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

Blake Cook, welcome to the show, man.

Thanks for having me, Sean. It's an honor to be here. It's an

honor to

have you. Yeah. Thank you.

So we met through Kyle. Yep. Kyle Morgan. Awesome. 1 of my favorite guests ever on this show.

Anamoy human. And, he is, man. He is. And, he connected with us, and and, I know you guys are working together.

Yep.

And, I'm just really thankful that that, that he made that connection because I've been looking forward to this interview since we spoke. So Appreciate it. So welcome to the show. But, so

I wanna do a just a full blown life

story with you, and I know you have a lot to say to the to the law enforcement community especially. Yep. I think a lot of those guys, the ones that are left anyways, are going through some some tough times

Yeah. Sure. Sure. With everything's changing.

And, and, man, it's just a shame what what has happened over the past, what, 4 or 5 years in law enforcement? Is that when it started? The whole 2020. Do you fund the police movement?

Do you fund the police? The after after the George Floyd incident is when it just it just spiraled downhill. Man, that's, well,

people are feeling it. People are seeing it. This is what happens when you shit on the cops. I mean Crime is up nationwide. It's crazy.

I mean, I see these I see these videos in where is it? San Francisco where people are just looting That's mind blowing. All. They're lose they're looting the department stores, Apple store. I mean, I've seen reels of them just walking in Apple Stores and just

Jewelry stores smashing glass, and then just leaving.

It's crazy.

That's not somebody has to pay for that. Yeah. Yeah. I would be I'd be infuriated if I was a owner of a store in 1 of those cities.

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

Because if you Yeah. If you try to if you try to do anything, they're gonna send you to jail for enforcing the law. It's, I feel so sorry for people for law enforcement officers in those areas because, you know, God forbid I had this conversation. Those guys, their job is to escape by any means necessary. They're very brave and they're bold.

They have no respect. They're broad daylight smashing glass, grabbing 1,000 of dollars of merchandise, and then leaving. We show up. What are we supposed to do? Ask them nicely?

Yeah. No. We have to chase them. We have to go hands on with them. And if they fight us and we have to use force, now the the mayor or the the governor, god forbid, or the police chief, they're gonna say, why didn't he let him go?

Was this is that a hill you wanna die on? Yeah. It is. Because you know what? I was hired to enforce the law, not different laws that you want me to enforce.

I was hired and took an oath to do my duty and to protect the laws and to protect innocent folks who are trying to make a living. Yes. Did they physically harm anybody? No. But that store owner has to come out of pocket for that.

You know? That hurts that family. That hurts the employees' families. They're not gonna get paid. Maybe they get laid off because of it.

Maybe the store shuts down. It has a domino effect. Yes. They didn't hurt nobody physically, but somebody has to deal with that. How about the PTSD they just caused those people inside of there?

They thought that they coulda died. I mean, they're getting robbed.

That is a good point.

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

I mean, I I can't blame them.

I mean That puts food on their on on their table.

I mean, some of these some I I here's another question. I mean, a lot of there was a lot of people on the ban on the bandwagon for defunding the police. Yeah. A ton of them. You know?

Now they're having to live in this shit. I mean, do you do you feel bad for them? You don't have to answer.

No. I don't feel bad for them. You know? It's it's not fair to judge all of us off of 1 individual's actions. Let's take ownership that that man was also a criminal.

Now I don't believe that a knee should have been in his back. He's in handcuffs. You could have put hands on the shoulders. There's there's 3 of you there. Somebody grab his feet.

Somebody grab his shoulders until we can get a wrap to put him in. There's way better ways to have handled that situation, but we all got judged based off of 1 police officer's action. Law enforcement officers were killed during those riots. Mhmm. People are more still mourning their their their husbands and wives that were killed based off another person's actions.

And because you went out and said defund the police, I think it's I think it went national that the most of the big movements of, the, BLM, like, spent the money that was donated to them on, like, houses and cars. Like

Yeah. They don't

care about their people. I know.

It's hilarious. City down.

That's hilarious. It's like, what are you doing? And and but I guess if you put it into perspective as police officers are like commercial airline pilots. You can't have a bad pilot because if you have a bad pilot and he crashes and kills a bunch of people, people are gonna be like, well, those guys aren't trained at that airline. Yeah.

You know? We're not gonna fly that airline no more. We can't have bad cops. And you know how you stop that? Is when good cops, whether you're young or not, you step up and you stop it immediately.

You be brave and you be bold, and you stand for what you believe in, and that is doing the right thing. That's how you stop that. Yeah. If I would have been there, I would ask him to get his knee off his back, and if he refused, I would have jerked him off of him and told him to stand by the car. Somebody should have done that, but nobody did.

Nobody was bold and brave. So now 4 years later, now look at us. Crime is through the roof, murders throughout the country, robberies, and I'm a tell you something, everybody should have owned a gun. My fastest response time as a police officer was, like, 7 minutes. And now that we live in a time where criminals are are are braver than law enforcement officers, it's scary, man.

It is. I carry it's why I carry everywhere I go.

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

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

Oh, yeah. It's awesome. Front lines of the civil war right now.

Yeah. Yeah.

There's a Chick Fil A down the road, pretty new, and when they broke ground there, they found the remains of of, like, 12 soldiers from the civil war.

I love American history. I was reading, and there was a old plantation house here that still has bloodstains Oh, yeah. On the floors from Confederate soldiers because I guess they had turned it into a a hospital. Yeah. Man, that's that's so cool.

Lot of history here. But, alright, Blake, let's Let's do it. Let's dive in. So everybody gets

an intro here. So, Blake Cook

Can we start a prayer?

Would you like to start

with a prayer?

I would like to

start with a prayer. Let's do it.

Dear heavenly father, god, I ask you, lord, to be with us during this interview. Lord, I ask that you speak through me to to whoever needs to receive this. God, I give you thanks for bringing Sean into my life. I give you thanks for allowing him and giving him this platform to use for the good. God, I I'm I'm so grateful for you.

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

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

Amen. Amen.

Thank you for that. Yeah. I feel good.

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

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

You deserve every piece of good that's coming to you. I appreciate that. So and I'm sure that, Jesus would would say the same thing.

Yeah. Jesus chose wild wild man. It is true.

Blake Cook, 4 years as army infantry

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

Thank you.

You are 1 year sober from alcohol. Congratulations. You received the 2018 gang unit of the year award. You are the recipient of the 2023 investigative achievement award issued by the United States attorney's office. You are currently the LE director of operations and lead CQB instructor at Blue Varying Solutions, and you've been married for 12 and a half years and the father of 1 son who's 16 years old.

That's me. Quite the quite the intro. How did you meet Kyle?

Man, let's save that. You wanna save that? Let's save that.

Alright. We'll save that.

Because it's, it's a testimony, man, of of the power of that of of god. I wanna let's save that.

We'll save it. We'll save it. Yeah. So I have a Patreon. I know you and Kyle do

too over at Blueberry, so everybody Subscribe to your Patreon.

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

So 1 of the things I do is I give them the opportunity to ask each guest a question. So this is gonna be a heavy interview, so we pick something a little lighter.

Okay.

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

Oh, dude. Oh, man. I have a good 1 for that 1. Did a search warrant 1 time on a gang house. It's a nontraditional gang, which means it wasn't a gang that was, you know, it's like a neighborhood clip.

Right? The guy that we were going after, he was distributing stolen guns from soldiers to to all the little hoodlums. So we went and did a search warrant, mom. I mean, just a horrible area in Fayetteville called Ferguson Road. So we go there.

We execute the search warrant, the gang unit, not not the tag team. And we're searching through everything, and that morning, my bungee on my radio couch had broken. And I was like, oh, you know, whatever. It'll it'll be fine. So, we're about to wrap up.

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

Taking the evidence to, to to the station, and I'm driving down Murkison Road. And then I hear, hey, mister policeman. You left your walkie talkie in my house. And I'm like, oh, man. Somebody's in trouble with an idiot.

But it I'm like, oh man, somebody's about to have been in a lot of trouble, and she is just on it. Next thing I know, both of my cell phones, my personal and my work number's ringing, and I answer it, it's my supervisor, and he's like, hey man, hey man, hey check, see if you got your radio. I'm like, hey dude, I got my radio, bro. I'm like, I got I got my radio.

Oh, shit.

And, he's like, no. No. For real, get hands on. I'm like, alright. So I'm driving.

I'm feeling it. I'm pulling my vest up. I don't see it. My heart drops in my stomach. So I turn around.

I pull over. I look. Can't find it. I'm like, hey. That's my radio.

And I whipped that car around, and I am I am blue license irons to this house because she is on it. She is she is talking shit. She is she is just solid. Because, I mean, this is this is not, like, a channel just for us. This is a channel for Oh, shit.

That district. She's on the radio. She's on my radio that I dropped, my police radio.

Oh, shit. I thought you meant this is the station calling you.

No. No. No. Cell phone. So she found my radio after we left the search warrant and turned it on.

And it was now was on that district station. Like, dispatchers are trying to dispatch officers to calls. They can't because she's on it.

Could you hear it in the car?

I had an in car radio. I could hear it.

Oh, shit.

That's why I started laughing. I was like, what a idiot. Somebody's in trouble. Oh my god. I mean, I whip that thing around.

By the time I get back to the house, the whole hood's out there. Everybody. Man, I get out the car. She's holding that radio by the antenna. She goes she goes, here, piggy, piggy, piggy, piggy.

Sean, I felt this big. My tattoos didn't matter. My beard didn't matter. My long hair didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

I was so humiliated. I had to walk over and was, like, sorry about that. Dropped my radio, got back in my car, but, man, I had I told everybody the story. Every day, I would have miss piggy. I would take it down the next morning.

It would go right back on my desk. It was so embarrassing, because, I mean, you're talking a a channel for that district. Not just a channel for our unit, but for that district. So everybody, police chief, everybody in my chain of command, all the patrol officers who look up to us. I mean, I really it is what it is.

I did it to it. You know? Thank god I didn't get punished because they realized that I was humiliated. Because when I got out, I had to turn my body camera on to make sure they didn't allow on me. So the whole interaction was on cam the whole miss piggy piggy piggy.

I was like, everything. So they're like, man, we're not gonna write you out for this 1. We feel like that you're you're I'm the, hey, man. Thanks. Yep.

I'm I'm really humiliated, and I'm sure I'm never gonna live this down. Damn. Yeah. That's it, man. That's that's the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to me.

That's a good 1. It was awful.

It was awful.

Wow. Wow. Well, hey. Before we before we dive in here, 1 last thing. Everybody gets a gift on the show.

Yeah. Any guesses? Gummy bears. Man, I was hoping you wouldn't mess that

1 up. Man, I watched the episodes. Oh, these are awesome.

There they are. Legal in all 50 states still. Probably shouldn't be with all the, sugar and shit in there, but

It's alright. But, hey, they taste amazing. I love gummy bears, man. Cool. Yeah.

Thank you for that. Alright. Alright. Here's where it starts getting heavy from here on out, but, we'll take any humor. But, yeah.

So once again, Blake, we wanna do a life story, so we always start at the very beginning. Where'd you grow up?

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Grew up in a small town in West Virginia called Pompa, West Virginia. Thousand people max in my hometown, 18,000 in the county. So, real small town. Everybody knew everybody. You know, the you start day care with the same people that you graduate with.

So, you know, for for 13, 14 years, it's the same friends. It's the same people every day. Even in the summer, it's we all live next to each other. So it was a it was it was it was a cool place to grow up. Windows open, doors open, ride your bikes wherever till whenever.

You know, we didn't have crime, you know, just just rednecks, you know, so it was a it was a great place to grow up. I grew up in a split house. You know, the the only memory that I have of my mom and dad ever together, my mom was trying to leave, and, my dad was punching a hole in the wall, screaming and yelling. It's the only memory I have of them together. And so they got a divorce when I was young, you know, 3 or 4, and, my dad built a house right next door, right beside my mom.

And that was kinda cool. Why'd they get divorced? My dad cheated. Yeah. So my mom had a lot of hatred towards him, but she ultimately left him because he he was a cheater.

He cheated on her. So Were you close with both? I am growing up, yeah, I was close with both. My mom was phenomenal, man. To this day, I still wish her happy Father's Day.

She she did her best. She was young. She was, I think, maybe 21, 20 when she had us. I remember she'd take me to college with her, to community college so she could get her degree. I remember the only memory I have of it was

Your mom would take you to community college Yep. So that she could get her degree.

She'd get her degree. And, I

have a brother.

I have an older brother. He's, 4 years older than me. I love him more than anything. He was, he's always protected me. Always.

We're complete different. He's well dressed, skinnier little fella. He's an attorney. Here I am looking like a convicted felon, but, you know, ultimately, man, we we to at the core, we're the same we're the same person. He's, even to this day, he's, he still looks out for me.

He's, 1 of my biggest role models. So he's a phenomenal father. He's a great husband. He's just a a great human. So I have, a half sister and a and a half brother from from my dad's, you know, we don't consider I don't consider them that.

They're my brother and sister. But, when my dad got remarried, he started another family. But my dad built in a house right next to us. It was cool as a kid because we would for us, right, we would just go back and forth whenever, but, man, it caused a lot of drama, you could say. My mom and my stepmom didn't get along.

And, you know, there was there was constant arguing in the driveways. I remember and and, you know, I would say that that they were more of the instigators on it. You know, my dad liked to even though that they weren't together, like, my dad still pushed my mom's buttons. I remember 1 time I was going to school, and and my stepmom or somebody had called down to the house. My mom said something to her on the phone, and and my mom was taking us to school, and my stepmom comes running out of the house, boom, boom, boom, down the stairs.

And my mom's like she she worked out every day. Like, she wasn't a typical woman. She was raising 2 boys, and she worked out every day. And and she was a social worker, so she was constantly dealing with drug addicts and stuff anyways, so she stayed fit. And, she had these heels on, man.

I remember my stepmom getting to the bottom of her steps, and my mom just stacked her up in a headlock. I'm like a kid watching this, though. At a young kid, it's now I laugh about it. Right? But as a kid, it was kinda scary.

You know? It's kinda like, what in the hell is going on? And then my dad come down, running down the stairs. You bitch. You better let her go.

You better let her go. Man, he got close to my mom. My mom stuck them heels so far in his chest, just just took the breath out of him, and then then they just ended up splitting ways and trying to call the police or whatever, but, you know, it was always some type of of you know, if they were both in the driveway together, it was always, like, anxiety. Like, let's just hurry up and get in the car. You know?

Like, my mom did a very good job at protecting us from it, but it was it was always there. And, you know, as a kid, that can be very traumatizing to to always have that anxiety of, let's just hurry up and get in the car. Let's let's just hurry up and get in the car. Oh, I hope mom and dad don't don't talk. Like like, if we were going out to the car and they were gonna out the car, like, it was always just like, please.

Like, can we just not fight? And and my my mom was always the bigger person when we get in the car, but it was always something, man.

Why did they not get along? Was was is your stepmom who your father had in the middle of?

That's that's, you know, you know, yeah, like, my stepmom my stepmom some weird shit. My stepmom was 16 when my dad started dating her. My dad was, like, in his thirties, so it kinda will start it kinda tarnished our name a little bit. And now thinking about my older brother, my older brother is only a few years younger than her, so there was always that. There was always that, him and her.

They never got along. There was 1 time Father's Day. We would always go up there. My mom would because he had he had every other weekend, so we'd have to go stay with him. And my mom would would leave, maybe go on vacation with her friends or something, maybe go out of town, and and we would stay with him.

And, you know, my brother and my stepmom would always get into an argument. I mean, hell, she's only a few years older than him. Then my dad would always take her. My dad, my whole life, has always taken women over us or, you know, always put women first over his children. And he in in father's day, I'll I'll never forget this, father's day, she had said something to him, telling me that she was gonna whoop his ass or something.

And my brother was, like, dude, you're, like, 2 year you're, like, 3 years older than me, 4 years older than me. What are you talking about? So my brother picked up a a 2 liter of Mountain Dew and chucked it at her, and he came over and got me and was, like, hey. We're gonna stay at the house. And, they end up calling the police on him, and there was a a cop at the time named Jim Hall who came up there and put my 13 year old brother in handcuffs, put him in the back of a cop car over that.

You called the police on your own son because of of something that he did that you caused by marrying somebody that was only 2 years 3 years older than him. And, so it was constant. Like, my mom would leave. We would go up to my dad's for a few hours, and then me and my brother would go down to the house because it was just it was always something. It was always something.

And my brother would cook for us. He'd take care of us, and then when, you know, my mom would we would call my mom the the day that she was coming back home, And we'd be like, hey, mom. We just came down to the house. We know you're coming home that day. And she had no idea that we were doing that, but it was he was my brother was protecting me from from the toxic environment.

He's he's he's always protected me. Damn. And, you know, and I'm not saying that the whole childhood when my dad was back because that that would be a lie. You know, there were great times. You know?

We would have Nerf gun wars and things like that, but, you know, and he was a good dad growing up. He he would play basketball. He'd teach me how to play basketball and things like that, but, you know, there was always something. Right? There was always something that would that would happen, that would run it.

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

You know, he he I was I've been playing sports since I was young, like, super young, and, basketball was always my thing. And, you know, we won every every you know, as a kid, it was cool, but we won every county championship until I was in the 8th grade. And the only games that my dad would really attend were the ones that were impoundable. You know? And and and then when I got into the 8th grade, there was a we won our county championship basketball game, and there was a guy in the stands that that had known me forever.

He said, hey. Won't you come try out for football? The way you move and how physical you are, you might be a great football player. I was like, man, I never play football. I don't wanna get hit like that.

I don't know if I'm tough like that. So my mom signed me up, and I started playing football. And and my first time ever on the field, man, 1 of my really good buddies, Nick Rizanica, came over, hit me so hard, put me off my feet, and took my took my my breath out. He said, hey, man. Welcome to high school football.

I said, dude, I gotta get in the weight room. I gotta get good. I suck. I suck at this. I'm out of my comfort zone.

And then, man, I I quit baseball. They only had me at baseball. They only kept me around. I sucked at baseball. Motor my, motor brother's name's JR.

His best friend, Derek Bolt, literally, they thought it would be funny. Derek was, like, 62 in in, like, 11, 12 years old. Threw a fastball, hit me right in the neck. I wouldn't stay in a batter's box ever again. I didn't wanna hit.

I don't want you to hit me in the neck again. I don't want nothing to do with it. They came around because I was fast, and they could sub me in to run bases. And, so finally, my freshman year, I was like, hey. Chief, I'm not playing baseball no more.

He's like, why? I was like, look. Me and you both know I suck. I wanna work out for football. And I dedicated, like, a lot of time in high school to for football, working out in football.

I was already pretty decent at basketball. And then, man, my junior year, I started getting really good at football, really good. And then when I started getting good and my name started getting in the paper, then my dad started showing up to all my games. Nanny wanted to come around, and then he really wanted to come around. My junior and senior year, we won back to back state championships in basketball.

And, he didn't really wanted to be around. Once we won the first 1, he came the 2nd year, he came to all the games, came to all the football games. You know? He wanted to be there now. Right?

That's how I

changed that. Resentment

because of that? I I did because, like, it was kinda like

At the time or looking back? No.

At the time, I I kinda did. And I've and I told my mom this as a kid because, like, the only times I ever saw you when I played basketball in in middle school in the 8th grade, and in the 8th grade, I'm, what, 13. Right? I'm I'm starting to see things and understand things a little little more. Like, why are you only at home games?

Is it because you don't wanna pay the $2 entrance at the other at the other games, and you get him free because he was a school teacher at the school. And,

he was the school teacher?

At Palmville Middle School. Then married a 16 year old girl. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Weird. Very weird. I I didn't know any of this at the time. Right? But but my mom, again, she hid it from us because it was embarrassing.

Right? We live in a small town. Everybody everybody knows knows that. It was still to this day, it's embarrassing. Now that I'm an adult and I know that that's wrong, that's not right, like, you know, there's there's even some hatred that I have, resentment that I have towards him for giving us that bad name because we share the same last name.

You know? Like, I don't want people fathers of my friends to think, man, I'm gonna grow up sick like that because that's wrong. It's sick. It's weird. It is what it is.

It's weird. We come from a small town where everybody knows everybody. So, you know, when I started understanding these things, and then he started coming around in high school when my name started getting out there in the papers and and colleges started coming and looking, then it's like, hey, man. Like, where were you at, like, my earlier years? Now you wanna travel 2 hours down the road to a football game and wear a shirt with my name on it.

Like, hey, bro. My mom has been to every game, and my grandfather on my mom's side and my grandmother have been to every game since I ever played. My mom showed up to an AAU game 1 time. Her friends had a, like, a birthday thing that they had planned out for. I guess she we didn't think we were gonna be there all day playing because we kept winning and winning and winning.

She canceled her plans so I could finish that game out. Like, she's been there since day 1. Like, where have you been? Oh, now now people are starting to know who I am here. Now people are like, wow.

Blake's really good at this. Because, man, I exploded with football. Like, I found a passion for it. I was a slot, I was a wide receiver, and I was a, a quarterback. My junior year, I had, like, 13, 14 interceptions.

Wow. My senior year, I I broke the record for yak yards, yards after catch. I had, like, I don't know, a 7 1800, like, 13, 14 touchdowns. There's 1 game where I had 4 touchdowns, and that was unheard of at that time because you're talking 2,008 where people were still trying to run the ball. Everybody then now wanted to run the spread because then Pat White and Steve Slaton, West Virginia started throwing the ball more, and now we had some really we had some new coaches come in that were like, hey.

Let's throw the ball. And their their nephew was the quarterback. He'd moved, so they're obviously gonna let him throw the football, but, man, it was like everywhere I went. Like, high school was crazy because, like, I'm a be honest with you, Sean, I didn't do a single bit of homework. I don't know if I even did classwork.

I just got pushed through. As an adult, I'm like, man, that's I wish you woulda pushed me to do better. Let's rewind for a minute.

Yeah. So did you actually tell your dad that? Or I never told my dad that. You never told him that? That was in your head?

It's always in my head. It's all those questions.

Yeah. Just you know? Because he's my dad, man. I loved him. I didn't want him to feel like I was mad or disappointed.

I loved him. He was my dad. And like I said, my childhood all the time wasn't all the time bad. You know? He he did do things that was a great father, but there were things that, like and I have a 16 year old son.

Right? I've raised him since he was 3. His dad's nonexistent. I married my wife. She had a son, and I've I've I've raised him since he was 3 as my own.

He is my son. You'll never be able to convince me that he's not. I'll never look at him and say, hey, man. Remember that time I changed your tire? Hey, man.

Remember that time I did this for you and did that for you and did this and that? That was what it was like. It was always, hey, man. Remember that time you ran off you ran out of gas on Salazar Mountain or ran out of gas on Salazar Mountain, I brought you gas? Yeah.

That was yeah. Yeah, dad. Thanks. Thanks for being a dad.

Your dad was keeping tabs? Yeah.

He's keeping it's to this day, and we'll get to that. To this day, he still keeps tabs. And it's like, man, you're my father. What are you talking about? You're supposed to do those things.

I would give my life for my son. And never keep a tab on it. I'd be dead, but I never keep a tab on that. And I hope that he would never be like, oh, well, you know, like, that's what I'm supposed to do. And that's what I'm raising him as is, hey, man.

When you have a son or a daughter, you do things for them out of love. You'd never expect a thank you ever. And so a lot of my childhood was he would do something great for us, but we would be reminded. Like, okay. My mom never did that.

Do you think why do you think he did that?

I I think he I I think he just wanted us. You know what I really think, and and this is something I've dived into in my adult life is I felt like he was always trying to compete with my mother because she she always did right by us. And but what he doesn't know is we never we weren't thanking her either.

Do you think maybe he was dealing with his own guilt? I do. He felt extremely upset.

Conversation later on in my adult life, and he says he regrets cheating on my mom. And, you know, I I do. I feel like that he he he has his own demons that he, deals with, and I think that it is his guilt. Yeah. He did the right things, but, ultimately, I think at that age, he he just wanted us to tell him how great he was.

I thought, maybe he didn't feel like he was great.

Well, I'm sure he, I mean, all the clues are there. I mean, he built a house. Right?

He wanted to be in our life. He built a nice house. He did his best. He he, you know, he he he worked as a manager at a swimming pool in the summertime, and he took us on vacation every summer to Myrtle Beach with that money every summer. So he he tried.

It's just he always wanted to thank you that we never gave him. I mean, I'm a kid. You know? Like, I have 1 parent who gives me the world with with not ever thinking about it, and I have another parent who is trying, and and we're not giving the thank you to. I'm keeping tabs.

He's keeping tabs. One's not, and 1 is. You know? What am I supposed to do? My I don't know.

My mom doesn't keep tabs, but he is obviously keeping tabs. It's we're we're beyond grateful. Right? I had a decent childhood. I'm not gonna say I didn't, but it was always like he's always trying to compete with my mom.

And because my mom took us on vacations every year and, you know, to, like, Mexico and Cancun and and Disney World, and and it was always like he was trying to compete. And my mom never, like, shoved it in his face, but he would always shove it back. Like, oh, I'll pay child support. You know, I'll take the kids on vacation every summer. Like, it was always something like that.

You know? It was always it was always, you know, now that I'm older, I'm like, man, maybe I should have said thank you more. I I don't know. I was a kid. I didn't know any better.

I just thought it's what dads do.

Shit.

What's your relationship like with him now? He's dying of drugs. I've spent my whole adult life fighting drugs, and, I'm losing my dad to it. It's a nonexistent relationship. I broke it off.

What kind of drugs?

Heroin, meth, Fentanyl, cocaine, dulotids, anything that's a drug that will get you high.

How did that happen? When I

was 14, he fell off a ladder, 20, 30 foot ladder, changing a light bulb, like a floodlight, and, went to a doctor in a town in our county called Oceana. It's, nickname, Oxiana. He had a doctor who was prescribing OxyContins like crazy. I I guess he's in federal prison now, but he got addicted to oxycodones. Wait.

He got addicted to Fentanyl patches for his back, and then it went to Oxycodones. So and I think my dad's always fought depression too. A lot of times as kids, he would he'd sleep all day while we were with him. We figured maybe he's just tired. Right?

He was a volunteer firefighter. He'd get called out in the middle of the night, all that. And, but now that I'm older, I know what depression is. He definitely had depression. I think he battled his own demons every day, and, ultimately, they got the best of him.

You know, you talk a lot about the breakfast this morning, but a great prayer. To tell you're a Christian, with very strong faith. Have you ever tried forgiveness?

I have. So I attempted to save his life. Medical when I got out of law enforcement, so I found out that he was on drugs. Right? So Thanksgiving 28 2018.

We're back home. We're in West Virginia. Met my mom's house. And my mom lives in a whole another city, whole another county now at this point. Right?

She moved to bigger town of Beckley, West Virginia. It's got, like, 30,000 people in it. So right outside of Charleston, West Virginia, about 30 minutes away. She don't even live near him anymore. So and she got remarried and all that in my adult life, but we went to visit him, me and my brother.

My brother has a lot of resentment towards him. He's not he's not alive in my brother's mind. My brother completely shut him off. My brother had warned me several times, my older brother, several times to be careful, and, my brother was mad that he was on drugs.

Be careful in what way?

Like, he's toxic. Manipulation. Manipulation. He's he's gonna put women in front of you. Like, be careful with him.

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

of you? If I have an argument with my stepmom remember, he had an argument with my stepmom at 12 years old, 13, and was put in handcuffs. My dad called the police on him and had a police officer put him in handcuffs. So I think my brother's always had resentment for that. It's terrifying at 13 years old.

Mhmm. Hell, it's terrifying at 9 watching your brother get arrested by by your dad. That was traumatizing. And then finally, my mom, like, rushed home and and fixed the issue. But so so my brother's always had some sort of resentment towards him.

So my brother's like, we have found we had heard that my dad got on drugs, like, hard drugs in 2018 because he was, well, he was on drugs, met this chick, got on drugs, got got away from this chick, and got sober. 2016, 2017. My my younger sister was in high school, so and her mother, my stepmom that we had issues with, had cheated on my dad and left my dad. So my dad was trying to raise this high school girl on his own. He did a good job, but after she graduated, he met this other lady named Melissa.

And Melissa comes from trash. She she was an addict, and she got him hooked back on drugs. So my brother wanted to drive down to confront him about all this, see if he actually is on drugs. This is on Black Friday, day after Thanksgiving. So so me and my brother, we drive down.

Knock on the door, Melissa answers. She's high as a kite. Like, hey. Is is my brother says, hey. Is Jim here?

It's my dad's name. She's like, yeah. Let me go get him. He's downstairs sleeping. I'm like, it's 7 o'clock, like, in the afternoon.

Like, what do you mean he's sleeping? Whatever. He's old. Maybe he went to bed. He comes up the stairs, and it's the first time in my life I've ever seen my dad.

So my dad never didn't drink when we grow up, and I hardly ever heard him cuss. I will say that. But for the first time in my life, I saw my dad physically, but I didn't know who my dad was. He was so high. And he invited us in, and my brother's like, hey.

You're high right now. What are you talking about? And they get into a heated discussion. My dad gets livid. Somebody that is on drugs, whether I think at the time, it was just I think cocaine and oxycodones is all he was on at that time.

Because he he he was on 4 DUIs for, driving while impaired from, not alcohol, but but narcotics. So he'd already been arrested for, like, 3 or 4 DUIs for this. So we were my brother was attempting to try to help him, but it went it went south. My dad filled with rage, and he took off running back downstairs, and I knew that's where he kept his revolver. I immediately grabbed my brother, and we ran out the house, ran down the stairs.

It's, like, 15 stairs. I run-in my truck, open my door, and I go to get my gun out. I'm like, he's gonna kill us. He is going to kill us. And, man, he comes running out, and I I never saw the gun.

I don't think I saw the gun. Everything was happening so fast, but the rage that he had. Sean, I I went out that driveway at probably 50, 60 miles an hour. I thought he was gonna kill us. I thought he was gonna kill us.

And then the whole 30, 40 minute drive home, me and my brother didn't talk. Got back to my mom's house, and everybody was already in bed at this point. And, man, I drank all night. I cried my eyes out. I went on his Facebook page, found photos of when we were younger.

I just lost it. I had a mental breakdown. That's the first time I ever saw him high. And, that was the biggest start of that was the start of my downfall. That was it.

That's what set the tone for the next several years of my life and what I was about to go through. So, no, I I have forgiven him once, and, I almost died from somebody else's drug addiction. I almost lost my family because somebody else's drug addiction, and I refuse to lose my family, or take my life from depression, or die from somebody else's drug addiction. I won't let it happen. I won't let it happen.

God got me once. God got me twice, but never again. No. No. No.

No. Your toxicity that you bring to the table, my childhood that you brought to the table, I'm not gonna let it flow into my family. I'm gonna protect my family. Yeah. And my wife is so sweet, Sean.

She she tries, and, you know, she's because she saw my dad before he was on drugs. You know? We got married in, beginning of 2012, and we only knew each other for, like, 30 days. We were married almost 13 years. And we'll we'll get to that.

That's a whole that's a whole another story, but, you know, she has always tried to because she's she's she remembers him. Right? She remembers who Jim Cook was before drugs. I mean and, and but now it's like, I I don't even remember who that person was. I don't remember.

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

Maybe there isn't

any. Sean, I don't think so.

You know, the only reason I was asking about forgiveness is, I've come to learn that it's for you, not for the person you're forgiving. Yeah. You know, I'd, I learned this from I interviewed this guy, Victor Marks. Yeah. And, it is without a doubt the most traumatizing childhood I have ever heard.

I mean, it is his dad made him shoot, kill a man, and shove him in a hole. That's horrible. Yeah. And, and that's that's how I grew up. And and so he talks a lot about forgiveness.

He's forgiven his dad. And, Yeah. And he called me up once. He called me. I had back in my tactical training days, there was this well known trainer.

I won't say any names because I've forgiven him. But, he sued me and tried to take tried to take everything when I had not much to begin with. But I was worried my home was gonna go. I was worried my wife was gonna go, and he he just wouldn't stop with the lawsuits. And, until we were able to prove that the whole case was a phony case and that he was gonna have to repay me all of my legal fees, which completely broke me now.

And, and, and so when he found that out, he quit suing me and and whatever. This is I'm just kinda giving you the context. I didn't have the money to go back after him and continue the lawsuit. But and so that just honestly, that's why I left the tactical industry. I was like, you know what?

Fuck this, man. I'm out.

Yeah. Who blames you? It's hard to trust people

after that. But I carried this rage with me forever. And this this is just, like, 1 example, but I'm telling you this because Victor Marx is who taught me forgiveness, and and and then I applied it to all these different aspects of my life to all these situations that I've been in with, you know, from military shit to agency shit to business stuff to friends, family. But this was the first this was the first time I that it actually sunk in. And and the reason I'm bringing it up is I can see the rage.

I can see it on you. And, I'm not I'm not comparing stories. This is so much more insignificant than what you're talking about. But but he said, he said he's friends with the person that sued me and said that they wanted me to forgive him. And I said, I are you fucking calling me to ask me to forgive somebody because they're worried that my growth is it's a different ball game than it was 10 years ago.

Yeah. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

Now We're way different playing field.

They ran a whole smear campaign on me and everything, and I was like, are you asking me to fucking forgive somebody who, like, tried to take everything from me? Smeared my name, lied about my service, like, wanted to take it all Yeah. And leave me in a fucking ditch because he's worried that I'm gonna I'm gonna do vengeance. And he said, yeah. And I was like, it's real hard to tell you no knowing what you've been through Yeah.

And that you've found forgiveness. And, I told him I would. I told him I never wanted to see him again. He wanted to talk to me. I said, we don't need to talk.

I said, you can tell him I forgive him, and you can tell him that I'm not gonna do vengeance on him. I'm above that shit. Man, just like fucking saying it to Victor Probably felt good.

Dude, it was like

because every time that name got brought up, every time that name got brought up, it would just fucking trigger rage. Yeah. And then and and and multiple people, you could you could insert into that, oh, I hear this person's name. I feel rage. But that was the first time I learned it, and it was like it was like being let out of prison, man.

Like, it just it was like, this shit doesn't bother me anymore. I dropped it. I'm never gonna talk to him again. I'm never gonna be around him again, at least if I can help it, but it doesn't affect me anymore, man. I don't live in that prison of rage.

Yeah. And I just hope that you can find that

because it's free. And I am finding it. Right? Because if I'm gonna say that I'm a Christian, I need to act like a Christian. And and it's hard, but parts of me is is trying.

And, you know, we'll get to the parts of of the why that I am the way that I am right now in this moment. And and you're gonna be like, wow. I kinda understand because I I tried so hard. And

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

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

I just want you to I think you're a really good person.

I appreciate that.

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

And and that's what I need to work on because, again, I wanna be free of somebody else's addiction. Because if I don't forgive him, then I'm I'm I'm just as as I'm addicted to to hate towards him. Like, he's addicted to drugs. And until I can forgive him, I can let that go. You know?

And you're right, man. I thought I forgave him, but I don't feel it now that I'm talking about it. I don't feel that a true I might have told people we have forgive him, but now that now that I'm here in this moment and we're talking about it because I don't really talk about it often. I'll be honest with you. I don't talk about it at all.

I talk about it with my wife. My wife brings it up, I immediately go to shutdown mode. I would rather be angry and start an argument and piss her off than to than to have her try to talk talk about it.

You know? And the other thing is if you can take emotion out of this situation and actually look at it from a 30,000 foot view and just observe, Look at what he's what he's created for himself. Yeah. You know? I think a

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

And I've spent my whole adult career fighting evil and fighting drugs. I only need to lose him to drugs. You know? That's hard. I said I have voice mails of it's when he was trying to to to do better.

Hey, son. I just wanna hear from you. I'm trying. And I just sent him a voice mail. You know?

And so I have a lot of guilt for that, dude. Like, I just, maybe I coulda done better, and maybe I failed him. Maybe he did addiction because I failed him. You know? Maybe he's addicted because I wasn't there for him, or I didn't say thank you, or I didn't give him, what he was looking for.

You know? That's that's a tough pill to swallow, and it eats in me every day. Because I do, man. I'm missing. Used to call me a shadow boy.

There's no shadow anymore. And, man, that fucking hurts. It hurts. 35 years old, man, and and the the little boy inside of me still still misses, you know, misses his dad. When everybody else gave up, I still tried.

Man, I got burned. I got burned. I almost lost everything. So I'm trying. I really am.

Maybe I need to go to therapy.

You know? Don't give up, man.

I'm not. I'm not. I just need to take a break and figure realize that I can't fix everything right now. You know? When I was in the gang unit, we were an easy button.

Hey, man. Go go fix this gang unit. Fix this. I'm used to being an easy button fixing it right now, and, but those right now's were only temporary fixes. Somebody else is gonna come in and take that guy's spot, or somebody else is gonna sell dope and guns out the house.

Maybe that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to fix it right now. Right? And, I'm getting no results because you don't you can't fix a can't fix a 67 year old man or 65 year old man that's been addicted to drugs for

the last 8 years. You can't fix anything on anybody if they don't wanna fix it themselves.

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

So 2,004 I met Kyle, I was teaching on my own. I have my own company, Black Flag Solutions. Wanna train SWAT teams. Guys just didn't get the training that we had. Well, I love law enforcement, man.

I love law enforcement so much, and I think the number 1 thing they lack is training. I was training people for free. Departments won't spend the money. My god, they'll go spend $20,000 to get new pencils that say, you know, Fayetteville police department. And not that Fayetteville did this.

It's just where I came from, but they won't put money towards training. It's it's mind blowing. So I was like, I I have to do something.

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And my wife, it it was asking me to go do something because I was an alcoholic. So I was training a team 1 day, and, my aunt Judy calls me, my dad's sister. And says, hey, Blake. Do I have a second? I'm like, damn.

She about to tell me my dad's dead. I've been waiting on that phone call every day. I have my phone in my hand all the time because I'm waiting on the call. I'm like, is he alive? She said, yeah.

He's alive. I said, okay. Well, what's going on? Why are you calling me? I'm in the middle of training.

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

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

Like a, like, a self check, like a hygiene check or whatever on a on a purse well-being check. I said, he's on probation for hitting 4 cop cars on the side of the road high, but he's on, like, a probation. Not in jail, but on probation. I'm like, do is there needles in the house? Yeah.

Yeah. They said they saw needles. Okay? They need to take him to jail, get him out of the environment. Well, the it was the police chief.

There's only, like, 3 people in that apartment. Well, they said there's nothing they can do. I'm like, what are you talking about? He's a drug addict. Syringes everywhere.

He's on probation. It's drug paraphernalia. I don't care what it is. I don't care if it's 1 orange cap. Take him to jail, because if he goes to jail, they won't take him.

They'll make him go to the hospital before they can intake him. So they'll force him to get medical. They're like, oh, Blake, there's they said there's nothing they can do. I'm livid. Like, what do you mean there's nothing they can do?

That's your job. You just don't know what to do is the problem. You don't know how to be a cop is the problem. So I'm like, I know he's a probation officer. So I call him up.

I'm like, hey. My dad's dying. There's drug paraphernalia everywhere. The police chief went in there, saw it. Nothing they can do.

I'm like, can you go check on him tomorrow? He said, yeah. Went and checked on him, found all the needles, revoked his probation, took him in at his office. My dad calls me. He's like, mate, he's high as high as kite.

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

I don't wanna go to jail. I'm like, hey, man. You're going to jail. Like, I can't keep doing this with you. You're going to jail.

So hang your phone up, and I have a breakdown. And I'm like, oh my god. Like, if he goes to jail, he's gonna get bare minimum care. He's gonna die. So I call I call him back.

Hey. I'm like, he can he go get so he's dying. He needs real medical help. Can we convince him to go to the hospital? Then he can go back on probation at at the house or whatever.

But let's see what's wrong with him. You see, yeah, we'll do that. Took him to the hospital, man. He was there at 2 hours. They lifelined him to some hospital on Roanoke.

Next day, he's having open heart surgery. He has done so much heroin and Fentanyl that he has vegetation on his heart. That he has what? Vegetation. What does that even mean?

Mold. Because drug addicts use back, They don't use they use faucet water with bacteria. So he had shot up so much that the bacteria in the water had went to his valve and started creating mold. That's how much heroin he was doing. Holy shit.

He had open heart surgery. He dies in surgery. They bring him back to life. They give him a second chance at life. Doctor calls me and say, hey.

He's got, like, less than 5% chance to live. I'm like because I'd had a conversation with him. I had a conversation with him afterwards. They're like, he he'll wake up, blah blah blah, but, like, we're not sure. And he was mumbling.

He's like, all I heard was cremate me and spread my ashes on the hill. The hill was his house was built on a slope, and that was the hill that's the hill that we played on as kids, and that's all I heard. And I was like, oh my god. He's gonna die. Like, Nicole, he's gonna die.

And, dude dude made a miracle just like, it was a miracle. He woke up the next day, infection, no infection. Vitals were good. Everything was good. So I told my wife.

I said, this is my opportunity. This is January of 2023. It's my opportunity, honey, to save him. I financially can do it. I'm medically retired.

I have the time. I have to go save him. So I packed some bags, went to the hospital, walked in. Didn't even know who he was. He's got no teeth.

He's weighing at maybe a buck 30. He's 5 510, 511, pale as can be. Looks like he's 90 some years old. They barely recognize him. He's talking to me, and I'm I'm talking to him, and, man, I stayed there.

I slept in my car, my truck, and I I slept with the hospital. And my wife has said, hey. He's agreed to let me help him. She said, alright. Like, we have we have you know, my stepmom tried to visit him, Melissa.

She was kicked out of the hospital for doing heroin in the bathroom. So, like, hey. She's got to go. She's living in his house. She's got to go.

So what I did is I came up with a strategy, is I created a renter's document and had my dad sign it. And I paid him a dollar a month as a renter to allow me access into the house. Because if not, I'm just breaking into the house, and she could call the police on me. But she can't no more because I have an actual contract signed by Jim Cook that I pay him a dollar a month for my room downstairs in the basement. So I can kick the door in, do whatever I want to to the house.

I'm a renter. If I break something, I just gotta pay the landlord, and that's him. Her name's not on the house, just his. I said, man, I went down to this house. I was like, hey.

Here's a contract, and I'm staying here. She's like, I'm out. I'm leaving. I'm like, cool. That was easy.

She gives me the keys. She calls some drugs, a drug addict, pick her up. I go in the house. Sean, I've been into thousands of dough palaces, users, dealers, just just disgusting people in general. The moment I walked in, I threw up.

The smell. The dog was overdosing also, had withdrawals, not overdosing, had withdrawals from dope and had diarrhea everywhere. There was a mop bucket full of water, diarrhea water, where she had tried to clean it up, but it's just sitting there for days. Diarrhea all over everything. The dog at 1 point had been chained to something in the door in a in a back bedroom and with carpet, and there was just shit and pee everywhere.

And I found out that the dog had been chewing on syringes, and it was getting high. And they haven't been using there because she'd been staying with somebody else. He's been in the hospital, so the dog's having withdrawals. I'm like, man, I gotta clean this house. I gotta clean this house.

I spent 1,000. My childhood best friend and my cousin on my dad's side, name's Josh Lambo, phenomenal human, Knew I was in town. I was actually staying with him, but I couldn't stay in the house. I would I'd get sick. I'm I'm on my hands and knees.

Spent 100 of dollars on cleanup stuff. I'm, like, shot back in diarrhea, ripping up carpet. He shows up and helps me clean this whole house. Most disgusting house I've ever been in, and we had it spotless. And she was gone.

I was I was still visiting my dad. I was making the house. I fixed the steps. I fixed I went and bought him a bed to to bring upstairs. I didn't want him sleeping on a dirty mattress.

We got him brand new everything. And she sorry. I'm having some getting kind of emotional. So I leave to go back home. This was about a month later.

See my family, do some things. My dad's still in the hospital. They release him. I get home on a Friday. They released him that same Friday.

They weren't supposed to. They weren't supposed to recently release him till the following weekend. I was gonna pick him up. See, it somehow convinced somebody something. Something happened where they released him.

So I went home. I was home, and my aunt Judy calls me and says, hey. They released your dad. I'm like, oh my god. I'm not there.

What do you mean? I can't watch him. Like, he's gonna go back. He gets home that Friday night, drops him off. He gets home immediately.

He had been in contact with my stepmom since he'd been in the hospital. He somehow got a cell phone and everything and was able to get in contact with her. We didn't think they had any contact. I thought I had fixed that problem. He gets home, and she pulls up maybe 10 minutes later, the neighbor says.

About 30 minutes later, my dad's drug dealer, Tammy. I figured out my dad's drug dealer. I've I got addresses, Sean, cars, mama's house, houses they were storing dope in. I had times of houses. I dedicated the whole month also to following her around everywhere.

I had built a case for the sheriff's office of Wyoming County. Everything they need. Tried to give it to their dope cop, crickets. Tried to give it to the sheriff, crickets. They wanted me out of that county so bad because I was forcing them to do a job they didn't know how to do, and I was calling them out on it.

I have everything for you because their excuse was is, you know, we don't have enough information on her. Cool. Stand by. Boom. Here's everything.

Phone numbers, license plates, houses, everything you need, her drop zones, the day that she gets her resupply, everything. I went to full straight detective mode again and got them everything in a big old folder, pictures. I took pictures of the cars, pictures of her, pictures of her mom, pictures of everybody, her dog. I had everything in there. They wouldn't touch it.

Wouldn't touch it. Didn't want nothing to do with it because that system down there is so corrupt. Where is this? It's in Wyoming County, West Virginia. It is the good old boy system.

Who pays the most money is in charge. I couldn't get help from nobody. I went to the sheriff's office, to the sheriff himself, who's known me since I was a child. I was told he's just a drug addict. I understand that, guys, but here is your number 1 drug dealer in the county.

This woman's not only serving him dope, but she is traveling from Pineville. So there's 4 towns in where I grew up. Pineville, Mullins, Bayleyville, and Oceana. She would come once a week and do a round in every little town and then go back home to Princeton. She didn't even live there.

She drove 30 minutes away. I gave them everything. I mean, they told me to fuck off. They didn't want nothing to do with it. They wanted me out of there so bad.

So that the night that they got home, my dad left with the drug dealer. The drug dealer came and picked him up. They came back home the next Saturday. Drug dealers stayed there a little bit. They went back to the drug dealer's house.

And everybody on that so the hill that I grew up on is was primarily of my whole family, and and the neighbors have known me since I was a kid. When I made when I tried to move in and made my stepmother leave, they them old women on that hill baked me brownies and cookies, and they were like, hey. Thank you so much because it has just gotten so bad. So they were calling me and and giving me updates, and I'm, like, trying to get home. I'm, like, I'm in I'm in North Carolina at this point, so I'm, like, man, I gotta figure out how to how to save my dad.

So I called my dad up. Now Sunday's came around. Sunday's here. I'm like, hey, dad. This is, like, Sunday night, 10 o'clock at night.

I'm like, what are you doing? The neighbors are calling me. You weren't supposed to leave the house. She's not even the Melissa is not even supposed to be there. The drug dealer's been up and down the driveway.

I was, dude, I was sending text messages out to deputies, to to police officers. She's there right now. This is the car. Nothing, man. Crickets.

So I'm like, I gotta get down there, dude. I gotta do something. So I'm like, hey. She's got to go. I've already contacted your probation officer.

They've already contacted your probation officer. Man, you're going to jail tomorrow. Like, you have to. It's not he thought I had some power. He's like, you need to fix this.

I'm like, dude, what do you mean I need to fix? There's nothing I can do. Only thing I'm trying to help you, I'm giving you a call right now telling you that your probation officer is showing up tomorrow. She needs to be out of the house. He's like, alright.

Alright. We'll figure it out. I'll figure it out. He had a call at 4 in the morning, from my dad's neighbor. She was a younger girl.

And Melissa would go down and ask for a cigarette and and and they pretty much just pestered her. She lived in the house that we grew up in. And I'd been trying to help them get Melissa out of there too and and trying to help fix some things around their house because my dad was on drugs and the house was falling apart and they were renters. And, she said she called and she says, Blake, Melissa called the cops on you. I'm like, how she called the cops on me?

I am literally 6 hours away. She's like, they lied. They said that you were laying down the street with a sniper rifle. I was like, well, I'm home. She goes, well, well, the police officer took her to the master's office, and she swore a domestic violence protective order out on you.

I'm like, what? And my dad's beeping in. I'm like, I gotta go. My dad's calling me. I answer the phone.

It's the last conversation I ever had with my father. He said, fuck you, you piece of shit. We took a DVPO out on you. I'm a go do my time in jail, and there ain't shit you can do. You're a piece piece of shit worthless son.

Hung the phone up. So I'm like, what is going on? Now I have a DVPO taken out on me. That's if found guilty of that, that's worse than being a convicted felon. So I'm like, immediately went into, like, I gotta go stash my gun somewhere else.

Because then first thing they do when they serve you that is they take your guns. But, luckily, I was 4 states away, and there's no communication with that crappy agency there. They didn't really they don't even know how to handle that properly. Thank god. It's like the the 1 mess up where I took advantage of.

She didn't have my address, so nobody could serve me anything. These dudes are calling me, asking me to come turn myself in. I'm like, dude, I don't know what you're talking about. See you later, alligator. So I got up with an attorney who was a friend of mine, Tim Lapartis, who so my dad so sorry.

I'm skipping. That Monday morning, my dad got arrested from probation. They took him to the courthouse. Some people in the courthouse know who I am and went to talk to him and said, Jim, you have to drop this. He he is a good person.

He trains law enforcement. He's not gonna be able to do his job. My dad said, fuck that piece of shit. Didn't drop it. So I got up with Tim LaParras, who's was my dad's really good friend growing up, who's an attorney there, represented me for free.

He helped me figure out a solution out. So I did some smart things while my dad was in the hospital. Right? Because he needed my help. Nobody else could help him except for me.

I made him sign his Social Security checks over to my house. All of his retirement money went to my mailbox in North Carolina, so she didn't have access to it anymore. And if he did that, I would buy him dinner while he was in the hospital. I'd help take care of him. I clean his house, do whatever he needed me to do.

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

So I called her up. I said, hey. Tim LaParriss was like, hey. Let's let's offer something. I said, alright.

I was like, $450. I don't know. I came up with a number. It was 4.50. And I said, hey.

If you drop this, I'll pay $450, and every month, I'll mail my dad's checks to you so you can cash them. Because the little fast check general store, grocery store in our hometown was allowing her, knowing that my dad's in jail or in a hospital, sign the back of his checks and cash them and then go buy dope with them. So but they would get, like, a 10% of the of the whatever, 3%, whatever. They were making money. They didn't care.

So they allowed her to to fraudulently sign his checks and cash them. The whole town is crazy. So she says she goes, yeah. We could do that. I said, look.

Because it's 1,000 of dollars in his retirement, Social Security. I'm like, I don't care what you do with the money. I'll mail it to you every month. Soon as I get it, I'll mail it overnight it. I'm panicking, Sean.

I ain't slept in 2 days because what if she gets up there and BS's and some female judge believes her and I get convicted? I'm done. I'm I mean, there's your guns are gone, everything. Mhmm. What am I gonna do?

It's all I know is that I'll run a gun. It's all I've done my whole adult life. She said, I'll do that under 1 condition. I said, what? You have to write an apology letter to your dad's drug dealer because she knows you've been following her.

Because I'd knocked on her door and asked her to stop selling my dad drugs and stuff. Pretty much terrorized her to run her away. I'm trying to save my dad's life. Didn't break the law. I didn't do anything that I wasn't supposed to.

I just made my presence known. I said, you want me to write a a an apology letter to my dad's drug dealer? She said, it's the only way that I'm gonna drop this. I was like, oh, man. Oh, man.

What do I do? I wrote a letter. I had a conversation with Kyle about this not too long ago. That letter was not her. That letter was to myself.

That was an apology to myself for acting the way that I had acted out of character, risking my family's future to do things that I shouldn't have been doing. So I wrote the letter, and I sent it to her, and they dropped it. It's the last conversation I ever had with my dad. Man, I'm sorry. So it's a little frustration there.

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

He didn't respond. Hey. I just wanna know you're okay. And then 2 days ago, I got a text. I blocked the number.

I'd appreciate you letting me know that you're okay. I said, I'm not going back to this. I'm not going back to this because after they dropped that DVPO and after the justice system and law enforcement that I've dedicated so much time, I trained their little SWAT team for free 15, 20 times because I wanted to give back to my community that I grew up in. I have a a small skill set. I have a passion for this.

I wanna help you. But when I asked for help of just doing your job, it was crickets. I was trying to do the right thing. I was so close in my mind of helping him, and all I needed was a little help from the wall to do their job, and they felt me completely. So after they dropped that, I said, man, fuck law enforcement.

Fuck this community. And I went straight alcoholic, man. I drink every day, all day. Hate. Pushed my family away, passing out drunk in my backyard by a fire.

And I finally realized that I'm never gonna get over this, and the only way to get over this is to take my life. That was in April. I knew my son's birthday was May 22nd. I said, man, I can't take my life before his birthday. I can't take that from him.

And at the time, I'm not thinking straight. Right? Whether I take it before or after, still gonna ruin his birthday. Right? But I was trying to put his feelings first somehow and say, I'm gonna wait.

So that was about 2 weeks when I started really deciding that, you know, I'm dragging my family through the mud. I'm feeling like this. I can't. I need to set them free. I am failed I am I am dead inside from my dad's addiction, because I did.

I tried. I tried to save him, and I failed. I failed miserably, and I thought that I actually had a chance to save him. And I was taking it out on my family by drinking, pushing them away, staying on my phone. So I was like, hey, man.

It's time to prepare things for when you're gone. So first thing, bills. Made sure everything was on auto draft on 1 card. Boom. Paperwork for the house, for the cars.

Everything went in my safe, labeled to my wife. I said to my wife, here are the documents. Everything. Life insurance, whatever. Everything that was important for my afterlife to to help her have have somewhat of a smooth transition, in my opinion, was there.

May 22nd came. We were in Tennessee. Does she know this? She knows it now. I shared this story at our at our Blueberry couples camp last year.

It's the first time that anybody's ever heard it. I hold that in for months before I ever spoke about it out loud. And, May 22nd came. We were in Tennessee, visited my brother, had my son's birthday with my family. We came back home.

Got home. I texted Kyle. So I talked to Kyle previously on social media. When I was first went to help my dad, and then I had to drive home to get resupply, His this show gave me hope. I listened to his episode.

I don't listen to I don't listen. I'm not real big into listening to people's podcasts and stuff. If I listen to a podcast, it's like the legends of the old west, Billy the Kid, things like that. That's what I really like. But I was like, man, I need something that's I'm tired of listening to music.

I don't wanna listen to music. I tried listening to a couple other peoples, but I was just not mentally there. And there was something about Kyle's podcast. I talked to him a few times on Instagram, maybe 1 or 2 times. Remember, I was transitioning from Glocks to cigs.

I knew that he had just started shooting cigs. I was asking him some questions, small Instagram talk. And I listened to the podcast, and I heard his story. Right? And I was seeing I'm getting chills, man.

And And I was seeing what he was doing, and I thought, oh my god. He was he was addicted a little bit. Right? Look at him now. I can save my dad.

There's hope that people can be addicted and be saved. Because in my whole law enforcement career, it was just drug addicts dying all the time, overdosing. It was horrible. But now there's 1 positive story of somebody that has overcame this. I can help my dad, and that's what gave me the motivation to to do what I tried to do on those 2 or 3 months that I was there.

So at the time, I was training tactical teams through the colleges. So North Carolina, how that works is a college can because there's only, like, for, like, training wise. You know? A college can host a course, have me come as in as an instructor. It's free to law enforcement officers, and then the state reimbursed the college for paying me.

It's a great system. So I was doing that through the colleges. And I was like, man, I love I still love the law enforcement community. Even though I was mad at the certain group that failed to do their job, I love cops, man. I think I I think what they do every day is courageous.

And I was like, man, I'm gonna reach out to this guy. I'm a give I'm gonna give him the advice on how to teach cops through the colleges. If they're gonna get any training, it might as well be by somebody like him. It you because there's so many fake trainers out there. Mhmm.

Right? He's gotta be legit. He seems genuine. I reached out to him May 23rd and said, hey, man. Do you have time for a quick phone call?

He was like, sent me a picture. I still have it. It was a, it was weights, and he's like, hey. I'm working out. I'll call you in a little bit.

Or can I call you in a little bit? I was like, yeah, man. Absolutely. The day came. No phone call.

May 24th came. Didn't know this at the time. I didn't even know this until when I talked about it at the couple's camp. May 24, 2012 is the day I got blown up. May 24, 2023 is the day that I drove my truck.

My service dog goes everywhere with me. I put her in a kennel and kissed her, and, I drove to Marshall's parking lot in Wilmington, parked at the very end, and I rolled all my windows down. I wanted somebody to hear the gunshot, and I wanted somebody to call the police. I wanted somebody to find me before the birds come in and eat me away. Down my head on the steering wheel, and I said, god, please forgive me.

I'm in pain. I don't wanna go to hell. Please don't send me to hell for this. I'm just hurting. And, I said amen.

And, I went to grab the gun. My hand grabs the gun. My phone rings. I remember the last 2 digits of this number, 82. This last 2 digits, Kyle's phone number because I remembered he was in the 82nd.

It was Kyle calling me. As I had my hand on the gun grabbing it, he was calling me back. Squeaky wheel gets the grease. My phone made a noise. I grabbed my phone.

I am so grateful for that phone call. Man, I am so grateful for that phone call because the things I would have missed out on in life, Man, it just wasn't that bad. So a big beautiful man called me. I answered the phone, said hello, and, he said, hey, man. Hey, man.

Sorry I didn't call you back yesterday. I said, hey, man. You're calling to have a great time. You're calling to have a great time. I'm like, he said, you're busy?

I'm like, nope. No. I'm not, man. He goes, hey, Yeah. Yeah.

I I got your message. I was like, yeah. Started talking to him about the colleges. He's like, Yeah, man. That that sounds great.

That sounds great. He goes, hey. Do you know anybody that, I just had a cancelation in my protect your mindset course. Do you know anybody that you used to work with from on on the team that would wanna come and take it? I'm like, I don't know anybody right now.

Like, I'm in the middle of something. Like, I might know I don't. He goes, oh, alright. You wanna come take it? I said, you want me to come take your course?

No, bro. I'm about to I'm about to kill myself right now. You said that? No. No.

No. No. I didn't tell him. He didn't know this until months later till he heard it at the couple's camp. I'm like, dude, in my mind, I'm like, bro, I'm about to kill myself.

I'm not gonna tell you, yes. But the other half of me was like, gave me a little hope, gave me something to look forward to. Another I love CQB, man. I love shooting. I love this industry.

I tell you. I was like, yeah, man. I'll come take that course, dude. I'm gonna phone up, Sean. I was so excited.

I was like, oh my god, man. I'm gonna go take this dude's course. I've I've seen the videos. We had a mutual friend that had taken the course a month or 2 prior that was, like, it's the greatest course ever. I said, man, I gotta go try it out.

And, man, I'd sold all my stuff. Right? I didn't really have much. I was so mad at law enforcement. I was selling all my all my things, giving it away.

I drove over to OP Tactical in Raleigh. It's, like, 1 of the best, like, tactical stores. They have all the good name brand stuff. Man, I dropped a bunch of money. Got belts, got all this stuff.

I was like, man, I'm excited. I'm like, holy shit. I haven't felt like this since months and showed up to the course. I bought all that stuff on Friday. Of course was Saturday Sunday.

Showed up to the course Saturday morning, and I'm sitting in the back, and we're introducing ourselves and introduced myself on calls of care. You know? Blake's here. Blake has his own training company too, so it's it's it's cool to have him here. And I'm like, like, alright.

How y'all doing? I'm I'm truly a nobody, but how you doing? So an hour 45 minutes in this course, man, I do some demos with him. You know, he's showing the students corner fed, what 1 and 2 looks like, and I'm running reps with him. You know, maybe he just felt that I was capable of of helping him demo.

So after that, he's like, hey. Take this take these 6 students to do corner favor with them. I'm gonna take these other 6 and do center fit. I'm like, what are you talking about, dude? Like, I have a Delta, a former unit guy that's asking me to take 6 of his students that has entrusted in him with money that that he's trusting in me to to be able to teach them even this little bit of knowledge.

Gave me a little fire in my gut. Right? Nervous. What am I doing? I'm capable of doing this.

Why are you nervous? This is what you you're good at this. I'm like, but I can't believe it. I'm like, sure, dude. Yeah.

Whatever. Whatever you need. Roger that. So we go over there, and and then we're switching, and then spend the whole day I'm helping him teach. And then the next morning, 2nd day of the course, he said, hey.

I want you to run the first scenario with and then I want you to flow in with the students and kinda kinda help guide them a little bit if they get stuck. I'm like, yeah. Cool. Phenomenal course. So we're at the end of the course, and the students I'm in the back sitting down as a student, and these there's 12 students.

I'm, like, the 13th. And these students are given the pros and cons of the course, like, kinda like closing statements. Right? About every student is thanking Kyle, but thanking me for my knowledge. Everyone.

And I'm like, what is going on? I started feeling some self worth again. I started feeling like maybe I'm I'm worthy. Maybe I shouldn't die. Maybe there's a purpose for me here.

Because what really draw me into Kyle was as he started his course out as we're gonna talk about god, and if you don't like it, you can get out. I was like, dude, that's how I feel too. But, like, it's hard to to I'm in a bad spot right now. Right? So but the last student's like, yeah, Blake.

Thank you for everything. Thanks for your knowledge. Kyle's like, hey, man. You didn't notice this job interview, did you? I'm like, I got my own training company.

I'm just talking about job interview. I started my own training company. I was talking about, we're competitors. No. Not really.

But, you know, I'm like in my mind, I'm like, man, I I got my own training company. I'm not gonna come work for you. What are you talking about? And then we started talking at the end of that, and then saved my life. I've been with him ever since.

And that's that's the end of May, October 22, 2023, I was rebaptized because god gave me a second chance. He put the right people on my path to save my life, and I will spend the rest of my life honoring him. And that's what I'm gonna do because he gave me another opportunity, which I feel like I didn't deserve. He took something that the devil meant for evil, and he turned it to good, and he did it to save me. And had I met Kyle any sooner, I don't think we would have clicked the way we did.

I don't think Kyle was Kyle had just gotten back from his treatment that he needed to receive me into his life. Timing is everything, and I don't believe the day that I grabbed a gun and my phone went off, I don't believe in coincidences anymore. I believe in god's timing. I believe he is the power, and he will guide you in the direction that you need to be even when you feel like that you're carrying the load all by yourself. But guess what, brother?

You're not. He's carrying you, and he's carrying the load to help you get through it, and that's what he did. And that's how me and Kyle met. And we've been running and gunning ever since. He's my brother, man.

I love him more than anything in this world. I I I love that man and his family and Eric and his children. They are my family. And, I'm just grateful for the opportunity to even so I dropped my company. I prayed and prayed and prayed, man.

I was like, man, what do I do? This is I've always wanted to work for myself. And and then prayers, I kept you know, where 2 or more gather, there I am. I could do it by myself where we can partner up with Kyle as a team and use our platform to bring people closer to him. And that's what we're doing.

We're also teaching you to be men, but more importantly, we want you to be Christian men and women so the next generation sees what that looks like. Wow.

I definitely was not expecting to hear

that. Saved my life. I'm beyond grateful, man. I am the opportunities, man, Sean is is you know, I did it August last year. A couple months after I met Kyle, we got hooked up with Warren Perimeter.

We did this video shoot for him in Arizona. We're running around in Helos, and I remember sitting there hanging off the side of it. Kyle's to my right, 2 former, still team 6 guys on the on the back end. I'm like, what are you doing here? This is all god.

I'm just a cop. I'm just a at the end of the day, I'm just a cop. I have a former unit guy, and I have 2 former SEAL Team 6 guys behind me, and I'm the 4th man. God is good. When you submit to him, fully submit to him, after everything I just went through, here I am flying around on a on a on a little bird with with these guys.

And that was when I realized, man, this is all god. This is all god. Here I am. And here I am before you, Sean, on probably the most respected platform in the world, in my opinion. And I was just a cop.

God is great. He will put you where you need to be, whether it's 1 person or a 100000 or a1000000 that can be saved by this message, even if it's just 1 person, I am where I'm supposed to be on the day that I'm supposed to be here with the person that I'm supposed to be with. And I truly believe that.

I believe that too.

Powerful. Very. Wow.

That What did Kyle do when you he found out about that?

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

That was the first time anybody had Anybody

had ever heard. Anybody at all. It was the 2nd night of the couple's week. Shit. Everybody was crying.

I was crying. My wife was crying. Wife was a little upset with me because she's a lot to him. Talking to me. I'm like, I wasn't thinking straight.

I was thinking that I was saving y'all from me is what I was thinking. I'm saving you from the monster. I swore when I married you, I promised you nobody would ever hurt you again, and I'm I'm saving you from from me. I'm no I'm not physically hurting her. I've never physically hurt excuse me.

Physically ever hurt my wife, but I was emotionally hurting her by just being an asshole, being a drunk. So I was gonna save my family. Does your son know? No.

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

Yeah. He listens to your podcast.

How are you gonna handle that?

Man, he's such a cool kid. He's so understanding. He is, he is just such a good son. And and we're gonna watch the episode together, and we're gonna have conversations. That's what I told him.

He asked, can I watch the episode? Yes. But not on your own. I'll watch it with you. Because I don't want him to hear that and think that I was giving up on them.

I wanted to protect them. I just wasn't thinking right at the time because I was mentally dying from somebody else's drug addiction. I'd put my dad in front of my family for the first time, thought that I could save him because I, like, can save anything. You know? And I failed, and I felt like a failure.

And then I felt like a failure as a father for putting them second, and then still failing. And then now I'm failing at home after my failure of my father. It's time for me to go. But I think he's understanding enough to know because he has watched the he watches everything I do. You know?

And I love that kid, man. He's my hero. He is you know, his his dad sucks. His real dad sucks. He's he and he knows this, but he smuggles drugs with boats.

He's a boat captain. Drives to Mexico and Florida all the time. He's been arrested. He's got a more rap he's got a longer rap sheet than, about any criminal I've ever arrested. My son Googled his he Googled his name 1 time, found out that a month prior, he had been in a hostage situation in Myrtle Beach.

He took his girlfriend hostage and threatened to kill the cops on an 18 hour standoff. So, you know, we we have some conversations. We talk, and, we're very open in our house about our emotions and feelings. And, he's 16, but and he's acts like a grown up. He's a he's a phenomenal human.

What's his name? His name's Henry Stacy Hayes. We used to call him Stacy. Got made fun of in high school, I think. So he goes by Henry, but I found out recently that Hank is short for Henry, so now I call him Hank.

Sounds cool. He likes it.

So you won't tell him this before he watches?

We're gonna talk about it. Yeah. I I don't want him to be a shock. We're gonna sit down as a family and have the conversation of, hey. We're gonna listen to this show.

We're gonna talk about this, and I'll explain to him everything that he's gonna hear that could harm him or hurt him or not hurt him, but he'd be confused on. I want him to hear it from me directly before the show comes out. How long have

you known this is how you're gonna do it?

Gonna do what? Talk to him about this? Yeah. Oh, man, Sean. This is

Did you know this before we spoke?

I've never told nobody, and I knew he would never find out. But when he heard I was coming on the show, he was excited because he'd watched some other episodes. And, he's like, you know, you're gonna talk about things I don't know? I'm like, yeah. So what is it?

I'm like, well, kinda why I've been hesitant to ever do anything like this is because I don't want him to be confused, but he understands trauma, and he understands that that relationship with my dad. He understands that PTSD from law enforcement. He understands my injury from when I was in the army. He understands that I I have some trauma, and he does a great job at at keeping me happy and keeping me active. He's a major part of who I am now, but I'm going to talk to him about it because I think he needs to hear it from me first rather than hearing it on a podcast as a family.

We're gonna talk about it, and we're gonna talk about this is what happened. This is why it happened. This is why I was upset. And he's so smart and understanding that I know that he's gonna understand because he's just he's just like that. He's just a he's a phenomenal person, and he's understanding.

And I don't think it's gonna be you know, is it something that I did? That was my biggest worry was, you know, was it me and mom? You know? But no, man. It was just me, my own demons.

Trying to save somebody that didn't wanna be saved was hard, and then failing at that when you thought that you could. And he understands that that we call used to call him papa Jim, my dad. He hasn't seen him in years, since 2018. Well, you saw him 2 years ago. We were back home, and we met with my dad at a state park at a little restaurant.

And my dad was, like, shaking and and it it looked horrible. And we had a long drive home and we explained it, and I told him that I'm not gonna expose him to pop out Jim anymore to protect him, and he understood. He was a little kinda scared why he was like that, and I was like, well, he's on drugs. Like, 15, man. I can't I can't hide it from you.

He's on drugs. Because you could just tell he's on drugs. I mean, scabs, shaking your mouth, doing all the things. You could just tell. So we had a long conversation that whole day about about that, and he agreed that he doesn't wanna see that no more.

Are you expecting some tough questions?

Yeah. He's intelligent. What do you think the I don't even know.

The first question will be? I don't even know.

I'm scared, to be honest with you. I am scared of those what those questions are gonna be, but I'm gonna answer them answer them with honesty. It's out. I'm not gonna hide anything or try to make it sound better. It's out.

Maybe he can take something away from this that you know? 1, that god is good, that don't ever give up on life, don't ever give up on yourself, and don't ever run when things get hard. Because now he sees positive growth. He sees what we're doing now. He's already seen me at my worst, but I didn't give up by the grace of god.

And things get better. Life is hard, but things always get better. At the end of every rainstorm, the sun comes out. You just gotta bear through the storm, and I hope that's what he learns from this. But he's gonna answer he's gonna ask some tough questions.

There's a lot of lessons to learn from in this already. Yeah. Just getting started.

Take a break. Let's take a break. Take a break.

You alright, Ben? Yeah. I'm good. I feel good. Some heavy stuff.

Yeah. Feel good. Good.

First time I ever talked about it other than with my wife and Kyle and Kyle's wife, Erica. So, you know, a lot of my followers on Instagram have a understanding of what I've been through, but they don't have a true understanding because everything you post online can be made to look a little better. Right? So but, you know, if you put yourself out there to to fight evil or to do anything in that line of work, trauma is gonna happen. We're not meant to see things that we've seen or do things that we've done.

And that's that's what I think he he really understands is I don't have a normal job nor did I have a normal job nor did I see normal things. And and with that comes some trauma. So, yeah, it felt good to get it out. Good. Been holding that in for a long time, and I hope that it just reaches 1 person.

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

Yeah. You think so?

I know so.

Yeah. Felt good.

Blake, you gotta find forgiveness, man.

I am.

I hope you do. Now.

I'm trying to figure out how to find forgiveness without physically telling him my forgive me because I don't wanna talk to him.

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

Him. Maybe that's yeah. It's crazy you said it because me and my wife are having this conversation. She said the same thing. Maybe when I'm ready soon so I can move on, I need to call him and say, look.

I do love you. You are my father. And I forgive you, but I can't carry on this relationship. And I think maybe that's what needs to be said, truly. But, yeah, you're right.

I need to forgive him. And I feel like I'm ready to forgive him. I'm just scared of his manipulation. He's already messaged me, telling me he's sober. I'm 18 months sober.

Dog, that don't even make sense. You were only in jail for 9 months, and the last time I saw you, you were on drugs. Still with my stepmom, so I can't help him. She is she is I have videos of her. Can't even put her shoes on.

She is a he's a bad drug addict. She is the worst drug addict I've ever seen. As long as he is with her, he'll never get clean. He'll never get clean. Moment he went to jail, she had some other dude living in the house begging him.

She'll never get clean. And I'm so scared that that phone call for forgiveness is gonna lead to trying to save him again. That's what I'm scared of because where I am now and who I am now is not the same person I was. I'm a year sober from alcohol. I haven't had a drink or did I want to drink alcohol in this last year?

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

And my problem is is once I get that feeling of the buzz, dude, it's like riding a bull, man. I ain't stopping. Maybe it doesn't have to

be a call. Maybe it could be a written letter. I thought about it.

I'm just gonna have to not put my return add they don't know they don't know my address. Anytime I mail those other checks, I didn't put a return address or I made 1 up,

but there's no think it does 2 things. It allows your dad to die knowing that you forgave him Yeah. And it set you free. Yeah. Let's take that break.

Yeah.

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Alright, Blake. We're back from the break, and, wow. I was not expecting to get that deep that fast. And, Yeah. Deep quick.

Yeah. I did. It did. It definitely did. I am curious.

What did what did Kyle say when he heard that?

He gave me the biggest hug. He was crying, and, just told me he loved me and and said, I want you to know that as much as you needed me, I needed you in that exact moment. Wow. So that was that was just good to hear. That was really good to hear.

How much time had passed since Let's see. Between 6 months. 6 months. You'd known him for 6 months since that call.

That was, November. I think we did a couple's camp in October November, but that was May. May when it happened. And you found out. And I think it was November.

That is definitely some divine intervention. Yeah.

Truly was. By how long

Very amazing. Wow. Incredible. Well, let's move, let's move into wow. Let's move on past high school.

Let's go to college. Let's go to college.

That was a ride. Was it? That was a ride. I rode that train hard. So I got a football scholarship.

And, man, I was I I thought it was the greatest thing ever. So I got to Concord University, which is a school in West Virginia Southern West Virginia. And I got there, and coming from a small town, like, our partying was different, man. Our partying was in the fields, chugging Bud Light and drinking Bacardi 151 by fire. Right?

That's more dudes than girls, whatever. You know, it's the country. And when the hell I mean, I grew up with half I grew up with everybody that was there anyways. I've known them my whole life. So I go to college, man, and, went to I went early for for, summer practice.

It was kinda boring. It's just football all day. Meetings in the morning, meetings in the afternoon, practice in the morning, practice at night. I was like, oh god, this sucks. So then the rest of the students started coming in.

And right as football was starting up, I went to my first massive college party, and it was in, like, an apartment complex. It was like all these apartments were having 1 big party. You could go from apartment to apartment. So I go down to this 1 guy's apartment, and he's, nah, man. Football players aren't allowed in here.

I'm like, get out of here, man. Get out of my way. Big boy. I mean, I thought it was something. I was you couldn't tell me nothing.

I was 18. I was at a football scholarship. I was on the football team. I took 2 steps. This dude came up behind me and punched the living fire out of me.

Boom. Knocked me out. Fell down the steps. I woke up. My buddies are carrying me to the car, and, they went back in the party, and I laid in the car in pain.

There's a small bone that's, like, right here that he had broken. And I had to go to the doctor the next morning and had to go tell my football coach I can't play because I was at a party that I wasn't even supposed to be at. You know, we weren't supposed to party. He's like, well, fine. You're not playing.

He goes, you know, you're gonna be redshirted and and, you know, don't even know if we're gonna carry on your scholarship next year. I was like, alright. I understand. I understand. Whatever.

So, man, for the next, like, 2 or 3 months, I never went I didn't go to 1 class. Not 1 class. I didn't even know where my class was. I knew where the food hall was and the gym, and I stayed in my room and played Xbox all the time. That was back when, Call of Duty, when they had the zombies, zombie game.

Man, I was playing that all the time, partying at nighttime. Well, about November or October, right before Halloween, they go to my room, and on my door is this letter from the college. I'm like, what is this? Take it off, go in my room, open it up. It's like, dear mister Cook, you have 0 attendance.

Your grade point average is 0. We're informing you that if you don't bring your grades up 0. Literally 0? 0. Holy shit.

I ain't go to 1 class. And, if you don't bring your your grades up or make an effort, then we're we're gonna have to remove you from the college.

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

I was like, are we in it? I was like, balled it up, Sean, in this most beautiful rounded, small little tennis ball. Kobe threw it away. I said, they're not gonna kick me out of here. No child left behind.

I'm like, dude. Now I'm like, bro, it's not high school. You know what I'm saying? Dude, month and a half later, we're coming up on Christmas break. People are standing by my door, go to my room, they're like, hey, miss Cook.

How are you? I'm so and so. Administrative office. I'm like, hey. Yeah.

How are you? Yeah. Did you letter yeah. Well, you got a letter, and you said you didn't go to class? No.

They were like, oh, cool. Make sure you leave nothing behind when you leave here for Christmas break. You're no longer enrolled here. I was like, oh my god. I'm like, no.

Let's work something out here. Right? I can't go home. I'm embarrassed. My mom's gonna kill me.

She's like, no, man. You gotta go home. So I called my mom. I'm embarrassed. She's like, ah, she's like, oh, you idiot.

Blah blah blah. She's like, you know what? Everything's gonna be okay. She's fine. I understand.

Maybe you just couldn't handle, you know, a a college, a university. I'm like, alright, mom. Yeah. You're just right. You can't.

She's like, alright. Cool. I'm gonna enroll you in a community college, and we're gonna get your grades back up, and then we're gonna go talk to them and see if we can get you back in there. I'm like, absolutely, mom. That sounds like a great plan.

I attended the 1st class for 15 minutes, and I was like, this ain't for me. I got up, left my notebook and everything in there, told the teacher I was going to the bathroom, never came back. Well, my my mom said that I couldn't find a party where I grew up. By this point, she was living in a little bit bigger city with, like, 20,000 people. What my mom didn't know is I could find a party in that city because Applebee's had happy hour at 12 o'clock, and I got drunk with a bunch of moms with their kids in the little carriers on the ground, like, every day.

So I didn't go to class, And my mom was infuriated because there she was she had tried. I kept telling her mom, maybe school's not for me. I'll get a job. I'll take a break. I'll mature a little bit.

She's like, oh, cool. She's like, let's try that. I was like, alright. So I stalled for, like, a year. I'd sleep all day, play Call of Duty all night.

I'm, hey, mom. I'm a be a professional gamer. She said, you know, you gotta go get a real job. You're a loser. I'm like, no.

I'm not. I'm working on a career. She's like, playing video games is not a career. So finally 1 day she comes home, and by this time, she'd she'd met my stepdad, and my stepdad was trying to get me to go like, he worked he did something, like like, delivering stuff for the coal mines, and he was like, hey. He took me to work with him 1 day, and I was like, oh my god.

This sucks. I don't wanna do this. And, finally, she came in, and she's like, hey. You need to find a job, or you're gonna have to go. I'm like, mom, where am I gonna go?

She's like, I don't know. You can't keep living here because I'm just supporting this. I'm like, okay. That's my mom. I'm the I'm the baby child.

You're not kicking me out. You kidding me? My mom and papa would light you up. You kicked me out of this house. That's her mom and dad.

So I'm like, alright. Whatever. So I'm playing video games. She calls me up. She's like, hey.

You find a job? I'm like, yeah. I know. I'm I'm yeah. I'm gonna try Hibbett Sports, up to that new shopping center complex.

She's like, okay. Alright. So I go up there, and I'm like, oh, man. Please give me a job. I'm like, I'm looking like a bag of ass.

Right? I got, like, sandals on and some and some gym shorts and a dirty shirt with Doritos cheese all over it and a hat backwards. I'm like, hey, man. Y'all hiring? They're like, oh, we're not hiring you.

I was like, oh, wow. I thought this was gonna be easy. So I go outside, and I'm sitting on the bench. I'm like, oh my god. She's really gonna kick you out of the house.

Where where are you gonna work? I'm like, I'm not going to McDonald's. I'm not no. We'll figure this out. Now here, this guy, he's like, hey, man.

You okay? You know, look up. He's kind of a bigger dude, and he's got the old digital camo on. It said United States Army. I was like, oh, man.

I'm not doing so good. I'm like, my mom's gotta kick me out of the house. I need a job. He's like, you need a job? How old are you?

I'm like, at at that point, I was 20. I'm like, I'm 20. He goes, come on inside. Let me talk to you. He's like, what do you do for fun?

I'm like, man, I play Call of Duty. He was like, oh, yeah. He goes, let me talk to you about real life Call of Duty. It's just like Call of Duty. I was like, I was like, shoot.

Just like Call of Duty? I'm like, I'm down. I'm like, let's go. We go inside. I do the little, like, computer ASVAB thing.

Got got my score. He's like, he's like, what do you wanna do? I'm like, I don't know. He goes, how about the infantry? I was like, what's it like?

He goes, call of duty, man. He goes, front lines. He goes, just like the game you play, all the cool gear. I was like, yeah. I wanna do that.

He's like, alright. Cool. Signed up, got a ship date for, like, that was ship date was in January or December of 2010. And, I go home. I'm on I'm playing video games, and she goes, still here.

Did you get a job? I'm like, I did. She goes, oh, man. I'm so proud of you. She goes, what are you doing?

I'm like, mama joined the army. She's like, oh my god. I killed my baby Tell him you can't go. I was like, I don't think that's how that works mom. I'm like, I've already signed paperwork.

I'm I'm fully committed She is. Oh my god. I killed him. She's, like, all hysterical. I'm like, no.

No. And then my sat down was like, no. It'd be it'd be it'd be it's good for him. It'll be alright with him. My grandpa was in Vietnam.

My grandpa called her and was like, Tammy, he needs it. My uncle was in the air force. He needs it. He is a bum right now. He has no guidance.

There's no discipline. Alright? Because I've been handed everything because of football. High school, like, it's Friday. You have a game tonight.

Put your head down. Take a nap. Basketball, Tuesday, Fridays, take a nap. Do you wanna go, hey. I'm kinda hungry.

I can't play tonight on empty stomach. Hey. Well, go down to the cafeteria. See if they'll feed you. Like, babied all through school.

Didn't do anything in school. And so I I was, you know, I failed myself as a as a young kid, but the people that were supposed to be molding me didn't do that either. So I had no drive, no discipline, no nothing. So I get sent to Fort Benning, Georgia, and I'm like, oh my God, what did I sign up for? As soon as I get off the bus, everybody's yelling, it's complete chaos, People are holding bags over their heads.

I'm like, oh, this I ain't see this on call of duty. This wasn't on call of duty. No. It wasn't. Y'all supposed to hand me some sexy stuff.

I got a bag, and y'all yelling at me. So, I did basic. Right? Recruiter didn't give me anything in my contract. Nothing.

I didn't have anything. So about 2 months in, and I I started asking people what they're doing. Some people are like, oh, man. I have, you know, the the 18 x rays, special forces. I got I got, airborne contract.

I got this, and I'm like, I mean, I got nothing. I got nothing. I got nothing. I don't have anything. I'm like, you know, people got bonuses, and I'm like, if I ever go back home, I'm a fight this dude.

He lied to me. It's not like call of duty. Everybody else in here getting paid pretty good. I don't have anything in my contract. So about 2 months in basic, the drill instructor comes in.

He's, like, reading off everybody's duty assignments of where they're going. You know, people with airborne contracts, some are going to Italy, some are going to brag. Obviously, the, 18 x guys are going to brag, and they're like, cook, Korea. I'm like, What do you mean Korea? Like, I'm the youngest child.

Like, when we went to, like, Chinese restaurants and stuff, my mom took me to McDonald's. I'm a I can't I'm not gonna eat their food. I don't know what food they got there, but I'm gonna starve. What are we talking about? I can't go there.

Are you absolutely kidding me? So I'm like, I'm panicking. I'm like, man. I'm like, some other guys are like, oh, man. South Korea, that's kinda cool.

I'm like, that's not cool. Like, at this point, I was dedicated. Right? I I wanted to go fight bad guys. Mhmm.

You know? Once I put the uniform on because I come from a family of of military people, and I'm the I'm the I'm that generation. Now my my younger half brother is now, and he's in the 82nd, but I was the first 1 from from from as the kids to go do something. So I was listening to all, like, the Toby Keith music and stuff before I left, getting myself all, like, hyped up, you know, the American soldiers. By this point, I was like, I was kinda in it, man.

I was like, man, it's kinda interesting, whatever. But I wanted to go do something. I didn't just I didn't know anything about what I was doing in the first place, but I know I didn't wanna go to Korea because I knew the guys didn't deploy from Korea to to go fight a war. And we were still in war. Right?

So if I'm here, let's go do it. I still had that as they were starting to mold me to understanding of of my purpose, why I'm here. Right? I'm here I'm here to go fight a war, go fight bad guys. So I'm, like, I go in there.

That was on, like, a like, a Friday. And, Sunday, it's, like, relax day or whatever, cleaning guns, whatever we're doing, and I find my drill sergeant. I'm like, hey, sir. I'm like, sergeant Rutherford. I'm like, hey, sergeant Rutherford or drill sergeant.

Can I can I talk to you? He's like, what you got? I'm like, hey. I can't go to Korea. He's like, why?

I'm like, woah. 1, like, for real, I don't I don't eat any kind of food like that. He's like, shut up and get out of here, private. I'm like, no. No.

For real. I wanna go do something. I wanna go to war. You have to help me get somewhere that's gonna deploy me. I didn't just sign up for this to have a job.

Now I know my purpose. I understand why I'm here, and I understand the importance of why I'm here. I understand that there are people who have died wearing this exact uniform that I'm wearing. I want a purpose. He goes pulls out.

He said, what what have you got on your last PT test? I'd maxed out 300 on all my PT tests. I actually trained for this. I didn't have a job. Right?

So I had 6 months to train. I trained every day. I ran all the time. I did everything I could because I had been told that you can get contracts in basic. So I'm like, I want I heard that I can get an airborne contract.

He's like, look. You got 300 on your next PT test. It it was it was coming up to be, like, the last PT test, before AIT. He's like, you get a 300 on your PT test, and I'll give you an airborne contract because you have the highest score here. You've had consistent 3 hundreds.

I'll give you an airborne contract. I was like, yeah. I was I was like, I can do that. PT test was coming up about 3 days 2 days before the PT test. I came down with the flu.

Diarrhea, throwing up, feeling weak. I'm like, oh, man, dude. I'm really going to Korea. And the night of the before the PT test, my bunkmate was like, hey, cook. He goes, no.

You ain't been feeling well, but you wanna buy something that'll give you energy? I'm like, what what what could you possibly have? Like, packs of sugar that you stole? Like, said, no. No.

No. I I was able to get a 5 hour energy shot from, the commissary. I was like, yeah. He I was like, how much? He's like, $100.

I was like, done. Done. I'll I'll get you the money when we get out. He goes, alright. And I ripped that thing the next morning.

Man, I I was thrown up on that run, but I was so dedicated to get out of a deployment to Korea or, speech stationed in Korea that I maxed out that PT test. I got a 300.

No shit.

So, I mean, I I'm pretty sure I'd I'd shit myself on that run. I wasn't stopping. I wasn't stopping to puke. I had I had to do this. Like, because the push ups and setups were easy for me, but it was always the run that I always came so close to to always passing to get to 300.

It was always by, like, seconds, and I didn't have seconds to spare. And I was feeling horrible. So they, Rutherford held up to his end of the bargain and gave me an airborne contract. So, we got the orders. Everybody else, again, was pretty much going to Italy.

Few going were going to Bragg, and, hey. We'll get you to Bragg. I was like, man, that's great. I'll take Bragg. An hour and a half from Myrtle Beach, 4 hours from home.

Like, that's that's that's okay. I can do that. I like that. And then I got to you know, I went to airborne school, and, man, it's just just another, you know, month of just being treated like shit. And, you know, now I'm talking to guys there that are like, yeah.

Yeah. I'm like, oh, where y'all going? Like, oh, you know, we're gonna RASP after this. And I'm like, well, what's that? They're like, oh, yeah.

Ranger selection. I'm like, dude, how did I not get any of this? Like, I forgot what my ASVAB score was, but it it it was it was high enough to get these qualifications. I don't know. I hear me or what it was.

It was like it was like, I don't know, like, 101 or something like that. I'm not sure, but it was high enough to get these contracts. My recruiter just I was easy.

Yep.

I was like a stray dog outside, and he gave me a little puppy chow, little little food, and I was happy. Or he gave me a job to I didn't think of a bigger picture. And I was like, man, I gotta get there. You know? It sounds cool.

You know? This is the kind of people I wanna be with. So I get to the 82nd, get to brag. It was really cool, man. I was just, like, seeing all these, like, maroon berets and just the kind of the vibe that people were putting out, and I was like, god.

This is I like this place. This is cool. But when I got to my company, man, you just get treated like shit. There's, like, no true leaders at that time in the 82nd. Everybody just treats you like shit.

There's nobody taking care of you. Nobody helping you or trying to be a leader. You got people that have never been leaders a day in their life, like e 4, like the e 4 mafia. Dude, those dudes would treat you beat you down and treat you like shit, physically hit you and treat you like shit, then expect for you to have morale. And then the squad leaders would come down after doing nothing all day long.

Instead of, like, going to do training, 5 o'clock comes around. It's time to go home. Hey. We gotta go do area beautification. That's just not what I signed up for.

I don't wanna signed up for it all. This is ridiculous. I was like, this I can't. Because at that point, I was like, 20 years. I can do 20 years.

Retire at at 40 years old. Yeah. I could do that. At this point, I'd I'd I'm I'm, like, committed. I'm in this.

I'm like, man, I'm type of people I wanna be around. But, man, that I I was very proud of wearing my maroon beret in in my 82nd patch, but it was, like, every day bad leadership was sucking the morale out of me. I'm like, I wanna do this, but I gotta I gotta get out. I gotta go maybe try out for something else, and that was when I saw my first SF guy. I was we were in a gym, and he was walking in.

I had a green beret, and I was like, man, what is that? He said special forces. I looked it up. I was like, man, that's I gotta get there. That's what I wanna do.

I wanna go be I wanna go to ranger school. I wanted to do this. And I had a horrible staff sergeant at the time. I mean, he was just a redneck from Louisiana that just was he had failed selection, like, 3 times, failed ranger school, didn't want any of his guys going anywhere. Right?

Because if I pass Ranger school and I have a tab, what does he look like? Jealousy. He didn't want any of us going anywhere. Dude, I was smoking them MPT. They would punish me by, like, stupid punishments by trying to smoke me.

I looked at it as a workout. Smoked me out for hours. That just means I don't go to the gym after this. I enjoy it. I'm working out.

I enjoy working out. I was taking all that hatred that we had talked about, and I would put it into working out. I enjoyed it. Push ups, front leaning rest, whatever. Because guess what?

You're not gonna do it till I die. Eventually, you have to stop, and I just gotta outlast you, and I can. But it was just all the time there. Just there was no training. I think I did CQB, like, twice.

Like, the rest of it was walking around area j in the woods acting like we were taking contact. Like, there's no real training. I'm like, man, this is this is not there's gotta be something better than this because my motivation I've been there for 8 months, and I'm, like, ready to leave. I'm like, this sucks. I'm getting treated like shit every day just for being good at PT or, like, not being able to take the machine gun, like, the the 240 at a certain time while people are yelling at me and while I'm doing jumping jacks.

I I can't take this machine gun apart fast enough, and neither could they. That's the problem. I was being asked to do things that they couldn't do. But because they had been there and they deployed some BS deployment to Iraq and didn't do anything, but set on a fob, they were superior to us cherries. They thought they'd done something for their country.

So instead of just taking us under our wings and teaching us the ways, you treated us like shit. You killed our motivation. Hey, brother. We are your backup. We are the people that are gonna be fighting next to you.

You don't want somebody next to you that hates you when you're trying to fight for your life. Because if you get shot, I'm gonna have to help you. You don't want somebody that hates you to help you. So how about you build us up? But it never got to that point.

It never it just I saw the first green beret, and I was like, that's what I wanna do. I wanna be that guy. I started looking into it. I'd see I see somebody that was in SF, and I'd ask them questions. They were they were nice guys.

Hey, man. What's it like? Hey. You know, we do this, this, and this. There's grown up rules, big boy rules.

I'm like, dude, I gotta get there. Because I spent, like, my whole youth being a part of a really good team. Football, basketball, always wanted to be the best. I wanted to be on the best team to win, and I wasn't on the best team to win. I didn't want to go to war not being on the best team.

So I asked if I could go to the selection. No. I asked to go to Ranger School. No. We're locked in.

We we have an appointment coming up, or we have training coming up. We don't have guys to spare. We're already short. I'm like, man, you should want me to go do these things. Like, as a leader, I want you to be better.

Because if you go and do these things and I and I help build you up, then that's an that's a, an example of what a good leader I am.

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

You're exactly right. It is a domino effect. They've been treated like that forever, and then it just keeps going and going and going. I think it's making a change now mainly because social media. Right?

I think a lot of these leaders have a lot of squad leaders on on Bragg that follow follow us and and want to be good to their dudes because they're learning from what we're doing. I think it is making a change, but back then, man, I hated going to work. I hated it. I couldn't get out of there because nobody wanted to send anybody because if you sent me and I actually came back with a tab, you know, and you didn't have 1, like

Yep.

It's it sucked, man. It it it it sucked. And then finally, I gave up because they're like, yeah, we're locked in on an appointment. So about November of 2011, we were supposed to deploy to Afghanistan. We went to Louisiana.

No. We were gonna go to Louisiana, JRTC, and it got canceled, then deployment got pushed. So we did a jump. Supposed to deploy, like, the following week, so I went in for a haircut at this place called, Frederick's Salon in Fayetteville. And I went in there and this girl cut my hair.

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

And I left, said goodbye, and then we went to some other train oh, we went to Dahlonega to train for about 2 weeks. And they came back, and they were like, alright, guys. Their deployment got pushed again to February. So, alright. Whatever.

So I went in for a haircut, and my wife was the 1 that I connected with. She was like, hey. She she's just got out of a relationship. She's dating this guy that was in the Q course. He went to Germany and cheated on her and stuff.

She went looking for a relationship, neither really was I. And she was like, hey. Let's all go out tonight. I'm a I'm a hook you up. The girl that was in the chair next to me, she thought you were cute.

I'll set it up, and we'll all just go out tonight. Bring some of your friends. I was like, yeah. That's awesome. Let's do that.

And we go to to my, my wife's apartment, and the girl never showed. So I was like, alright. So we all just started hanging out. And then me and my wife started hanging out and, stayed all night with her. Didn't have sex.

Thought that was awesome. Got married, like, 41 days later. 41 days? 41 days. Yeah.

That date alone is crazy. January 4, 2012 is when I got, married. What we had just found out this past year, her grandparents were married January 4th. No way. I found out in a newspaper article that my aunt posted on Facebook that my dad's parents married January 4th.

Wow. No idea. We had no idea. Wow. We have them, hanging up in our house, both of the articles.

Hers is a wedding invitation, mine's an article. Super crazy. Very cool. So how I met my son is about that 3rd or 4th night, I was over at her house, and it was like in 1 of those old historical homes downtown Fayetteville that they turned into, like, an apartment complex with, like, 4 apartments. They had a backyard, so we had a fire going.

She had her son. She said, hey. I'm a he's in the bathtub. My mom's watching him. I'm gonna go put him put him in bed.

I was like, alright. Cool. I'm sitting out by the fire. I'm by myself. I hear, like, little footprints.

I'm like, oh, what is that? This kid runs over. He's, like, soaking wet. Sats on my lap. Looks right at me dead on my face and says, I love you.

I'm like, whose kid is this, first of all? Who's whose kid is this? I'm a little freaked out. She's like, oh my god. Stacy, mom, you're supposed to watch him.

She's like, he just ran out. And, you know, she she's she's got hip replacements. She can't really run after him. She's like, I'm so sorry. I mean, you weren't he wasn't supposed to meet you.

I was like she's like, you know, because she didn't want him to meet me, obviously, because she don't wanna traumatize him with with, you know, some some male at his house. And and I don't know. We got married 41 days later, and it was just instant the instant I just felt this instant love for them that I've never felt before. And, and What was your second interaction with them with your son? We had, I came over.

We had I had breakfast with him and stuff. And then, about a week, I just instead of staying at the barracks, I just stayed there at their house. And, when did

you start getting close to him?

Almost immediately, honestly. Yeah. What drew you in? He was so loving. He is just he was a good kid, but, man, he was hell on wheels too, though.

1 time I had a disciplining. I was like, hey. Go sit on your bed. He's like, little kid, man. He did some.

He wouldn't listen to his mama. Said, hey, man. Yeah. Go sit on your bed. You're in timeout.

So he goes and sits on the bed. I hear him in the air, like, messing with the bed. I'm like, hey. 5 more minutes just added. He looks at me dead in my face and goes, 5 more minutes.

I was like I was like I was like, hey. I can't whip this. I can't whip him. She's gonna have to go down there and deal with that. I was like, I'm about to lose it.

Oh, shit. What do you do? She starts busting out laughing. I'm like, no, man. Go down there and whoop whoop that tail.

What are you talking about? So, you know, we but we've had a great relationship since day 1, since since day 1. It is just it's it's just like he's my child since day 1. And I wasn't trying to be his dad. He already had 1.

I didn't know anything at the time. Like, his dad was was he knows this, but his dad was very abusive. Like, when I met my wife, my wife had screws screwing her windshields down. Not windshields. Sorry.

Her windows down in all of her on in all around the whole house, the whole apartment. She had, like, 5 or 6 locks on the inside of the doors keeping them from being kicked in. So it was a I always I never knew at the time. I didn't know I didn't know anything about that. I always thought it was weird.

I thought, okay. Well, maybe somebody previous did this, but, yeah, the windows were were locked. Back door had the same thing. It was a pretty bad situation that I came into, but I found it out weeks later. And I was like, ma'am, I she's like, she didn't tell me.

Her mom told me. I confronted her about it. She's like, I I don't want you to leave. She's like, I'm I'm I'm sorry, but I I figured if I told you, you're you would leave. You know?

It's hard to find somebody as a single mom anyways, but it's really hard to find somebody that has a a crazy abusive ex. I'm like, well, I'm not going nowhere. But but don't all I ask for from here on out is is honesty, and that's what our whole marriage has been, is honesty. And and that was a we got married January 4, 2012, like, 41 days later and went down. I had a marriage at the courthouse.

You know, got married in a in a red button up with a cheetah print tie, you know. Nice. Some vans, man. And she she was she's dressed up nice, had some had some guys from the 1 leader that was phenomenal, 2 leaders. 1 was named Nick Fredsey, and the other 1 was named Dakota Cartos Santos, which ended up becoming 1 of my best friends.

Really took me under his wing, phenomenal human being. He was a gym now in Pennsylvania, phenomenal human. He was man, he kept me going every day. He was a phenomenal leader, and if he would've stayed in, he would've been a phenomenal leader. But he was there at my, at my little wedding, and, you know, I didn't know any better or anything at the time, and I didn't tell anybody I got married.

I didn't tell anybody. And so finally, the training came for JROTC. Right? And I'm, walking around Louisiana. My phone is just.

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

She found out. I'm like, dang. This is gonna be bad. So we carry on with the with the little training exercise we were doing, and we get back to the, little hootches. And I call her, and she's she's like, my grandma my grandma will be her mom.

She should have been a CIA spy on Facebook. She could have found anything. She was the Facebook Farmville queen, man. She lived on it. She goes, well well, mom said that on so and so that so and so saw where you got married.

She goes, are you married? I'm like, yes. I am. Yes. I am, mom.

She's, oh my god. Oh my god. You're an idiot. I'm like, they have a great relationship now. But I was like she goes, I had to find out through your grandmother on Facebook.

I'm like, sorry about that. I was like, it makes you feel any better. Nobody else knew unless you lived here. And so finally, man, we we we got through that, and then, I deployed at the end of February. So I met my wife, got married in 41 days, went to training for a month right after I got married, and then deployed 2 weeks after I got home.

Wow. So

How'd you propose to your wife?

The private way. You know? There's a little bar restaurant downtown called Husk Hardware. It's the first place we ever went to. We, we had dinner, and we had a little little thing in the corner, and, you know, took an e, asked her to marry me, and I was shaking so bad.

I'm 21 years old. 22 at the time. I'm like, you know, couldn't couldn't even get it out. Right? And I just knew I loved her.

That's that's all I knew. I I I just knew that, man, I've I I don't even know like, I have never even felt this really this kind of love, like, other than, like, my mom. Like but I feel like I almost love her more than my mom. I loved her so much. And, yes.

I proposed at a restaurant. Right? And then we got super wasted. Went to dollar night at Lidos downtown. Everything was a dollar.

You know, we were high on life. You know? We were just living it up. She at the time, she's older than me. She's a cougar.

You know? She's 39. I'm 35. So, you know, she's she's older. And, you know, free haircuts for life, though, but, you know, whatever.

It's a perk. But, I deployed, and then a couple weeks into deployment, my son's father found out that I was gone. He was he was infuriated. He was livid at this point, and, because he hadn't been he hadn't even been around, really. But he just shows up and tries to cause violence.

When you were there? Never when I was there. But once he found out I left, it was game on. There's police reports. Like, when I became a cop at Fayetteville, I I kinda looked into some addresses and stuff.

He actually tried to cut a pipeline at that apartment and tried to blow the whole apartment up. What? Yeah. Before I was around. Like, did some shown some of the most horrific things I've ever heard of to her.

And I I don't wanna say them because they're they're her stories, but it was gnarly. It was really bad. So she's like, Blake, you know, I don't know what to do, so I call my mom. I, hey, mom. I got a favor to ask you.

I'm like, it's gonna be a hard favor, but I need Nicole and Stacy to come stay with you. I explained the situation. She said, tell them to come on, and, she took them in, took care of them, made sure they were safe. And, but my wife, every other weekend, my wife had to drive to Fayetteville, 5 hour drive. She'd drive drop Stacy off on Friday, drive back to West Virginia because his his grandfather, his real dad's dad had custody, not his dad, because because it's part of the good old boy system.

He had a bunch of money in Fayetteville and knew the judges, and how that even worked out is backdoor deals. But she would turn around and drive 5 hours Sunday to go pick him up and then drive 5 hours back. She was driving 20 hours in a weekend. Wow. So strong woman.

But, you know and my mom took him in, and, so it was just you know, it's it's a standard deployment. It was it was winter it was starting to phase out of that wintertime. Right? We're starting to get into the fighting season that you always kinda hear about. When we first got to, 5 Warrior, the Polish were still there.

And, man, Polish were crazy. Like, they were they were somehow making, like, whiskey and and or whatever they were making. Like, them dudes were them dudes were wild. Like, it was cool to see that. It was a cool experience.

And, you know, we we we were doing the exchange with him 1 time, and we were on a route, and there was an IED, and it was close to, you know, we were, like, an hour away from, like, surf and turf. Right? And then and, dude, we're like, oh, you know, we'll call EOD to come out and look at this. Man, these dudes just start chucking grenades. It's like, oh, we'll blow it up.

I'm like, oh, this is not how we operate. Right? Like, that seems kinda dangerous. They're like, oh, no. We gotta eat.

We got surf and turf. So I was like, this is what? This is wild. This is crazy. And, you know, so finally they ended up leaving, and then, you know, the rest of the big 80 seconds started coming in.

Right? Command sergeant major Love. Dude was a soup sandwich, man, and he was the head of of everything. And it just got to the point where, like, hey, man. We're at war.

We had mortared every day. Like, why do I gotta wear a PT belt to go to the bathroom? Why do I gotta wear a PT belt to go to chow hall? What are we doing here? And that was when I was like, I have to get out of the 82nd because this is this is this is crazy.

I'm wearing a PT belt, and I'm shaving in, like, horrible environments because I can't have, like, a little scruffle. Like, I'm shitting in MRE bags up at the outpost. Like and I'm still having to shave up there. What is going on? It doesn't make sense.

Everybody's stuck in this World War 2. Guess what? That was great. They did great things. It's not World War 2 anymore.

Right? It's a different environment. Y'all can loosen up a little bit. This is not that long ago. Like, that's a long time.

We can chill out a little bit. I don't need to shave and shit in an MRE bag. Like, nobody's bothering us. It was just everything was ridiculous. But it was it was fun, though.

The the I started to really get to know the guys. We started forming as, like, a little team. We had gotten a new squad leader at the time. His name was sergeant, Staff Sergeant Garcia Boaches. He was like, he's had, like, all these jumps.

He was a black hat for a while. He was, Pat Tillman was went to his class and jumped school. So he was a awesome guy, very old school though, but he he took he looked out for us.

Mhmm.

And then before him we had Nick Fredste who was he he deployed, like, 7 or 8 times to Afghanistan. Like, in my eyes, he was, like, a legend. Like, man, this guy's still alive. He's got 8 deployments in 10 years of his career. Like, he'd he'd been deployed, like, all the time, and he was, like, he was so chill.

Like, we had him go as a squad leader for, like, 7 months, and, man, he just taught you everything. Like, he just took care of you. He just taught you everything. But I still couldn't go anywhere because we're locked in on an appointment. So then he got sent to another company, I think, like Delta Company, and then we got Bocez, which was awesome to have, and then we deployed.

But, I mean, it it actually felt good because there are a lot of good young guys in the 82nd. There's a lot of there's a lot of good dudes in the 82nd. You know? The the conventional army has been overshadowed. People think it's not cool anymore, like, being in the infantry, like standard infantry, because of social media.

Right? Social media now, when when you think of something sexy, you think of beards and and, like, plate carriers and cutoff t shirts and, you know, the the the special operations community. Like, it's it it looks cool, and it's you know, a lot of guys in the 82nd are they're really good dudes, and I think they feel maybe over overlooked. You know? Maybe, like, we're not as important anymore because we're just in the 82nd.

I've heard guys tell me their story. Well, I was just in the 82nd. Hey, man. Be proud.

Yeah.

Be proud of what you did. You're still in the infantry. You're still in the 82nd. You're still jumping out of planes. Be proud of what I'm so proud to be in the 82nd.

I don't go around and try to act like I was in SF or anything. I'm proud of what I did because what I did set me up from where I'm at for where I'm at now. That was where I was supposed to be. So I tell all those guys, anybody to this day in the any second, be proud of what you're doing. Your service is not overlooked.

You guys, there's a lot of really good young dudes who are who are changing this. They're changing the 82nd. You know, I've been reached out by several guys, and I will go on post and train any of those guys for free from the 82nd because I didn't get that. I didn't get any CQB training except for basic, and it was the whole, like, grab, lean, rock, lean, rock, Like, old school stuff. My heart is with them guys, man.

If they ever need anything from me, like, they they message me all the time, and I will do whatever I can for you. If any training, any shooting, any advice for, like, after the military, like, I got you because I'm proud of what and I'm proud to know you. Be proud of your service. So we had 1 of the SF groups, I don't know who's 1, that was on our Enfav Warrior too. So we had seen them around, and and they just had, like, a different life.

Right? Everything was just kinda carefree and and big boy rules. You know? They're they're treated like big boys because they're they are. Right?

They come from an amazing group or amazing unit or amazing team. And and something about that, I was like, man, when I when I leave here, I talked to Bocez, and and he's like, I he's like, I'll help you. He's like, we'll we'll we'll get all the paperwork done. We get back. We'll do everything.

And I was so excited, man. I was, like, so excited. And then May 24, 2012 came. We were that week, we were the QRF, and whatever outpost that that the SF unit had, they were taking contact, and we were going out to help them. The fastest road to I later found this out.

The fastest road to them was they labeled it as a black road. It hasn't been cleared of an IED in 2 weeks, but it's the fastest route to them. So that's the 1 that our amazing leadership decided that we were gonna go take, And we had turned off highway 1, but maybe more than a half a mile. And I'm the gunner, and we're driving, and then it's so crazy. I mean, think about it now.

It's so crazy. I saw this massive bright light, and then it was like slow motion of seeing the dirt. I could see, like, piles of dirt. It was so crazy, like, slow. I never heard it.

I just saw it, and I saw the dirt come up. And I felt this heat pressure push me back, and my back plate broke in half. And then I came forward and snatched the whole left side of my face on the buttstock of the 240, and I woke up, they said about 10 minutes later, on a gurney. I'm hearing people scream. I'm hearing people talk about the QRF that's coming for us.

Just got ran over an IED. They're seasonal operations. I hear Apaches. I hear something about ambushes. So the vehicle in front took took the main blast.

Right? Our front half of our vehicle caught it because it was, like, kinda in between, but I got the the back blast. The pressure is what got me. It pushed me back and broke my plate, and then I got slung forward and then broke the whole left side of my face. Up to this day, still, I have no feeling on the left side of my face.

Damn. There's it's it's you can look at my nose and tell that it's it's broken. So I have no filling anywhere over here. This is they never fixed it. Never gave me surgery for it.

Nothing. It's just the nerves are gone. It's crazy. I feel this side, but not this side. So if you ever see me with a face tattoo like Mike Tyson, it'll be on this side, just so you know that.

Teardrops. But I remember laying on the on the gurney, and they're trying to get a bird in. Man, 1 of my really good friends, he's calling in the 9 line. His name is Josh Marshak. Were you aware,

or are you just conscious?

I was I was aware at this point. I could feel bleeding. I could taste the blood. I just didn't know where it was coming from. And, actually, I have a a scar on my head.

It was a massive massive gash. That that's mainly where I was bleeding from, And but I had no idea. I had a massive headache. My ears were ringing, and there was just tons of confusion. But I could I could see Marshak next to me, and he's calling in the 9 9.

I'm kind of I'm kind of hearing what he's saying, but, like, I'm kinda going in and out too. And I love that dude to this day. Like, we still talk, and I still thank him. Anytime I see him, I hug him. Hey, man.

Thanks for getting that 9 line for me. Then a bird came down, and they got me on the bird. And crazy story about that too. They got me on the bird, and I'm laying there, and, man, my head's killing me. I'm bleeding.

And on the ceiling is a flag. You know how some of them will put their team flag or whatever on the ceiling? Man, it was a black beard flag. It was this guy. And I didn't know my injuries.

I thought I was dying, the way everybody was acting. They're cutting clothes off on me, and, and I pass out. And, I wake up at the little medical spot on, 5 Warrior, and I got all these doctors around me, you know, asking me about filling in my legs, my brain, my brain I had a massive knot, like, a huge knot. They're like, oh, you know, they're trying to do all these things, but they couldn't find me to bother them. Weather was so bad.

What whatever they call it, the sky was red. I don't I don't know whatever they call it, but so I laid there for 2 days. Just I remember laying there, and, we'll get to that in a second, but so they give me some some morphine. Like, I'm feeling kinda good, and I'm laying there. And then the next morning, the command sergeant major, and the the commander walks in.

And they're like, hey, private cook. Like, did he talk to you about something? I'm, like, drugged up. I remember the conversation, and they're like, hey, We need you to call your wife. I'm like, okay.

I'm like, yeah. That'd be great. Can you am I got a phone? I can call her. Like because I had, like, 1 of those little hodge phones that you could buy with the minutes.

I was like, hey. Somebody give me my phone. They're like, but here's here's the problem is the 82nd and the family readiness group called my wife that night, told my wife that there was an accident, and I was deceased. Are you fucking kidding me? Next to my mom.

And your mom.

And my mom. And there was about an hour from my call from the call she received from the from from when I called her. They called her first they called her first thing that morning, not that night, first thing that morning, and then I was able to call her an hour later. And she goes her exact words was, who the fuck is this? I mean, hey.

It's me. I'm like, sound funny because I'm on morphine. I'm not dead. I'm alive. I'll call you in a little bit.

She's, like, so confused. I'm like, hey. I'm like, this is really me. I promise. They get on the phone.

They're like, ma'am, miss Cook, we're sorry about this. Like, she is he is alive. Nobody had died, but, like Holy shit. So for an hour, my wife and my mom thought I was dead. Like, how do you how do you fuck that up?

Because some army wife calls my wife and tells them news that shouldn't even been delivered to her. Why would you do that? It's not your responsibility. So that was I think that still bothers my wife maybe that she got that phone call, but I can't even imagine, man, how she felt. So but at least they were they caught it fast enough to where it wasn't a day, right, or hours.

It was about an hour. And I think what happened is the lady that was ahead of the FRG had told her husband that, hey. I called the wife. She's okay. I was like, well, hold on.

Nobody fucking died. He just got hurt really bad. So we're able to clear that whole mess up and you know, which was caused anxiety for the whole rest of the deployment for my family, but they finally gave me to bother them. I get to bother them, and, you know, I have massive headaches. I don't feel well.

I'm still throwing up. My legs are feeling weird. My back is, like, super sore, and I didn't break my back. Didn't have any spinal damage. I just had, like my whole back was black.

I guess just nerve damage. So they're like, hey. We can send you to Germany and then send you home. I'm like or I'm like, can I stay? They're like, well, that's how do you feel?

Like, I feel great. They can't send me home. That's an embarrassment. I failed at college. I'd failed my family about getting a job.

Like, I'm on a continuous path of failing. If I go home early, look like a bitch. I'm I I let my grandfather down. You know? I'm I'm not dead, so why do I need to go home?

So then they they they're like, that's fine, but you're not gonna be operational for a little while. Take it. Take these ambiance in the morning and at nighttime. Sleep. I was taking, like, 2 ambiance a day.

1 in the morning, I'd eat breakfast, take an ambiance, go to sleep. I'd wake up, go eat dinner, take an Ambien, go to sleep. And then then I was like, oh, I need pain medicine. They're gonna give me oxycodones over there. I was like, I stayed high and and tired.

Then, like, I kicked all of it to the curb because because now people, like, are looking at me like I'm a pussy. Like like, they don't know the extent of my injuries. When I got back, I told them nothing was wrong. They don't know that I I I have some brain scans that that, you know, they they told me I was fine, but later on when I got back home so I get back home, and we we do the appointment. I do a couple missions with them, and then I I get back home, and we do a battalion run.

I think I'm fine. I feel fine. I do the run, don't even remember the run. I remember walking out to the field, hearing, some ACDC. We're all lining up, and I remember drinking water.

That was it. That's all I remember. So then I was like, man,

how do you know you did the run? I don't know. How do you know you missed something? Because people had told me

that I was I ran, so I was in the formation. My shirt was wet. We had gray battalion shirts. My shirt was soaking wet. I thought maybe I was dreaming.

I didn't know what was going on. People told me I ran. I don't remember the run, and my shirt's drenched. I mean, you're talking October, North Carolina, 80% humidity. I'm soaked.

I thought, man, maybe I just blacked out. So a couple days go by, I start having these random nosebleeds, these massive headaches. My eyes, like, start hurting over here on the sides. I'm like, man, I don't feel right. Something something's not right.

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

Suck it up. You're gonna be a sick call ranger? I mean, hey, man. Like, I got hurt. Like, I'd like to get a follow-up.

So finally, they let me get a follow-up and get these scans done, get a full body scan, and ended up being, committed to the hospital. I had some some I I had swelling in my brain, and I had some some optic nerve issues, and I had some nerve damage in my spine. So I'm in the I stayed in the hospital for, like, a week. And then they they they get the swelling down. They they bring in a doctor who enrolls me into the first Womack traumatic range injury pipeline.

There's 5 of us. 1 guy killed himself, 1 guy dropped out, 2 guys dropped out, and 2 of us completed it. Me and another guy completed it. So for 2 years, I did this pipeline. I met with, a world renowned brain doctor.

I can't remember his name. I'm a but me and my wife met with him once a month. To this day, Sean, I don't know why I was having the issues. It was never explained to me. Nobody ever got answers.

Nobody ever got anything. I had a doctor, a neurologist, told me that she thought I had STDs. What? Exactly. I got off the phone with my wife.

I'm like, what? And then she ended up getting fired because she was sexually harassing patients. The whole system was broken. To this day, I still don't know what happened. I did speech, memory, and physical therapy every day for 2 years or a year and a half.

And I got transferred to the Warrior Transition Battalion because I had so many doctor's appointments, and I couldn't ever get an answer. The army never wanted to admit that they messed up by letting me go back and not fixing me right then because that's on them. They let me go back. I'm sure that that doctor wouldn't 1, didn't that did the brain scans. There's no way you didn't find that my brain wasn't swelling.

Had a nod out to here, and I was throwing up with nosebleeds. You just gave me Ambien. I don't know if there was, like, hey. We can't send just send people to Germany unless you're, like, actively dying. I don't know.

I don't know. But to this day, I never got answers of what happened to me. I have a medical file that's this thick. I'm a 100 total impermanent, but I never got answers. I could never get answers ever.

So for a year and a half, I did speech memory and physical therapy with no answers to what was wrong. But whatever they were doing was working, so after a year and a half, I felt normal. I I had all these, like, like, shock therapies on my brain. I had these needles put all over. Had all these things done, but nobody ever told me why why I'm doing this.

Like, oh, you know, you got a brain injury. It's just something we're doing. Something we're testing out. I'm like, I'm not a rat in a lab. What's wrong?

What are you doing to fix me? You know, you have a great care team. They got it taken care of. Yeah. That's great.

But what are they doing to fix me? Have they not explained this to you? No. Bring it up to them. I bring it up to them.

Nothing. Nothing. It was it was horrible. You wanna know why guys are killing themselves? Because they can't get answers.

You don't care. You're a civilian or you're, in the military, and and and you're not giving people the answers that they need because you don't care. Something's wrong with me. What is wrong with me? If the army fucked up, that's fine.

I'm not gonna blame the army, but nobody ever told me what was wrong. So I got released from the pipeline. I had this little ceremony, whatever. Their call is so successful. I'm like, cool.

Send me back to my unit. Send me back. I can leave a Warrior Transportation Tower and go back to the 82nd. Get in the 82nd, everybody's, like, rigging up, getting all their stuff. They're like, hey, Cook.

Hey, man. Glad you're back. Go get your rock. It needs to be this weight. Blah blah blah, or you got a combat jump tonight.

Then we're gonna walk back to the company, and you're gonna jump to 240. I'm like, I just got back. Like, I just walked in the company. I'm like, what do you mean? I'm not jumping.

I just I just did this for a year and a half. This was, like, the end of the end of the end of 2013. So about about December of 2013, I'm like, I only have, like, 6 more months left on my contract. I'm like, I'm not jumping. They're like, oh, you're gonna jump.

You're not with the Warrior Transition Battalion anymore. You're gonna jump. I'm like, man, this is bullshit. This ain't right. First sergeant was mad.

They're all mad because I went to the war transition battalion and got help that I needed. Whether I got told what was wrong or not, whatever they did worked. I felt better. I still have some stuttering when I get excited. If you watch any of our videos on Instagram when I'm, like, trying to teach, sometimes I'll stutter.

But whatever they did, like, it was great, and I'm and I'm grateful for those people. But to this day, I'd still like to know. But so I get rigged up. I got no option. I'm an e 4.

You know? Like, you can't argue. They're either gonna give me an article 15 for disobeying orders 6 months before I get out, or I can just suck it up and jump. So I'm like, cool. Whatever.

I'll jump to 240. At this point, whatever. We jump. Jump out. Parachute opens.

Everything's fine and dandy. Bam. Head bust right off the windshield of a Humvee. Snacked a Humvee on the ground. I woke up, man.

I don't know. Maybe a I mean, it could it could've been long. 30 seconds later. I'm like, damn. I got a headache.

I'm like, dude, suck it up. Suck it up. Put my parachute up, met up at at at the meetup point, the rally point, and I'm laying on the ground, and and sergeant Beauchez is right there, and I'm just throwing up. I am just yacking. He goes, Cook, what's wrong?

I said, hey, man. I hit my head off the Humvee. He shined a light, and I I was I was bleeding down down around my face. He's like, are you sure you hit your head? I'm like, yeah.

I'm throwing up. He's like, hey. He goes, go to the medical tent right now. He goes, you only got 6 months left. Go to the medical tent right now.

Went to the medical tent, took me to the hospital, same doctor in the ER. Super cool. Right back into the Warrior Transition Battalion the next day. They treated my concussion for about 5 months, and then they're like, hey. You seem fine.

See you later. Go pick up your d I walked in still thinking I had treatment. I still had, like, a month left in my contract, and they were like, hey. You go pick up your your d d 214 and and take this leave. I was like, okay.

That sounds great. Is it am I okay? Am I good to leave? You've been like, yeah. Your doctor's cleared off all your paperwork.

We have all your paperwork. I'm like, nobody ran that by me. Nobody told me I was cleared. No shit. I was like, let me see my paperwork.

There it was. So they rushed you out. Rushed me right out, pushed me right out the door. I went to, a social support center, picked up my DD 214, and I didn't even hear I didn't even need any out processing. Dude, I still have I had, like, my helmet.

I didn't do any out processing. Never got a letter for to bring it in. Nothing. They rushed me right out. See you later.

And, man, that's why I do encourage people to if you wanna stay in this longer, try to get to those other units, man, because I I feel like you might get better treatment. Maybe it's different now. I mean, it's been my god. It's been 12 years now, but to this day, I I have no idea. I just know how I felt.

I just know that I was putting this important timeline. I know that I was sent to a a battalion that was made so people can go to their appointments because they're messed up, and then I was rushed right on out. And I had 2 months of leave build up, so I took it. Damn. And, still had memory issues.

Couldn't remember anything. Couldn't remember I put my keys. Couldn't remember nothing. And so I applied, so I got out early. So that was that was, like, February or, like, March March time frame.

I was like, man, what am I gonna do? So what am I gonna do? Because I didn't get out medically. Don't have a degree. Right?

Didn't take that serious. Shooting a piece of paper in a trash can didn't work for me. What am I gonna do? I have a son and a wife. She works.

She does hair, but she had to lose all of her clients when I deployed to move back home with my mom. So she's still trying to build her clientele up. She gave all of her clients away to for safety, and now she's trying to build all of them back up. It's hard. So, like, man, I'm gonna oh, we were driving down Bragg Boulevard, and I saw this this armored vehicle flying up the road, blue lights and sirens.

It said Fayetteville police emergency response team. I was like, that's it, man. I'm gonna be that. How do I get there? So I walked to the police station.

I walked in. Police station says, hey. I wanna be a cop. How do I sign up? Like, oh, you know, you gotta go over to the training center.

So I started the process and and did all the hiring process, and then, you know, May came, and I heard nothing. May June, crickets. I'm like, man, I didn't I didn't get this job because, you know, I had to tell him, you know so in that time period when I fell out of college, you know, because I was honest with him about everything. Right? Smoked some smoked some weed.

My stepdad had hernia surgery, and when he was healed, I stole the rest of his Percocets and sold them for money. So I had to be truthful on all this. They give you a lot of texture tests. I said, man, maybe they didn't really like that. You know?

Maybe that was maybe I should've tried to a lot. I don't know. May maybe they didn't like that. Man, like, June like, end of June, they're like, hey, man. Start be let next Monday.

It's like a week of be let. Basic law enforcement training. You're hired with the Fayetteville Police Department. You start you start BLAT next Monday. I was like, they were like, we're gonna report we'll get seen an email with all the instructions.

I was like, am I hired? Or, like, yeah. I was like, oh, man.

I am. Cool. Let's go be a cop.

Right? I have no idea what to expect, but let's go be a cop. So first a and b let, you know, we go and we're we're meeting with all the other people. There's there's, we had, like, a large class with, like, 18 18 18 to 20 of us, and, we lost 6 in for testing purposes. But Fayetteville has their own basic law enforcement training.

So everything is in house. You don't have to a lot of places you go to college, go to be let, and then you're sponsored by an age agency that then picks you up afterwards.

Mhmm.

But Fayetteville is a really good department because Fayetteville is a very dangerous city. So they have their own instructors, their own b let on-site at the training center. We have a whole training center. And so I I so I go to b let, and we're sitting down. They're doing orientation at city hall, and then we do that.

And then the next day, we we report to the training center. Get to the training center and they're explaining everything and they're like, every Friday, we're we have a test on see, there's a total of, like, 20 some tests because it's all about, like, law, 4th amendment, like, all the all the everything. Anything about being a cop. So they bring an instructor in on Monday, teach you for 4 days, and then Friday, you take an exam. You can only fail 2 your 3rd when you're out.

And I'm like I go home, and I'm like, honey, I'm screwed. I'm like, I can't remember. At this point, I can't remember. My memory is horrible. It's really bad.

I'm like, there's no way I'm gonna be able to to take sit down and and do this and to and go take a test. Already had, like, test anxiety. She's like, we're we're gonna get you through it. I'm like, you she's like, I promise you we're gonna get you through this. Like, alright.

I'm a I'm a try it. So every Wednesday Thursday night, my wife would come home from working 10 hours, help me make index cards, and she'd sit up all night flipping them for me, helping me study. All night, hours. We'd get up 5 o'clock in the morning before test, and she'd flip index cards. I was, like, top 3 in my class for academics, and there were some really intelligent people.

I had, like I was getting almost I never failed I never failed 1 test. It's because my wife stuck by my side and came home after a long day at work feeding our son and then staying up and flipping index cards with me. And that's 6 months of doing that. Damn. So she was exhausted.

I quit Terry now would never would have made it through be let testing if it wasn't for her. I owe it all to her and god, but, man, like, she made sure that I was successful.

It's a good woman.

Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah. Man, she was not gonna let me fail because she had saw my life the last 2 years of how I was treated in the army. She wanted to go talk to all these chain of command.

She was livid. I was like, no. Leave it alone. Leave it alone. She's like, Blake, I want answers.

Like, I do too. But I'm like, I don't wanna make nobody mad, Nicole. We don't understand. I don't wanna be punished. I'm afraid that if I roughed up too many feathers, they're just gonna send me back to my unit.

Just discharge me and send me back to my unit. I'm like, just be quiet so I can just keep doing the treatment. Because if you start pissing off people, they're gonna send you they're gonna send me back. If they send me back, then you have nobody to irritate except for that commander and first sergeant, and you're not their problem anymore. So she's like, okay.

Okay. Okay. So she was already living. I mean, she she had helped me shower. Like, there were times where my leg was would just go numb.

Like, just like a like a not a numb, like, not where I couldn't feel them, but, like, they were just asleep. And if I stepped, it hurt. It felt like knives were in my legs, only in my legs. Never my arms, never my upper body, always my legs. The only answer I got was nerve damage, and that it can take up to 3 to 4 years for nerves to heal themselves.

They're kinda like misfiring is what I was told. And that's what's happening. They're misfiring with my brain, and that's the feeling that I'm getting. Some BS answer. Not even a a true medical answer.

Sounded like a talking about a car engine. Like, tell me what's wrong. But she never let me fail, man. So 6 months, go to graduation. You know?

Right? She she pins my badge on me. You know? I'm just so grateful that that that that that she took the time to do all this. And, Your wife pinned her badge on you?

Yeah. That's awesome.

Yeah. It was awesome. It was because she should have been wearing a badge. By that point, she knew the law. She knew the law better than I did.

You know? Because it was it was because she she had to to read the chapters and pick out what she believed to be important things. And and while they were teaching, I would highlight things that they would be like, okay. You need to label the Sean Ryan show. Wink wink.

That might be a test question. Yeah. But she would go through all the highlights and make the index cards for me, and I would make them too. And and without without that, man, there's without her push, right, hey, man, don't give up. Don't give up.

You're not broken. Because I I could've laid around and made excuses. Oh, the army said I was zipped up. Right? Yeah.

And jacked up. You know? Because I wouldn't get any disability or not at the time. Nothing. Not not a not a thing.

No good. Nothing. No medical. No nothing. So, she pays my badge on me, and, I get assigned to Fayetteville's broken up into 3 districts, Hamilton, Central, Cross Creek.

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

No kidding.

Hell, yeah. We'll get into that.

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

do it.

I know everybody out there has to be just as frustrated as I am when it comes to the BS and the rhetoric that the mainstream media continuously tries to force feed us. And I also know how frustrating it can be to try to find some type of a reliable news source. It's getting really hard to find the truth and what's going on in the country and in the world. And so 1 thing we've done here at Sean Ryan Show is we are developing our newsletter, and the first contributor to the newsletter that we have is a woman, former CA targeter. Some of you may know her as Sarah Adams, call sign super bad.

She's made 2 different appearances here on the Sean Ryan Show, and some of the stuff that she has uncovered and broke on this show is just absolutely mind blowing. And so I've asked her if she would contribute to the newsletter and give us a weekly intelligence brief. This is gonna be all things terrorists. How terrorists are coming up through the southern border, how they're entering the country, how they're traveling, what these different terrorist organizations throughout the world are up to. And here's the best part, the newsletter is actually free.

We're not gonna spam you. It's about 1 newsletter a week, maybe 2 if we release 2 shows. The only other thing that's gonna be in there besides the intel brief is if we have a new product or something like that. But like I said, it's a free CIA intelligence brief. Sign up.

Link's in the description or in the comments. We'll see you in the newsletter.

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

Yeah. So like I said, my wife my wife pinned me. Right? So I'm super excited. Starting to really feel like a cop.

I got a badge. I got a gun. All the training that I feel like I need. So I get my assignment. You know, my assignment's central district, which is kind of the city's broken, like I said, into 3.

Central's the middle. So it's, covers a lot of the really bad areas. It covers an area called Bonny Doon, Massey Hill, a lot of, crime and gang members and and all these things. And,

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

So Fayetteville is obviously a military town, but it's a it's, it's weird. It's it's it's kinda nice, but it's kinda ghetto. It's, it's, you know, like, the street that my wife grew up on was a really nice street. It's called Devon Street. It's 1 of the predominant areas in Fayetteville because she's born and raised in Fayetteville.

Okay. And, the street behind it is 1 of the worst neighborhoods in the city. It's 1 of the worst roads on the city. And, you could be driving nice nice nice and then bam. Ghetto.

And then nice nice nice. It's, it's crazy. There's the I I really because I started out in this district, I got fascinated with gangs. Like, just how they operate, music, everything. So Really?

Yeah. I just I just got obsessed learning everything I could about gangs. What kind of gangs? So we have Bloods, Crips, and we have MCs, and we have some cartel. The New Generation and Sinaloa Cartel's pretty predominant in the area.

Sinaloa Cartel runs Myrtle Beach.

No shit.

Oh, absolutely. What do

you mean by that? Runs Myrtle

Beach? Like, runs it. They are Runs what? Like, everything. Strip clubs, drugs.

Anything that comes in and out of Myrtle Beach is Sinaloa Cartel. It used to a long time ago, it used to be kinda like the Russian mafia, but something happened when the Sinaloa Cartel came in and just took over.

Dominated it.

So dominated it. So I clubs,

drugs.

Probably all the stores, all the so when I was younger, when I would go there all the stores. Like, Subway. Remember how Subway used to like, Subway in Myrtle Beach, you would go there. It would be, like, foreign exchange units from Russia. The wings, the all the stores were had Russian.

Now it's just a bunch of Hispanic people. Growing up, it was always it was always Russian teenagers. Now it's not no more. Now it's it's it's Mexicans, Hispanics. So we train How do you know their cartel?

So the what? The cartel bought the businesses? We we just know

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

Gotcha.

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

Is it really?

You can take several exits in and out of our city off I 95 and disappear. They operate a lot in Lumberton, North Carolina, which is so so so it's called the Lumbee tribe. They're not they're not they're not a national tribe. I think Trump was trying to make it, but they're not. But there's a lot of land, and they can disappear out that way.

Like, drugs and money and guns are just so predominant through Fayetteville and that Robinson County area because of 95. Interesting. You can gump off 595, and then boom. So what was your first encounter with gangs? What what what what initially

got you? You're fascinated with that?

There was this kid in Fayetteville called Kaboom Holy. I think his name was Andreas Flight. He was the leader of a nontraditional gang. So you have traditional, nontraditional. Traditional gangs are gangs like like Lil Wayne come came from, like East Side Maua Piru.

That is a gang that is nationally known everywhere, sets everywhere. Nontraditional was like a neighborhood clique. So he had a non clique called Money Gang. Right? And they were a blood set.

They were a

blood many people are we talking here?

What's what's a nontraditional gang?

20, 30. 20, 30 people?

Young young teenagers who are violent. Okay. You know, it's, you know, the the surf

Young like 13, 14?

14, 15, 16. Okay. 17, 18 is kinda old. Old? Yeah.

That would be old. Older. You're not you're dealing with those high school kids.

So hold on. We're I'm really you sound like the guy that I talked to. So 13, 14's young. 18, 19's old. Where do they go when they're 20?

So a lot of times they'll start at nontraditional gangs. They'll get older, then they'll move on and try to get into another gang. Like like, if they're a non traditional blood set, like money gang, they'll try to go once they get older, they went away from that little click, or maybe several of them have died off, and the gang has died off. They'll they'll go maybe they have a homie that's with East Side Mob Piru or Sex Money Murder. Those are those are traditional gangs.

So money, money gang is a blood set, a nontraditional blood set, but once they kinda age out, maybe they don't wanna be a part of this clique anymore.

What do you mean a blood set? So you

have Bloods and Crips. Mhmm. Right? That's just who you are, and then there's different sets. Like, a set is sex, money, murder.

That is a blood set. They're bloods, but then you have east side Mobiru.

So what is this shit? Like, the UFC feeder things?

Dude, it's it's Is

that what it's like?

It's very

organized. You're in the JV, and now you're in the varsity?

Pretty much.

You're in the

Do they have minor leagues? They have rules, bibles.

No shit.

They have it's it's What kind of rules? Like, like, you gotta be beat in for a certain amount of, like, 8 Trey Crips. Like, they had to be beaten for 83 seconds for 8 3. Right? 8 Trey.

3 is Trey. So you have to be beaten into the gang, or if you're a chick, you can be raped into the gang. You can be raped into the gang. Gang. Women choose to be raped into a gang.

Yes.

Why? What do they get out of that?

They're obviously missing something at home. They wanna be a part of that gang. Like, what does that entail? So, like like, man, who's the, What?

They gotta fuck somebody or they

Oh, yeah. They get raped by, like, multiple gang members. But is it rape? Pretty much. Yeah.

I mean, they're it's just beating

her ass, and they're they're fucking her. They're it's not like we're all just gang banging you. They're, like, forcefully, like, raping her. Like, maybe she'd because she's not like maybe she don't want to be a part of it. Right?

Maybe she might, like, change her mind, but once you commit to it, you've you've committed to it. There's no backing out. Yeah. It's sex, but then if they don't want to and they try to back out, there is no backing out.

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

Like, if they're blood, they're blooded. What does that I mean, are they just female, just hangs

Are they

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

It's I'll show you some videos, but it's That's alright. It's no. Not of not of getting gang banged in, but, but, I mean, it's just gangs are very interesting. So if I go see, you know, you have to be Hispanic or black to be a blood. You can't be white.

Any white guy that ever says they're a blood, they're a complete liar. So in this day and age, if I see maybe a young 13, 14 year old African American kid, and he's wearing Chicago Bulls, and he can't tell me anybody on their current team, it's a validation point to be a blood. So I have to get 3 validation points to validate you on a sheet that gets submitted in to state that you're a gang member. But if you tell me you're a blood or a crip, I just need 1 other validation point. But a validation point is a lot of you see a lot of blood members wear Chicago Bulls.

Why? Because Bulls stands for bloods usually live longer and stronger. You see a lot of 8 Trey Crips, 83 Crips, they wear the Texas Ranger hats. The hats were blue, and there's a t on it. T stands for Trey, 8 Trey.

You see, like you ever seen the tattoos that say MOB and they're like, ah, money over bitches. Member of blood. You see a lot of tattoos that are RR, that stands for real right. That means you've done something for the gang. You've done something maybe violent for the gang.

There's, you know, the 5 pointed stars, 6 pointed stars. You ever see anybody with a Star of David on them? You know, they're a gangster disciple. It's just so much. Bloods operate on the right side, so if they're flying a flag, which is a bandana, they're on the everything should be on the right side.

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

Are those are these the 2 biggest gangs in the country?

Bloods and Crips. Yeah. No. It's what you Because to this day. Yeah.

Stoop Dog, Crip, you know, Lil Wayne. You can watch, there's a music video with him and Bruno Mars. This mirror on the wall, whatever that mirrors or whatever. If you actually watch the music video, Lil Wayne pays tons of respect to the bloods. He shows all of his blood tattoos, MOB, RR, 5 pointed stars, everything.

A lot of them will even have, like, red dreads. So there's another set of bloods called sex, money, murder. They are a blood set, but they were founded by a guy in, like, the sixties, Pistol Pete. They don't do this. This is blood.

Right? They hold this up, this is blood. You'll never see Crips operate on the right side. Crips will always operate over here. So they're a blood set, but they show they they'll throw up 2 pistols to pay respect to Pistol Pete, and they operate off the color green because Pete loved money.

Have you ever known Chicago Bulls to ever wear green? No. No. So why do they sell green jerseys and green hats?

No shit.

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

No shit.

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

Are these guys always are these 2 gangs always co located with each other, or do they have specific territories?

They have territories, neighborhoods, you know.

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

Oh, yeah. There's then you have nontraditional gangs who have no authority or discipline because there's a bunch of kids that wanna make their presence known. They might attack a traditional blood set. Doesn't make any sense. The nontraditional gangs, Sean, scare me to death.

Why? More than the traditional gangs?

They're undisciplined. They're not answering everybody. They have no rules. They're not scared of us. Because why?

Because they're 15 and 16. I can't do nothing with them. 16 or 15 14 and 15, I can't do nothing with them. 16, you're mine, but I can't do nothing with you at 15 or below. Man, like, they are it just so I watched this first video.

My friend, 1 of my really good friends named Dave Franklin, huge mentor at the police department. He was in what was called GGVU at the time. It was called the, gang gun violence unit. So he came in and taught a gang class while we were in. That was 1 of the the classes.

And I watched this video. It's called gun weight, and it's a nontraditional gang, the money gang. And they're just in this shitty trailer holding up guns, talking about the gun weight. 3 of those kids in that video are dead from gang violence. 2 of them are in prison, and the leader is in and out of prison.

It's just man, I I it's just so fascinating to me. I used to listen to the music, all the all the rap music, just listening to terminology, how they talk, how they operate. Just there's so many different things, like, like Bloods, will, they'll make a sound. You hear a lot like Lil Wayne's music videos. If they're in a large crowd full of other blood gang members, that's signaling to them that 12 is around because it sounds like police sirens.

It's just so fascinating. And a lot of chicks really got into the to the gangs because of, Cardi b. Cardi b's a blood. She used to have blood blood dreads, and she had the whole 9 yards. She was a straight gangster.

She had a whole music video where there's, like, she's the OG back before she got super famous. She's Wow. It's

So Cardi b is a blood. Mhmm.

Lil Wayne's a blood. The song red nation that, like, it talks about, it pays respects even like Ocho Cinkos. Like, it gives him a shout out. Doesn't mean he's a blood, but it means he's affiliate. It's so interesting, man.

Like, I used to be obsessed with watching, because I knew this is what I wanted to do. How many gangs are in Fayetteville? Oh, man. A lot. Like, 20?

More than 20. 50? Man, probably probably 30, 40. 30, 40 gangs.

Yeah. Are they all rivals?

I don't think that they get along. I think Bloods try to hang out with Bloods and Cripps try to hang out with Cripps and GD is trying to gangs

in a town of did you say 300,000? 300,000. But that's not a huge town. No. Where do 40 gangs go without running into each other?

They're everywhere. They're everywhere. Like

Are any of them friendly? Do the MCs get along with the Bloods or the Crips? They don't even

really mess with them. The MCs don't get into that. They have their own rival. I mean, you've got

cartels. You've got the Bloods and the Crips.

Gangster Disciples, Latin Kings. You got all this shit in 1 area. Oh, yeah. We got Crips, Bloods, Latin Kings, Gangster Disciples, Folk Nation, Hell's Angels, and, like, 4 or 5 other motorcycle gangs. But all of those How do you categorize them?

Research. We a lot of them, we'll we'll admit. A lot of them, we'll see on their Facebook page hand signals, tattoos.

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

They do. They'll never admit it, but I mean, what do

they do? Prostitution, run drugs

Lot of it is running drugs. Run run guns. Run guns and run drugs and just be they're just outlaws. They just they have they just shoot each other. Like, nobody fights anymore.

It's just shooting. The money gang, they had a I forgot his I forgot that they brought in a boy from Charlotte, man. He he he sucked. I can't remember his name, but he has been arrested several times for sex trafficking. He was a big sex trafficker.

God, I can't even remember his his name on YouTube. They have all these videos out there, man. Like, there's a 1 gang in Fayetteville called Roo Gang. We completely dismantled them. They made a video that said, fuck the police, shoot anything blue.

Holding rifles, convicted felons, and this idiot at a surplus store sold all of it to him for a music video, plate carriers, then gave him patches to wear. They were raided by Homeland Security, had stolen secret radios, had 22 ops corps maritime maritime helmets that belonged to SEAL team 6. What? 22 of those. How'd they get them?

Supply guys bring them there and sell them to him.

No shit.

He's gone. They they raided him. I think he still has a store, but he's he's pending federal charges unless he snitched, which I'm sure he probably did. But that other gang is gone. Like, we dismantled them.

They were 2 brothers were the leaders, and, ecstasy or, Xanax bars were were were their big things. We did a search warrant on their house, couldn't find anything in their house. Went out to their storage unit, started digging through boxes, big old heavy boxes. I'm like, what is in these? Open them up, cereal boxes.

I'm like, this is weird. Open up the cereal boxes, bags, cereal bags full of Xanax bars.

Holy shit.

Probably 1,000. I don't know. I think about, like, 20, 30000. Just 1,000. I mean, they kinda keep to they all kinda keep to themselves until, at some point, they cross paths or they had beef.

Social media beef is the worst. People get mouled on social media, and then they go shoot houses up. Nobody fights anymore. It's it's shooting and killing. It's, man, Fabo's wild, Sean.

Is it really?

When the sun goes down, it is you get, like, a very eerie feeling because that's when all the goons come out. They all come out to play. And it is like any car you stop, you might be in a you might be in a gunfight because they don't respect law enforcement, especially after the past administrative chiefs and stuff that we've had.

Yeah.

Like, they just don't respect it. And, man, it's very, very interesting just how they operate because we'll find their Bibles and we'll study them, and, you know, a lot of them can't stay off social media. Right? A lot of them will always be on social media throwing up gang signs. So we'll go find them.

We'll do investigative stops on them, find guns. Man, the year that we got gang year of the year, man, we got, I don't know, like 4 or 500 guns that year, just guns everywhere. And it's a lot of it is because soldiers leave their cars in their apartment complexes unlocked with guns in them. And these kids, these gang members go around pulling pulling car handles, And then, man, they'd get 20, 30 guns a night. And then the soldiers threw his gun box away and don't even know his serial number.

So he can't sometimes can't even charge him with stolen firearm because they don't have the serial number. And they'll tell him, hey. When you get it, call it in so we can put it in the system, and they never do. It's, I mean, I've had some close calls in that city. That city never sleeps.

We've had broad daylight shootings. Wendy's parking lot, 1 o'clock in the afternoon, 3 people dead in a parking spot. It's crazy. Damn. I mean, I pulled up to that scene, and they're like, oh, the car left, and I didn't see it.

And I saw 3 bodies. I get out. It's 3 young black African Americans dead over drug deal. It's just broad daylight. Had 1 got another 1.

Broad daylight, smokey bones, outside Cross Creek Mall. He was shot 5 times with a judge with a 4 10 shell. I didn't know he was black or white until I felt his dreads. I was plugging bullet holes. Damn.

He survived. But I didn't

know survived?

Yeah. I couldn't tell his skin color because he was covered in red. He was so bloody. He survived. He's paralyzed, but he survived.

It is it is wild. It it was a it was a wild ride, man. And there's nowhere else I'd rather been a cop, though, than that city. That city gave me every opportunity to do everything I wanted. It was a it was a it was a fun place to work.

True. Sounds like it.

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

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

Oh, man. About 3 years. 3 years? It's a spot nobody wanted to leave.

The the gang unit?

Yeah. Nobody nobody wants to leave that unit.

Everybody wants to be in the bank

in the gang? Everybody wants to be in the gang unit. Why? It's fun. You're like cowboys.

No shit. Yeah. You're not like the narcs where you you know, the narcs couldn't show their faces, and, you know, we wear plain clothes. I'd made my hair down and pass my shoulders, a beard down to here, just out there getting after it, man, fighting crime. You know, there were times where we where we weren't seen at all, and then there were times where we would go out at nighttime and just go to work.

They have didn't take calls, did what we wanted, and we made a difference. You wanna make a difference in your city and stop crime? You go get you about 7 good dudes who wanna fight crime. Tell them good luck, and give them a good supervisor. How would you do that

today? Is it even possible?

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

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

I think that the the good because there is good leadership out there. Where? Other than here. I think in in a lot of agencies, there are good leadership that have made it to the to an executive level, but they're too afraid to speak out because they're outnumbered. I think those people have to have backbone.

I think we have to figure out that this person is a shitty leader, and they need to be demoted. You know, if you have officers, like, when I left when I medically retired, a 108 left. Let's talk about your career.

I mean, when we spoke on the phone for the first time, you had a lot of frustrations.

Yeah. A lot of frustration. It's my first call ever, day 1. I am I did got I got pinned the day before, and now I've reported to my duty. I get with my FTO, and we're going over all the things.

7:30 in the morning, my first call. Call comes out. Missing kid. It's cool. It's a great 1 to go to.

It's a great 1 to learn from. Right off the gate, missing kids that come up all the time. So a lot of them are runaways. A lot of them are just hiding in closets. Don't wanna go to school.

Parents just can't find them. Whatever. They're not actually missing. They're just running away. So we get there, and the mother is just she's really, like, distressed.

I I don't know what she's supposed to look like. It's my first call ever. She's like, god. I can't find my son. I don't know where he's at.

I've searched the whole house. I just haven't looked in the basement. They're, like, well, has he ever had any behavior of running away? No. He just doesn't like going to school.

Like, alright, man. We'll we'll search the house again. Searched the whole house, nothing. Open up the basement door, started walking down the steps. I see 2 little bare feet, maybe about a foot, foot and a half off the ground.

And I'm like, wow. I already know what this is. I get all the way down to the basement. My FTO is behind me. He took an extension cord, tied it to a water pipe, multiple pipes, and hung himself.

So we're sitting there, and I'm day 1, man. First call. My FTO was such a coward. He said, hey. He ain't going to tell that mother that her son is deceased, and we found him.

Why don't you go do that? I'm in training. This is my first day. I'm not even supposed to do that. I'm just watching you.

No. No. You you ain't gonna do that. I'm telling you you can do it. Alright.

Roger that. So I go up there. She's standing in the kitchen. She's leaned up against the counter. I'm like, hey, ma'am.

I'm sorry to tell you, but your son is in the basement, and he he's no longer alive. She let out a scream, Sean, that I still hear every night. I watched her open her mouth and scream, and when she opened her mouth and screamed, I watched her soul leave her body. And I go back downstairs. She's screaming.

Finally, the the her sister gets there. She's comforting her. I'm holding the kids' legs, FEO. Cuts cuts cuts the extension cord off. He had, like, 1 of the serrated knives and cut him down.

We laid him on the ground, did all the things, called the detectives. Next rotation came. Next rotation is is, kinda like towing, like like for tow trucks. If we need a tow truck, it's the next on rotation, but we have a we have a morgue service, so they're in a rotation. So next rotation means whoever the morgue service is up to come get the body, That's that comes.

We holler for next call for next rotation for for morgue. They come too and they they get the body and, you know, we go through on out the day. Like, the next call, man, was, after that. The next call was some old lady complaining, and, she was mad that the neighbor's cat was on her car. Realistically, she was lonely.

Just wanted somebody to have coffee with at 9 o'clock in the morning.

So you go from

Go from a dead 12 year old

Cutting a dead 12 year old who hung himself.

To an 80 year old lady He wants to file a complaint or write she wants a police report for her neighbor's cat that's on her car causing damage. And I have to be able to give her every bit of me that I can because she's she's calling me. She's calling me for a service in my job. I can't go there and just give her half ass. I have to switch off what just happened.

That what what I just went through doesn't matter anymore. That's done. Kick it out.

How do you do that?

Try not to think about it. Focus on man, the queue is so busy. The queue and the the calls, they're just stacked. There'll be 15, 20 calls pending. They all go by priority.

You don't have time to think about what you just went through because the next thing that you're gonna go through might be just as bad. The next call might be your life. Can't think about that. You can't dwell on that, kid. That's horrible.

But how do I know the next call is me not dealing with somebody that's gonna try to kill me? I have to be mentally sharp to deal with the next call. Once you get in your car and that call's over, put your head on the steering wheel, let out a big old nice scream, and push on. Because guess what? The next call is somebody else's having their very worst moment of their life that you are responding to.

Every call is somebody's worst moment of their life, and every call, you should treat it as if it's your first call of the day because they deserve that. They're calling you at their worst time. I never got a phone call for somebody to come tell me I was doing a great job or somebody to cook me food or pat me on the back. Every call for 10 hours is somebody's worst moment. Somebody's dead, somebody's got to kill themselves, robbery, a murder, a mental patient standing in his garage naked with a butcher knife, to granny wanting to have a cup of coffee.

It's insane. And there's no there is no shutting it off. I still think about all of it. There are cops that have been way through more than me. I don't know.

All all I did was the next call could be life ending for me, so I need to be switched on. That call no longer exists. It goes away. It's just a report number. But then you deal with it and you get home by drinking or lashing out at your family.

And then you wake up the next day and you go to work and you treat people at work better you treated your family because you can't show up to work angry. You can't lash out at people at work. They'll put you on administrative leave and take your gun, make you go get help. Can't shut it off. Fake smile every day, and you give people the best version of yourself because they need you in that moment.

Whether it might not be a big event to you, it might be stupid to you, you might think this is a stupid call, but, I mean, they're on they they call 911 police because they're having such a bad moment. They need you at your best. Forget about the next call. It's time to move on. This is what I always got told.

So at the end of that shift, I walked in and my sergeant's sitting there with his legs up, shoes off. Said, cook, how was it? I'm like, oh, it sucked. First call of the day, kid hung himself. It's a lot.

Starts laughing. He's like, suck it up. Welcome to being a cop. I was like, what? What?

And then it just for the next, you know, 2 and a half years, it was a ride, man. Every day, like or if you're not checked in when when you check-in for service, if you're not mentally checked in, you could die. You could die. There were times where because let's say you're being proactive. You know?

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

Oh, shit. I didn't know that.

I mean, every traffic stop that I walked up to that I couldn't see into the car or my Spidey senses kicked in. And people people ask, you know, why are cops so aggressive when they get up to the car? Because when they touch the back of your car from the front of their windshield, do you know what they're thinking about? Am I about to take rounds through the windshield? Am I about to get shot?

When the window comes down and it's it's old miss Betty and she's all nice and sweet, it's a good feeling. Now she can still kill you. Right? You still gotta be elevated a little bit, but it's a good feeling because every car I ever approached, I just waited for rounds to come through the windshield.

Have you had rounds come through the windshield?

I've I've never. Luckily, I've never. I've seen a lot of videos where it has happened. It just never happened to me. And I had a OG gang member in Bonnie Doon tell me 1 time.

He say, man, you know, I see a lot of people in the neighborhood treat you different. He's like, you ever wonder why? I'm like, I don't know, man. Because you're you present yourself well. Your uniform is obviously tailored to your body.

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

That's a big deterrent. My uniform was fresh every day. I had 3 uniforms. I wore the same uniform. I wore day 1, I wore my first uniform, and then I would wear that again on my 4th day.

But day 1, 2, and 3, I always had fresh uniforms. On my day off, the first thing I did is I took them to 1 of the shops and had them pressed. They're all tailored to my body because I wanted to present myself as if you fuck with me, I'm gonna kill you. If you try to kill me, I'm gonna kill you. You're not gonna kill me today.

I'm the wrong 1. I'm a do everything lawful. I'm a do everything I can as a professional to keep you alive during our interaction. But the moment you try to take me off this earth, buddy, I'm coming, and it ain't gonna end well for you. I'll give you the utmost respect.

Everybody I encountered, I treated as if it was my mother, my father, my brother, my sister. I treat them as a family member and as a United States American citizen because they deserve that. Now the moment you cross that line, then we're going. We're doing it. Whatever you wanna do, but you better be ready because I'm ready.

And I I try to harp that to law enforcement to, hey, man. Like, use this as a motivation. Get in shape. Go to the gym, and quit eating bad on duty. Like, be presentable.

That will keep you alive. If bad guys right? I heard you, ask, sheriff,

Mark Lamb.

Yeah. Sheriff Mark Lamb. Love that dude. What's a good, you know, way to prevent people from, you know, entering in your home and, you know, things like that? You know, security cameras.

Anything that bad guys will not, you'll never become a victim if they feel like that there will be any resistance. They only pick easy targets, man. Wolves don't attack other wolves. They attack sheep. They kill animals that can't protect themselves.

Single. Right? If it's a single wolf, they're not gonna go try kill a grizzly by themself. They know they're gonna lose, so they'd just rather go get the sheep. I wanted to present myself as if you mess with me, you're getting all of me, and it's not gonna end well.

And that's how people, if they just put just ADT stickers on glass, that's a deterrent. Floodlights. Anything that they feel like they're gonna get caught at all, they won't mess with it. It's only easy targets they prey on. Same with law enforcement.

Yeah. You have a gun. People look like a bad ass. You probably can't shoot it. So they're going to test you.

I never got tested. I got tested. No. Take that back. Been tested twice.

1 dude was, like, 66, 280. Brother, I just held on. That was it. That's all you could do. You slam me up against my hood of my car, and I just I just maintained control much as I could until somebody else came and and helped me.

But very few times I've I've been tested, and it's because every day at work, there was nothing on me that looked ragged.

Let's talk about that scenario. How did that start?

Traffic stopped. Dude had dude had, outstanding robbery warrant, pulled him over outside the hospital, Cape Fear Valley Road. Soon as we stop, car door opens. I get out. He takes off running.

He is on me before I know it. I'm I'm fighting him. He's fighting me. Dude's picking me up like a rag doll, throwing me on threw me on the hood of the car. And I'm just holding on.

Finally, we make it on the ground. I don't have a lot of jiu jitsu knowledge at all, but I did mess around with it, so I do I do I did know, like, some control techniques to try to control him, especially keeping him off my gun. That was my biggest worry, was my gun. He actually got hands on my gun, but I had my level 3 Swariland holster that had the hood, and he didn't know how to operate, worked that. He knew the button, but he couldn't get my hood.

So that holster saved my life. Always have your hood up. You see a lot of officers, they put the hood down to get shots off faster. Just go train. That's it.

Because that saved my life. Then luckily, my zone partner, BJ Bullard, showed up and just came up from behind and just 1 good hit. Boy went down and that was it, end of the fight. Because now it's 2 on 1. His chances are over.

He felt a little resistance, a little I can't compete against 2, and he gave up. You know? It's because BJ was a proact he he was a proactive. He he he he wasn't the first to always initiate, but he would always back you up. He was a good country boy, and, he went to the academy with me.

So, you know, it's it's, I've I've seen videos where cops just stand there and watch their their buddies get beat up. I don't know how you do that. Because if BJ would've watched me get beat up that day, yeah, we would have had to have shot that dude. And then what would that have been?

Yeah.

I shot an unarmed black man. And that always goes through your head, especially after, the boy in Louisiana, I think, that that he killed, the Darren Wilson guy killed, that started all this years ago, like, 2014.

What happened

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

Mike Brown? Louis.

Yeah. Saint Louis. Yeah. Yeah. So Mike Brown.

I used to live there.

After that, like, man, like, I'm white. It sucks. You know, if I should know I'm black dude because guess what, man? These can kill you. Mhmm.

If you're 66, 290, I'm 510, 215, would a reasonable person believe that if you got the best of me, you could take my gun out and kill me? Yeah. Now I'm shooting an unarmed dude. That's what the news is gonna put out. West Virginia boy shoots and kills unarmed dude.

Like, the news is awful. Yeah. And, they're a major reason why cops are getting out too by telling lies. Who are they gonna call? They never thought about that.

These big cities never thought about that. Who y'all gonna call when these criminals go wild? Crime doesn't stop, but police officers will quit. Criminals won't quit. That's all they know.

Why would I continue to to get treated like shit for it's $43,000 a year.

Did you get treated like shit? Let me rephrase that. Did your apartment did your department have your back?

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

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

So I I had 1 supervisor named Kerry Young, man. Phenomenal dude. He always had my back when I was on patrol. I mean, I it takes, like, 2 or 3 people, right out the gate. He had my back.

There was 1 incident that there was a disturbance inside of a restaurant when I was on patrol during the day. Dude had made a comment right before we got there that he was gonna go to his truck and get a gun. We show up. He's still in Texas Roadhouse or Logan's Roadhouse. We go inside.

He's still in there. Him and this other family have have went at it. He goes, I'm gonna kill you. I've already had 2 people tell me that said he was gonna go get a gun. So he runs out to his truck.

I watch him run out the door, and so I've run after after him. He goes, opens up his door, gets in a posture as if he's grabbing something under the seat. I draw my gun. I give him commands. I got 3 days off for that.

He had a gun. I was too aggressive. He he had a gun? He had a gun under his seat. He just never presented it.

Because he didn't present it, why did I draw my gun? Why didn't I use de escalation skills? I don't know, bro. Because I didn't wanna get shot first. How about that?

That was when I realized, wow. Things are bad. How early in your career was that? Year and a half.

That was a year and a

half into your career, and you had how long of a career? 10 years? 12 years? 8. 8 years?

And I had I had 1 1 time where I was fighting a guy. We'll get into that, but it was when I was in the gang unit. I mean, if you cussed on body camera in a high stress situation, you're getting 10 hours off. You're getting written up. So a lot of people don't know this.

It's a nation it's become a nationwide thing. If I point my gun at you, that is a use of force. I get written up for that. Might not catch days off, but let's say a year goes down the road and I pull my gun 50 times that year. Dude, I could pull my gun 3 times in a shift.

We're dealing with people. I've had people jump out of a bed with swords, serving involuntary commitment paperwork that their family couldn't deal with them anymore. So I'll I have to go in and deal with them and put them in handcuffs and take them to the mental section at the hospital. I mean, I have almost I had a guy who was shooting blow darts. So Fable used to have a mental institution.

They shut it down and just see y'all later. Thanks for thanks for staying. Send them all back out in the wild. My first week I had a call, a guy named Allen, in his garage, butt naked, circle drawn in the garage with chalk. He's got a trash can in the middle of the garage, people running by, I called and said he's blowing blow darts at him.

So I'm like, oh, it's a mental mental patient. I gave him in the I'll I'll I'll get him I'll convince him to go to the hospital. I'm a hit Chipotle after this. This is easy. I like these calls.

As I'm coming around the corner, I hear dispatch. She's like, you know, now he's in the garage with a knife. Man, I hit the corner, dude. This dude's standing there butt naked. This big massive butcher knife.

He's like, come in the dungeon, motherfucker. And I'm like, no, sir. I'm like, let's drop that. I mean, he's like, no. No.

No. He's like, fuck you. Come in the dungeon. And finally my backup comes, like, seconds later. So now we're both lethal.

Right? Because we don't know what he's about to do. People don't understand tasers only work if you're in a distance. Like, they if I shot you with a taser right here, it wouldn't work. I have to be, like, 7 feet back to get the spread to split the hemisphere.

1 has to go in the upper torso, and the other 1 has to go in the body to get exactly what you need. If I shoot both here, that's why you still see people being able to reach it out. It doesn't do what it's supposed to do. That's why cops say shoot tasers from feet away. It doesn't work.

I was too far back from my taser, and I didn't wanna get close enough to him so it works because if I get closer to him and he charges at me and then Regga shoots him, what did I create? Why did you go up there? To tase him so we didn't have to shoot him? So we're out there 45 minutes, me and him. Me and Regott.

This dude's coming in and out of his house. Finally getting to put the knife down in the middle of the garage. And he runs over and he crouches down behind, like, a city trash can on wheels. We're like, what's he doing? And he's like back and forth using the trash can as like a barricade.

And he's talking to Reggaat, and then he starts talking to me and and Regat yells at him, and he turns a little further. What he had had, he he had taped on the back of the trash can a little 10 inch blow dart gun, and he was putting darts in it as he was talking to us to shoot us with them. And when Regatta yelled at him and I saw him do that, I hollered, pulled my taser out upside down, shot it. 1 went in his head. The other 1 went in the wall.

He turns around, tries to dive on the knife. I turn the taser off, turn it back on, initiates a second cartridge. I shoot it again. 1 misses. The other 1 hits him in the head.

Done. He starts, like, seizuring it out and everything. Hits his head, cuts his head wide open. He's bleeding everywhere. Get him in handcuffs.

Later, we found out that he he he had dirty blood, and he was stabbing himself with the needles and was gonna try to shoot people with him to give him his dirty blood. But he was also Holy shit. Is that HIV positive? Oh, yeah. He was also He was trying to fucking give other people HIV.

It's crazy. He was he was gone. So got him in handcuffs. He was found out he'd been drinking, and he was on cocaine, but they were upset with me because he split his head wide open. I'm like, he's alive.

What do you mean? And that was, like, a big ordeal.

That was a big ordeal.

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

they give you a suggestion? Like, okay. Well, what would There's no suggestion. What were you supposed to do?

They don't know the answer. The problem with agencies is Shitty leadership. Shitty leadership. Because in their mind we had this guy named James Nolette. Man, he ended up being our assistant chief.

He ran everybody away. He was horrible. Probably, in my opinion, maybe the worst human on the face of the earth. He was a horrible person. Not just a bad leader, but a horrible person.

And this dude would punish people because he thought by punishing people, it made him a good leader and that he would get promoted. This dude made it all the way up to assistant chief. He's the reason why I left. I mean, officers are doing their job, and they're getting written up for it. I ended up not caring about getting written up because I'd at that point, I'd applied and got my VA disability.

You wanna get you wanna you wanna give me a week off? I'll take a vacation and post it all over Facebook. I don't care. I'm getting paid. But imagine some of these guys who are a father of 3 and a wife, they're making $1100 a paycheck, and they're getting talked about getting 2 days off.

Why would you be proactive? So now I gotta feed a family of 4 on a $700 check because you gave me 2 hours off or or you gave me 2 days off. So why would you be proactive?

Yeah.

I can't blame them. I I We have to hold leadership accountable. I don't I don't blame them either. I mean,

I see this shit all over, you know, social and the news and people raiding the mall and people I mean, now you go on put California, even everything. Literally, the entire store is behind those little key things. We were

in And then I just Yeah. I'm We were in California.

I don't blame the cops at all.

I blame the people that live there. I need the ocean at Target. You wanted to defund them? You got

what the fuck you asked for. Yeah. Now you can live in this shit.

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

Yeah. I'm

like, they're like, yeah. Sorry. They steal everything. I'm like, that's crazy. But the problem is is if they get a use of force with these people, they're gonna get in trouble by the chain of command because the chain of command says, well, that's not healed that we don't wanna die on.

You know? Just let them take it, and we'll take the report. That's not right. That's not right. It's not right to the people that own that store.

Do you

think this shit's gonna change?

The only way it can change, in my opinion, is if Trump gets reelected or if Trump gets put back in office. Well, I'm with you

on that, but even even so, I mean It's, it

does when he was in office, things changed. I don't know what happened, but there was a little bit of a span there where cops were being cops again. It's I don't know what it was, but during the I was a cop for 2 years during the Obama Obama administration, and it was different. They had a liberal chief, like, who, like, said that we were pulling over too many black people. That's another thing, Sean.

I got in trouble. So anytime you do a traffic stop, you gotta do a a a traffic stop incident thing where you put in male, female, black, white. They just searched the car. What did you find? I used to get in trouble and have to go do racist classes because I was pulling over too many black people, but my district was all African Americans.

Like, so what did I do? Stop stopping cars. I let known drug dealers drive past me because I'd already stopped too many black people, and it's piss leadership. It's because instead of having a backbone of being a man, they would rather throw you under the bus and make themselves look good. We disciplined him.

Don't worry. Instead of saying, hey, Blake is assigned to an area full of African Americans. He's probably gonna have a higher traffics operating for those kind of people. Like, I have heard people say, go stop more white people. What does that even mean?

Go violate somebody's right? Stop them because they're white now? That's the leadership mentality that we're having nationwide. It don't even make sense.

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

I don't know, Sean. I really don't. Because, like It's gotta be The on every single

person's mind who wears a badge. Every single 1 of them has to know about this shit.

Oh, they do. I've had so many people ask me if I can be their voice. Please put this out. Hey. This happened.

Do this. Hey. Like, put can you put this out on your social? Like, they can't go vocal about it. Right?

Because they're gonna be punished. They're terrified. It's the good leaders have to somehow get a backbone.

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

That's true, man. You're right. So, yeah, we have very few good leaders then. I mean, the

I don't give a shit where they came from, what the fuck they did. If you get up there and you don't have a backbone, you're a piece of shit. And that's I agree seeing it in the military too. These guys that have these phenomenal careers, and then they get up top, and they turn into a complete piece of shit.

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

And it's it's so much easier to write us up than stick up for us. So, like, when I was in the gang unit, we were the we were the easy button. We were the button that for an example, female brand new female officer out in the area called Bonnie Doone, she was doing real police work. She had a good sergeant. They were letting her do good police work.

She was disrupting this nontraditional gangs operation. They started getting tired of her. She did a traffic stop 1 time, pulled over a kid, had a gun in the car. Gun was in the passenger seat, she arrested him. He was a convicted felon, she knew that.

All the people out of this little apartment complex came out and swarmed her. Somebody ended up taking the gun out the out the seat. Told her they were gonna kill her. So they said, hey. There's a female cop that's being her life's being threatened.

We need to go out and make our our presence known. Coming from the top. I mean, who's this coming from? Coming from the top. Cool.

I'll stop what I'm doing. We went out there, drove around that complex. I'm like, cool. I need to stop a car here, so I waited till I saw a traffic violation. Saw a traffic violation, lit them up, happened to be right in front of the apartment complex.

As I get out the car, and 30, 40 people were coming out. I'm like, oh, no. I'm like, hey. We don't look like the regular fucking police. We don't act like it.

Get your asses back inside, or you can get some of this too. They're like, cook. I was like, yeah. Says it's the gang unit. They call us, like, charger boys.

That was a name that carried on from when they were GGVU. Everybody was scared of the charger boys, and, we gave a head nod and went back inside. Problem solved. The Uber driver it was an Uber driver that we stopped, black kid. Said that I called people coming out of the apartment complex the n word.

Called and complained, so an investigation happened. I have my body camera on 247. I will say whatever I will say whatever with my camera or with my camera off. Whatever I say with it off, I'll say with it on. I don't change.

It's just who I am. I said, go ahead and review it. Went in, set it in, it uploaded. Didn't happen. But we had a major at the time named Major Whitaker.

He was racist. He was a black dude. He was racist. He hated white police officers, in my opinion. Just my opinion.

He was not proactive. He was a horrible cop throughout his career, and he didn't like the way I talked to people in that neighborhood. He thought I was talking to someone like that because they were black. So they called me in the office, in his office. Like, hey.

We refused this footage. Major Whittaker wants to have a conversation with you. I'm like, dude. Okay. I cussed.

Sorry. Like, when you're in those environments, you speak their language. You don't tell them, please get inside. They don't understand that. They didn't grow up with that verbiage.

Hey. Get fuck inside. Okay. Cool. Sorry.

It's not it's not regular police. We're going back inside. So I get in there, and they're all in there. And he's, like, talking about, well, we didn't like how you talk to people in that neighborhood. You know?

It's a it's a minority neighborhood. You know, the times that we're living in, you could have been a little nicer. I'm, like, I'm, like, looking over at my leadership. Like, does anybody wanna tell him why I was there? Do you even know why I was out there?

A female cop is being threatened that they were gonna kill her. I'm, like, looking at my leadership. Like, y'all wanna y'all didn't tell him? Y'all didn't brief him on this? Because in his mind, I'm out there just freelancing.

The people that see me out there have everybody being quiet crickets, hands in their pockets. He's like, cook. What would you have said if you're in Vansory Hill? Vansory was a a really nice neighborhood in Fayetteville, and, a group of 4 or 5 white women came out drinking wine, and you were on a traffic stop. What would you tell them?

Again, I'm looking at my leadership. Like, this dude's trying to bait me in on a race question. They're looking at me. I'm like, I'll tell him get the fuck back inside. We went to regular police.

Nothing changes. Don't make this a race thing. And my leadership went they're like, oh, I'm like, don't how about you be a man and say you sent us out there? The people that came in and told us to go out there didn't say a word.

No shit.

Nobody spoke up and said, hey. We sent them out there because x, y, and z.

Because they were threatening to kill a female officer.

Female police officer. Nobody said a word. Why? Because they're cowards. Because they don't wanna take the responsibility that they sent us out there because it looks bad on them, and everybody's trying to get promoted.

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

Because they don't wanna take responsibility. Because a female officer

was about to get murdered.

They don't wanna take responsibility. Nobody wants to take accountability of sending people out to do things when it comes down to it. Now when it's good, if it's good, it's good. Hey. If we send them out there, that was on me.

Monday morning, we do the the, crime stats come out. Right? Oh, slower. Yep. I sent the guys out there.

We took care of that. But when shit hits the fan, you're on your own. And when the waiter brings the bill to pay, ain't nobody else paying it but you. Everybody else done walked out. That's a major issue that we have.

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

Is that why you left?

I left I left because they had us out in an area. It's a predominant gang area, drug area, and I watched a car go by, and I realized that the driver was a guy I had dealt with before named Joshua Hill. Known to have guns, known to sell guns, known to be a big dope boy, not just little street stuff, you know, kilos of Fentanyl, kilos of cocaine. He was he was he was his beautiful charger man. This chrome paint job, big rims.

So I get behind him and he takes off. I take off with him. No lights. No sirens. Take off with him.

Finally, turn my blue lights and sirens on. He goes faster. So I'm like, okay. I'm a turn my blue light sirens off. I'm still following you, brother.

And then he realized that he can't shake me. We we didn't go far, maybe 200 yards. He pulls over. So I throw my car in park. I'm like, alright.

He's not jumping out. Nothing's going on. Took a deep breath, and I was, like, treated like a regular traffic stop. Don't act like it just almost turned into something. So I go up to the car, rolls his window down.

Man, I see the bag. His car is just thumping. Sweating profusely. Can't even talk. He's breathing so hard.

I'm a hate sergeant from Texas Coat with Fayetteville Police Department. The reason I pulled you over is we have a new chief. You have really dark window tint, man. Window tint's the flavor of the month. I'm a I need your ales.

I'm a scratch off a warning ticket. I'm hungry. I'm a go to Chipotle. K? We're gonna make this quick.

So I'm like, alright. Cool. Like, where's where's where's everybody at? You know? And I I didn't put I didn't get enough time to put it on the radio yet because he kept we kept playing the games, and and I was trying to get it out, but I couldn't because he stopped too soon.

So I get back at my car and put it out, and a k 9 officer shows up. And I was hoping for 1 of the gang guys, but the k 9 came up, which is great because he's backing me up. Look up his history, man. It's just gun charges. He's he's he's gone away for a while.

I didn't see a gun. When I went back and watched my body camera, you can see it clear as day. Sitting right here, I just got focused on the bag, the dope. My attention went straight to the dope. I smell it.

I know I'm gonna search the car, and I know what I need to find is in that bag. So I'm watching the bag. Don't even see a gun. Don't even see the Glock. Now it's a black gun with black center dash.

Right? So we go up to the car. I'm a, hey, man. I'm a pull him out. Cigar.

I mean, hey, mister Hill. I need you to step out of the vehicle. Before I walked back, I'd actually had him take his keys out and put them on the dash. Something I always did if I knew that I was gonna search a car. So because of this reason, when I walked back up and asked him to step out of the vehicle, he said no.

Open the door. He grabs the door. He shuts the door. Now he's trying to throw it and drive, but he doesn't know that his keys are on the dash. We had to turn the car off, and I made him put the keys on the dash.

His zoodle loop now his his mind went to, I gotta get out of here. So open up the door again, I dive in to get him, he reaches down, he goes to pull out a Glock. Glock hits the steering wheel, I grab a hold of the Glock. If you look right here on my hand, I have 2 scars. You see them?

That's from his front side post trying to rip it out of my hand. Now I'm hitting him with elbows. I'm hitting him with, I can't shoot him. I'm left handed. My gun's over here.

I'm gonna have a hold of his gun with my left hand pinned down. I'm hitting him. I start beating him over the head with it. It shatters. Nothing.

He he knows he's going to jail forever. Man, I'm like, I'm getting tired. The k 9 officer is trying to get in, but he can't. And, wish I wish he would've went went around, but it was a pretty crazy incident. Man, the passenger door opened.

I can't say his name because he does federal work, but the most big beautiful country boy ever that was on our gang unit opens up the door and just punches this dude, man. And we fall out. Getting me in handcuffs, no more issues after that. His gun had his sweat dripping off the handle. Took pictures and videos of everything.

So cool. It's a useful force. Right? Because he he got hurt. I hit him a couple of times.

He got scraped up on the ground. People are outside filming. Right? Because we're in a predominant minority neighborhood, and here we are pulling out this dude, roughing him up a little bit because he had a gun. So go back to the station and, upload my body camera.

I'm typing my report. Body camera uploads. I'm allowed to watch my body camera to write my report accurately. So I'm writing my report, and I write it out, submit it in. Everything's good.

Come to work next morning. And, I'd already before I get to this, I'd already tried to leave Fayetteville once, and we'll get to that after this. So the next morning, the report comes out, or I get to the office. They come into my desk. Hey.

They need you in I in his office. I'm like, okay. Yeah. I mean, did hit the dude. Right?

So I'm sure I need to sign internal affairs paperwork saying that I'm being investigated. So I go in and I I go to make a right into, the sergeant's office and, like, 998. We were in this room. What room? The room that has the camera with the red light on it right now that means it's recorded?

They're like, yeah. I'm like, oh, okay. It's kinda serious. So I get in there. They're talking.

They're like, hey. On your body camera, you stated that you thought he had a gun. You never stated that he had a gun, but you wrote on your report that you observed the gun. We believe that you lied on your report. I'm like, well, hold on.

First of all, I was fighting for my life. My oodle loop was all jacked up, and I was trying to yell that he had a gun, but I couldn't get past the initial traffic stop when I was, like, man, he's got a I think he has a gun. He has to have a gun. There has to be 1 in here. But my other loop was so messed up I just kept yelling, I think he has a gun instead of gun.

I made a mistake. Nothing unlawful about what I did. I watched my body camera. I wrote a good report. I stated in my report that I thought he had a gun until I observed a gun, but they were trying to twist it around because that assistant chief wanted me out of that unit, James Ouellette.

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

The gun was in the body cam footage. Correct?

Yes. And we had photos of the gun. The gun was put in evidence. The gun was taken with his DNA. Sliced up.

I'm bleeding. The gun with his DNA on it is in evidence on body camera, and we took crime scene photos. What are you what are y'all talking about? So they wanted to suspend me. For for what?

Because it would have sounded bad on CNN.

That's that's the that's the If

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

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

So there is question. So chief Braden

What the fuck is the point?

So chief Braden is there now. Chief Braden is the only 1 of the few that has a backbone. There there are several others that he's promoted that have backbones, and they're making better choices. Chief Braden is a is a crime fighter. The dude still wears tactical pants.

He's been on SWAT team his whole career. He took 8 rounds on a search warrant. He is that he is a he is a crime fighter, and he's the police chief there. He's doing the best he can, and he's promoting the right people. He's just now fighting city council.

Why are we pulling over black people? Like, I don't know. Maybe because their tags are dead. Why are we arresting more black people? Maybe because they're dealing drugs.

I I I don't know. I just know that a crime is being committed, and we are taking that person to jail no matter what the color is. So he has shaped the police department back. He's the tac team is doing more search warrants now than ever. They are back to trying to be crime fighters, but he's just getting so much push now from city council has too much power.

They have too much power because for them to be able to What

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

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

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

but they put out we don't have a gang problem. The city council does. We do have a gang problem. But I will say, Sean, Braden is is doing a I would I would go back and work at the Fayetteville Police Department right now. I would.

Under chief Braden is the only person I would. Now there are still some cowards in that leadership, but there are more people now with backbones that have were on specialized units and and were proactive police officers that are making a difference there now. The biggest problem they're facing now is trying to get city council to raise their pay. Why work at Fayetteville when you can go work at Cary for 20,000 more dollars and it's a way nicer city? But chief fought for them and did get them a pay raise.

So he's doing the things. There are still some police departments that have great leadership. They're just I don't doubt that,

and I'm not saying

that in between. What I'm saying with the other chief, what

is the point of having a police department?

I don't know that. Is the point? The chief that I worked under, that was the assistant chief, James. The main chief, her name is Gina Hawkins. She tricked us.

She got hired and started buying our attack team everything. And then it was like she flipped a switch overnight. More people left because of her than anything. Dude, her last year as a cop, she was at a bar, a gang bar on Owen Drive in Fayetteville, North Carolina, left with the mayor. 2 minutes later had a homicide.

Her vehicle was in front of the building. She showed up 2 hours later, had a police officer come pick her up because she they assumed that she was drunk, showed up at the crime scene. 1 of the homicide detectives said, hey, chief. I'm here to brief you. She said, hey.

I'm here to get my car. She had sunglasses on and a wig. They said we can't take your car. She moved him out the way, went and took her vehicle that was taped off in the middle of a crime scene, and drove it off. The bar had cocaine in it.

The bar was a it was a homecoming weekend for Fayetteville State University, which is Fayetteville's there's 2 colleges 3 colleges, Methodist, Fayetteville Community College, and then Fayetteville State University, which is a all black college. It was their homecoming. They had a massive party there with gang members. Apparently, I wasn't there, there was drugs all over the bar that our police chief was at. They paid her $250,000.

She claimed some racist that she was mistreated because of her race, and then she went back down to Atlanta. Our city manager was only there because he got a DUI in a county that she worked in, and she got him out the DUI. And then he hired her when he got hired in Fayetteville. She wasn't even in the running. He brought her back in the running.

It's that kind of stuff that is going unnoticed and why people are leaving. That's the shitty leadership I'm talking about. So after they told me that it would have sounded bad on CNN, I lost it. I was so mad.

You were gonna talk about something that happened a couple weeks prior.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I was trying to leave Fayetteville, and this is the first time this has ever been heard other than my wife and a few other people. Nobody at department ever knew why I came back.

A lot and said the trooper the guy decided not to go to the troopers. So I decided I had to leave Fayetteville because they were just man, it was just like 1 incident after another, just horrible leadership. They were telling us to go do something. I point my gun, and then I'd get written up. I'm like, I can't sustain here.

I I can't work here anymore. My mental health is damn near gone, and I'm drinking all the time. All night long I'm drinking. So I applied for a police department where I live now called Riceville Beach. Went in for an interview, and I answered, like, 4 questions, and they were like, hey.

You're hired. Just don't do nothing stupid in between now and when you can move up here. I was like, oh, absolutely. Man, the following weekend. Like, wait.

That was on Thursday. Yeah. The following weekend. Saturday, there's an island called Palm Tree Island. It's got a fake palm tree.

It's you can go out, pull the boats up, and swim. It's super fun. It was July 4th weekend. Went out to the island with some with some friends. I was just drinking, man.

I drink a whole 5th of Fireball. Just I was at that point, I'm drinking out of rage, just pure rage, because they don't wanna face the reality that I have to still go back to work and deal with bad leadership. It got to the point, Sean, where I didn't even wanna go to work. I couldn't go to sleep because the anxiety was so bad about knowing that when I get to work tomorrow, somebody's gonna task me with something, and then they're gonna write me up for it if it doesn't go smooth. So, man, I drank this whole bottle back when my wife was drinking too.

She was drunk, and the people we came on the boat with left. Left. Left us on an island. Sure. There was a bunch of people.

I was drunk. I didn't know anybody. So the island is is a it's in the intercoastal waterway, but it's it's maybe 50 yards from the shoreline, but it's deep, and it's a high boat boat area. So my wife say, hey. We're gonna swim.

I'm like, yeah. We got another option. So we swim. I'm like, I'm a decent swimmer, a drunk. It's kinda hard, especially with the current.

Right? Low tide was coming in, so the current was pushing out. And, I mean, I felt like I was drowning. We get all the way to the to the we make it across. We get to the dock.

You know, I'm just a country boy from West Virginia. Right? I don't know about all the barnacles and everything on the dock, so I grab ahold of the dock. Current's coming out, current's sweet, takes my legs out, and just slices my legs. I'm like, dang.

So I get out, and I look down. I am just bleeding. Shit. I'm just my whole legs is covered in blood. And I'm like, oh my god.

We gotta get back to the house. Like, I'm not supposed to be out here acting a fool, and now I'm standing on a dock with blood everywhere, and I'm and I'm hammered. Shithouse. Not hammered. Shithouse.

So we take off walking, and we're not familiar with the area, and we're drunk. Wife's like, hey, we gotta go this way. I might know we have to go this way. This is the way to the house. She's like, no.

So we get in this massive verbal argument on the side of the road, cars everywhere. It's July 4th. I'm screaming. She's screaming. I'm like, fine.

Go that way. I'm going this way. She she goes that way. I go this way. Man, 45 seconds later, I hear it.

I turn around. This dude draw him down on me. Show me your hands. I'm like okay? He comes over, and handcuff me.

He's like, where is she at? I'm like, who? It's like, the lady you were arguing with. I'm like, this is my wife. She walked that way.

I'm walking this way. We're trying to figure out who gets to the house first. Puts me in the back of a cop car. Rest of the cops show up. They know who I am.

They asked the dude what happened. They went and found my wife. She's like, nothing happened. They come back to him, and they're like, where why did you put him in handcuffs? He's a cop in Fayetteville.

He didn't do nothing wrong. Now he's in the back of a cop car in handcuffs. Takes me out. They all apologize. He would take me to the to the house.

And, I got a call Monday morning, not hired. So I tried to leave, and, I failed. So now I'm thinking, man, they all knew I was leaving. I told them I'd gotten the job that Thursday, and I was gonna prepare to leave. I was like, oh my god, dude.

If they find out about it, I'm gonna get disciplinary action and probably take him off the gang unit. How do I tell them I'm not going to this department anymore? Came up with a lie. I said, hey. The guy that was leaving to go to highway patrol didn't get the job in the highway patrol, so he went back to the job, and they're not feeling it.

They did offer me a reserve job for now, but I told them that if I can't get a full time job, I can't commit to that. And that bought me about a month until this incident occurred that I just explained with fighting for the gun. And then once that happened, I had an emotional breakdown. I was like, I can't leave this place. I'm stuck here.

I'm being treated. I'm being shit on right now in a in a room that's being interviewed because I fought a guy for a gun the day before, and it would look bad on CNN. Well, guess what, asshole? What about my family? Because the fact of the matter is if I would have died on that Friday, they would have had a nice memorial service, people would have agreed, they would have put these beautiful flowers and wreaths on my car, had a memorial service Saturday, funeral on Monday, and before the flowers died on my vehicle Monday morning, they would be swiped off and it would be reissued out, my desk would be cleared, and I would be some stupid pitcher on a wall.

And the next generations of police officer would walk by and just know that's just some guy that died here. And the only people grieving me for the rest of my life would be my wife and son. That's the truth. You don't ever put an agency before your family because the agency moves on. Your family doesn't.

They grieve you forever. The agency does some bullshit stuff for a couple days and then don't even communicate with your family anymore. Your badge gets reissued out. Everything. Like, you didn't exist except for the picture that collects dust in a hallway that people don't even know who you are.

So I got up. I completely excused myself from this. After they told me it was sounded bad on CNN, I didn't hear anything. I walked I stood up, went to the bathroom outside the gang unit office. It's a single bathroom.

Locked the door, I sat down on the ground, and just cried my eyes out. I said, I can't do this cause I knew that from here on out, I would never be able to make a decision to protect myself in the event of a deadly force encounter because I will always think about am I gonna get in trouble. And I can't do that. I can't put my family through it. I wasn't feeling well, man.

Called my friend who was my, my family doctor, and I went and saw her. I just left. I left her apartment, went and saw her. I guess they're still waiting for me, and I I don't know. She said, come in immediately.

I went and saw her, sat down. She said, Blake, you don't look good. I'm like, what do you mean? She goes, no. Like, I see it.

You don't look good. Her husband was a retired Green Beret, and she knows the look. And, she has talked to me, and I talked to her. And she put me on medical leave, the, I always mess it up. F m LFA, whatever that is.

It's the medical leave, like, the people take when they have babies and stuff. Always mess it up. But Kyle's gonna laugh at that because I always mess it up. But she said, hey. You you can't do this job no more.

She goes, it it's gonna it's gonna take your life. I'm just crying, man, because I love this job. It's the highlight of my life. I was in it, man. I was I was in it.

I didn't get the opportunity to go SF, and here I am in this specialized unit that is just big boy rules. Something I always wanted was, and we were killing it. And, man, she gave me my paperwork, and I went back to the department. They're like, oh, well, where'd you go? I was like, hey.

Nope. Am I doing this some more? More? They're all mouse all dropped down. I'm like, y'all fucking did this to me.

I love this job. I'd have died for any of y'all. I love this job more than everybody in this building, and you stole my passion from me because you failed to be a good leader. James Nollet stole the passion of law enforcement out of me, sucked it out of me because he thought that was gonna help him be promoted. Stole it from me, man.

I love law enforcement. That's why I love working at Blueberry. I love what I do now. We give so much to the community, to law enforcement. All of our training courses are incredible because we're passionate about what we do.

I've had somebody ask me, Blake, why do you still give back to the community? You're completely screwed over because I love you, and I love everybody that wakes up every morning and puts a badge on. Now say this, think about it like this, all the tier 1 guys, all the specialized military units, they go do the most dangerous jobs in the world, the most secretest dangerous jobs in the world. But the difference, they get to get on an airplane and come back to United States of America. Police officers are deployed 365 days a year, 7 days a week in a city that they have to work in.

You wanna talk about paranoia? I can't even go to Best Buy with my son without being bumped into somebody that I arrested for a drug charge, and I don't know if he's gonna kill me right here or right now. That's paranoia. Law enforcements take their life, I believe, because of paranoia. 185 law enforcement officers killed themselves in 2023.

136 died in the line of duty. Why are we having more officers dying by self inflicted gunshot wounds than they are fighting crime? It's because the leadership is pushing us to the point where we would rather kill ourselves than have to see your fucking face in the morning. That's the problem, and it needs to be addressed nationwide. The DOJ needs to do something about it.

Somebody needs to do something. It's getting out of control, and bad leaders need to be held accountable. They need to be fired. Man, I'm passionate about this because I feel sorry for them because there are some good ass cops out there, man, that are still believing the right, still doing the right thing. But when it when the time comes and there's a little little hiccup in what they're doing, they're thrown to the wolves and their families have to suffer because it comes out of a paycheck.

That's bullshit. If you get an officer involved shooting, they put your ass in a closet. Whether you're good or not, if it's a good shooting, they put your ass in the closet, get you a new gun, and they make you watch body camera footage. Nobody checks on you. It puts you in the worst job possible.

Man, it's things need to be done better. People need to speak up. You know how you change this, Sean? Fucking officers need to step up and speak up because as a unit, as a whole, they can get some stuff done. You might be scared alone, but, man, form you a group and and and and make sure that that bad leader gets out of there, or you walk out because they want that bad leader or they wanna lose a 100 people.

I try to bring this to Gina Hawkins' attention. She called me when she found out I was leaving, begged me to come in for an interview the day after. She said, please come in. We don't want you to leave. I said, chief, I'm out.

I'm like, your leadership is fucking horrible. The people you have under you, horrible. She says, still come in and talk to me. Come on, Blake. I said, alright.

I'll give you an exit interview. I came in there. I sat down, started telling her issues. She didn't wanna hear it, man. She didn't wanna hear it.

She took up for every 1 of those dudes. I said, that's the problem. That's why I'm leaving. I said, you don't even know it yet, but you're about to have a mass exit. Like, it's crazy.

The riots, Why would anybody wanna be a cop after the riots? The city we lived in, they were burning them all down. Our SWAT team was riding around in unmarked cars, and it looked like what's the movie where they have, like, 24 hours to kill people? You know what I'm talking about? What is that movie?

Hunger Games? No. No. They have 24 hours to kill people. It's legal.

All crime's legal for 24 hours. Can't think of the name, but I'd if I went on here, I'd spelled it off. But, man, that's what it was like. People doing doughnuts in the middle of major intersections, shooting guns in the air. People shooting glass out of convenience stores.

Raiding Walmart, shooting guns. Employees in Walmart, calling for help because they can't leave. That is a hostage rescue at this point. They're being held there by gunfire. We're not entering Walmart.

We advised them they needed to shut down. What? We gotta do something. Like, Academy Sports, Fayetteville, it took us 2 year a year to recover from from what happened there. 2 patrol officers watched the vehicle, watched 4 gentlemen run out of Academy Sports, like, for the 5th time, carrying boatloads of guns, throwing them in the vehicle.

They recovered, like, 15 guns in the parking lot because they they dropped. Got behind them, was gonna stop them, and James Nollet told them, let them go. We have the license plate. We'll find the guns. Mind blowing.

Purge. That's the movie. The Purge. I've never seen anything like it in my life. When that incident happened in Walmart, man, I remember sitting in the vehicle, and my eyes were so watery because I was so mad.

I was like everybody's like, oh, well, we can't you know? Like, no, man. Somebody right then should have made a decision. Like, there are people that need to be saved. Go in the back.

Let's go pull the people out and drive on. Those people need our help. They just they said, let them burn it down. The residents of Fayetteville under her leadership should have been infuriated. There's there's radio calls of her saying, stand down.

James Nalette, assistant chief cartoon, stand down. Your city's burning down. People's lives are at stake. What are we doing? It reminded me of the scene, Sean, from 13 hours.

Remember when they're waiting to be released and they're just watching the embassy being burned, and nobody will send them? That's what it reminded me of. They're burning our market house down, which is like this historic building with the historic and guy inside of it. Let it burn. There's somebody inside of there.

He ended up getting out, but what do you mean let it burn? I just had so much that I couldn't do it anymore. And I can't even imagine these massive cities, cops getting you see, there was a video recently out in DC, cop getting drugged through the street, stealing his cell phone. Dude, if I saw my partner getting drugged like that, well, I'm a go get 2 or 3 people, and we're gonna come in like like the wolf pack from WWF. We coming in hot.

We're gonna we're gonna lay the law down, but they can't. People are scared. They watch their buddy be dragged off because they're scared you should've even been there. It's I love the the people, man, who are out fighting every day. I really do.

I'm their voice for them. I will continue to support them because there's a lot of good young cops out there, but, man, you have to come together as

a whole. What would you this is infuriating. I can't even imagine how you feel because I'm infuriated. But, I mean, what do you say to these guys,

the young guys? Hey, man. Focus on why you're doing it. Because it's not for money. It's your calling that you feel like that you're being called to do.

Focus on the positive impacts that you're making on people's lives. That's what kept me there so long. When I was in the gang unit, we would go do search warrants, and I would there would be kids without beds. The next morning, I would go to the mattress warehouse and buy mattresses and then deliver them to that house for those kids. I've taken vans off my feet.

I used to keep boxes of vans in my feet of different sizes to give out to kids who didn't have shoes. I have pictures of all this. I used to find the the what I would feel like a kid in the neighborhood in a neighborhood who just wasn't in a game, but wanted to affiliate with a game, who just was on a bad path, and I'd say, hey, man, look, I'm not asking for passing grade or I'm not asking for a's and b's in schools. Bring me passing grades, I'll buy you Kevin Gate concert tickets when he comes to Fayetteville. I'll buy you skateboards.

I'll buy you a bicycle. Bicycles are huge. It gives them the ability to go get a job. It gives them the ability to escape their situation. That's why, like, we have a bike drive at Jimmy's at Riceville Beach.

It's a bike drive. We raise 2 or 3000 bikes in 30 days. Brand new bikes, not used bikes. We raise these bikes and we give them we give them out at Christmas to kids who get nothing for Christmas because a bicycle to a teenager that's living a horrible life is a way for them to escape, to go get a job, go do something instead of just walking around. I have a huge passion with this bike drive.

I have a huge passion with I used to buy kids bikes all the time. It's because I'm giving them the ability to get away from what their environment is producing for them. I'm giving them something, some motivation. I'm actually by skateboards all the time. We have a skate shop in Fayetteville, man, and they were so awesome.

They would sell me boards at 50% off. And I'd I'd go to the neighborhood and I'd give it to the kid. Or if there was a kid that we did a search warrant on that was traumatized, I'd I'd I'd go play basketball with him. There's a there there's 1 pitcher, man. It's my favorite pitcher.

It was hanging up on my house. It's the gang unit. We just went in a neighborhood. We played basketball with all these kids. They're terrified of police.

It's Massey Hills, 1 of the worst neighborhoods. And they were damn sure terrified, dudes with beards and long hair, because that's normally people that are coming to take their parents away for a while. Right? We're the jump out boys. And just got out and started playing basketball with them 1 day.

Used to do it all the time on the road, just play basketball with them, and there was this picture of this kid sitting on my shoulders, he's messing with my hat, and his brothers and sisters are here, and the gang unit's here. And, it meant so much to those kids, man, to see that we're humans. Law enforcement officers are humans. The problem is that citizens see us at their worst moments. They'll never see us at their best moments.

So if their worst moment, we're either good or evil. It doesn't matter. They still don't get to see us as humans. You know, when I go home and I take off that vest, I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm a son, I'm a brother. I'm a human.

I used to have shit thrown on me when I was on patrol. Crazy lady shitting her hand and threw it on me. All I did was ask her to get out of the road. People don't understand that. So when people, like, are are wondering why officers are aggressive, you're just seeing them in that capacity.

You don't know what they just came from. They're they're humans. Find them outside this. They'll joke with you. They'll have a beer with you.

They'll hang out with you. They're they're just normal people that have a job and an oath to protect. That's it.

Damn, man.

Just stay motivated. Do it for the right reasons and be a good cop and know that you're impacting somebody's life. Whether it's 1 person or it's a 100 people, you're impacting somebody's life. You have the ability to reach somebody at their worst moment and, try to make it a smidge better by just your presence. That's the key, man, of being a good cop.

Try to make somebody's worst moment a tad bit better. How would you want a cop to approach you at your worst moment? That's it, man. You do that, you're gonna be okay. You'll have a good career.

But when it's time to go to work, time to go to work. It's time to be the police when it's time to be the police. But you gotta be able to switch it up and switch it down. It's the biggest thing about CQB is when knowing to throttle it up and throttle it down. That's what makes it professional.

You know? I truly believe that a professional law enforcement officer is not 1 that gets in shootings. I was fortunate of 8 years to not get into I didn't ever pull the trigger. That is because I did everything as a professional. There's nothing more professional than going into a crazy environment and not having to kill somebody, having to talk them out of their worst moment, having to have better tactics than the bad guy to get them in handcuffs.

That is being a professional. That is what should set you aside from everybody else, is being able to go do what I consider to be the country's most dangerous job and not ever pull the trigger. Because you have better tactics, you're out thinking, and you have the ability to talk somebody down at their worst moment. That's what makes a good cop, Sean. It's that's what makes a professional, in my opinion.

Damn. That's damn good advice, brother.

I tried to live by that, man. I I did. I really did. I wanted to make an impact. It's all I wanted to do.

Well, it sounds like you made a hell of an impact. I like to think I did. I really do. But there's a lot of people that that know you did. I appreciate that.

It means a lot, honestly. You're welcome. I tried. Well, Blake, we're wrapping up the interview. But, and, man, I'll tell you, it's been a real honor.

It's been a pleasure to be able to sit here and and share this story. You know, a lot of things, man, I've never even said out loud. So thank you for having me on the show and using this platform. And, man, if it just helps 1 person, that's all that matters.

It's gonna help a lot of people. And, man, seriously, I just I'm so glad Kyle, you know, connected us and, sounds like Blue Bearing Solutions is doing just amazing stuff. And, all that stuff will be linked below if you guys wanna follow Kyle and Blake and and, take some courses. But

Yeah. Like, I think my biggest

in the business. I just I just wanna say thank you, man. Oh, thank you, Sean. Thank you for the service you've done, and and, man, just thank you for law enforcement everywhere. I I know that community is going through a a real fucking tough time right now, and there's a lot of us that that appreciate it, that appreciate the service, that wish Ellie the best, and and we support you.

We we do. And, I hope they hear that.

Yeah. I I think that's the most important thing for them to hear is that stay off the news, stay off social media because people support you.

And I'll say something too to I always do it. But, man, if you are, for the listeners, if you are if you do support, and we all do, anybody that watches this channel supports law enforcement, man, just take 5 seconds out of your day and say thank you. That's huge. Safety.

I appreciated every person that stopped me and said thank you. It's the only positive thing I ever got during that 10 hour shift.

I do have 1 last question.

Alright.

I mean, it sounds like your mom has been there for you, and, I mean, she's always been there. Sounds like a very, very strong woman. And, is she gonna watch this? I'm

sure. You

sure she will? Say?

I would not be who I am without her. She never gave up on me. She's been my mom and my dad. She's been my biggest supporter. I love you, and I'm so grateful that god gave me you gave you as my mother.

Thank you for never giving up on me.

Good for you, man. I wish you the best of luck, and I'm just very thankful that we met. I'm I'm beyond grateful.

Named 1 of the best personal finance podcasts, the Stacking Benjamins show with Joe and his friends makes makes financial literacy fun. Draymond Green has a podcast. He was asking Mark Cuban why at the beginning of 2024, Cuban sold a huge part of his company. He's like,

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Was that much more graceful than that.

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