds, dude.

And yeah, I was literally recording one deal in the back of a car and it went off like some kind of alarm, like it had run outta space. Oh man. On the recorder. And I had to figure out like. The hell's going on with this damn Nokia. Yeah, I can't figure this out. I'm thinking, just forget

Jordan Harbinger: it. I'm not recording this.

Oh God. The modern equivalent would be an app on your phone that says police recorder basically. Totally ridiculous it when it's out. Police recorder time is up. Oh, what is that? That's just my kid sending me a text message. It's [00:58:00] just so sad. The technology is just so bad. It just makes no sense. You mentioned when people are suspicious of you, you just touched on this, in the dialogue that's in the book, you ask them questions back, you're kind of flipped the script to get them thinking about their answers.

Maybe instead of your answers, can you gimme an example of that? I think that's a good technique to deflect suspicion, and I'm wondering what other techniques you have to deflect. Suspicion.

Tegan Broadwater: It depends on the type of questioning, except I've gotten somewhere. They're just rattling off questions. I just say, man, you obviously are a novice.

You've never done this before. 'cause you don't ask somebody questions like that. If you're really in business to do real business, it's not how it works. Other times, like I said, I would pull up vouching for him and blah, blah. You heard about him and everything else. And then I would slow the game down before this guy starts saying, Hey man, good to meet you.

I'm gonna this and this. I'm, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I had a few questions. I wanna make sure your source is straight. Have you dealt with so-and-so before? Because that's where I'm getting to you. That's great. I'm glad you know him. But do you know my guy over here too? I also need to know that I'm connecting people that I trust to you, but [00:59:00] careful questioning, I didn't ask idiot questions.

Some of the low level folks would ask, lemme see your id. Can you prove that you're really who you are? I'm not gonna ask you to prove who you are either for doing this illicit game.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Tegan Broadwater: Then the idea is your best friend is saying, I'm cool and vice versa, so let's do business. I don't need you to have incriminating information on me.

I want to do business in that kind of world. It's ideal to know only so much. So the only way that I really would get great information on these guys is of course, to just figure out who they were, where they stayed, and then. Grab a license plate on my way out and then to work backwards. 'cause I had a little more sophisticated technology to work with.

Sure. In terms of figuring out exactly who they were, pull up a mugshot. I'm like, okay, I know exactly who this dude is. But even then, it was a lot less of a thing for those guys to be able to just get online, spend 20 bucks and figure out

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, who I

Tegan Broadwater: was necessarily.

Jordan Harbinger: That makes sense. So it seems like if there's supposed to be that distance between you and the person you're dealing with, giving away too many details about [01:00:00] yourself might be an indicator

Tegan Broadwater: that you're lying.

And so the way cops work, most of the time people talk about trade craft. I'm like, man, I think this is just so obvious to bad guys too. Anyway. But most cops are not doing long, long-term undercover work. They're doing short-term deals. They're gonna knock this guy down. If he gives up somebody else, they might go there and then two days later they're knocking everybody down and they just take what they can get.

You don't accept no for an answer when you're a cop working short term stuff like that. 'cause you only have one shot at this. You're just trying to get it over with. Even if it is a massive deal, it's a massive deal and it only happens once 'cause the serendipitous situation is about to happen. So they're trying to make this deal happen.

My whole approach was the opposite. I'm like, I'm happy to walk from this because what they really want is my money. And I say, well you're not gonna get my money until I'm absolutely positive that this is gonna work. So the cops will typically just try to push a deal to go forward and I just leveraged the complete opposite and was the first to say, you know what, that's okay.

You can keep asking questions, but I'm done here. [01:01:00] I'm not interested. Don't worry about it. You keep whatever you're gonna keep and I'll just get outta here so you're

Jordan Harbinger: not in a hurry to make the bust, which probably gives you a little bit

Tegan Broadwater: more.

Jordan Harbinger: Credibility, I guess is, it's

Tegan Broadwater: almost look compared to, again, in a normal business situation, and you would know this too, being the master, uh, the master master of nothing in terms of relationships and things like that.

You don't just walk up and meet somebody and then start pitching stuff. Oh yeah, definitely not. It's the same type of thing really. 'cause it's, that's the human nature part. 'cause if you knew for sure I was a gold mine and I knew for sure this is the best deal ever, we would just do it. But that's never really the case.

But the only way you've determined it's a gold mine is 'cause man, I've really gotten to know you. I really appreciate what you do. I know you as a person and at least have vetted you from people that I trust with my life to the point where let's do something serious. That's the way they work. I think it's more human nature than anything else.

This is a high trust

Jordan Harbinger: business. The drug game. It has to be because. I can't do a credit check on your LLC to make sure that [01:02:00] you are current. I can't get a proof of funds from your banker. There's no third party verification other than OT says you've been dealing with him or you sell good stuff or whatever.

I mean, that's as good as it gets,

Tegan Broadwater: right? Yeah. Oh, for sure. I mean, that's how you grow man. That's how you grow. Business is somebody is Jordan says, Hey man, this guy's good to go. I wanted to introduce him to you. I would just talk to him. I wouldn't even have to ask questions 'cause you're sending him, I trust you.

So I automatically will just talk to the guy.

Jordan Harbinger: You are about to hear a preview of The Jordan Harbinger Show with a black man who befriends members of the Ku Klux Klan.

JHS Clip: I don't support the KKK at all. I don't support that ideology, but I support people having the right to believe as they want to believe, as long as they don't cross the line and hurt people.

And to show, to prove that I will stick up for somebody else's rights has also led to people just like that sticking up for mine. And now I didn't convert anybody. I am the impetus for over 200 to make up their own minds to convert themselves [01:03:00] because I've given them reason to think about other things, you know, that make more sense than what they're currently doing.

It bothers me a great deal that we call ourselves the greatest nation. I. On the face of this earth. You know, we have to admit that there are some flaws here. I don't adhere to that statement that we are the greatest. Maybe I would bend and say that perhaps technologically we are the greatest. So how is it that we as Americans can talk to people as far away as the moon or anywhere on the face of this earth, but yet there's so many of us who have difficulty talking to the person who lives right next door.

This is the 21st century. This racist nonsense does not belong in any century, let alone the 21st. We are living in space age times, but there's still too many of us thinking with stone age minds.

Jordan Harbinger: For more on how Darryl Davis convinced 200 KKK [01:04:00] members to give up their robes, check out episode 540 on The Jordan Harbinger Show.

That's it for part one, part two, coming out in just a few days here, all things Tegan Broadwater will be in the show notes @jordanharbinger.com. Advertisers deals, discount codes, ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com/deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Also, our newsletter wee bit wiser.

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