Life Inside the Bubble: Why a Top-Ranked Secret Service Agent Walked Away From It All (3 page)

Upon graduating from the cadet training program and becoming well-versed in military marching, the law, and most importantly the law-enforcement culture, I was assigned to the 114th Precinct in Astoria, Queens. After an awkward few days wandering around the precinct aimlessly waiting for my shift to end, I was asked by precinct supervisors to see if I could help “upstairs.” The second floor of the 114th Precinct was known as “the borough,” or the command center for the entire borough of Queens. The top NYPD brass from Queens worked upstairs along with the staff they imported from precincts around the city. It was no place for a cadet, the lowest-ranking uniformed member in the department, and I didn’t exactly get off on the right foot. On my first full day at the borough I was assigned to an afternoon shift after my college classes ended. When I arrived, I dutifully signed in the log that I was beginning my shift. Ten minutes later I found out that I had committed the mortal sin of signing in at the actual time I had arrived and “blocked out” a chief who arrived late and was now obligated to sign in at her actual (late) arrival time. I was not off to the best start, but after serving a penance of performing menial tasks and a period of public humiliation by the borough staff, I was forgiven.

Given my young appearance, it was not long before an affable sergeant who had taken a liking to me asked me if I would be interested in doing undercover work. Sergeant Schwach asked me if I could report to the 111th Precinct in Bayside, Queens, to accompany a team on alcohol enforcement operations. I was not a police officer yet and did not carry
a weapon but the assignment appeared benign enough. Bayside was a popular middle-class Queens neighborhood with a vibrant bar section (coincidentally where I would later meet my wife). The bars brought economic activity to the area but also significant crime and trouble from underage drinkers and irresponsible patrons. Some of the local delis and convenience stores contributed to the problem by selling alcohol to underage customers. My task was to accompany a small unit of police officers and a sergeant and attempt to purchase alcohol from the stores and bars. The brief ride to the first bar on the Long Island Expressway service road was an experiment in emotional suppression. I did not want the officers to realize how nervous I was, so I engaged in small talk to cover my anxiety as we drove over to the Pull-Box.

The Pull-Box was a local bar owned by a former New York fireman (a fact, I was to discover later, that played into the decision to include it in the undercover operation). I walked into the bar feigning bravery and sat down among a crowd of fewer than five patrons, which only drew more attention to my awkward entry, and asked for a beer. When the bartender asked me for an ID, I responded that I didn’t have one and he asked me to leave. I was relieved that he did the right thing since I was completely unprepared as to what to do if he actually served me the beer. When I reappeared, the look of disappointment on the officers’ faces was clear. I found out later that one of them had a grudge against the bar owner. It was my first exposure to the rough underbelly of law enforcement.

After a number of weeks acting as an undercover and making underage alcohol purchases, I became comfortable with the process and the undercover work became second nature. It was a skill I would use later as a Secret Service agent. The process was clean and efficient: walk in, grab a beer, pay for it, pretend I forgot something, and walk out. The officers would then rush in and write the owner a criminal court summons. I performed my role well enough to be considered for reassignment to a new unit in the borough that was to focus on serial criminals, a line of work I found incredibly interesting given my academic background in psychology The unit was called the Pattern Identification Module and its mission was to analyze data on major crimes and attempt to uncover patterns that could be relayed to detective teams for use in their investigations. My job was to input and analyze data, often for hours at a time. In one case, I began to
notice a series of serial home-invasion–type robberies where the criminal would say the same thing each time he would knock on a door of a home he intended to break into.

This early success in detecting patterns in the serial robbery cases allowed me a degree of workplace freedom I was not used to in my short time with the NYPD. This gave me credibility with the officers and the sergeant I worked for, and they subsequently allowed me to make my own hours. With the new, flexible work schedule and the companionship of a good team, I enjoyed this assignment immensely and spent the next two years working with the team.

After a few months working in the program, I became friends with a fellow cadet in the program named Marty (who, ironically, I later reconnected with after he saw one of my appearances on
Wilkow
on TheBlaze TV). During our commutes back to the police academy in Manhattan for ongoing training, Marty liked to talk about politics and was the first person to introduce me to the ideological principles of conservatism. Although I was always passionate about economics and politics, my understanding at the time was limited and my larger perspective was lacking. Our long, sometimes confrontational conversations triggered my interest into why the big questions never seemed to be answered. Why were there pockets of poverty despite decades of antipoverty programs? Why did universal health care really equate to excellent health care for some and universal mediocrity for others? Why did some schools excel yet others fail miserably despite access being guaranteed? Marty did not know it at the time but he sparked an interest that would alter my life permanently.

As my graduation from college approached and my time as a police cadet came to a close, I began to prepare for the next stage of my career with the NYPD. My contractual obligation to serve for two years as a police officer upon graduation from college was about to start, and I looked forward to the opportunity. The cadet program was an interesting experience because I learned about the organizational structures and psychology of law enforcement from the inside. The culture of law enforcement is unique in its clear divide between those who carry the guns and those who do not, regardless of their background or qualifications. Entering the police academy in the summer of 1997, now for the second time, was an easier transition compared to the cultural shift I experienced entering the cadet program as
a teenager. I found the training to be somewhat redundant and spent the majority of my time building relationships with other classmates.

After nearly nine months of academy training, we were ready to pick our “wish list” of precinct assignments before being assigned to an FTU, or “Field Training Unit.” My FTU, where I would spend one month, was the 32nd Precinct in Harlem, a challenging assignment for a new officer. However, I selected the most difficult precinct within the NYPD borders for my first permanent assignment, the 75th Precinct in East New York, Brooklyn. I chose this notoriously dangerous precinct for two reasons, the primary reason being that I knew the assignment would be difficult and I relished the challenge, the secondary reason being that I knew I would be granted my wish, since no one actually requested the 75th.

Field training was the pinnacle of the police academy experience and a welcome break from the monotony of the classroom and regimented nature of the academy environment. The standard-issue NYPD uniform was dark blue, but while in field training we were permitted to wear only our gray police academy uniform. We were “rookies” to the police officers and residents of the precinct. Standing at my first roll call hearing the chant of “rookies, rookies” was slightly humiliating, yet funny. It was not funny later on when nearly everyone who passed me on my foot post made similar comments. I quickly learned that no matter the outside temperature, it was always wise to bring your standard-issue NYPD jacket, the same one worn by every other police officer, and cover up your gray shirt.

The gray shirts acted as a “scarlet letter” and forced the recruit class to bond together. I found companionship in the other recruits assigned to the 32nd Precinct with me, many of whom I had never met before. A fellow recruit named Brian was assigned to partner with me on our nightly foot patrols and we became fast friends. New York is a large city by population but is made relatively small by networks of friends and families, and, Brian’s cousin was a friend of my brother’s and we knew some of the same people. We spent hours talking while walking our assigned foot post, and, as I would learn throughout my law-enforcement career, things could change in an instant. We would move from a conversation about baseball and the neighborhood to a foot pursuit through upper Manhattan and back to a conversation about a neighborhood friend. Brian and I would remain lifelong friends as a result of these foot patrol conversations, and
our children would later grow up together.

Most of the police officers treated us as a precinct sideshow and largely ignored us, but after a few days some of them warmed to us. This would change rapidly for me one weekday afternoon.

I was walking my assigned foot post and as I turned a corner I saw a man seated on a store railing smoking what appeared to be marijuana. I was excited yet apprehensive, as this was the first police action I was about to engage in. As I slowly approached him he jumped down and began to run. I screamed into my radio “10-85,” which was the nonemergency call for assistance, and immediately heard the cacophony of sirens as seemingly every police car in the precinct activated them at the same time. I chased him for a long city block until he was cut off by an assisting officer in a car and placed in handcuffs. Feeling relieved, I transported the man back to the precinct with the assisting officers who, rather than congratulating me, proceeded to lecture me on wasting police assets on “weed.” The stern lecture from the sergeant on duty at the precinct was even more emotionally devastating, but it did teach me a lesson that would become a staple of my political philosophy. It taught me that there are real consequences to having an unreasonably idealistic view of the world.

In a perfect world, recreational drugs such as marijuana would exist strictly for ethical uses such as medical treatment. But the world is not perfect; it is a place where legislative decisions and law making involve trade-offs with very real consequences. Getting into a foot pursuit with a man who was smoking marijuana in public may seem like the right thing to do in a black-and-white world. In the real world, however, it involves police officers putting their lives at risk driving at high speeds and then removal of numerous police personnel from the streets to help in the administrative portion of the arrest. Another devastating consequence is the untold damage of an arrest for what even the most ardent law advocates among us would call a minor offense. With the perpetuity of the Internet and the permanent scar of a criminal record, this man’s life has been altered permanently. The costs far outweigh the benefits.

Field training ended with a quick good-bye to the precinct personnel and an order to report back to the police academy the following week for graduation. Graduation ceremonies in the NYPD are a sight to behold. The event takes place at Madison Square Garden, and thousands of
graduating recruits gather with their friends and families to celebrate the occasion. It was the last time I would see a number of my fellow recruits from the academy as we moved on to our careers with the department. Officer Stacie Williamson, a member of my training class, was shot and killed not long after graduation, and Officer Daniel O’Sullivan was struck by a vehicle while rendering aid to a stranded motorist and never physically or psychologically recovered, sad reminders of the daily perils of putting a badge on your chest and a gun on your hip.

My permanent assignment to the 75th Precinct began with the same rookie hazing rituals I was already accustomed to from both the academy and field training. But the hazing process in the 75th was much harsher than the one we experienced in the FTU. The police officers in the 75th were a street-hardened group. This Brooklyn precinct had a citywide reputation for being the toughest place to work given its consistently high crime rate and as a hiding spot for problem officers. Most of East New York, from the Belt Parkway to the entrance to Cypress Hills Street, was part of the 75th. This area was a world away from Manhattan, the financial capital of the world, and even the gentrified areas of Brooklyn could not have been more different. It was consistently scarred by drug wars, gang wars, racial intolerance, and urban blight. It was sad to watch, and as I began my assignment with daily foot patrols in the toughest areas of the precinct, I witnessed, up close and personal, the real human cost of social policy most politicians and bureaucrats only read about in books. The devastation was nothing short of tragic: generational poverty and dependence the likes of which are frequently unseen in a country as prosperous as ours. The lives of the neighborhood residents were ignored by the media, politicians, and bureaucrats until something was needed from them: votes, sound bites for the evening newscast while covering another crime scene, or a backdrop for another politician’s vapid speech about a new piece of legislation he was sponsoring.

Eight hours a day, five to seven days a week, I would walk alone in the neighborhood from six at night until two o’clock in the morning, thinking about and digesting everything around me. It was emotionally devastating to see the hopelessness in the eyes of the residents of the neighborhood. One interaction stands out to me as an illustration of the difference between our “American Dream” and the dreams of a child I
met while on patrol.

It was late at night, approximately eleven o’clock, and I was walking my typical patrol route when I noticed a child on a street corner known to be a hangout for drug dealers and prostitutes. The boy could not have been older than eight, yet he seemed very comfortable in his surroundings. I started up a conversation and asked him where he lived. He pointed across the street to one of the 75th Precinct’s numerous housing projects and said, “There.” I asked him about his parents and he proceeded to tell me that they let him stay out “late.” As I walked him back to his building I asked him the typical questions any adult would ask a young child: