I like that instead of just bashing some of the more unrealistic films, he actually acknowledged the reasons why those decisions were made for that particular medium
They kinda didn't mention that in Lethal Weapon, Mel Gibson's character is a suicidal dude has a death wish, he literally TRIES to get killed, and provokes criminals for that. And he isn't really undercover, it's also one of their crazy plans. Of course the movies aren't supposed to be realistic, rather, the first two used crazy action to set up complex questions, like is it feasible to give diplomatic immunity to racist authoritarian regimes like in authoritarian South Africa... Which become very important 30 year later when russian diplomatic mail was found out to be used for drug trafficking.
AeneasGemini a lot of the time it isn’t done on intentionally. It isn’t easy getting everything realistic whilst having engaging plot line. Godfather was an unrealistic mafia movie yet one of the best movies ever.
I gotta say, I really like this guy. I hope he comes back. He explains concepts of his work eloquently and comprehensively. I wish he was my teacher, thats how good he is at explaining.
@@mr_h831 Not necessarily. Most people you'd meet on an undercover OP you probably don't receive enough information to arrest and prosecute at the end of the operation or it simply isn't worth the resources and risk to get that information on certain members as it would risk the officers position which could be more useful chasing bigger fish.
I HIGHLY recommend his book 'Good Cop Bad War', especially if you're interested in what fighting the war on drugs does to an emphatic human being. Still need to read his second book! As a former drug addict Niel Woods is my hero - a cop that understands drug addicts are people who hate their life but without the drugs have extreme & life-consuming trauma & mental illness and don't have the money or resources to get them treated. And that criminalising instead of treating addicts is just pushing them further and further from ever having a normal life. Everyone is telling you it's your fault you're addicted when you yourself HATE it, your life is constant danger, violence, betrayal, death & poverty and you've tried to get clean hundreds of times but it never lasts because there's always a deep psychological problem that causes you to become a heroin addict in the first place - no one, ever, has said when I grow up I want to be a heroin addict. There's no heroin addict doesn't hate their life, no heroin addict that doesn't desperately want to quit. Most heroin addicts don't even enjoy taking heroin, it's not a pleasant drug, especially compared to others, but it's the ultimate pain reliever, moreso mentally than physically, it just makes you feel blank, removes the emptiness, depression & PTSD symptoms. I got very lucky and got psychiatrically detained (for about the 7th time) but that time got put in a private psychiatric hospital with weekly therapy, something I'd never had access to before even after probably 18 months of time in psychiatric hospitals behind me. Without that I could never have got clean. Not a chance. I've been clean 14 months now and I'm happy for the first time in my life. I still have PTSD flashbacks and nightmares every day, a lot of them from the experiences I had while addicted to drugs (it's a brutal and violent life where you know you're going to die soon, and friends are dying constantly, sometimes in front of your eyes, from overdose & murder but you don't care because death is better than being trapped in the life you have now). But I made it to age 30 and I'm still alive! Which is something that for 17 years I lived in absolute certainty that that could never happen. Niel Woods in his book talks about finding out while undercover in Brighton that addicts were being murdered for introducing undercover police to dealers (thinking the were just another junky who was from out-of-town and going through withdrawals). He informs the local police chief of this and he doesn't care at all about junkies dying, even when it's murder. I lost a lot of friends to overdose but nearly as many to murder and oftentimes we knew exactly who'd done it (nearly always county-lines drugs dealers from London) and the police had everything they needed for a successful prosecution but they never, not once, investigated it properly and never once charged anyone. Of course because of that the dealers felt like they could kill people at will with no risk so they did it a lot. Often over very minor things like a £20 debt or one time someone they were forcing to move the drugs for them between the flat they were in and the alley they were sending customers to coming back just £5 short because he'd not counted the money properly ("busting the shots" ie selling the bags to people is a very high-risk, high-stress thing and addicts regularly manage to confuse the dealer or the person the dealer is forcing to "run" the drugs to the "spot"). They even killed his dog too. But the way the police didn't regard the murder of our friends and what was essentially our community as human lives worthy of having any care about very much deeply sums up how you're looked at as an addict and how much you're trapped by your addiction, cos it feels like no one but your drug and other junkies will ever care about you, or treat you as a human being. If you've read to here then thank you. If you want to help a human being then next time you get asked for money on the street don't give them money, give them love & respect; sit with a beggar and talk to them, find out about them, treat them as a human being with their own interests, personality, hopes, fears, humour and problems. And please don't try to sympathise with how hard their life must be, they want someone to treat them normally; if you do they will probably act like you can't understand how hard their life is or what they've been through and that's because cos you probably can't. You probably wouldn't expect to be able to relate to the suffering a child soldier has been through so why should you be able to relate to someone whose life had also been death violence, death and abuse in it from a young age. Please also remember they might be withdrawing and don't have time to talk to you because they need to make money as quickly as possible. Please don't be offended by this because withdrawals are like a parasite that controls your brain; you can't think of anything other than getting well again. But most of the time that person is going to be so so glad to talk to someone who doesn't look down on them, or preach to them, or focus on their addiction and how hard their life must be, but instead just talks to them like another human being with aspirations and interests and stories, who gives them a name and a face and a personality rather than just seeing them as another faceless beggar they walk past every day but never even acknowledge. This is what will help them. If you get to know some addicts and find out they're actually decent people who are suffering and want to help even more then you can find your local substance abuse/misuse services and volunteer your money or time. Studies have shown addiction is formed from a lack of care from other humans (especially at a young age), so the person bonds with a drug to alleviate the lack of bonds with other humans. Just a conversation can help rebuild a shattered bridge between an addict and society and take them one step closer to believing they are with knowing and could live a normal life if they kick their addiction. Thank you.
@Gavin B. Hi Gavin. Yes thanks - coming up for 23 months, so nearly two years, clean soon & I feel so far from that world now I can't imagine going back anymore. Got my life together, am a productive member of society which feels absolutely amazing, to be contributing, paying taxes & working, and I'm teaching myself Mandarin, I could never have done that before. Have made a lot of new friends & the biggest step has been I've learnt to trust people, that outside of that world I don't have to assume negative intentions in everyone I meet or that everyone I'm around, no matter how well I know them, is probably playing an angle for their own advantage & would drop you in a moment if you're inconvenient. The sad thing about that is too that a lot of people who are clean (not just strangers, most dealers have this attitude too) assume because you're homeless & an addict that anything about you can be bought or sold, that you have no principles or that drugs are the only thing that matters or will ever matter to you. There's a few out there that maybe that's true for, but even then that's because they made that choice along the way. Being an addict is like doing terrible things constantly while also trying to insist to yourself you're a decent and moral person, you can't ever let go of that belief really, despite the evidence. It's got its own internal logic & morality in a way, and you are far from just being available to the whims of the highest bidder. But yeah learning to trust people has been the biggest step & the longest journey. It took a lot of believing people were out to screw me over & finding out they weren't to get it back. And it took a long time to feel like people would see me as someone equal & someone valued, not like I had this black mark on my forehead. Anyway, thanks so much for reading, just that really makes a difference. I think if there were more people who genuinely wanted to hear addict's stories, their real stories warts & all, not the noble, rose-tinted version that we had to tell to beg for money or to avoid being judged (or often just because we were ashamed of ourselves, our choices & our lives) then that'd go a long, long, way towards healing the broken people on the streets, the people addicted to crack & heroin. Because living every day knowing it's not very likely you'll last much longer & feeling relieved & comforted by that - that's a very broken human being. So thank you. Words cannot describe how lucky & how grateful I was to be given a way to get out. I still bump into and talk to people from that life all the time (none of which have shown anything at all but the greatest genuine happiness for me for doing it or any hint of wanting to pull me back in) and honestly I feel so much pain when I see them, even the ones who screwed me over or did me wrong, because they're all people to me: people I laughed & joked with, people I talked to for hours sat in alleyways in the rain waiting for dealers, or in hidden spots just out of the public eye to use, learning about them, what their story was, what they were good at, what they had wanted to do with their life, where things had first gone wrong and where things finally went wrong - every conversation like that is always had in the sense of the final: this is where our life has ended & all our ambitions, hobbies, things we care about are in the past now and can never be returned, life's just a slow suicide from here on. I think that sums up what it's like more than anything and I wish there was a clear path for every user to see & take that led to getting clean & getting out, and actually doing it for good. Thanks again, I really appreciate you taking your time out of your day to read it, and even more for actually hearing it. Sorry for the long message again, it's really difficult to talk about this stuff without a lot of words, if that makes sense... All the best to you Gavin.
Honestly an inspiring read, you should be proud of yourself for the progress you made. I want to go check out that book now, this is a real eye opener on something I admittedly hadn't thought about much before.
A wall of text written by people smarter than you doesn't change the fact that it's a choice. Even without help many trauma victims cope without drugs. You chose to shoot up, knowing it's a crime, and whatever you did under the excuses of "I'm an addict/high/victim" doesn't exonerate you. You are not a victim, addicts make victims. Decriminalization only creates more victims, what we need is enforcement, cops rarely arrest junkies so many weak people take drugs knowing them will be seen as a "victim". Enforce it and less people will take the risk of ever starting.
He is an undercover alien that pretends to be a human, that works for a foreign government as sleeper agent and pretends to be an undercover cop that pretends to be a drug dealer.
To be fair The Fast and The Furious started off as a cop movie with a gimmick being cars. Even 2 Fast 2 Furious and Fast and Furious followed this theme until Fast 5 changed it into criminals and ultimately Furious 6 changed it into...well what Fast and Furious is now. The F&F is my favorite movie franchise but it should of ended at 5. It was the perfect ending but greed prevented that from happening
I take Adderall for ADHD. At my usual dose, it really isn't very noticeable. One day I absent-mindedly took a double-dose. "Uncomfortable" is a good word for it. I was basically hanging onto my desk for three hours.
As a German speaker, The first time I watched the in inglorious Bastard scene, I knew Michael Fassenbender was going to be toast. That sign thing was very authentic.
I remember that this guy who was a Russian agent was identified by the way he held flowers after he bought them. I guess in Russia it's customary to carry the flowers with the bulbs pointing toward the ground, so they knew right away.
The speed he took was 40% strength and the highest percentage of speed bought on the streets is roughly 8%. Apparently this stuff was so potent it was practically dissolving the bag it was in. He said he was royally sick as someone with no former experience of speed and thus no tolerance, and was up for 3 days straight. He also had to not alert his wife and newborn baby that he was high as a kite as she wasn’t allowed to know the nature of his work, but he did say his house had never been so clean. He also had to go sick from work on the fourth day after taking the speed because he was so hungover, and his colleagues again didn’t know he was involved in undercover work.
Eleanor Zeigl speed can make you feel today is the best day ever, it can make you feel paranoid as hell, it can drive you to doing routine tasks that you might not normally enjoy, it can make you physically shake, it can drive you to a heart attack. And it can destroy your life because when you are on it you are in a bubble oblivious to how you are hurting those you love. I used it for 20 years and I wish I hadn’t.
a deputy in my academy class was arrested about a year after we graduated (early 2000’s) for being a plant. iirc he was caught smuggling contraband into the jail system.
@WestNileSnipes yes very thoroughly. But with no arrest history, no gang tattoos, and enough people to lie to the background investigator the system can be beaten.
I love the way he discussed with Jason Bourne how the inaccuracies were in the context of communicating to an audience in a visual media. It’s a great way to approach a judgement of accuracy
Yeah but in the context of this movie I'm pretty sure he grabbed a random phone as a burner And Bourne is never undercover, he's always evading being caught lol
My biggest problem with the Fast and Furious is the guy who does the engineering Jesse, F1 Prize money is like $36 million USD prize money and that is just for winning one race, never mind the engineering and peripheral technology design and patents it can generate. If the guy was as good at designing engines as he is supposed to be in the movies, there is no way street racing could make him the kind of money that being in Formula 1 could provided. He could easily be making 175,K a year , plus a percentage of prize money , plus some patent or percentage of the team , if he was as good as the movie makes him out to be. Adrian Newey has something like 10 million.
Exactly. What Riggs did wasn't something any normal undercover cop would (or should) do but, it was absolutely true to his character. His reputation for doing things the average cop would consider crazy/suicidal was a big part of his character arc.
The fast and furious movies started out a little more grounded, and then with each film, they became more outrageous. I'm still waiting for the film that will have a space shuttle. They've ripped a vault out of a bank, used an attack drone, controlled cars like a swarm, flew out of skyscrapers in Dubai, had a submarine, had a tank, used an EMP explosive, had the main character turn bad for a portion of the movie, had a bad guy help out (Jason Statham), fought another tank, grounded a huge plane, had GTA gokarts, now they've attached rockets to the back of a car, and they've survived just about every cliff situation they've been in to where it's not even impressive. I'm still waiting for the full on space shuttle
Someone in my family was an undercover guy decades ago during the cocaine wars in Chicago. Put a ton of mob guys away. To this day, he's the hardest man in the world to read. This guy's comments about knowing your anecdotes are dead-on. My family member (I'm being intentionally vague since mafia promised to kill him and his family) can lie about virtually any topic. He's told stories that I still don't know the veracity of. It's as if lying is a sport to him. Don't get the wrong idea, he doesn't lie maliciously like most people. He just sees what ridiculous stories he can get people to believe. And he wears a straight face at all times. Never seen him crack once. Until he starts to feel bad that you're being duped. Really interesting part of policing. Takes a special kind of person.
I think Lethal Weapon should have gotten 10/10. He said himself, “That would be a good way to get yourself killed.” And In that part of the movie he was actually trying to get himself killed.
Yeah. Oftentimes in these videos a scene is graded as inaccurate because the characters aren't following best practices, but in context there's absolutely a reason for them to not do things correctly.
Here are some the dumbest undercover cop movies. 21 JUMP STREET. 22 JUMP STREET. CON AIR. FACE/OFF. THE HEAT. KINDEGARDEN COP. MARKED FOR DEATH. MIAMI VICE MISS CONGENIALITY. PLAYING GOD. POINT BREAK. RAW DEAL. SWORDFISH. XXX.
@@idislikemints I don't think it was recorded, it was a talk in Oxford at a small event in a pub. Organised by a group called Sceptics In The Pub. If you check them out, they might have some footage
"The trouble is: It's a half a trillion dollar industry worldwide, and that inevitably causes corruption" - Man literally describes problems far outside of the illegal drug trade.
This guy is a hero and also has a common sense approach to decriminalising drugs. He’s someone who’s spent his career fighting the war on drugs and has the balls to highlight the absurdity of it.
I was a heroin addict for years. I hated every moment of it. I had morals and stuff. I didn't steal, I worked 2 jobs to pay my bills and my drugs etc. One of the guys I bought drugs from was a well known drug dealer but was pretty much untouchable. One day this homeless guy came into the house of the drug dealers house (he was a connect so people that needed a dealer needed to know somebody who used drugs basically and this homeless guy would feel out the person and eventually introduce them over time) he brought this older gentle men. This older gentleman was dressed down but kind of clean cut which I found odd. He reached his arm out to shake the dealers hand and I saw a tan mark on his wrist where a watch used to be and a worn spot where he had a wedding ring. It didn't take me long to put 2 and 2 together. My dealer started asking questions (he was really suspicious of people ) and I knew my dealer was gonna ask questions. I let it start to play out but the gentleman was quick on his feet but it wasn't answers my dealer wanted to hear (it all went down really fast) so I pretended to recognize him I said "did u used to be known as JJ? " and I give him the look of "dude go with it" and he did. So then I hugged him and basically pretended to know him. I asked him things like "so how's your mom doing? Ur family still own that big lot ?" Etc and he went with it. My dealer recognized that I knew him and he cut it out. My dealer was the type that wouldn't wait. He'd kill u. Id known him for many years (we went to school together) so we had a friendship in a way. After the meeting was all said and done, I left with "JJ" and we started walking down the street and of course a car was parked on the side of the road with 2 people in the front and I knew they were watching their UC. It obviously was his first case as a UC and they must have wanted to watch to make sure the first meeting went safely. Once we got far enough away I stopped and told him "u need to cover your wrist till that tan line goes away" (generally cops, military, personal protection specialist etc all wear their watches the same way) and to put a ring on. I told him my dealer was about to bust his face up and ask questions (my dealer would use xanax with heroin and for some reason he would really really get paranoid but with meth he was fine) I told him I didn't want to watch him get killed . I told him I didn't care what he was there for but now he is vouched for,he can do his job (they weren't after me so I knew I was safe). He just nodded. About a month later my dealer was arrested. He got out about a year and a half later for "good behavior " and he developed a heart condition that the prisons basically didn't want to pay for so they let him go. My dealer obviously went back to dealing drugs and he eventually shot and killed himself. They didn't really want my dealer, they wanted to arrest him to turn him so they could get to his supplier which was the cartel. I doubt he turned, he wasn't the type at all. Years later (I finally got clean and at this point I was like 2 years clean) I volunteered for this police education program where recovering addicts will talk to officers about what to look for, what behaviors to look at etc(the town I live in has a giant heroin problem which the police had been trying to clamp down on for a hot minute) I went to the classroom cause I was asked to speak and here comes "JJ" marching in. He recognized me right away (took me a minute to remember) he was really good about it. He first said he was so happy to see me clean and healthy, then he said he was sorry for my loss (my dealer was over all a really good man just haunted by his demons. I mean his mother used to put heroin in his baby bottle to get him not to cry for God's sake. Everyone that was close to him knew his a good guy with a good heart, he just became a paranoid bad person when he did drugs. I knew for a fact he had killed like 2 people but they tried to steal his drugs and he easily had connections to make it all disappear). "JJ" thanked me for covering for him that day and I just told him I didn't wanna see someone get hurt. After I was done doing my whole speech thing, "JJ" introduced me to his boss, tole the whole story blah blah blah and offer to sponsor me through the police academy. I was honored but unfortunately I take seizure medication and law enforcement don't really like to hire someone with a health condition like that which is understandable but I did always want to be a cop or go in the military but when I was diagnosed I knew that would never happen. He said to just try the academy and see how I do, so I did. I aced through all firearms training (my dad was a marine so I've already been taught to shoot, break down a weapon etc), I had no issue with hand to hand combat (I did martial arts for 20 years) but of course I struggled with the actual book work but I did pass. Once I was done, "JJ" asked if I would reconsider but I said no because I don't want the politics which he understood so he asked if I would be interested in personal protection so I agreed to do it. Now I work as a personal protection specialist (body guard) I've done jobs for politicians, famous people, average Joe who has a lot of money etc. I absolutely love my job and love my life and its all because a UC came into my drug dealers home one day and I just happened to have the eye to notice details that most people didn't. "JJ" and I still keep in contact to this day. He has been retired for many years as a UC now and he just retired from the force 2 years ago, my wife and I went to his retirement party. Great guy. Such a random situation but thankful it happened. Life is funny that way I guess.
So you saved a lying revenue collection agent of the state who would steal your belongings and put a boot on YOUR neck had he been given the orders to do so - way to go!
It’s interesting because ‘being a different version of yourself’ and ‘using your own imagination’ is the essence of good acting. Good acting is never just pretending or imitating.
In Argo they were vulnerable. As none of the people trying to learn their “legends” were cops. Undercover or otherwise. They were diplomats trying to get out of a country, so they only needed the essentials name, DOB, SS#, for customs agents. No custom agent was going to ask them about a bartender on a Wednesday night as they are trying to get through customs. They just want to make sure you know your basics info and maybe why you were in their country.
The thing is, just give them a birthday they already have. Unless the people looking for, or questioning them already know exactly what their real information is, and are looking out for that, getting somebody to remember a bunch of specific new information about themselves is just setting up a bunch of traps for them. If you can't use your birthday, use your spouses, or your brothers, or even a holiday, and just use your birth year. Keep the story simple and close to who you really are, and it's far easier to remember the stuff you're meant to be lying about.
Including this film as an example of one of 13 supposedly iconic undercover police officers to be commented upon struck me as just bizarre. It's as if the person selecting the films had no clue what this movie was about.
@@Lurklen In the film the Iranians are able to eventually reassemble the shredded documents from the embassy and find the details of the missing staff, so they know their names and dates of birth etc. They have to take on aliases as a Canadian film crew to escape so they do have to have a complete backstory, and Ben Affleck tells them the Iranians will be able to get people to question them who have lived in Canada and know all of the little details a Canadian would be expected to know.
The bit where Mel "tastes" the drugs to see if they're legit, every time I see similar scenes in movies it always reminds me of the Robert Di Niro scene in Showtime when Wil Shatner is showing the cops how to check the drugs by tasting it and Di Niro's character, looking very unimpressed, simply says "What if it's cyanide?"
For me, the scene in Fast and Furious, where Brian breaks undercover to save Vince, has always stood out as one of the best scenes in movie. Such good scene, and amazing done by the cast, director of photography and director...
I watched a similar video from Vanity Fair. Their Undercover expert claimed he never used illegal drugs. I found that hard to believe. This guy seems much more credible and honest.
I watched that one as well and one thing to consider would be what were his undercover jobs for? And that guy was FBI and not about drugs but other crimes so he most likely could have very easily gone without ever using drugs… just something to think about
Plot twist: This guy was an undercover cop in Harlem for 15 years. He lead a drug kingpin away in handcuffs and got a call later that night. The kingpin was on the phone and said to him "Okay this prank has gone far enough! If you don't let me out of here I'm callin the cops!"
Me: “The guy looks as clean cut and business like with such an honest face. How the heck can he be undercover officer?” 5:29 Somehow transforms to look more like a criminal than the guy he is busting.
Some people seem confused by the Inglorious Bastards scene. In Germany when we signal "3", we use thumb, index and middle finger, not index, middle and ring. So it would seem extremely odd, that someone signals three like that. And we signal it in places like bars due to the noise, as 2 and 3 can sound quite similar (which is why ie in the military you'd sometimes say Zwo instead of Zwei over radio etc, so they can understand you better).
@@benb9151 Yes, or maybe Anglos are just stupid with cripple hands? If you count on your hand, do you start "1" with thumb or index? It's also uncomfortable imo to make the 3 the anglo way.
@@sugarnads read the comments, plenty of slow people. Which is why Democracy is clearly overrated, when you consider that if they can't understand this, they clearly can't understand complex policy issues...
For the clip "Inglorious Bastards" the guy didn't look at him because he was hostile, he looked at him because of the fingers that he used to count the number 3, in Europe they start counting from the the thumb and not the index that's what sold the guy out, it wasn't so much so his hostility. But apart from that i love his explanations, hope he comes back again.
4:30 - THIS is scary stuff! Imagine how many police officers whom are dirty. There's virtually no control whom enter the police academy as long as you don't have a criminal record.
There's all kinds of control on who enters the "Police academy" in the UK a person is vetted financially as well as criminally, throughout training candidates are monitored. Corruption isn't widespread and tends to come about from poor impulse control from cops (who develop bad habits or have bad 'friends.')
Hey guys, don’t be unkind, they couldn’t show Donnie Branco cos it was a raging success. I saw an interview with a mafia chief who was around then, and he said Branco was so convincing NOBODY suspected him. He caused the capture of a massive amount of mafiosi, and pretty much started the demise of the mafia. Maybe they didn’t judge it cos he’s still alive.
Tamer Ciftci , hey don’t lose your s#!t cos you can’t count or read. I didn’t say “I think” at all, and the only “maybe” referred to who created the video. You need to take a walk and get some fresh air. Clearly you’re spending too much time in your own company and you’ve forgotten how to be nice.
7:30 good observation that "it would be a way to get killed" since Riggs was actively trying to get killed on duty in that part of the franchise. Just an 80's action movie, but nonetheless, good catch :)
I can't even imagine being undercover with people who do drugs. You have to partake. I wonder how many undercover cops have died of an overdose, became addicted, or were figured out by the bad people. So scary!!
The way he so casually glosses over events that would reasonably cause any normal person a lifetime of nightmares makes me think that maybe my life isn't so bad after all.
09:59 I know it is a little nitpick, but IIRC he bought burner phones from a kiosk right off the street. Bourne Ultimatum came out right before Bluetooth headsets became a thing. Seeing someone with an earpiece going to a cellphone wouldn’t have been that unusual at the time and he had to improvise with the tools available to him. He is a rogue spy and has no support at all, so he has to improvise. The pulling up his lapel to talk is still dumb though.
I think he dismissed "Rush" a bit quickly, seeing as it was based on the memoirs of an undercover narcotics officer in 1970s small town Texas and they took pains to portray it straight. Another good undercover scene was in "State of Grace" (1990) where Sean Penn is grilled by Ed Harris on the places he's been.
Because no one wants to see a movie about drug dealers getting caught with immense evidence backing them up, and getting a suspended sentence or the case just being binned because the justice system is the most blatantly corrupt of all
Serpico is actually a very true story. All the way down to the fact that he was set up by his own Squad and shot. New York during the 70s was disgusting and the police department was almost completely corrupt.
9:59 Perhaps nowadays earphones with leads may be getting less common, but you see earpods everywhere now, so I think an updated Bourne film could easily have him with an earpod doing exactly the same thing and it wouldn't be suspicious.
@@alexander1902 remembering it was just a movie and not real life, if you were applying it to reality, yes, I agree, it would have been inexperience on his part. In a way if such a situation were real you'd question why the LAPD would put someone inexperienced in over their head like that. The characters were all definitely killers who would shoot you pretty quickly.
Well, Bourne used the phone and handfree he was able to buy in that shoppingmall the scene takes place in, so it wasn't high tech government equipment he was dealing with, so in the context of the movie i think it makes sence. But i get that an actual person trained in surveilance will find odd shit like that.
Its was nice of you to give him some credit there, but I think he got it all wrong. He was saying it would look suspicious to have ear buds in your ear. It's perfect, you dont have to touch the microphone and everybody in there is wearing them! He obviously hasn't been in a train station recently. We're told he worked undercover, I think he was following shoplifters in a shopping centre!!
@@McHunt84 Bourne is a spy flick so I am a little confused about why they included it when most of the films are about undercover cops. That being said if a spy agency were surveiling an area they absolutely have the communications equiptment to listen in on any device in the area. The CIA or NSA would absolutely get suspicious if someone they had under surveillance put an earpiece in his ear.
Funny thing about the anecdote from "Reservoir Dogs" is, that this story actually happened to me about 25 years ago. So now everytime I tell the story of me having been "caught" having weed on me by a police dog, who then got yelled at by "his" police officer, because the cop didn't think I was looking like somebody having weed on him, people will say "Nah, you got that one from that Tarantino movie". Fortunately I am not a gangster, as other gangsters would immediately think I was an undercover cop if I'd tell them the story. ^^
"The ethics of undercover policing is quite straightforward. You remain a police officer, so your first priority is still to preserve life" Maybe the US shouldn't have broke away from Britain
@@Rusaarules but he can't pull it off. Also, his "attempted suicides by gangs" also never work because he doesn't really want to die and defends himself.
I would have wanted him to explain how you would reconcile preserving your false identity vs exposing yourself as a cop in order to save someone's life. Like if you see your buddy gunned down do you possibly let him die in order to stay undercover? Youd have to forego preserving life then...
Very true, the “protect and serve” slogan applies to themselves in covering up when they ignore the rights of citizens. 3 members of my family are/were cops and they all say the same thing: the training american police receive is far too short and not comprehensive enough (especially when compared to the police of France or Germany or Britain or Scandinavia, ya know, civilized countries). It can take years to become an officer in those countries as opposed to a couple months here. Secondly the filtering of applicants is too lenient... many of the worst cops in america should never have become cops because the personality/psych evaluations should be catching these thugs and bullies but they don't.
Very nice source and analysis. BUT they should have had him look at Point Break as well - not only the whole Johnny Utah scenario but also the scene with Tom Sizemore, when they realize they've blown his cover/ ruined all his hard work and how much he's sacrificed. Also Donnie Brasco... come on, forget about it!
Departed is a remake of a Hong Kong film called Infernal Affairs. Absolutely great movie. I love the Departed but this movie is still better because of the layers and complexity of the story and humanism.
You find the media confuse it, which may also be part of the problem. E.g. 'the suspect was arrested by undercover plain clothes police'. Detectives aren't undercover (as you point out), they identify themselves when they have to, they make arrests and they work together or in teams. No so for undercover police officers.
First time I saw that scene, I thought Tarantino had made a mistake. I was whispering to my friend in the theater that it was the wrong 3 fingers and how any good undercover operative should have known that. I was _SO_ happy a few moments later when it was the detail used to out the undercover guy. Masterful use of a little cultural detail by Tarantino.
It would be interesting to hear where the line between "preserving life" and "never break cover" is - it seems that most situations you'd find yourself in would mean the decision wouldn't be easy, I suppose "preserve your own life" would need to be factored in.
I find it funny that he rates "Argo" as he does, considering that the folk that are being drilled aren't police officers, they're essentially Civilians, and the only guy there that's part of any kind of undercover agency is CIA, and the husband of the CIA Disguise Expert that shows up on the "Wired" channel every so often XD And she praises this movie, as I recall.
Who would have thought that the most realistic thing portrayed in The Fast and the Furious has nothing to do with cars, and speed and Civics and NOS but field medical report to an emergency operator... Shocking! Give the guy who wrote that part a raise and an Oscar
This gentleman clearly knows what he’s talking about, so why waste his time or ours asking about a goofy popcorn bums-on-seats comedy like 21 Jump Street? Don’t get me wrong, it was a fun movie , but if you didn’t take it with a grain of salt then the last laugh is on you.
Kev Stacey It was more to talk about what heppens when you have a partner and both of you are undercover cops. How that situation is much more complicated and you are giving the bad guys x2 information, also is riskier since if one of you fucks up you are both in big problems. You both have to match looks, talk, friendship... etc Much harder than just being you alone.
I like that instead of just bashing some of the more unrealistic films, he actually acknowledged the reasons why those decisions were made for that particular medium
to be honest, sometimes inaccuracies are forgivable, but sometimes it's just an excuse for sloppy writing
They kinda didn't mention that in Lethal Weapon, Mel Gibson's character is a suicidal dude has a death wish, he literally TRIES to get killed, and provokes criminals for that. And he isn't really undercover, it's also one of their crazy plans. Of course the movies aren't supposed to be realistic, rather, the first two used crazy action to set up complex questions, like is it feasible to give diplomatic immunity to racist authoritarian regimes like in authoritarian South Africa... Which become very important 30 year later when russian diplomatic mail was found out to be used for drug trafficking.
AeneasGemini a lot of the time it isn’t done on intentionally. It isn’t easy getting everything realistic whilst having engaging plot line. Godfather was an unrealistic mafia movie yet one of the best movies ever.
Shut up
Just as in most genre of films; Most Cop Movies are based upon Other Cop Movies much more than real life .
I gotta say, I really like this guy. I hope he comes back. He explains concepts of his work eloquently and comprehensively. I wish he was my teacher, thats how good he is at explaining.
I think you saw a different video than I did.
@@TheOrangeDuke01 Nah.
If you wanna hear more of this guy he’s done a podcast with truegeordie on TH-cam just search truegeordie undercover cop and it should come up
@@TheOrangeDuke01 What are you on about? He's experienced, articulate, and professional.
If you're interested he has a few books about his career I listen to his audio books a lot, his "Good Cop, Bad War" is a very good book
Somewhere in the world, there's probably a criminal who's like "Isn't that Johnson?"
Ikr
😂😂🤣
Amon Scarlet if there is likely they've been arrested. This guy seems very proficient at his job.
@@mr_h831 Not necessarily. Most people you'd meet on an undercover OP you probably don't receive enough information to arrest and prosecute at the end of the operation or it simply isn't worth the resources and risk to get that information on certain members as it would risk the officers position which could be more useful chasing bigger fish.
LOL I was thinking the same! Hahaha.
This man has the quietest confidence I have ever seen
Underrated comment
Great way to describe him
it's a normal dude
He’s just British
You have to for a job like this.
I HIGHLY recommend his book 'Good Cop Bad War', especially if you're interested in what fighting the war on drugs does to an emphatic human being.
Still need to read his second book!
As a former drug addict Niel Woods is my hero - a cop that understands drug addicts are people who hate their life but without the drugs have extreme & life-consuming trauma & mental illness and don't have the money or resources to get them treated. And that criminalising instead of treating addicts is just pushing them further and further from ever having a normal life.
Everyone is telling you it's your fault you're addicted when you yourself HATE it, your life is constant danger, violence, betrayal, death & poverty and you've tried to get clean hundreds of times but it never lasts because there's always a deep psychological problem that causes you to become a heroin addict in the first place - no one, ever, has said when I grow up I want to be a heroin addict. There's no heroin addict doesn't hate their life, no heroin addict that doesn't desperately want to quit. Most heroin addicts don't even enjoy taking heroin, it's not a pleasant drug, especially compared to others, but it's the ultimate pain reliever, moreso mentally than physically, it just makes you feel blank, removes the emptiness, depression & PTSD symptoms.
I got very lucky and got psychiatrically detained (for about the 7th time) but that time got put in a private psychiatric hospital with weekly therapy, something I'd never had access to before even after probably 18 months of time in psychiatric hospitals behind me. Without that I could never have got clean. Not a chance.
I've been clean 14 months now and I'm happy for the first time in my life. I still have PTSD flashbacks and nightmares every day, a lot of them from the experiences I had while addicted to drugs (it's a brutal and violent life where you know you're going to die soon, and friends are dying constantly, sometimes in front of your eyes, from overdose & murder but you don't care because death is better than being trapped in the life you have now). But I made it to age 30 and I'm still alive! Which is something that for 17 years I lived in absolute certainty that that could never happen.
Niel Woods in his book talks about finding out while undercover in Brighton that addicts were being murdered for introducing undercover police to dealers (thinking the were just another junky who was from out-of-town and going through withdrawals). He informs the local police chief of this and he doesn't care at all about junkies dying, even when it's murder. I lost a lot of friends to overdose but nearly as many to murder and oftentimes we knew exactly who'd done it (nearly always county-lines drugs dealers from London) and the police had everything they needed for a successful prosecution but they never, not once, investigated it properly and never once charged anyone.
Of course because of that the dealers felt like they could kill people at will with no risk so they did it a lot. Often over very minor things like a £20 debt or one time someone they were forcing to move the drugs for them between the flat they were in and the alley they were sending customers to coming back just £5 short because he'd not counted the money properly ("busting the shots" ie selling the bags to people is a very high-risk, high-stress thing and addicts regularly manage to confuse the dealer or the person the dealer is forcing to "run" the drugs to the "spot"). They even killed his dog too.
But the way the police didn't regard the murder of our friends and what was essentially our community as human lives worthy of having any care about very much deeply sums up how you're looked at as an addict and how much you're trapped by your addiction, cos it feels like no one but your drug and other junkies will ever care about you, or treat you as a human being.
If you've read to here then thank you.
If you want to help a human being then next time you get asked for money on the street don't give them money, give them love & respect; sit with a beggar and talk to them, find out about them, treat them as a human being with their own interests, personality, hopes, fears, humour and problems. And please don't try to sympathise with how hard their life must be, they want someone to treat them normally; if you do they will probably act like you can't understand how hard their life is or what they've been through and that's because cos you probably can't. You probably wouldn't expect to be able to relate to the suffering a child soldier has been through so why should you be able to relate to someone whose life had also been death violence, death and abuse in it from a young age.
Please also remember they might be withdrawing and don't have time to talk to you because they need to make money as quickly as possible. Please don't be offended by this because withdrawals are like a parasite that controls your brain; you can't think of anything other than getting well again.
But most of the time that person is going to be so so glad to talk to someone who doesn't look down on them, or preach to them, or focus on their addiction and how hard their life must be, but instead just talks to them like another human being with aspirations and interests and stories, who gives them a name and a face and a personality rather than just seeing them as another faceless beggar they walk past every day but never even acknowledge. This is what will help them.
If you get to know some addicts and find out they're actually decent people who are suffering and want to help even more then you can find your local substance abuse/misuse services and volunteer your money or time.
Studies have shown addiction is formed from a lack of care from other humans (especially at a young age), so the person bonds with a drug to alleviate the lack of bonds with other humans.
Just a conversation can help rebuild a shattered bridge between an addict and society and take them one step closer to believing they are with knowing and could live a normal life if they kick their addiction.
Thank you.
@Gavin B. Hi Gavin. Yes thanks - coming up for 23 months, so nearly two years, clean soon & I feel so far from that world now I can't imagine going back anymore. Got my life together, am a productive member of society which feels absolutely amazing, to be contributing, paying taxes & working, and I'm teaching myself Mandarin, I could never have done that before. Have made a lot of new friends & the biggest step has been I've learnt to trust people, that outside of that world I don't have to assume negative intentions in everyone I meet or that everyone I'm around, no matter how well I know them, is probably playing an angle for their own advantage & would drop you in a moment if you're inconvenient.
The sad thing about that is too that a lot of people who are clean (not just strangers, most dealers have this attitude too) assume because you're homeless & an addict that anything about you can be bought or sold, that you have no principles or that drugs are the only thing that matters or will ever matter to you. There's a few out there that maybe that's true for, but even then that's because they made that choice along the way. Being an addict is like doing terrible things constantly while also trying to insist to yourself you're a decent and moral person, you can't ever let go of that belief really, despite the evidence. It's got its own internal logic & morality in a way, and you are far from just being available to the whims of the highest bidder.
But yeah learning to trust people has been the biggest step & the longest journey. It took a lot of believing people were out to screw me over & finding out they weren't to get it back. And it took a long time to feel like people would see me as someone equal & someone valued, not like I had this black mark on my forehead.
Anyway, thanks so much for reading, just that really makes a difference. I think if there were more people who genuinely wanted to hear addict's stories, their real stories warts & all, not the noble, rose-tinted version that we had to tell to beg for money or to avoid being judged (or often just because we were ashamed of ourselves, our choices & our lives) then that'd go a long, long, way towards healing the broken people on the streets, the people addicted to crack & heroin. Because living every day knowing it's not very likely you'll last much longer & feeling relieved & comforted by that - that's a very broken human being. So thank you.
Words cannot describe how lucky & how grateful I was to be given a way to get out. I still bump into and talk to people from that life all the time (none of which have shown anything at all but the greatest genuine happiness for me for doing it or any hint of wanting to pull me back in) and honestly I feel so much pain when I see them, even the ones who screwed me over or did me wrong, because they're all people to me: people I laughed & joked with, people I talked to for hours sat in alleyways in the rain waiting for dealers, or in hidden spots just out of the public eye to use, learning about them, what their story was, what they were good at, what they had wanted to do with their life, where things had first gone wrong and where things finally went wrong - every conversation like that is always had in the sense of the final: this is where our life has ended & all our ambitions, hobbies, things we care about are in the past now and can never be returned, life's just a slow suicide from here on. I think that sums up what it's like more than anything and I wish there was a clear path for every user to see & take that led to getting clean & getting out, and actually doing it for good.
Thanks again, I really appreciate you taking your time out of your day to read it, and even more for actually hearing it. Sorry for the long message again, it's really difficult to talk about this stuff without a lot of words, if that makes sense... All the best to you Gavin.
Honestly an inspiring read, you should be proud of yourself for the progress you made. I want to go check out that book now, this is a real eye opener on something I admittedly hadn't thought about much before.
Thank you for sharing your story ❤
Hey buddy, I hope you are doing well!
A wall of text written by people smarter than you doesn't change the fact that it's a choice. Even without help many trauma victims cope without drugs. You chose to shoot up, knowing it's a crime, and whatever you did under the excuses of "I'm an addict/high/victim" doesn't exonerate you. You are not a victim, addicts make victims. Decriminalization only creates more victims, what we need is enforcement, cops rarely arrest junkies so many weak people take drugs knowing them will be seen as a "victim". Enforce it and less people will take the risk of ever starting.
Plot twist: He's actually still undercover as an Ex-Undercover cop to find out what's really going on INSIDE INSIDER
Plot twist : hes accually not even a cop, he just fakes it on insider to be able to sell fake information to the cartels.
@jeff well the cops might be a joke, but I won't say gangsters in Britain aren't tough.
@jeff well thts better than everyday mass shootings in US so surely u gotta hv better police
He is an undercover alien that pretends to be a human, that works for a foreign government as sleeper agent and pretends to be an undercover cop that pretends to be a drug dealer.
He's been undercover investigating Ricky Gervais for over a decade.
Goes by the name "Karl Pilkington" on the streets.
TFW you realize Fast and Furious was a more accurate undercover cop movie than a car movie.
Well yeah, it's a rewrite of "Point Break" but instead of Surfer dudes, it's car guys.
To be fair The Fast and The Furious started off as a cop movie with a gimmick being cars. Even 2 Fast 2 Furious and Fast and Furious followed this theme until Fast 5 changed it into criminals and ultimately Furious 6 changed it into...well what Fast and Furious is now. The F&F is my favorite movie franchise but it should of ended at 5. It was the perfect ending but greed prevented that from happening
@@mizunokage124 I expect by the next one they'll basically be fighting the Avengers.
@@GhostEye31 something something Thor's Hummer
Kyuba it became ridiculous once the rock got involved
"I had to take some speed once, which was quite uncomfortable......"
I take Adderall for ADHD. At my usual dose, it really isn't very noticeable. One day I absent-mindedly took a double-dose. "Uncomfortable" is a good word for it. I was basically hanging onto my desk for three hours.
Eren Yeager idiot
@GazB And those people are called idiots.
@@leohong5845 when I doubled my dose, there was no fun involved.
@@leohong5845 Wahahahah, that pseudo-flex on the internet. Sure bud, whatever helps you cope.
As a German speaker, The first time I watched the in inglorious Bastard scene, I knew Michael Fassenbender was going to be toast. That sign thing was very authentic.
I remember that this guy who was a Russian agent was identified by the way he held flowers after he bought them. I guess in Russia it's customary to carry the flowers with the bulbs pointing toward the ground, so they knew right away.
Somewhere, someone is watching this and saying “I KNEW THAT GUY WAS A COP!”
I often think about this. I can't help but feel that 99% of undercover cops are unrecognisable outside of their areas and outfits.
"I had to take some speed, once...
{recalls traumatic flashback}
... which was quite uncomfortable."
I didn’t get the comments about it, what’s speed like? Isn’t it enjoyable? (Sorry, oblivious to drugs)
The speed he took was 40% strength and the highest percentage of speed bought on the streets is roughly 8%. Apparently this stuff was so potent it was practically dissolving the bag it was in. He said he was royally sick as someone with no former experience of speed and thus no tolerance, and was up for 3 days straight. He also had to not alert his wife and newborn baby that he was high as a kite as she wasn’t allowed to know the nature of his work, but he did say his house had never been so clean. He also had to go sick from work on the fourth day after taking the speed because he was so hungover, and his colleagues again didn’t know he was involved in undercover work.
@@ZOSOqueen that’s insane! How do you know this?
Eleanor Zeigl It’s all in his book: Good Cop, Bad War. Thoroughly good read, can recommend. The full audio book is available on TH-cam 🙂
Eleanor Zeigl speed can make you feel today is the best day ever, it can make you feel paranoid as hell, it can drive you to doing routine tasks that you might not normally enjoy, it can make you physically shake, it can drive you to a heart attack.
And it can destroy your life because when you are on it you are in a bubble oblivious to how you are hurting those you love.
I used it for 20 years and I wish I hadn’t.
The fact that The Departed is somewhat realistic is kinda unnerving.
great film though
Ehren .Newton Yeah, no doubt.
a deputy in my academy class was arrested about a year after we graduated (early 2000’s) for being a plant. iirc he was caught smuggling contraband into the jail system.
morimo11 That’s nuts. Don’t they vet people pretty thoroughly before they join the academy? I wonder how no one noticed he was a plant.
@WestNileSnipes yes very thoroughly. But with no arrest history, no gang tattoos, and enough people to lie to the background investigator the system can be beaten.
James McAvoy could play him a movie.
Agree
Should do movie contract
I could play him a movie, I've got a blu-ray player.
I was thinking Edward Norton
Can he do that accent?
I love the way he discussed with Jason Bourne how the inaccuracies were in the context of communicating to an audience in a visual media. It’s a great way to approach a judgement of accuracy
Yeah but in the context of this movie I'm pretty sure he grabbed a random phone as a burner
And Bourne is never undercover, he's always evading being caught lol
It's amazing that they found 30 seconds out of the entire Fast and Furious franchise that rings relatively true.
My biggest problem with the Fast and Furious is the guy who does the engineering Jesse, F1 Prize money is like $36 million USD prize money and that is just for winning one race, never mind the engineering and peripheral technology design and patents it can generate. If the guy was as good at designing engines as he is supposed to be in the movies, there is no way street racing could make him the kind of money that being in Formula 1 could provided. He could easily be making 175,K a year , plus a percentage of prize money , plus some patent or percentage of the team , if he was as good as the movie makes him out to be. Adrian Newey has something like 10 million.
In fairness to Riggs, he WAS trying to get himself killed, pretty much all the time.
Yes^
DAMMIT, RIGGS!
Exactly. What Riggs did wasn't something any normal undercover cop would (or should) do but, it was absolutely true to his character. His reputation for doing things the average cop would consider crazy/suicidal was a big part of his character arc.
And Riggs was a plain clothes detective and not a full on deep cover undercover cop.
@usmc 03retired and Christmas movie, too
The best thing about Inglourious Basterds is that it's a German playing a British character who is going undercover as a German.
And Fassbender even admitted once half the reason he wanted the role was to show off his German speaking skills 😂
Half German / half Irish
he's a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude
@@PsstImAFanOf more like he's a dude playing a 'mate' disguised as another dude.
@@PsstImAFanOf gold
Most realistic undercover scene is from the most unrealistic action movie ever In history period.
It was the first chapter. Which was more or less realistic
the first part was actually a little bit of realistic compared to the rest of the movies
@@v-trigger6137 apart from Brian's partner who almost encouraged him to switch sides
The fast and furious movies started out a little more grounded, and then with each film, they became more outrageous. I'm still waiting for the film that will have a space shuttle. They've ripped a vault out of a bank, used an attack drone, controlled cars like a swarm, flew out of skyscrapers in Dubai, had a submarine, had a tank, used an EMP explosive, had the main character turn bad for a portion of the movie, had a bad guy help out (Jason Statham), fought another tank, grounded a huge plane, had GTA gokarts, now they've attached rockets to the back of a car, and they've survived just about every cliff situation they've been in to where it's not even impressive. I'm still waiting for the full on space shuttle
I dunno man, the Transporter 2 is just....yeesh.
Someone in my family was an undercover guy decades ago during the cocaine wars in Chicago. Put a ton of mob guys away. To this day, he's the hardest man in the world to read. This guy's comments about knowing your anecdotes are dead-on. My family member (I'm being intentionally vague since mafia promised to kill him and his family) can lie about virtually any topic. He's told stories that I still don't know the veracity of. It's as if lying is a sport to him. Don't get the wrong idea, he doesn't lie maliciously like most people. He just sees what ridiculous stories he can get people to believe. And he wears a straight face at all times. Never seen him crack once. Until he starts to feel bad that you're being duped.
Really interesting part of policing. Takes a special kind of person.
“I had to take some speed once... which was quite uncomfortable.” I could not have some up with a more British sentence if I tried 😂
Not that British because most of you love powdering your nose at all times
About that speed, he mentioned in one video that “he didn’t sleep for 3 days and his apartment was cleaner than ever” 😅
@@thomashan4963 same minus staying up 3 days I just stayed up over night
have you ever been out on a friday night in britain
I could be wrong be isn't it sum up.
I think Lethal Weapon should have gotten 10/10. He said himself, “That would be a good way to get yourself killed.” And In that part of the movie he was actually trying to get himself killed.
Yeah. Oftentimes in these videos a scene is graded as inaccurate because the characters aren't following best practices, but in context there's absolutely a reason for them to not do things correctly.
Here are some the dumbest undercover cop movies.
21 JUMP STREET.
22 JUMP STREET.
CON AIR.
FACE/OFF.
THE HEAT.
KINDEGARDEN COP.
MARKED FOR DEATH.
MIAMI VICE
MISS CONGENIALITY.
PLAYING GOD.
POINT BREAK.
RAW DEAL.
SWORDFISH.
XXX.
I saw this guy give a talk about his years undercover, his experiences are incredible. Some of the stories he told were terrifying.
Where is that video/interview?
@@idislikemints I don't think it was recorded, it was a talk in Oxford at a small event in a pub. Organised by a group called Sceptics In The Pub. If you check them out, they might have some footage
@@jumpnam thank you!
Did you find the footage?
"The trouble is: It's a half a trillion dollar industry worldwide, and that inevitably causes corruption" - Man literally describes problems far outside of the illegal drug trade.
This guy is a hero and also has a common sense approach to decriminalising drugs. He’s someone who’s spent his career fighting the war on drugs and has the balls to highlight the absurdity of it.
"You've got to feel invulnerable". That's how you know this job is for a very special type of person.
To be fair, Mel Gibson was playing a suicidal character in Lethal Weapon.
Good point
True but you kind of wonder why no one at the precinct picked up on that and how he managed to remain an undercover cop in the first place!
But you also forget that this movie is just pure entertainment.
Yes he was "playing" yes
He later reprised that role in his real life.
The photo of him undercover kinda reminded me of Thom Yorke.
He IS Thom Yorke. Radiohead was just a cover story that went a bit too far.
He was on an assignment trying to infeltrate and bust crminaly overrated bands
@@gavriloprincip11 ooooohhhh ha ha lol, love it.
Lollol
How to disappear completely.
I was a heroin addict for years. I hated every moment of it. I had morals and stuff. I didn't steal, I worked 2 jobs to pay my bills and my drugs etc. One of the guys I bought drugs from was a well known drug dealer but was pretty much untouchable. One day this homeless guy came into the house of the drug dealers house (he was a connect so people that needed a dealer needed to know somebody who used drugs basically and this homeless guy would feel out the person and eventually introduce them over time) he brought this older gentle men. This older gentleman was dressed down but kind of clean cut which I found odd. He reached his arm out to shake the dealers hand and I saw a tan mark on his wrist where a watch used to be and a worn spot where he had a wedding ring. It didn't take me long to put 2 and 2 together. My dealer started asking questions (he was really suspicious of people ) and I knew my dealer was gonna ask questions. I let it start to play out but the gentleman was quick on his feet but it wasn't answers my dealer wanted to hear (it all went down really fast) so I pretended to recognize him I said "did u used to be known as JJ? " and I give him the look of "dude go with it" and he did. So then I hugged him and basically pretended to know him. I asked him things like "so how's your mom doing? Ur family still own that big lot ?" Etc and he went with it. My dealer recognized that I knew him and he cut it out. My dealer was the type that wouldn't wait. He'd kill u. Id known him for many years (we went to school together) so we had a friendship in a way. After the meeting was all said and done, I left with "JJ" and we started walking down the street and of course a car was parked on the side of the road with 2 people in the front and I knew they were watching their UC. It obviously was his first case as a UC and they must have wanted to watch to make sure the first meeting went safely. Once we got far enough away I stopped and told him "u need to cover your wrist till that tan line goes away" (generally cops, military, personal protection specialist etc all wear their watches the same way) and to put a ring on. I told him my dealer was about to bust his face up and ask questions (my dealer would use xanax with heroin and for some reason he would really really get paranoid but with meth he was fine) I told him I didn't want to watch him get killed . I told him I didn't care what he was there for but now he is vouched for,he can do his job (they weren't after me so I knew I was safe). He just nodded. About a month later my dealer was arrested. He got out about a year and a half later for "good behavior " and he developed a heart condition that the prisons basically didn't want to pay for so they let him go. My dealer obviously went back to dealing drugs and he eventually shot and killed himself. They didn't really want my dealer, they wanted to arrest him to turn him so they could get to his supplier which was the cartel. I doubt he turned, he wasn't the type at all. Years later (I finally got clean and at this point I was like 2 years clean) I volunteered for this police education program where recovering addicts will talk to officers about what to look for, what behaviors to look at etc(the town I live in has a giant heroin problem which the police had been trying to clamp down on for a hot minute) I went to the classroom cause I was asked to speak and here comes "JJ" marching in. He recognized me right away (took me a minute to remember) he was really good about it. He first said he was so happy to see me clean and healthy, then he said he was sorry for my loss (my dealer was over all a really good man just haunted by his demons. I mean his mother used to put heroin in his baby bottle to get him not to cry for God's sake. Everyone that was close to him knew his a good guy with a good heart, he just became a paranoid bad person when he did drugs. I knew for a fact he had killed like 2 people but they tried to steal his drugs and he easily had connections to make it all disappear). "JJ" thanked me for covering for him that day and I just told him I didn't wanna see someone get hurt. After I was done doing my whole speech thing, "JJ" introduced me to his boss, tole the whole story blah blah blah and offer to sponsor me through the police academy. I was honored but unfortunately I take seizure medication and law enforcement don't really like to hire someone with a health condition like that which is understandable but I did always want to be a cop or go in the military but when I was diagnosed I knew that would never happen. He said to just try the academy and see how I do, so I did. I aced through all firearms training (my dad was a marine so I've already been taught to shoot, break down a weapon etc), I had no issue with hand to hand combat (I did martial arts for 20 years) but of course I struggled with the actual book work but I did pass. Once I was done, "JJ" asked if I would reconsider but I said no because I don't want the politics which he understood so he asked if I would be interested in personal protection so I agreed to do it. Now I work as a personal protection specialist (body guard) I've done jobs for politicians, famous people, average Joe who has a lot of money etc. I absolutely love my job and love my life and its all because a UC came into my drug dealers home one day and I just happened to have the eye to notice details that most people didn't. "JJ" and I still keep in contact to this day. He has been retired for many years as a UC now and he just retired from the force 2 years ago, my wife and I went to his retirement party. Great guy. Such a random situation but thankful it happened. Life is funny that way I guess.
Thanks for sharing, bro! Hang tight
Glad things are working out for you now, very few have the bravery to stand up in a situation like that.
You need to write a book about your experience. Your writing is very good 👍
@@Mostopinionatedmanofalltime yes, except they need to learn about paragraphs! Otherwise, a fascinating story.
So you saved a lying revenue collection agent of the state who would steal your belongings and put a boot on YOUR neck had he been given the orders to do so - way to go!
It’s interesting because ‘being a different version of yourself’ and ‘using your own imagination’ is the essence of good acting. Good acting is never just pretending or imitating.
Yeah, but actors become radically different in the process.
In Argo they were vulnerable. As none of the people trying to learn their “legends” were cops. Undercover or otherwise. They were diplomats trying to get out of a country, so they only needed the essentials name, DOB, SS#, for customs agents. No custom agent was going to ask them about a bartender on a Wednesday night as they are trying to get through customs. They just want to make sure you know your basics info and maybe why you were in their country.
The thing is, just give them a birthday they already have. Unless the people looking for, or questioning them already know exactly what their real information is, and are looking out for that, getting somebody to remember a bunch of specific new information about themselves is just setting up a bunch of traps for them. If you can't use your birthday, use your spouses, or your brothers, or even a holiday, and just use your birth year. Keep the story simple and close to who you really are, and it's far easier to remember the stuff you're meant to be lying about.
Including this film as an example of one of 13 supposedly iconic undercover police officers to be commented upon struck me as just bizarre. It's as if the person selecting the films had no clue what this movie was about.
@@edwardlongshanks827 same with Lethal Weapon. Riggs is breaking the protocol as he has a death wish after an unsuccessful suicide attempt.
@@Lurklen In the film the Iranians are able to eventually reassemble the shredded documents from the embassy and find the details of the missing staff, so they know their names and dates of birth etc. They have to take on aliases as a Canadian film crew to escape so they do have to have a complete backstory, and Ben Affleck tells them the Iranians will be able to get people to question them who have lived in Canada and know all of the little details a Canadian would be expected to know.
@@Lurklen Go watch Wired's spy review. Tony's actual Wife reviewed it. Tony is the person Ben was playing. It was real.
Just answer every challenge with "u wot m8?". Easy job, easy living.
Stop putting "Change Me!" in the corner of the clip. It's distracting and adds nothing.
Pellbort how are you distracted, I didn’t notice it until you pointed out
@@janlanser648 He is paying attention, i was also distracted thinking it was some kind of score for the clip
Yes, what the hell is it supposed to mean anyway?
Pellbort what is the change me referring to you think? Commenting because I’d like a solid logic based answer lol just curious because I saw it too
@@alexisjnea Easy. Change clips
The bit where Mel "tastes" the drugs to see if they're legit, every time I see similar scenes in movies it always reminds me of the Robert Di Niro scene in Showtime when Wil Shatner is showing the cops how to check the drugs by tasting it and Di Niro's character, looking very unimpressed, simply says
"What if it's cyanide?"
Fentanyl nowadays. You can die pretty fast.
Welcome to another episode of: “Where the quarantine has lead me today”
Love your channel bro
For me, the scene in Fast and Furious, where Brian breaks undercover to save Vince, has always stood out as one of the best scenes in movie. Such good scene, and amazing done by the cast, director of photography and director...
I watched a similar video from Vanity Fair. Their Undercover expert claimed he never used illegal drugs. I found that hard to believe. This guy seems much more credible and honest.
This guy has been in the media a bit recently. Seems the real deal as an undercover cop for sure
Read his book its amazing
@@kenneththompson8933 what's it called?
@@sleepcrime good cop bad war
I watched that one as well and one thing to consider would be what were his undercover jobs for? And that guy was FBI and not about drugs but other crimes so he most likely could have very easily gone without ever using drugs… just something to think about
Most accurate part of the entire FF franchise was Walker's character calling for medical help 🤣
How can you talk about undercover work, and not bring Donnie Brasco? That's one of the best undercover movies in the world.
Also based on a true story.
Because this guy was real life Donnie Brasco!
Forget about it
Forget about it
Forgeeeet about it
Plot twist: This guy was an undercover cop in Harlem for 15 years. He lead a drug kingpin away in handcuffs and got a call later that night. The kingpin was on the phone and said to him "Okay this prank has gone far enough! If you don't let me out of here I'm callin the cops!"
I need more
Love how profesional this guy is then goes onto to say "roll a spliff". This guy is great!
People of all kinds have been saying that for over 60 years.
He did go onto to that, didn't he?
So Fast and the Furious is the most realistic? I did not see that coming...
Only that one scene of course.
and it's not the cars?????😂
Mind Blown
Seems more like Fast and the Furious is the most flattering tbh
The first one is actually a great movie. Then they got crazy.
What a line of work to be in. There would be so much stress in doing this! I couldn’t imagine how anyone could pull this off for a career.
That was a really interesting one. The way he's calm and settle and shares some real knowledge, without unnecessary judgment.
Riggs in lethal weapon wanted to die, so the situation was quite dumb to choose here
I don’t know why “bit harsh” killed me
Me: “The guy looks as clean cut and business like with such an honest face. How the heck can he be undercover officer?”
5:29 Somehow transforms to look more like a criminal than the guy he is busting.
Some people seem confused by the Inglorious Bastards scene. In Germany when we signal "3", we use thumb, index and middle finger, not index, middle and ring. So it would seem extremely odd, that someone signals three like that. And we signal it in places like bars due to the noise, as 2 and 3 can sound quite similar (which is why ie in the military you'd sometimes say Zwo instead of Zwei over radio etc, so they can understand you better).
Its explained clearly in the scene itself so yeah, weird ppl dont get it.
This is annoying if you go to Germany. If I were a foreign agent I would be discovered by the end of the day
@@benb9151 Yes, or maybe Anglos are just stupid with cripple hands? If you count on your hand, do you start "1" with thumb or index? It's also uncomfortable imo to make the 3 the anglo way.
@@youtubemodsaresnowflakelef7692 you're a fun person, really
@@sugarnads read the comments, plenty of slow people.
Which is why Democracy is clearly overrated, when you consider that if they can't understand this, they clearly can't understand complex policy issues...
Learning the story in Reservoir Dogs may not have been realistic but I really loved it. Best part of the movie by far.
Next : real cars rates disney pixar cars
Real furniture rates Disney beauty and the beast furniture.
Next: real insects rate a bug's life
This would be a fun idea for them to make on april fools or something 😁
real couples rate "romantic" "comedies"
I want a episode with Dwight, telling about his undercover missions.
Propably classified and the gangs won't like it
Pretty sure i watched him on the Shaun Attwood podcast
Glad I watched this, I never would have known Dwight and Michael in the office wasn't that realistic.
For the clip "Inglorious Bastards" the guy didn't look at him because he was hostile, he looked at him because of the fingers that he used to count the number 3, in Europe they start counting from the the thumb and not the index that's what sold the guy out, it wasn't so much so his hostility. But apart from that i love his explanations, hope he comes back again.
"I had to take speed once... which was uncomfortable..."
Ahh British understatements at their finest.
4:30 - THIS is scary stuff! Imagine how many police officers whom are dirty. There's virtually no control whom enter the police academy as long as you don't have a criminal record.
There's all kinds of control on who enters the "Police academy" in the UK a person is vetted financially as well as criminally, throughout training candidates are monitored.
Corruption isn't widespread and tends to come about from poor impulse control from cops (who develop bad habits or have bad 'friends.')
No Donnie Brasco not even once??
I KNOW RIGHT
Hey guys, don’t be unkind, they couldn’t show Donnie Branco cos it was a raging success. I saw an interview with a mafia chief who was around then, and he said Branco was so convincing NOBODY suspected him. He caused the capture of a massive amount of mafiosi, and pretty much started the demise of the mafia. Maybe they didn’t judge it cos he’s still alive.
Tamer Ciftci , hey don’t lose your s#!t cos you can’t count or read. I didn’t say “I think” at all, and the only “maybe” referred to who created the video. You need to take a walk and get some fresh air. Clearly you’re spending too much time in your own company and you’ve forgotten how to be nice.
Arghh forget aboud it.
It was in the video Ex mafia member ranges Mafia movies
What about Donnie Brasco? I wanted to hear his view on that
They did that in the Ex mafia member ranges Mafia movies
7:30 good observation that "it would be a way to get killed" since Riggs was actively trying to get killed on duty in that part of the franchise.
Just an 80's action movie, but nonetheless, good catch :)
I can't even imagine being undercover with people who do drugs. You have to partake. I wonder how many undercover cops have died of an overdose, became addicted, or were figured out by the bad people. So scary!!
The way he so casually glosses over events that would reasonably cause any normal person a lifetime of nightmares makes me think that maybe my life isn't so bad after all.
09:59 I know it is a little nitpick, but IIRC he bought burner phones from a kiosk right off the street. Bourne Ultimatum came out right before Bluetooth headsets became a thing. Seeing someone with an earpiece going to a cellphone wouldn’t have been that unusual at the time and he had to improvise with the tools available to him. He is a rogue spy and has no support at all, so he has to improvise. The pulling up his lapel to talk is still dumb though.
I think he dismissed "Rush" a bit quickly, seeing as it was based on the memoirs of an undercover narcotics officer in 1970s small town Texas and they took pains to portray it straight.
Another good undercover scene was in "State of Grace" (1990) where Sean Penn is grilled by Ed Harris on the places he's been.
Seen two of his videos now. Why has no-one made a movie? This guy is a legend. The things he's done, yet so calm and collected.
Because no one wants to see a movie about drug dealers getting caught with immense evidence backing them up, and getting a suspended sentence or the case just being binned because the justice system is the most blatantly corrupt of all
DAMN he really pulled that man bun off!
Serpico is actually a very true story. All the way down to the fact that he was set up by his own Squad and shot. New York during the 70s was disgusting and the police department was almost completely corrupt.
9:59 Perhaps nowadays earphones with leads may be getting less common, but you see earpods everywhere now, so I think an updated Bourne film could easily have him with an earpod doing exactly the same thing and it wouldn't be suspicious.
It’d be fair to not trust Orange, he obviously wasn’t great at his job.
He stood back and watched White blast two of his colleagues. Orange forgot where the line was.
@@marknorris1381 wasn’t that his first UC Job? In reality what was he expected to do in an era before cell phones and surrounded by armed murders?
@@alexander1902 remembering it was just a movie and not real life, if you were applying it to reality, yes, I agree, it would have been inexperience on his part. In a way if such a situation were real you'd question why the LAPD would put someone inexperienced in over their head like that. The characters were all definitely killers who would shoot you pretty quickly.
Well, Bourne used the phone and handfree he was able to buy in that shoppingmall the scene takes place in, so it wasn't high tech government equipment he was dealing with, so in the context of the movie i think it makes sence. But i get that an actual person trained in surveilance will find odd shit like that.
Its was nice of you to give him some credit there, but I think he got it all wrong. He was saying it would look suspicious to have ear buds in your ear. It's perfect, you dont have to touch the microphone and everybody in there is wearing them! He obviously hasn't been in a train station recently. We're told he worked undercover, I think he was following shoplifters in a shopping centre!!
@@McHunt84 Bourne is a spy flick so I am a little confused about why they included it when most of the films are about undercover cops. That being said if a spy agency were surveiling an area they absolutely have the communications equiptment to listen in on any device in the area. The CIA or NSA would absolutely get suspicious if someone they had under surveillance put an earpiece in his ear.
Funny thing about the anecdote from "Reservoir Dogs" is, that this story actually happened to me about 25 years ago. So now everytime I tell the story of me having been "caught" having weed on me by a police dog, who then got yelled at by "his" police officer, because the cop didn't think I was looking like somebody having weed on him, people will say "Nah, you got that one from that Tarantino movie". Fortunately I am not a gangster, as other gangsters would immediately think I was an undercover cop if I'd tell them the story. ^^
This is the most wholesome. I am so happy to hear that your journey took you to a happier place.
"The ethics of undercover policing is quite straightforward. You remain a police officer, so your first priority is still to preserve life"
Maybe the US shouldn't have broke away from Britain
7:29 To be fair, Riggs is trying to kill himself.
Yes, Murtaugh is wondering if Riggs is just trying to draw psycho-nut pension or really is a psycho-nut.
@@Rallarbusen Well, they show him even attempting to shoot himself in his trailer so there ya go.
@@Rusaarules but he can't pull it off. Also, his "attempted suicides by gangs" also never work because he doesn't really want to die and defends himself.
12:25 never thought I'd hear this again
There's a couple movies I'd like to hear him talk about, Training Day, Street Kings, and Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.
This man said "Sorry, mate, I didn't mean to tussle you" to a HOOLIGAN and got away with it because the amount of confidence he has is off the charts
I would have wanted him to explain how you would reconcile preserving your false identity vs exposing yourself as a cop in order to save someone's life. Like if you see your buddy gunned down do you possibly let him die in order to stay undercover? Youd have to forego preserving life then...
He literally explains it.
In many cases a professional actor brings parts of his own personality into the stage, so being an uncover cop requires the same skill.
I saw this lad on the Shaun Attwood podcast, fascinating man..
To bad he didn't do some of the BBCs' stuff like "Line of Duty" and "Informer".
I think he's working with the Line of Duty writers adapting his book(s).
That bit about the signal of putting his hand on top of the car being triggered by the suspect putting his hand on top of the car makes no sense.
How could you leave out Donnie Brasco that’s one of the greatest undercover films ever made!
"Cannabis a few times" yea me too guy me too 😂
Yeah, if you watch his body's reaction when he said that, I am betting it was more than a few times.
My last name means cannabis haha
🤣
i love the way he speaks , his accent , his attitude
“A cop’s first duty is to preserve life.” Welp if the accent hadn’t already given it away, that mindset alone tells us this dude is not American.
Sigh
Very true, the “protect and serve” slogan applies to themselves in covering up when they ignore the rights of citizens. 3 members of my family are/were cops and they all say the same thing: the training american police receive is far too short and not comprehensive enough (especially when compared to the police of France or Germany or Britain or Scandinavia, ya know, civilized countries). It can take years to become an officer in those countries as opposed to a couple months here. Secondly the filtering of applicants is too lenient... many of the worst cops in america should never have become cops because the personality/psych evaluations should be catching these thugs and bullies but they don't.
@@corvus2512 ye, we have pretty brutal psych evaluation
Very nice source and analysis. BUT they should have had him look at Point Break as well - not only the whole Johnny Utah scenario but also the scene with Tom Sizemore, when they realize they've blown his cover/ ruined all his hard work and how much he's sacrificed. Also Donnie Brasco... come on, forget about it!
Departed is a remake of a Hong Kong film called Infernal Affairs. Absolutely great movie. I love the Departed but this movie is still better because of the layers and complexity of the story and humanism.
How can it be better? It's pretty much a scene for scene clone.
This guy is awesome. I need several more videos of him speaking about abutting he wants.
A lot of folk seem to confuse an 'undercover' officer with a 'plain clothed' officer. Two completely different things.
Is the real life distinction strictly adhered to in movies? Of course it's not, so it's no surprise people are confused.
You find the media confuse it, which may also be part of the problem. E.g. 'the suspect was arrested by undercover plain clothes police'. Detectives aren't undercover (as you point out), they identify themselves when they have to, they make arrests and they work together or in teams. No so for undercover police officers.
"He injected heroin without a filter into his groin."
Call me overly cautious, but I'm beginning to think that heroin is a bad idea.
Damn this guy had a criminal threaten him with a Duke Nukem line and he kept his shit straight, props.
5:43 He picked up on the fingers he held up, a German would have held up the thumb, index and middle finger
First time I saw that scene, I thought Tarantino had made a mistake. I was whispering to my friend in the theater that it was the wrong 3 fingers and how any good undercover operative should have known that. I was _SO_ happy a few moments later when it was the detail used to out the undercover guy. Masterful use of a little cultural detail by Tarantino.
POINT BREAK would've been a great movie to get his feedback on.
Anyhoo, fun vid. :)
They used the point break remake instead (i.e. fast and furious)
The real one.
It would be interesting to hear where the line between "preserving life" and "never break cover" is - it seems that most situations you'd find yourself in would mean the decision wouldn't be easy, I suppose "preserve your own life" would need to be factored in.
Would have loved to hear his opinion on Donnie Brasco
They Forgoddaboudit.
This guy is a legend. No show-off, just badass
Buy this man’s book: Good Cop, Bad War. It’s absolutely fascinating and an amazing read
I find it funny that he rates "Argo" as he does, considering that the folk that are being drilled aren't police officers, they're essentially Civilians, and the only guy there that's part of any kind of undercover agency is CIA, and the husband of the CIA Disguise Expert that shows up on the "Wired" channel every so often XD And she praises this movie, as I recall.
Yep!!! I love her.
A younger Mark Knopfler on his time as an undercover cop.
I really like this guy, hope they get him on again sometime.
Who would have thought that the most realistic thing portrayed in The Fast and the Furious has nothing to do with cars, and speed and Civics and NOS but field medical report to an emergency operator... Shocking! Give the guy who wrote that part a raise and an Oscar
I like how he stresses "If someone is suspicious of you, they will challenge it *Instantly* ". Hilarious.
This gentleman clearly knows what he’s talking about, so why waste his time or ours asking about a goofy popcorn bums-on-seats comedy like 21 Jump Street? Don’t get me wrong, it was a fun movie , but if you didn’t take it with a grain of salt then the last laugh is on you.
Kev Stacey It was more to talk about what heppens when you have a partner and both of you are undercover cops. How that situation is much more complicated and you are giving the bad guys x2 information, also is riskier since if one of you fucks up you are both in big problems.
You both have to match looks, talk, friendship... etc Much harder than just being you alone.
My name Jeff
@@andreiasimov33 Excellent point.