The Ghost Turd Stories Podcast

*Ontro* Hello everyone and welcome to The Ghost Turd Stories Podcast. I'm your host, Troy Gent.

Ghost Turd Stories' mission is to use humorous and challenging stories from veterans and first responders to reduce the burden of families whose veteran or first responder took their own life.

Ghost Turd Stories' vision is to use humorous and challenging stories to prevent suicide within our ranks and reduce the burden of families whose veteran or first responder took their own life.

We hope to attract veterans and first responders as well as those interested in knowing more about what it's like to be in our shoes while we wear or wore those shoes.

*Commercial* At Ghost Turd Stories, we tell and write the stories of veterans and first responders for their families and friends.

We love storytelling and believe there is nothing more inspiring and that gets people to take action like a great story.

Families and friends want to know the sacrifices we made, the services we rendered, and the people we lifted, so they can be inspired and learn about the legacy we left.

Our podcast is the face of our company, but we want every family who cares to know about the experiences their veteran and or first responder went through for them.

We interview veterans and first responders, collect pictures, write their stories, and compile them in a book for their families and friends to enjoy.

Oftentimes, it's difficult for us to talk to our loved ones about what we did, saw, and heard. At Ghost Turd Stories, we bridge the gap.

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Troy Gent: Welcome back to The Ghost Turd Stories Podcast.

My guest wants to remain anonymous, but I will tell you that he is and has been a law enforcement officer. Thanks for coming. Welcome.

Anonymous Guest: Thanks for having me.

Troy Gent: Maybe let's start with your Academy experiences and some of the shenanigans that you experienced, things that you couldn't believe happened, people doing dumb things, or your instructors treating you like dirt or hazing you.

Anonymous Guest: Yeah, that definitely took place.

Just getting through the selection process to get hired is one hurdle to get over, but once you get selected and they give you an academy date to make an appearance, your career starts.

You're there the first day. You're looking around. You're just kind of like, "Okay, who's my competition? What do we have here?"

You have people from all over the country with different backgrounds.

Troy Gent: You were sizing each other up.

Anonymous Guest: Yeah, you do.

I've been in law enforcement for roughly twenty years, but I guess when it's in you, it's in you.

We had people who were teachers prior to law enforcement.

I've been through about four of these academies. I didn't want to go through four of them. It just happened that way. They all have their own independent uniqueness, but needless to say, one in particular...

The first day we were there we were in suit and tie. We were all sitting at our assigned seats and the next thing I hear is, "On your feet, front lean rest."

We were looking at each other. We weren't in the military. Like what is this?

I was like, "I don't know what this is."

We're trying to figure it out and we see some people that probably were military because they were in a weird position doing like a push-up or up in the upright and we're in suit and tie.

Troy Gent: Were you sitting down when this command was given?

Anonymous Guest: Yeah, we were sitting down and our Cadre comes walking in and that's what he yells.

It threw me off guard cause he had broken his arm. He had a cast on. I didn't even know he was our Cadre.

So front lean rest, we get down into it, and we were thinking, "Okay, this is interesting."

And then they just burn us out. They just kick our butts.

Troy Getn: In your suits...

Anonymous Guest: In our suits.

People are tearing their suits and sweating all over the place. And this is our first day.

Your first impression has got to be a lasting impression, but all of us just looked like a bag of crap because by the time they finished smoking us, we were sweaty and shovel-looking.

Some of our suits were torn. It was a unique first-day experience.

Where we were in the country was really hot and humid. We weren't wearing thick suits. We were wearing a thinner suit to offset the temperature and humidity and they were just busting.

You're thinking "The Cadre is just sitting back there laughing."

They're like, "Look at these people. There's a bunch of morons on the ground."

Troy Gent: What were the other academies like compared to that one?

Anonymous Guest: They weren't that intense.

It was more professional and business-like in these other academies.

But this specific academy leaves a lasting impression to put forth your best at all times.

A motto that our Cadre told us that has always stuck with me is, "Never give up, never give in, and don't cheat me."

Troy Gent: Did you have to sleep in barracks during the academies or did you typically go home at night?

Anonymous Guest: They all were a little different. I had a barracks-type setting in one of them. The other put us up on base in a hotel, if you will.

Another one we had specified rooms that we stayed in individually. So a little bit of everything, I guess.

Troy Gent: Was it hard when you got to go home or got to separate yourself from the environment for a few hours.?

Anonymous Guest: I wouldn't say that because those academies that I was able to go home kind of broke the monotony of it.

They were challenging both academically and physically, but not to the extent that I didn't want to go back.

Now I will say the one that we got smoked out on the first day, that would have been one if I was able to go home that I may have thought, "Why am I here?"

In fact, a lot of us questioned that. Like, "What's going on? I left a good job behind to come to this and just get treated like a preschooler."

And yet it whipped me into shape like an adult.

Troy Gent: So that Academy, you stayed on location?

Anonymous Guest: Yes, and we did have an individual not show up on the second day.

Troy Gent: In the Marine Corps, the officer side is a little different, but if you're enlisted and you sign up, you have a contract to fulfill. You can't just quit. In law enforcement, if someone decides, "Hey, I'm done," they can just walk off and the instructors won't stop them?

Anonymous Guest: There are no contracts involved. They treat you like they own you but you don't sign a contract or an agreement.

You can leave and it's encouraged that if you get to any point in the academy that you feel strongly that it's not for you, you leave. If they go through their basic academy and get out on the road, by that time it could be too late. Someone could get hurt.

Troy Gent: Do you remember a particular experience where an instructor laid into you or anybody else for being stupid?

Anonymous Guest: I was wise enough not to be that guy, but unfortunately, by no fault of my own, the class individual who gained the attention of the instructors in the wrong way sat at my table.

Troy Gent: So you were always exposed.

Anonymous Guest: I was death by association is the way to equate. This guy got spun up so easily and when the instructors found that out, it was just like a dog to a bone. They wanted to get every bit of meat off that bone before they chewed it up.

They'd call him retard and all sorts of other names and I'd try not to laugh, but I did laugh. That got the attention of the Cadre and he'd try to address me while not laughing himself. It's funny. Let's be honest, as long as it's not you, right?

Troy Gent: What kind of experiences do you have out in the field with stupid criminals or people being idiots?

Young twenty-year-olds and late teens have their moments but I've had people as old as eighty do some crazy stuff. So it's situational. I'll give you an example.

I was running speed and I saw this car reduce from seventy miles per hour to fifty-five.

Troy Gent: You were running speed?

Anonymous Guest: Speed. It's a radar.

Troy Gent: Okay.

Anonymous Guest: So I get this car and it's doing about eighty-five, right? And it's a fifty-five-mile-per-hour zone. I've maybe handed out fifty citations in my entire career.

Troy Gent: Really?

Anonymous Guest: I'd rather talk to people and educate them unless they absolutely need it. I figure you can go a lot farther just through education, but there are times when people need it.

Anyway, I stopped this car and God bless them. It's an elderly couple and the lady's sitting in the front passenger seat.

They had to be in their seventies and they took a little while to slow down.

I get up to the window and tell them who I am, who I work for, and why they're being stopped.

I asked why it took a little bit longer for them to stop. She says, "Well we don't get pulled over very often."

She's speaking for her husband, who was a driver.

She says, "We were having some issues."

I'm like, "Really?"

She's like, "Yeah."

I say, "What do you mean? With the speeding? Are you guys okay health-wise? Is everything fine?"

And she says, "Oh no. We're fine, honey, but our brakes were not working."

I'm like, "Your brakes weren't working?"

And she said, "No."

I said, "Huh. How did you stop?"

And she looked at me and said, "Well, God must've been here helping us stop."

I'm thinking to myself, "So they're going over the speed limit by a fair amount of miles per hour."

You can just get curve balled by people. Honestly, it's integrity is what it equates to.

Troy Gent: You told me a story about a chick that was pole dancing on a flagpole.

Anonymous Guest: Oh, geez. Yeah, we'll jump right into R-rated here.

I get a call from my dispatch. I'm going to leave the location out because people will know.

I am in charge of protecting a certain government building and I get a call from my dispatch who's on-site and says, "You have a situation unfolding right now. You may want to go and see what's going on."

They left it at that. And so I'm thinking, "People get drunk. They do stupid stuff. They come up here at this specific location."

We've seen anything from sexual contact to people doing drugs, intoxication, and just weird stuff, right?

So I'm in my car. I have it blacked out. It's at nighttime. I don't have my lights on. I'm on the said piece of property. I'm not on the roadway.

I round this corner, there's a ginormous flagpole, and on this flagpole, you have lights that illuminate the flagpole.

I see this young gal. She's on this flagpole and she's doing a weird dance. I'm thinking to myself, "What is she doing?"

I get a little closer in my car and say, "Oh no."

So of course I'm thinking to myself, "I have a spotlight. Let's turn the spotlight on."

So I did and this young gal is just a hundred percent butt naked doing a pole dance on the flagpole.

The funny thing is that as soon as I turned on the light, she got the impression that she should have some privacy. But she's out in the middle of the public, butt naked on a flagpole pole, dancing where every car driving by can see. But the moment the spotlight turned on...

To her defense, she was really intoxicated.

Troy Gent: So the whole point of this is don't get intoxicated.

Anonymous Guest: Or don't get intoxicated in a public setting like that because chances are you're going to have the police contacted.

Troy Gent: How have you seen offenders and criminals act? Give us examples of times you encountered an offender acting crazy, and you're like "Really?"

Anonymous Guest: Oh yeah. I have one in mind. This one is probably on the scale of legitimate crazy.

I was running patrol and got a call from dispatch of a vehicle going very slow on the interstate. The speed limit was seventy and the vehicle was doing thirty-five. Not only were they doing thirty-five, but they were weaving in and out of both travel lanes, preventing cars from going around them, which is a huge safety hazard.

You start to wonder, "Is it medical? What's going on here?"

As I'm coming in the opposite direction to intercept this vehicle, I see this long line of cars behind it. I flip to the median and I get up behind him. I call dispatch to let them know, "Hey, I'm here with the vehicle. This is where I'm at. I'm going to initiate a traffic stop."

I initiate a traffic stop and the subject pulls over. I get up to the vehicle, it's like a hatchback, there are rubber-made totes in the back and you can see right into the car.

It has out-of-state plates. I'm looking at this guy as I'm conducting the traffic stop. I'm trying to gauge if this guy is intoxicated or if it is medical.

It took about maybe two sentences of his response for me to tell that this guy is just batshit crazy.

He kept looking in the back of the car and turning his whole body, just looking at the totes. And I'm like, "Dude, what are you looking at?"

He says, "Can't you see him?"

I'm like, "See who? I see nothing but totes. Do you have a dead body chopped up back there? What are you looking at?"

He's like, "Right there. He just moved."

I'm like, "Man, you're crazy."

I'll tell you what, if there's one thing you do not do, it's tell someone who is legitimately crazy that they're crazy. Because I'll tell you what, that's another level of craziness that you are going to experience and that I did.

I was fortunate enough that my backup arrived. We had to rip him out of the car, go hands-on, and put him in cuffs.

Troy Gent: Was he fighting before you had opened the door to get him out? What was he doing for you to think, "I need to get this guy out?"

Anonymous Guest: I needed to get the guy out. This was some time ago, so forgive me, but I believe we had ran him and he had a warrant out for his arrest.

And it doesn't end there. I get in my patrol car, and the jail is about an hour away. On my way into jail, he's telling me everything that he's going to do to me, to my family, and I'm like, "Okay."

I'm just taking it, right? Like, this guy is crazy.

Troy Gent: In a police car, do you have a record button? Can you record what they're saying?

Anonymous Guest: Oh, yeah. You do.

Troy Gent: Okay.

Anonymous Guest: Yeah, dash cam video and audio.

I will say that he was trying to kick out my back window when we put him in my car prior to transporting him. We had to fix him so he couldn't do that.

I'm driving this hour and this guy is just mother-effing me and trying to get out of my car.

I thought to myself "I'm going to call ahead. I'll talk to the jail and let them know we got a hot one coming in."

And so, we get up to the jail, the doors roll up, and sure enough, we have a receiving party of about eight deputies.

I tell the guy, "Okay, look. All that stuff, that madness, and crazy talk you were telling me this whole way here, that was your opportunity to do it. But I'll tell you something, those guys over there, I don't know if they'll like it. If you try anything...."

He's like, "Oh no, sir. No, I don't mean any of that."

I'm like, "Okay."

The sheriff called me. Not a deputy, not a sergeant. The sheriff called me and said, "This guy has been at my facility for a month. We thought he was just on drugs. That's not the case. This guy is just batshit crazy."

I started laughing. The sheriff didn't think it was funny because I knew I called it for what it was.

He says, "Whatever you do in the future, do not give me another individual like this guy because we will not take him! We had to put them on a Greyhound bus, ship him to Colorado, and make it their problem."

I'm like, "Oh, okay. That works."

Troy Gent: Where do they expect you to take them?

Anonymous Guest: Right? That's the point. Fine upstanding citizens that don't break the law, typically aren't the ones going to jail. It's the ones that are just... You know what I mean? It is what it is.

Troy Gent: I've heard that you look for things. I've heard of police officers following a car they were suspicious of, but they don't have probable cause to pull them over. But if they follow them long enough, basically they can get him for something. Did you have any situations like that?

Anonymous Guest: There's a fine line of doing that because you can get yourself hemmed up in court.

I try to stay away from that if someone isn't breaking the law and I want to get them to make a stop and see what's going on.

We run plates before we stop you. We run the registered owner. We check for insurance. We're doing a lot of database checking and if something doesn't jive with that, typically you'll have some sort of justification to initiate a stop.

If no insurance is found on the vehicle, then that would be a cause for stop. They've since changed that now.

If I did follow somebody, it wasn't for very long. Because the individuals who you really want to stop and talk to, once they see a law enforcement presence around them, they're going to get extra nervous and chances are it's either a warrant, no drugs in the system, or a warrant with excessive drugs in the system. Either way, they're going to do something. They're going to screw up pretty immediately.

There are so many reasons and justifications in the code book to stop somebody. So it's just you getting familiar with that and then making those stops consistently, showing a pattern that you've stopped others for the same thing too.

Troy Gent: What's your favorite part about being a law enforcement officer?

Anonymous Guest: As cheesy as it may sound, it's providing society with a safe environment, to protect those who need to be protected, and to take care of those who need to be taken care of meaning in a criminal offense or an episode. Anywhere from domestic violence to we have a fugitive wanted for murder and rape. It could be white-collar crimes. It could be drugs.

So, trying to keep our society and community that we live in safe. And it's not just localized to where we're at because we have a lot of interstate traffic and commerce as well. So in essence, we're affecting the vicinity of the surrounding states as well. Plus, you get a car and can drive fast. That's fun too.

Troy Gent: What's what's your least favorite part, if you have a least favorite part?

Anonymous Guest: It has got to be anything involving children and it could be from abuse to death.

My second least is going to be death notifications. That's when I have to tell somebody their loved one is not coming home.

It just sinks in. It hits hard and no law enforcement officer wants to do that.

Troy Gent: I interviewed a law enforcement officer and he said the hardest part was for him to see people that they said they loved each other, hurt each other. Seeing the criminal hurt somebody wasn't as hard as seeing someone say, "I love this person," but were hurting them anyway. Especially the adults hurting the children. That was the hardest part for him to see.

Anonymous Guest: Yeah, absolutely.

There's so much that unfolds with that. It's just like any career path. Once you've been in it, I hate to say it, but you kind of find ways to numb out those types of situations. Even though you deal with it, are professional about it, and see it to a logical conclusion, you have to have a coping mechanism and an out. Minus going to the gym where you show me up. I don't know if that's an escape.

Troy Gent: No, every time we talk, we seem to tell each other something stupid or funny.

Have you seen your job impacted by what's currently going on with defunding the police and that kind of thing? What are your thoughts on that and things you've seen?

Anonymous Guest: It's dependent upon the area that you reside in and if they're supportive of it or not.

If they're in support of defunding the law enforcement officers and the police, it really tanks morale. Not only that, but you start seeing an exodus of highly trained, qualified officers going to other areas that number one, they feel appreciated for what they do and have the backing of their department.

So unfortunately, not to throw out any agency names, but if you paid attention to the news over the past two to three years, you'll know what areas and agencies are having a hard time. And let's be honest, right now law enforcement in general is having a hard time.

I think the biggest thing that took a hit was trying to get people to join law enforcement as a career path. They just don't want to. Why would they want to get thrown into a pack of wolves? You could do everything right, yet they'll still crucify you. Not only will they crucify you, but now you're looking at tentative jail time. You're looking at civil suit. You could lose everything you worked hard for.

Your family could be out on the street and for what? Why?

Troy Gent: Have you struggled with any post-traumatic stress that you've had to face? Are you still numbing out just to keep it at bay?

Anonymous Guest: I do sport shooting and long-distance shooting. Things like that take my mind off it. My biggest thing is this family time. I learned early on in my career that when work's over, I leave it at work. When I'm home, I'm home. Sometimes you come across something major and it takes a little time to figure out how to flip that switch.

The gym is one of my biggest outs. You can't stress and sweat at the same time and I embrace that.

Troy Gent: Yeah, it's hard to think about anything other than the next set or the next rep when you're in pain.

Anonymous Guest: Yeah, that's right. It sure works for me.

Troy Gent: Is there anything else you'd like to talk about or any other stories that you remember off the top of your head that you'd like to share?

Anonymous Guest: Yeah, there's one in particular. You had asked if I have ever come across anything interesting on a traffic stop.

I did drug interdiction and we came across this individual's in a car. Long story short, they had multiple kilos of cocaine.

Troy Gent: What gave you the probable cause to say, "Something's wrong. Something's off. I need to check the car."

Anonymous Guest: There were a lot of indicators and keep in mind that we were staying within the confines of the law and the parameters of our stop.

So, as we were doing as such, we were getting stories from them and as we were conducting the business of the stop. We'll separate them, get the driver, and visit with the driver in our patrol car.

As we're typing up a warning or a citation, we'll ask, "What's going on here?"

They will tell you and if their story's not jiving with, say, the passenger's, and there are indicators in the vehicle that are throwing some red flags, that establishes a reasonable suspicion ultimately to a probable cause of search, right?

We got consent for it. It's always good to get consent, even though you have a PC. It's still good to have both.

Troy Gent: Okay, so the driver or the passenger gives you consent.

Anonymous Guest: Yeah, because more times than not, if an individual is running narcotics, they don't want to come off guilty by not granting you consent.

In this case, they had hidden a couple of kilos in a speaker box.

Troy Gent: When they give you that consent, do they typically think, "Oh, they're just not going to catch us?"

Anonymous Guest: Yeah, that's exactly what they're thinking.

On this specific stop, we had a canine. The canine did alert, and once the canine alerted, we owned the vehicle.

Troy Gent: What happens when these people see the canine? Are they like, "Oh shit."

Anonymous Guest: That's exactly what they're thinking.

It was funny because one of the passengers was like a professional bodybuilder. This dude was yoked out. He had to have been on steroids. He looked like the Hulk.

One thing that is common with most criminals and law enforcement canines is that they've either had a run-in with a canine or simply want to avoid it. Either way, they don't want that damn dog on them. That thing can just be devastating.

The canine was down at alert. The guy who was acting up and not getting in cuffs was kind of backpedaling.

Troy Gent: Do you wait to bring the canine out until they give consent?

Anonymous Guest: No, we don't want to coerce them or feel like it's a setting of coercion.

As soon as the stories didn't jive, we built up reasonable suspicion and established probable cause. Then the dog hit, and it's like, "Okay, we got this vehicle now."

The handler had to tell this individual, this incredible Hulk guy, "If you do anything I don't tell you to do, this dog will bite you."

The guy looked at the dog, looked at us, and said, "You know what? I don't need this shit."

So he turned around and just put his hands behind his back.

And this dog, he was a man-eater. He was a beast. He scared me. I didn't even want to get by the dog.

Troy Gent: Is this dog only loyal to his handler?

Anonymous Guest: Yeah, when it says do not pet or don't come close, don't. Even other cops.

Troy Gent: Absolutely.

Anonymous Guest: Yeah, you don't want to look like the aggressor to the dog. Even though they're highly trained, there are animals, right?

Needless to say, we get the vehicle, we find the kilos, we get it back to the office, we're doing an inventory, and there's just a ton of shit in this car, right? That's another way that they try to mask the scent, is by excess fragrances. Like, who the hell puts laundry detergent all over the seats?

You know what I mean? It's it's one of those things.

Troy Gent: In Hollywood, they show people covering themselves in crap or fuel. In Jurassic Park, the dude covered himself in gasoline so that the dinosaurs couldn't smell him. Does that work with the dog? Can the dog still smell through it?

Anonymous Guest: The dog's good, man. The dog's good.

Troy Gent: That's incredible.

Anonymous Guest: I think they have a two hundred times stronger sense of smell.

Troy Gent: Two hundred thousand or something like that. It's incredible.

Anonymous Guest: It's crazy. But we got the vehicle to our office and there was just a ton of shit in the car.

We were going through an inventory. I had the clipboard and was preoccupied writing stuff down as the other officer was telling me what he was finding.

The next thing I hear is, "Oh here. Uh, catch."

I look up and lo and behold, as it's twirling in the air is this sixteen-inch dildo.

It smacks me right across my chest and it takes me by surprise because I'm trying to analyze what the hell the object is coming at me, right? I had my clipboard and was trying to maintain the integrity of my clipboard. The dildo falls on that, it falls on the ground, and I'm like, "You son of a bitch."

And the worst thing about the whole situation is that it was a used dildo.

Troy Gent: Did this come out of the car?

Anonymous Guest: Yes. It was gross.

You don't know what people do. There are some freaky people out there.

Troy Gent: What would you say the rate of Narcotics being found to the actual rate that there are?

Anonymous Guest: I think statistics is like one to fifteen loads, you'll get one.

Yeah, there are just so many drugs right now with fentanyl coming from the southern border. It's sad because it's not only fueling the pandemic of the drug addict, but you also get a lot of these habitual offenders that just have mental health issues either from drugs, more times than not drugs. It could be from an accident like TBI. They get sent to jail or prison and you wonder, "Do all people belong in there?"

We may want to start looking at more of a mental health type rehabilitation, depending upon the crime that put them there in the beginning.

Troy Gent: Yeah. Well, thanks for taking the time.

Anonymous Guest: You bet.