Episode Transcript
<p><!--block-->Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Cup of Nukes. As always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey, and I am excited about today's episode because there's a few different topics we're gonna touch upon, one of which I'm more intrigued about and I think is more important, but all three equally important, of course. And we're gonna get into the faith, the FBI, two things that some of us think, uh, don't belong together. We'll get into that conversation for sure. And then on a very serious note, teenage prostitution. So we're gonna cover a lot of stuff today that's really important. Here with a brand new and upcoming author, Mr. Eric Robinson. So great to have you here. I've mentioned a little bit about some of the, you know, different parts of your life, and I'd love for you to give us just a brief overview before we get into it. Yeah. So being in the FBI was... I served in the FBI for 24 years before retiring in January, and, and actually, faith is a pretty good part of, uh, a lot of people who work in the FBI. Uh, that shouldn't be too surprising if you think the strictures it takes to get in. Can't do drugs, gotta have a clean record. You know, you can't have a bad background. So with that, it kind of takes out quite a few people, so there are a large number of, uh, church-going folks in the FBI. But I spent 24 years in the Bureau. I started out in Chicago, where I investigated drug cartels, gangs, and public corruption. Moved back home to the Toledo, Ohio area, where I investigated, uh, organized crime, crimes against children, financial crimes, and then finished out with national security and some human intelligence. Uh, along the way, I spent 15 years as a SWAT operator, about 10 as a tactical instructor and firearms instructor, and all before that, I was a Baptist pastor. I preached my last sermon on Easter Sunday 2002 in my church in Western New York. The next Sunday, I was in Quantico, Virginia for the FBI Academy, and then the Sunday after that, I was preaching in the FBI Academy because they needed a chaplain to fill in, and they asked me if I could do that. So eased me into my law enforcement career So you talk about a lot of people going in with the faith. But the point I wanna make is how many leave it with their faith still intact? And I say that because working with veterans, working with active duty, duty military members, a lot of people lose the faith. A lot of people refer to it as moral injury, and it's one of the largest contributors to suicide for veterans. So what did you personally experience? Especially, part of that is seeing all these hardships, part of that is the isolation. There's a lot of different factors that go into it. You know, is the faith something that... I think, in my personal opinion, I would assume it's two ways. Either you really lean into it and it grows, or you lose it. And what did you personally experience and observe? Well, I, I didn't lose it. Yeah, I didn't lose it, and I didn't see people necessarily losing it. I, I can't tell what was going on inside of- Right ... my colleagues. But for me, it, it broadened my understanding of people. So even seeing over and over some- Mm ... of the criminal activity, some of the disgusting and dirt that's in society, it just helps me understand a, a little bit more than what I experienced in the church. Mm-hmm. So in the church, there are gonna be people, you know, pretty much like me. Some might have, you know, darker sides, more difficulties. But for the most part, you know, you don't have a lot of the heroin addicts, teen prostitutes, pimps coming to church. They stay away. So I was exposed to, uh, you know, normal people who had normal problems but wanted to be better. And then in law enforcement, I'm seeing very bad people doing often very bad things, not wanting to be better. But that showed me what people are about, what they're willing to do. And still keeping that grounding in what I believed, I could now get a, a better notion of what people go through. Mm. So working gangs in Chicago, you know, I'm seeing young men who are looking for an affiliation. Okay, I understand that. That's something everyone wants. They might join a gang for protection because their lives were threatened, and this is the only way that they could find, uh, safety. They had fewer options than I had. I didn't grow up i- with money, but I was able to go to college. My parents stayed together, good family home. So there's so many factors that are involved that why they get into violence, drug sales, prostitution, it didn't excuse it, but it helped me understand the human condition more. And if God's, God loves them and if God's trying to work in their lives, now I can see what He's, uh, what He's doing in the world, not just that small section of Western New York. Mm, mm. Definitely want to unpack some of that, but let's backtrack. Let's actually go down to childhood. What got you into ministry work to begin with, and what age did you start preaching, and what kind of wa- was the training or the lifestyle that led you to that? The lifestyle was we went to church every week, and it wasn't a demanding thing. It was just what the Robinsons did, and it was part of our lives. I didn't, like, get excited about going to church, but I didn't hate it either. This was, this was what we did. And so- Mm-hmm ... faith was part of our everyday experience, which I think was very healthy. Just it, it made it natural as, as just like eating breakfast. My, my dad wasn't a strong spiritual leader, but he did what he could in that each morning he would have a devotion for us, you know, just a few minutes, but it, it started us on the right ideas, and it also established him as someone who cared and made this authentic. Uh, so I had a precocious knowledge of the Bible when I was a kid. I was the one always raising their hand in Sunday school and knowing the answers. As I went to college, I studied the Bible more. I got into ministry, uh, on campus. Uh, went on a, um, mission trip when I was a, a junior and, you know, from there I thought, "Okay, this is something that I feel strong about, I think I'm good at, I'm equipped for." Uh, and then I decided at that point I'm gonna graduate and move into ministry. I had trained to be a missionary to Muslims. I had studied Islam, had done the mission trip to a Muslim country. Uh, I think that probably played a, that probably played a role in the FBI wanting to hire me because my application was in process when 9/11 hit, so we've got an Al-Qaeda problem, here's a guy who knows Muslims. However, in my process as, as I thought about going that route, we had some family issues that said maybe going overseas and those hardships and difficulties might not be the best, so- Mm ... from there just took the usual route of youth pastor, assistant pastor, until the church I was the assistant at said, "We'd like to plant a church," and I thought, "I'd love to do that." Went through that vetting process as well, and then started a church that was meant to be one of outreach. We... I didn't wanna just shuffle Christians from different seats, you know, take them from this church and come to mine, and so we set out with a core group to, uh, welcome people who otherwise wouldn't go to church. And I challenged that group of Christians that started the church with me with a flinch test. Can you see someone coming in who's not dressed for church like the Baptists would, tattoos, piercings, homosexual, interracial, you smell alcohol on their breath. You know, you know their, their sordid stories. Can you welcome them? With no judgment, just glad you're here. Because we were going to, if anything, err on the side of grace. So I told them, "Let, I'm gonna let God judge us for being too welcoming. If that's a problem, w- you know, we'll, we'll change from there, but we want people to come and win an audience with them." And we did that, and we were successful. We, we did it well Right. So I wanna go back. You talked about the routine and the naturalness of it, but was there a development of the understanding of why we're doing this? And I bring that up because a lot of families make church almost a chore or routine- Mm-hmm ... and there's not a lot of cultivation of the why. There's not depth to it. And so when those, you know, teenagers become youn- young adults, e- either they stay in that routine or they're like, "You know, why were we doing this?" And they either develop that further understanding or they just drop off. So was there a cultivation of, "This isn't just what we do, this is why we're doing it. There's an importance to it"? So I, I thought back. My, my brother and sister are both good people with good skills, want to help others. I feel I'm the same, and I try to think back of what my parents said or specifically modeled so that I would follow in a, in a right path. And, and I can't recognize any verbalization or, or specific statements of, "Here's what we do." It was, for me, just like the sediment that builds slowly over time. Mm. Um, my parents were... They, they're always known to be ones who are caring for others, and so I think that, that everyday modeling of being right, n- not correct, but being right, um, was what we should be doing. Mm. So, you know, the church I went to was, was a solid one. People there were accepting. I grew up Lutheran, so in case you're not aware, Lutherans have this idea of, "If God didn't want us to do that, he would've told us no in the Bible." So they're very accepting of different habits. Mm. Folks would smoke outside the church door after service. Baptists are often very strict, and their idea is, "Well, if God said it was okay, he would've said it's okay in the Bible, so everything else is forbidden." So it was a, a drastic change for me, but all along there was just this notion of, "We honor God. We follow the rules. We follow what the Bible says, and we treat people with, uh, kindness and compassion." I'll have to one up you. I grew up Catholic, which is one of the strictest, most traditional, and then went, um... Not that I am Baptist, but down south there's a lot of Baptist church that I was invited to. And for me, going from masses in Latin and I'm wearing a suit, to this guy's wearing a Geo- Georgia Bulldogs tank top and shorts, um, I- ... I kinda had a little, uh, meltdown, you know? Uh, again- Yeah ... not that it's wrong, not that God bars those people from going. For me, uh, Catholic or not, it was just about respect, right? I'm gonna take the time to dress up. We've got people dressing up for the club, but you can't dress up for the Lord, and so that bothers me. Um, of course, I would never stop anyone or s- something, but it's a- it's about that, you know, time and respect. I wanna go to, you talk about, and I really like what you said about, you know, your parents, even if they didn't verbally explain it, their actions explained it. And I think that's really- Mm-hmm ... important 'cause the Bible calls us to live in a way that, you know, we reflect that life, that people see Yeshua reflected in us, that people see our actions. And I think that's really important. Even if we don't explain it, people are gonna say, "Why do you have this hope? Why do you do what you do?" And you can tell them. So I think that's great. But at some point in your journey, you mentioned missionary trips, you mentioned the, the routine. At what point, though, did you feel like you had a personal relationship with God? Maybe it felt like it was always there, but was there, like, a certain point where you just said, "I, I really feel it now"? Uh, no. And, and so when I got into college, I was involved with Campus Crusade for Christ, which is now Cru, because the idea of saying Crusade when you go to Muslim countries- Right, right is a bit offensive. Yeah. So it took them a long time to realize that. But, so I remember, like, so this, now this is evangelical. Now this is s- trying to save people. And I remember thinking, "Yeah, I don't... My testimony sucks." Like, I- Mm-hmm ... I just grew up knowing Jesus loves me. You know, my mom would sing that. The only, the only music, my brother and I joke about this, the only music that was on in our house were, like, these 1970s hokey, uh, you know, choirs singing straight Bible verses. So I- Mm ... you know, that's what I grew up on. And, and so because of that, I can, you know, I can quote scripture, but I have to do it by song from what I had- Mm learned. And but the difference was- From, from the early years then going to college, now it became more personal. So getting discipled, now studying, studying the Bible, you know, less, less than just kind of reading or hearing it from the pulpit, getting bits here and there. Okay, now I'm digging in and I'm, I'm trying to understand more what this means, which is why I moved more to the Baptist, uh, theology. Their doctrine is, their practices are a little more of getting into scripture, so that appealed to me. Um, but it was in college then when it went from, "Yep, that's, that's who I am," to, "Okay, but what does that mean? Now, what should... What you sh- what should be done about this faith that's been built into you?" And that's what pushed me to say, "Okay, now I, uh, now I need to reach out to others. I need to disciple others. I need to learn so that I can assist others too." Right, I agree. You could have apologetics completely down to a T, but if there's no personal testimony. But I also say, and I always encourage everyone, you don't need this big, grand conversion. You don't need to say, "Hey, I was homeless in the streets doing drugs, and now I'm a CEO," right? Everyone's story, it's about that personalness. You know, it's about showing humanity, right? Because apologetics are great. They're really important. I highly encourage every believer should be learning them to help evangelize and to defend their faith, right? Apologetics, that stems from being able to defend your faith. But that personalness is what's really required, especially for that intercultural evangelism, right? I mean, when you study, there's all these different, you know, methods of evangelism. But at the end of the day, really what most people are doing is it's about building a relationship, seeing where they're struggling, and explaining what you have hope in and how God has helped you. So I think that's super important. And then so you worked in ministry for a while. You mentioned, talked about some family hardships, and then the, the transition to the FBI. What, what in your head was going on that you were like, "Hey, I'm gonna join the FBI"? Or was it a calling from God? Or was it a family pressure? What kind of was the situation with that? Well, it was very literally in my head. So I, I was in my early 30s and didn't understand- Wow ... some concepts of how to handle pressure. And so as senior pastor now, I was the, I was a sole guy. You know, there were men around me who definitely were, uh, strong assistants in the church, but I was the only pastor, and I did not have someone that I could relate to to say, "Hey, this is hard. I'm struggling with this." Mm-hmm. And when people would come to me with their problems, I lacked the ability to separate myself from them. So as this wore on, I came to a place where it caused stress, and that stress gave me headaches. So for two years, every single day I had a headache. Like migraine level? And it was the most... Yes. It, I mean, it just... After a while, whatever malady you have, you just go, "Oh, okay. That's my life," and you accept it. So- Right. Right ... you know, couple months, you know, hey, hoping this goes away. It doesn't go away. I'm seeing doctors. I'm taking medicine. Nothing helps. One doctor says, "Maybe don't be stressed." I go, "That, that's good, Doc." That's military- That's good ... quality help right there. Yeah, absolutely. But, but absolutely, but it was true. Right. And so it got to a point where, you know, my body's telling me, even though I enjoyed ministry and I, I, I was doing it well, my body is saying, "Can't do this anymore, man." So at what point does your body say, "Well, I tried headaches. Now I'm gonna try giving you a stroke 'cause you're not gonna listen"? And I told my wife, "I g- I gotta find something different. I need to find a new career." I applied for two jobs off the bat. One I was overqualified for, and they turned me down. And one I was underqualified for- And then- ... I thought, and there we go into the FBI. Uh, you know, took the initial test after the long, long application. It's like an SAT. Right. Took the test in Buffalo, New York, and I walked away going, "Well, at least I tried," you know? There's no way- Mm ... I passed that. They called me back, said, "On to the next steps," and then just went through the process from there until I got into the academy in 2002. But the cue for me that I had made the right decision was the day that I got accepted in the FBI, uh, with the conditional offer of employment, headaches went away Mm, mm. Amen to that. But I got to ask you something, 'cause to me this is extremely ironic, and I think most people would agree with me unless I'm crazy. Who says, "I'm really stressed. Let me join the FBI"? Like, did you not perceive that as something stressful? Like, why not say, "I'm gonna go be a mental man." Or sell ice. I don't know, something a little, like less stressful than the FBI. What was the mindset? I, I don't e- Dude, this was, this was, uh, you know, 27, 26 years ago, whatever. Uh, yeah. I don't remember why I thought, "Ah, let's try the FBI." I'll tell you this, and, you know, I don't think you're gonna fight me on this. It seemed pretty cool. I thought that- Yeah. No way ... that sounds like a, that sounds like a cool job, and it w- it absolutely was. And while there's definitely stressors in the FBI, you know, I got very few guns pointed at me in, in ministry. Uh- Right ... the stress would go away. So the difference is, here I was in ministry on an island dealing with people's problems. Mm-hmm. You know, you come to me and you say, "Man, I've got this alcohol problem. My wife's leaving me. My kids hate me." I don't give you Bible verses and then walk away going, "Okay, I took care of that." It, it stayed. I go in the FBI. Mm. I didn't have to be perfect like I thought I had to be as a pastor. I could just be a good agent, and we'd take care of a case. We'd arrest guys, and now we're onto the next, and it did- it didn't matter. Mm. The fact... E- even with the victims, even if I encountered these terrible situations where victims are harmed, it wasn't my job to care about them. I could care, but there was no place for me to do anything afterwards because it wasn't my job, and it actually would've been inappropriate. So- Right ... there were boundaries man- mandated where I didn't have to take that on. I'm moving to the next criminal. I'd actually done my job well, so now I was successful. I was complete. Mm. We arrested this guy. I put that in the system for justice. I'm doing God's work to bring justice, and now I'm moving on and it, it didn't... It just didn't carry on for me like ministry did No, I totally get that. You know, there wasn't this heavy moral obligation, and you could see almost, I'll call it tangible results. You could see the results. Yeah. Yeah. Now, that's not to say in ministry someone were to come back and say, "Pastor, you saved my life," or, you know, uh, uh, "That scripture you shared really helped me." But one thing that is really interesting to me is I'm here in Japan studying some, you know, evangelism and talking to people here. It's great to see. A lot of people don't realize there's a huge Christian revitalization in Japan. Most people don't realize there's a long Christian history here. I mean, there was Christian schools here many, many years ago. Even decades ago, there's tons of Christian history. They, you know, crucified people at Nagasaki on, on- They crucified people, so huge Christian history. And I was talking to people here, and a lot of them were leaving the church not because of social pressure or Japanese identity but because of service burnout. I'm burdened by all these people that I'm on the worship team, and they're coming to me with issues, and I just don't have the power to fix them, and all I can do is refer them to God, but I feel like I haven't done enough. Yep. Yep. So two, two main questions for you. One, did this give you a better understanding of Yeshua, AKA Jesus Christ? You know, we know that on the cross, he bore all of our sins. And I'm not saying that you were bearing people's sins, but for some parts it sounds like people were confessing things to you or bringing their problems, the sins of others, so you're bearing that weight. Did you kind of- Did it make you have a deeper love and understanding of what Christ went through because you're like, "This is just a fraction of, of what- Yeah ... he felt. I couldn't imagine this times, you know, 100,000." No, that never came, uh, i-into my mind. Um, and I, I feel like it would've been inappropriate if I would've thought of myself, you know, in that way. Yeah, not compare. I, I want everyone to understand that. Right. Yeah. Right. But, but just the idea of, uh, uh, like you were... Like, if you're in my church, um, I have a responsibility to care. And so even if, you know, you come back and say, "Those Bible verses really helped," well, your wife's still leaving you, you still have a alcohol problem that you've gotta fight with- Mm-hmm daily, so it continues, and then there's the next guy. So, uh, you know, for me, you know, I, I've been... I'm always been very practical, so I acknowledge what Christ did, and I know that was him. And then there's me and there's my problems, and those were just my problems. And, and being young and inexperienced or f- you know, fairly young, I didn't realize that I needed to have people around me who could speak my language, be completely non-judgmental, and, and listen to things that I might tell them that might even be kind of sordid or show vulnerability. In the FBI, you know, we would see some terrible things. Right. But anyone I would talk to was either there as well, so they got, they got it, or they understood because they've been places like that. Built that community. And so the language was built in. Yeah. F- it was right there. "Yep, I've been through that, too." And it doesn't have to be like we're crying on shoulders. It's just talking about it where they get it. And so that was good to have. It's something I lacked in the church. My fault. So I, I do wanna address something with that. Did you have any frustrations with God, or was your faith kind of struggling because of these burdens? Especially in a sense, you know, this is something I've felt before where, you know, Yeshua says to us, "Come to me all who are weary and, you know, heavily burdened, I will give you rest." And I, I read that, but to actually feel that, to actually do that, I've had frustration in my life, to be hon- to be completely transparent. Did you feel like that? Did you feel like, "God, I don't know how to take these to you," or, "I'm trying, but I'm not seeing the results"? Like, was that a frustration point for you? No, I, I didn't, I didn't lay that on God at all. I just thought it was my fault or- Okay ... you know, just circumstance. And so that, that part was good. I mean, I didn't come out of that with a frustration of, you know, "Come on, man, I've been praying for this forever." Mm. "I'm trying to do... You know I'm trying to do right, and I'm... And hey, me and you together, God, we're doing really good. Release me from this so I can be even better." Um, I... It honestly for me too perhaps was a directive because once I got into the FBI and was into that work, it honestly felt more natural. Mm. Um, the ideas of having to wear a mask and be a certain type of person, um, as a pastor- Mm ... who, you know, I had a, I had a good, uh, man in my church who would come to me after sermons and go, "Hey, Eric, you know, you made that joke, and that, s- people might take that poorly." I'm like, "Oh, thanks. You're right." So I had, you know, people checking me, but it wa- it was hard to always be on. So happy- Right ... smiley, joyful, perfect. Self-imposed, sure, but there's a kernel of truth to that where people do want their pastor to be somewhat infallible. And in the FBI, I could just be a good FBI agent, you know? I could still serve God. I could still have the same ideas, but I didn't have that task of meeting this standard that- No one, no can meet Right. And I know, and the New Testament itself says directly, you know, that we who become teachers of all of this will be hi- held to a much higher standard. And it is a difficult, you know, standard to, to meet, especially in this day and age. And the sad part, too, is you have a lot of the people who are calling you out or trying to hold you to the standard are well below that standard and are, you know, being hypocritical. Let's move a little bit more into the FBI work. You talk about, you know, many years of service. Now, is it the same as military, where it's 25 years for, like, a retirement package? Or ... 'Cause you talked about 24 years, so I wasn't sure what the whole process is with that. Yeah. The process is, for an agent, it's 20, uh, plus 50. So you have to be at least 50 years old and have- Oh ... 20 years of service. I got in at 32 and a half, so around 57, then I'm retiring. You have to retire by 57 because for some reason I'm not capable of firing a gun straight anymore. I don't know. You know? Right. Suddenly I'm not in, suddenly I'm not in shape. Um, but Yeah, so I got out just before '57 and, you know, moved from there. Um- Oh, okay. Yeah, many, many military guys working in the FBI too, and they're all buying out their service so they can have that on the back end. Right, and that was something I was curious about. Were you one of the oldest people joining? Because you were in your, you know, 30s, and I don't know if most people going in are, like, 17, 18, 19, or what, what was kind of, like, the standard? So I was about in the middle of the pack. Uh, and, and- Really? Wow ... and the, the, the, the new agents, it- it's kind of... it moves in, in a sine curve at times. Um- It's okay, yeah, yeah w- we had one person turn 30 while I was in the academy. Everybody else was over that. N- now it's gotten to where, uh, they're, they're dipping a little younger. So the bureau, again, to be an agent, you have to have a college degree and at least three years of real-world work. Mm-hmm. So that's gonna turn into the youngest being 24, and even there at 24, most times they're saying, "Hey, you know, get a little time under your belts here still." So 26, 27 now is about the, the young end of being an agent. Um, s- something around that. And then you have to be under 37 to get in to get that 20 years. Okay, okay. Interesting. Yeah, so you went in, and then you mentioned during that time several different positions, and I don't know how much information you can give. Is that kind of like in the military, where you kind of choose billets you want and you get maybe that, or they just tell you, "Hey, you're gonna do this," or do you choose to qualify for stuff? Well, I... My career, I think, is a little unique, not in a fascinating way, but just circumstance. So I go to Chicago to work drug cartels. We had two drug squads. After five years, they dissolved mine. So no choice. They go, "We're gonna send you to the gang squad." Okay, so I work gangs. After doing that, running and gunning for six or seven years, a colleague who had worked with me on the drug squad was now on public corruption, said, "Hey, I'm transferring. You want me to put your name in as, as a good recommendation?" And I go, "Yeah, I'm kind of tired of the midnights," you know, you know, all the s- Right. That's fair ... dangerous. Work bankers' hours for a couple years then, uh, doing public corruption. So that's, you know, here's a couple moves. Go to Toledo, Ohio under the Cleveland division, and now of course, you know, I'm assigned to this. The head of the Violent Crimes Against Children task force goes to DC for a couple years, so they ask me if I could fill in, so that's a move. When I come back, now there's a new squad, and I go to that, work financial crimes. And then out of the blue they go, "Hey, you've been working criminal for 15 years. We're gonna put you on counterterrorism." I'm like, I kind of forgot most of the Islam stuff, but okay. You know, and then did that for a bit, was asked to do human intelligence too for a time. They dissolve that squad, I go back to counterterrorism Right. So one thing you've mentioned a couple times, gangs, drug cartel, that kind of stuff. Would you say in general the average American's imagination about these things, 'cause obviously there's all kinds of different inputs, social media, mainstream media, all these different stories, right, left, whatever it may be, personal stories about this kind of stuff. Would you say a lot of people underestimate the amount of its existence and its impact, overestimate it? Is it more mythological than real, or is it more real than just stories? Well, myself included, I would say people probably underestimate it, not necessarily in, like, the violence or, or volume, but, like, with working the drug cartels, I'm seeing not just the drug dealers, but, you know, drug dealers on the phone with a guy who owns a supermarket down the street, you know, a small carryout, says, "Hey, can I store my dope at your place?" He goes, "Yeah, you're gonna have to pay." Like, so there were ancillary people involved or accepting of the drug trade who never would get charged. You know, it's, it's not worth the time. So there's a prevalence that ran through there in Chicago. And then there's, you know, just the eye-opening facts of working with criminals and seeing what they're doing. We're investigating people. My, my youngest kid had a job at a restaurant, and she's telling me about Frank, who's a 50-year-old dishwasher at the restaurant. And I go, "Oh, well, Frank's a felon." You know, so you, you just kinda see, like, she's talking about Frank, and she goes, "Well, he's a nice guy." I go, "That's... Okay. Frank's a felon." You're not 50 years old, still in your prime, working as a dishwasher unless you got a record. So it just opens up that understanding of there are people, you know, pedophiles, you know, sex offenders who aren't charged yet, but you know they are and here's where they work, guys who are online saying they wanna kill Jewish people and Black people, and they work at your hardware store, that, yep, there's folks out there, and you don't know about them until we bust down the door or get into their phones or insert and form it in their lives Mm. Now, you worked in that for a while, and what would you say... So we've touched upon the subject on the podcast in general about fentanyl distribution and drug distribution specifically to minors, especially teenagers. Uh, you know, what was, if you had any personal experience with that, what would you comment about that? Well, fentanyl wasn't around when I was working dope. We, we had cocaine, crack, and heroin that we were mainly- Mm ... going after. It wasn't quite the scourge back in 2002 to 2008 or so when I was working this. Um, it, it was interesting because the first five years working drug cartels, so now I'm going, our squad is going after, uh, large weight distributors. So these are guys who are getting, you know, 10 to 20 kilograms of cocaine or heroin and distributing that now to the next group who were the gang members or, you know, maybe there's one more middleman in between. And then we had the gangs, and these guys were violent. They're kind of just scrapping to make money. The dope dealers, the heavyweights, those guys were not violent. They didn't want anybody to know about them. They were quiet, just went about their business and, you know, left the violence to the guys in the gangs who were, like, trying to fight for territory. Mm. And I mean, we had one case where we're on a wiretap of a, uh, crack dealer, and I've been on many wiretaps. And call comes in, you listen to it. You see if it's pertinent. If it's pertinent, you transcribe it, you know, it goes in the system. And being on a crack dealer's phone, people are just hitting it. Like, I had no time to even transcribe a, a quick call because, boom, the next call came in. They're f- they're hitting his phone as if, like, they were addicted to crack or something. Right. And we worked that guy up to the next level, who was his supplier, and this was this OG gangster, a guy who's probably about my age now, who was a subject. He was the target of the investigation. We get on him until finally we get the call h- from his supplier where he's gonna be picking up dope, and we knock him down with 12 kilos of cocaine. And I watched two senior agents sit in with him and turn this gangster to an informant, and now he starts working for us. So now we're up on his supplier's phone and work- working with him. Supplier says, "Hey, come. I got a new shipment in." We put a camera on the guy, send him in the guy's apartment, and we see here's 45 kilograms of cocaine, which is a million dollars. So we set up, we get a surreptitious search warrant. Normally when we have a search warrant, if I go to your house, I show you paper that says a judge says we can do this. If you're not there, we leave it with a receipt of what we took. A surreptitious search warrant means we can break into your house and delay notification, so we can basically rip you. So we set up on this guy's condominium, and you needed a key card to get in to the garage that was underneath. So here I am, a new agent, driver of a van with guys loaded behind me, and I'm waiting in the out ramp for someone to come out. So someone comes out and I burn down going in the out ramp, praying that nobody's coming out at the same time, because it's gonna be a mess. We get in, we park, and we watch now the subject's vehicle for him to leave. We're hidden. He leaves, and then a team goes upstairs, busts in the door, and steals a million dollars of cocaine. And then we go back and listen to the phones to hear him crying to our new informant about how he's gonna get killed because he can't afford to pay off a million dollars that he had on consignment Right. Now, when it comes to all this stuff, a lot of people always say, you know, Mexican this, Mexican that, Mexican cartel. From your personal observations, would you say it's, it's not a, a Mexican issue, it's, uh, there's whites and Blacks and Hispanics in America all involved with this. Yeah. So in, in Chicago, uh, 25 years ago, we were mainly working Mexicans. And the reason it's gonna be more Mexican than whites, which it can be, and we, we had some guys that are gonna be Puerto Rican or, or white- Right ... is because these guys had a connection. When they're, when they're dealing in fairly heavy amounts of drugs, at least again 20, 25 years ago, they had to have a connection near the border. So the cartels bring it across the border to- Right ... one of their own guys. That, that guy's gonna be Mexican. That guy is gonna take it now to the next step, Atlanta, LA, Chicago, and there might be a, a step in between. But now you're keeping kind of those, I trust you because you're one of my people or because a cartel set you up there. Uh, one guy we picked off dealt in very heavy weights, and part of the administrative process in the FBI, at least back then, was we had to tie a target to a cartel. Mm. And it didn't matter. I mean, it's just, that's just pencil whipping. It was administrative. So we'd go to phone records. We see this guy calls that guy, calls that guy. That guy is in this cartel. Okay, he's Sinaloa, whatever it might be. Well, we pick up this guy who, you know, had dealt in hundreds of kilos of cocaine and we say, "So you're with this cartel?" He's like, "I have no idea." You know? "I call my, I call my buddy Miguel at the border and he brings me dope." Like, "I don't know who he's with." Right. So a lot of times along the way, like, the affiliation kind of gets lost. It's just I know a guy. Right. And so we have a lot of people from, you know, the border of Mexico bringing drugs into the US. Now, the FBI, you already listed a bunch of major hotspot cities. Is it kind of the situation where every time you cut off the suppliers or whoever it is, new ones just pop up? It's like fighting a Hydra. What would you say? Oh, yeah. We had, we had a, a mass arrest early on when I joined the gang squad where we took down, like, 55 guys from this gang. Doing that, like, that corner itself wasn't a- any safer because new guys just fill in. Mm. So when, when there's that supply that's there, we had to be that governor, uh, the one who kind of mitigated- Just absolute sales. So we weren't gonna stop the problem, but because guys had to be careful, they knew that they were gonna go to prison for a good while, like that slowed the process down. Mm-hmm. And that's about the best we could do. So you knock this guy off, you give him 10 years, whatever it might be. Okay, that's fine, he's off the streets, but it, the effect was more the next guy who stepped up couldn't just sell dope with impunity. He had to check if you're a cop, make sure it's okay, double back, you know, drop phones. You know, it just, you know, it, it was just a tiny little- It's almost becoming more and more difficult because they have to continually adapt to y'all strategy. And, and that's about the best that we could do. Mm-hmm. So you take dope off, sure. But there's an unending supply, so, you know, 45 kilos, it was nothing compared to what was- Right ... going through Chicago. So, you know, it's- Mm ... it's, it's just trying to throw a blanket on top of it and slow the process. Right. Right. And, you know, that's above your pay grade to figure out the whole issue. You know, you did your part in, in that, I totally get it. Yeah. And then, um, moving forward, I wanna address something that, you know, you had mentioned, I saw in your bio, teenage prostitution. Now, that is... Well, first of all, let's get into is it way bigger than we think? You know, is it a much bigger issue, or, you know, you happen to come across a few cases in a span of X, Y, Z amount of years? What kind of do you think? And obviously, everything we're talking about is a little, um, I don't wanna say outdated, right? But we know that society shifts very fast. So- Yeah ... I mean, it could, it could be 10 times the amount now or it could be less, uh, but just from your time period serving. So I was working this, uh, about 2012 to '14, so things have changed. The mandates in the FBI have changed a bit too- Mm-hmm ... especially with the internet and with applications evolving. Back then when I was working it, the FBI's mandate in our office was to go after pimps who were sex trafficking teenage girls- Mm ... underage girls. And we could have cases on, uh, adult women who were being coerced or abused into that role, but mainly we were going after those who took advantage of the teen girls. And that came out of a 2005, uh, prostitution sting in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where an inordinate, uh, number of pimps and prostitutes were from the Toledo area. So because of that, a task force was set up saying, "Hey, they must have a big problem." So we were on the front end in Toledo of tackling this issue. And y- we could find the girls. They were definitely out there. Um, and we could find the pimps and, and get them off the street too. What this has evolved to more now is we get what's referred to as travelers, and that is guys who think they're talking with a child on the internet when it's an undercover, or guys who think they're talking with, which is far worse I think, a, uh, a parent of little children who's offering up their kids for abuse and looking for the same. So that trading in the child pornography is That's something that except for the manpower hours that it takes to set up these operations, write warrants, go through discovery and evidence- Right ... go through trial, they could do this every day. Uh, you, you could go after a guy every day if you had the men to do it and the time, but that is definitely highly pro- prevalent. And I would say it's actually even more so because I've seen just scrolling through social media, some parents posting about, especially in, like, Texas and states by the border, "Hey, my child had gotten a dating app. They were talking to this guy. He a- he ordered an Uber for her," or any driver service, to- Yeah come meet him at the border for a date, and obviously it wasn't gonna be that, you know? So I think it's even more dangerous now with not just the dating apps, but now with AI, the implementation of AI, right? We always talk about the good of AI, and that's great, but there's also bad people who are gonna do bad things with it, you know? And when it comes to now the technology with voice cloning, with, you know, facial recreation, with now impersonation being an easier tool for people to use to kidnap, to traffic, and to do all these things. So, uh, it, it's really sad. And, you know, there's also just a lot of not physical prostitution, but now there's a lot of online prostitution as well m- more than ever before, especially compared to that time period. So, you know, seeing all this stuff, I mean, you talked about kind of how it, it shaped your mindset a little bit with the, with the faith. So tell us a little bit more about that. You talked about, you know, God loves these people, seeing these people in hardship. Did it- Make you feel more empathetic? Did it make you feel... Did it reignite your calling to wanna maybe go back into pastoral work after the FBI? Like, what is that looking like? Well, it did make me more empathetic. I, I f- I feel like I came in with that, too, but it, it broadened what was there. So i- I came from a place of, you know, knowing black and white from the Bible says this is right and this is wrong to seeing, oh, you know, there, that gap there, I always had acceptance of people, but now I start having a, a wider gap of there's more to it than s- simply yes and no. Mm. So, you know, we, we worked with the teen prostitutes. Okay, that's terrible. They shouldn't be doing that, you know. Th- they're involved in immorality as well. Well, I mean, if you can... This is very crass, but I use this example. If you think of a woman in your life, mother, sister, someone you know, and think of what it would take for them to cross through that threshold to say, "I will now have sex with strange and disgusting men every day," that is a tremendous barrier to cross. Right. And yet here were 15, 16-year-old girls who don't even have the ability of, you know, a, of an older woman to just comprehend how to deal with that trauma moving into that. So why are they doing that? They're doing that because they are either so, um, distressed, uh, in need, desperate- Mm ... and also likely they've been pushed through that barrier already by someone else. Right. So that idea of doing that isn't as bad because they're already there. So these were- Girls who were going through difficulties, they had no adult in their life who had any value. So parents were useless or abusive, drug addled, maybe mental health. Now they're on their own. They don't have, uh, serviceable skills. You know, they don't have an education. What do they have? They have their body. Okay, well, that's the only way I can- Right ... make money to survive, so now they're doing that. And it, and it just, it broadens that empathy, being like, "Okay, this is bad, but there's a reason why you're here." And I can say I wouldn't do that, but I come from a much more stable background. I come from a position where I wasn't forced in there. So my whole statement of I wouldn't do that is purely hypothetical. Right, right. 'Cause I don't know, and, and, and they're pressed into that many ways. And, you know, same with the gang members too. Like, doesn't excuse their violence, but they are in a situation far different than mine. Right, it gives you an understanding. And I relate to that, 'cause I used to be very condemning and judgemental of strippers or prostitutes, and now actually I work with some organizations that help evangelize to them, and I've had conversations with people who are strippers, hearing about their backstories. And many of them are tragic. Yeah. Every now and then you'll find one who says, "Oh, I'm just hot and I love to dance." But a lot of them, they ran away from home at, you know, 14, 15, 16, or they were in abuse. A lot of them had some kind of emotional attachment to their pimp or to whoever they were working for. A lot of them were in financial bondage. And so luckily there are organizations out there like Hadassah's Hope, for example, in Jacksonville, Florida, who are helping provide resources for mental health, medical, counseling, and faith to help those women get out of those situations. And, and same with, you mentioned the, the gangs. You know, talking about some people grow up in a area where they need to make a choice. You know? Yeah. They had to choose to be in one, otherwise it's, in some cases, life or death. So I, I think that is really important. And you know, it really speaks to the importance of why we need to share resources and help mentor people to prepare them for life so that they don't resort to stuff like this sometimes. I'm not saying we can prevent all of it, but think we should all try to play the biggest role we can in helping spread information, prevention, awareness, and having conversations like this is important. Now, on that line of resources, I mentioned in the very beginning that you have a book coming out, and so I wanna talk about the motivation behind that and kind of what we can expect from that. Well, the I was getting near retirement, and I asked my wife, "What should I do?" And she has worked in promoting and marketing authors for 14 years, so I guess that was a stupid question because she said, "You should write a book." And I thought, "Okay, let's see about that." And, and I sat down to tell my story, and we would always joke about it when I was in the Bureau like, "Hey, you see that guy on SWAT over there? Guess what he used to do." And of course, nobody guessed Baptist pastor. So y- you know, it's an anomaly. It's unique, but I wanted to tell that story of how I went from a guy who never handled a gun before and had no understanding of law enforcement and got into, you know, the highest echelon of law enforcement in the world. But it's not only that, it was the positions the Bureau put me in where I could work cases, meet people that were remarkable. These human interactions, even with the criminals. Like, the criminals could have been bad people, but their stories are still ones that you go, "That's interesting." Right. Of course. That in- investigated... You know, here's me sitting down with pimps. Here's me investigating the CEO who's a legitimate actual sociopath, helping out, uh, an elderly disabled woman who's being stolen from. Many of these cases, stopping mass shooters, they're very interesting. I can sit back and go, "That was cool that I got to do that." And all along, I think people can read the book and go, "That's fascinating," but also, "Yeah, I think I could do that, too." Because I'm nobody special. Like, I was just a guy who got great opportunities in the FBI and was able to develop those skills because the FBI offered that opportunity for me to do that. So is that kind of... Obviously, it's very entertaining, as you mentioned. Educationally speaking, that lesson is kind of inspiration. Is that what you're aiming for with it? I think so. The, the idea is, I, all along as I am, uh, you know, I, I open the book after I tell my story of getting into the FBI from ministry. I open the book with me sitting down with another pastor who we have just arrested for being involved in a sex trafficking ring, and I felt like that's a, that's a great transition from ministry now to tell this story of, of a man who preached every Sunday and was having sex with a teenage girl who was being pimped by another pastor. Hmm. And that story, it wasn't my case, but I was asked to interrogate this pastor probably because the case agent thought, "Hey, guys- Pastor to pastor. Exactly. And so that's what I tried. I, I had a very literal come to Jesus speech for him. "Here's Bible verses on making yourself right with God, confessing your sins." And as I started in on that, he puts his hand up and says, "Buddy, I'm willing to talk with you, but we're not gonna bring Jesus into this," which was an obvious way that he had lived his life. Because on Sundays when he's ministering, yep, Jesus is there. When he is living a sinful life, having sex with a teenage girl, yeah, that's what we're gonna talk about, and Jesus is not a part of that. And that's how he lived. Mm. And eventually got confession. He went to trial. He decided to not take a 12-and-a-half-year plea deal, saying that he'd take his chances, and he got a very rare life sentence, which is good. Now, the book is called Ear, Reverend, and for those who are just listening, you know, the, the reverend is in white, you know, standard text, and then the ear is kind of like Sharpied on in black, right? And those watching, you can see that. What is the inspiration behind the name? Obviously, I mean, it's a play on words to a degree and stuff, but kind of what were you hoping it would express? Well, so for a long ti- I was... My wife works in this field, and so we're, we're going through a title survey asking people what they think, and oftentimes that one-word title pops. I had started with the, the working title was Preacher to Breacher, 'cause obviously I was a preacher- Yeah. That's pretty- ... and then I was, the... Then I- it is pretty good. Then I was the guy who knocked down your door. Um, but sitting down and thinking about it, the reverend part, that's obvious. But a lot of the things we got mixed into in the FBI, not w- we weren't doing bad things, but we were amidst some very unholy situations. Right. So taking the reverend and, and making it think, yeah, but some of these things were irreverent. They were, they were definitely unholy, they were disgusting, they're filthy, and that's the world that this reverend was now in. Hmm. Yeah. Could've done the Preacher to Breacher subtitle, you know, but I... It seems like- your, your wife is, is whatever she wants, you know? It's kind of a- Yeah, so I, I get that. Now, one thing I wanna focus on here, you know, is a message of hope, because, you know, that's what this podcast is about. We address a lot of dark subjects. We talk all the time about suicide, homicide, you know, sexual abuse, domestic violence, human trafficking, but I wanna put forward the hope side of it. This conversation today has been particularly heavy. You know, a lot of people- Mm-hmm ... are hearing this like the world is full of gang violence and drug violence and sexual violence, and it sounds like we can't even do anything about it. What is your message for everyone when it comes to hope, when it comes to living in this world feeling powerless, feeling hopeless? Well, I, I, a little bit unrelated and a little related to- Okay ... my work in the FBI. I, I've always thought this. I, when I worked in the church, I got to earn a living and I also got to serve the community. So for me, that was doubly noble. In the FBI, look at this, I got to do it twice. You know, earned a liv- earned a much better living than as a pastor. Right. But also got to serve the community, and, and my reaches went well beyond what I was otherwise able to do. But if you look at crime and violence and all the horrible things that happen, if you try to take that in, it'll be overwhelming. Mm-hmm. And there's nothing that you or I can do to stop that. As you talk about the things that you're involved in, you're trying to expand your sphere of influence somewhat. You can only expand it so much and still- Right ... be effective. And so, my, my message is this. Instead of just reading the headlines and shaking your head or letting it depress you, you look at what you can do. So God gives you your family and your... Number one, you're taking care of them, then you're expanding to extended family, your friends. And if you can reach out and have just points of influence beyond that into your community, that is doing what you can. Like, just taking care of what's in front of you and then looking a little bit beyond that. So to, to some of the things we talked about, I remember the first time working on the Violent Crimes Against Children Task Force, and we, we rescued the first teenage girl. We arrest the pimp, we get her out, and the first thought I had was, "Well, now what?" Like, we did that, but what do we do with this girl? Because she's a runaway. Mm. We send her back to the foster home, she's just gonna run away. She's gonna find a new pimp. She's gonna trick on her own. And we worked best when there were non-governmental organizations, ministries, charities who were assisting us. So as you talk about that, the people who can step in and say, "Well, now my job is to have a bed for somebody." We worked best when there was this 35, 40-year-old former prostitute who had beds and could talk to the girls and say, "I've been there. I know your world. Here's how you can come out of it." And they need helpers too. They need those who support, so whatever people can do in that realm or any other, now you're, you're extending your influence just that bit and doing what you can to make the world better. 100%. I always say that the internet is great for global connection, for global awareness, but sometimes it throws the whole world at us. Yeah. And we lose sight of our local power in, in the terms of what we can do locally in our community, and then our county, and then our state, right? We just jump for this big global, like, all these issues. And I always say, start with your local impact and expand from there, you know? And people look at it as it's me versus the whole world instead of, hey, it's me and hundreds of other human beings all taking care of our communities. It's a ripple effect, right? And I think that's, we get so focused on I need to be the person to take care of this, right? We're not alone. And you talked very earlier on about how important community is, being there for one another, for both the helping and the hardship and everything in between. So I think that's really important, and I, I appreciate that message. Book is set for release this fall, you know? It- And we'll, uh, on my end I'll be promoting it when it comes... Once you let me know it's out, I'll be pushing it out, so everyone just get ready. Do you have a website or a pre-order link you'd like to share for now? I do. Uh, no pre-order link yet, but the website that you can follow and see w- how the book's coming along and when it drops is the aforementioned preachertobreacher.com. So I still got to say that. You did it. Yeah. Yeah. You gotta, um, get a sign for your man cave that says that or something. You know, like... Absolutely. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for guesting on the podcast today. Thank you for your work in ministry and the FBI and now, you know, doing this in this next chapter of retirement, you know, helping other people out by spreading, you know, the word. Like we said, the first step of prevention and awareness is conversations and knowledge. So thank you so much for that. Absolutely. Appreciate your time</p>
