Police Stings and Sex Predators

John Jay Wiley (0:00): He is a retired state trooper. The got involved investigating crimes against children, including online sexual molesters and suspects that a lot of you wouldn't suspect that wanted to drug children. He's here to talk about that in his life after on the law enforcement talk radio show. Welcome to the law enforcement talk radio show. In the law enforcement talk radio show, we are joined by special guest talking about their experiences, the realities of investigating crimes, plus those who have experienced horrendous trauma, police, first responders, military, and victims of crime share their stories.

John Jay Wiley (0:38): Hi. I'm John Jay Wiley. In addition to being a broadcaster, I'm also a retired police sergeant. Be sure to check out our website, letradio.com, and also like us on Facebook. Search for the law enforcement talk radio show.

John Jay Wiley (0:53): If you're on the clubhouse drop in audio chat app, be sure to look for me and follow me. My name's John, the letter J, Wiley, W I L E Y. You can also search for LETradioshow. That's John J Wiley, w I l e y, at LET Radio Show on the clubhouse drop in audio chat app. Calling us from California, we have Carlos Rodriguez on the law enforcement talk radio show.

John Jay Wiley (1:25): He is retired from the Washington State Police. See, he's a Washington retired Washington State trooper. During his career, which he'll talk around in a few moments, he got involved in investigating crimes against children, which we'll talk about. He also wrote the book, The Ugly Underneath. The website is theuglyunderneath.com.

John Jay Wiley (1:45): Carlos, a, thanks for your service, and b, thanks for agreeing to talk about this on a law enforcement talk radio show.

Unknown Speaker (1:50): Yeah. Great. Thanks for having me.

John Jay Wiley (1:52): By the way, and police work is and I I hate to say this, but one of the things that still bothers me is crimes against children. And that's not a field that most people wanna get into, and they don't volunteer for that. It's quite often I find that people like myself have a bigger version to these crimes against children and especially from so called loved ones. I just don't understand it to this day.

Carlos Rodriguez (2:15): Yeah. You know? And and when I when I first got into this work, I didn't even know that, the Washington State Patrol even investigated these types of cases.

John Jay Wiley (2:24): And what I I had a a former coworker on from Baltimore Police Department, and he's retired. He worked, and I can't remember the ICAC or something from Maryland State Police involving Internet crimes against children.

Unknown Speaker (2:37): Yeah. And and and that's what, the work I did, it was with the Missing and Exploited Children's Task Force, and we were an affiliate of ICAC, which is the Internet Crimes Against Children.

Unknown Speaker (2:45): How did you get into that? Is that something you wanted to do?

Carlos Rodriguez (2:49): No. Well, what had happened is I had just left I was working the road and I was trying to get into work with our fusion center where they handle data and intel for for Washington State. And that position got filled because trying to get back to work with a supervisor I had worked with for a while. And he said, Hey, have you heard of this task force? I think you should check it out.

Carlos Rodriguez (3:13): I think you'd be really good there. So I went cross train there and I learned that they worked crimes against children and investigated people who were trading these horrific images of of horrible things happening to kids. And I went to a warrant. I watched how they did everything. And once I realized what they what was going on and how prolific it was, I thought, how can I not be doing this?

Unknown Speaker (3:37): I I get that me a little bit differently.

Unknown Speaker (3:39): I I get that part. But here's the thing. It's like and I don't get disturbed. There's an overused term. Like to say haunted by memories.

John Jay Wiley (3:47): And I the things that really bother me the most that are crimes against children, crimes of violence, sexual violence, doesn't matter what it is, and crimes against elderly. Those are ones that that's come to mind first and foremost, and they usually show up when I don't want them to.

Carlos Rodriguez (4:02): Yes. I you know, I I think for me and it took me a while to figure it out. Didn't know why that I was able to do the work. So it used to actually make me angry when other people would tell me, hey, thanks for what you I couldn't do that. I've got kids.

Carlos Rodriguez (4:22): And I would think, well, I've got kids. I do that. You're a cop. You should be doing this. You should be helping people.

Carlos Rodriguez (4:28): And it took me a while to realize that not everybody has the capacity to work these types of cases. It's like I can't go play basketball in the NBA. I can't build a rocket. I can't fly a jet. And it's the same kind of thing.

Carlos Rodriguez (4:43): I realize that through life, there were certain things that helped prepare me to to be able to do these these types of things. Just I had compartmentalize things all throughout my life, which I think we all do, but it's certain things where I just became really good at that. And then when I worked these cases, that's that's what I applied. And you're right, over time, like the images, they're images in my head that I still can't get rid of no matter how hard I try. And I'll say when I was doing the work, I didn't realize how much it had affected me, but it does affect you.

Carlos Rodriguez (5:19): And I think if you're out there doing this type of work, you don't really realize how much it affects you until you're not doing it anymore. And then you, because you don't have the need to compartmentalize things quite the same way. And you also don't have, usually, you don't have the same support structure, the same people that are in it. So it starts to you start to see what type of toll that it it took on you.

Unknown Speaker (5:41): And one of the things and and by the way, that's there's a couple buzzwords in the the law enforcement industry. Compartmentalize is one of them that I hear all the time. And you've become very good at that after a while. The other one here is resilience and mental health, all that stuff. And I'll be honest with you, Carlos, I think that a a lot of talk of window dressing when it comes to agencies and departments.

Unknown Speaker (6:04): They really don't seem to care too much about the welfare of their people.

Carlos Rodriguez (6:08): Yeah. I'll say when I first got to the task force, there was a wellness program that was new. It really wasn't implemented. As we went there, I ended up going to some training. It's called SHIFT training.

Carlos Rodriguez (6:20): It's provided by the Innocent Justice Foundation and it's provided to law enforcement to do this type of work. I'm very glad that I went to that because it really helped me and helped me put some safeguards in place for my people, for my detectives and myself. I'll say I didn't always follow them myself because I think I took better care of my detectives than I did of myself. And so that is helpful. But the thing where you talk about, sometimes it's just window dressing.

Carlos Rodriguez (6:50): You're absolutely right. When I go around across the nation and I meet law enforcement officers everywhere, you see people that are afraid to speak up about how things may be affecting them because they're afraid they're going to lose their position or they feel that they're damaged or broken. At my department, we ended up, we didn't use our, the psychologists that we had for the department. We ended up getting a contract with someone who used to work these types of crimes. I was very fortunate that our administration got it as much as they could because they didn't work the cases, but they supported us and they allowed us to have that person on contract who used to do work the cases and then now had retired and was provided therapy.

Carlos Rodriguez (7:36): And so if anybody needed to go speak to her, they would just go and there are no questions asked. The bill would just come in. It wouldn't say who it was unless there was something that needed to be brought to the department's attention for the safety of that officer. But I'll say I don't think we did that enough. I I think it should be mandatory more often.

Carlos Rodriguez (8:01): It was once a year, and then people can go whenever they want it, but really, that wasn't enough. I would go at first because I was the boss, and I wanted to show that, hey. I'm going. It's okay.

Unknown Speaker (8:11): Look at me. I'm okay. I have nothing bad happening.

Carlos Rodriguez (8:15): But I didn't go enough. And and then when I did go, it did help. It helped a ton. So I I think that's extremely important. And just if you're a supervisor out there, you know, when you say, hey, whatever you need, you know, we'll get it for you.

Carlos Rodriguez (8:31): You know, if you say that, you know, back it up. And what your people need, they need resources and they need your support. They have That just these, you know, pat on the

John Jay Wiley (8:41): I get periodically, I'm sure you get too. So, oh, meet so and so, my niece, my nephew, my son, my daughter, whatever it might be. They wanna be a police officer. What advice would you give them? And the first thing I tell them is you go every year and you see a dentist for routine checkups.

John Jay Wiley (8:56): You go every year to get a physical. Get yourself a trauma informed therapist and start. Get started, be proactive about it before bad things happen because you're going to get dinged up. It's inevitable. It's going to happen.

Unknown Speaker (9:09): Yes. Yes. It does. And then and then surround yourself with people.

John Jay Wiley (9:13): And don't wait for the department to to order you to to go because, by then, it's not good being on their radar. We're talking with Carlos Rodriguez. He's retired from the Washington State Police. He, spent many years, which we'll talk about in a few moments, investigating crimes against children, and, we'll talk about some of those in a moment. He's the author of the book, the ugly underneath, and his website is theuglyunderneath.com.

John Jay Wiley (9:38): That's the uglyunderneath.com. This is law enforcement talk radio show. Don't quit anywhere. We will be right back. Get access to free podcast versions of the show and more on Facebook.

John Jay Wiley (9:53): Do a search for the law enforcement talk radio show, and be sure to click like. Contest from great state of California, we have Carlos Rodriguez on the law enforcement talk radio show. Carlos is retired from the Washington State Police. And, yeah, I know he's living in California now. He's a West Coast guy.

John Jay Wiley (10:16): During his career, he investigated crimes against children, including a lot of sexual crimes, which we'll talk about in a few moments. He's the author of the book, The Ugly Underneath, and his website is theuglyunderneath.com. That's theuglyunderneath.com. Carlos, before we went to break, you started leading into some of your story. How long did you investigate crimes against children?

Carlos Rodriguez (10:38): I investigated crimes against children for approximately eight years towards the end of my career.

John Jay Wiley (10:43): That's a long time. And by the way, in Baltimore, I'm sure it's similar to the state patrol in Washington state. You've got to do your time on the street and that involves weekends, holidays, rotating shift work, all that stuff. And I could understand wanting to get out and and reach for anything. Is that what prompted you to do this?

Carlos Rodriguez (11:06): No. I had the opportunity to go cross train with the the task force I went to. And once I saw what they did, I thought, I I need to do this. And then so and then I joined the task force there.

Unknown Speaker (11:20): When we were kids

Unknown Speaker (11:21): And

John Jay Wiley (11:22): Well, I'm I'm much younger, much younger. I'm I'm older than you are. But when we were kids, we we were constantly giving the the talk about the stranger in the van and he's offering you candy and look for his kitten, all that stuff. Be beware of their predators. Now it seems like a lot of that action happens online.

John Jay Wiley (11:39): Am I wrong?

Carlos Rodriguez (11:41): No. You're absolutely right. There they a lot of it does happen online. And I mean, there are still people out there. You know, most of these cases aren't some creepy guy in a park or a van, you know, that gets overly sensationalized.

Carlos Rodriguez (11:55): And then oftentimes I've seen kids, if a creepy person comes up to him or looks at him at the playground, you know, they're not they're not stupid. They usually figure out, hey, this guy's weird. The ones you gotta worry about are familial people known to the family Right. And then online where they where they start to get kids to, relax and think that they know them and become their friend.

John Jay Wiley (12:15): And with most crimes of violence, one of the things that my wife and I met her years at her time for police work is stranger on stranger crime is is very rare. It doesn't happen very often. In crimes of violence, it's not the boogeyman down the street you gotta worry about. It's the person that lives with you.

Carlos Rodriguez (12:33): Yes. And you know, when I first started working these cases, I I had to change how I talk to my kids because it used to be, hey, if somebody did this to you, they're never gonna find them. You'd have like, that's I think the knee jerk reaction that most people say. And then when I started working these cases and I started to see that most of the time it was someone known to the child, I thought I I need to change that phrase because if something happens to my own kid Right. I don't want them to protect whoever it is and then just have that conversation with them that it's never their fault.

Carlos Rodriguez (13:04): It's never their fault. They didn't have a say that no matter how guilty they feel or how or they think they're gonna get in trouble, they're not going to get in trouble. And then they can trust me and to be able to have that conversation with them because that's one of the number one ways to prevent some of these things happening. It's not some app you put on your phone, which can help, but it's really having the ability to have a conversation with your kids. That's that's number one.

John Jay Wiley (13:29): I think that goes a long way. And part of it is, Carlos, and I I wanna know if this is familiar territory with you is I didn't want my kids to have to worry about me. I didn't want them to be thrust into adult roles when they were little. Of course, they're in their thirties now, but we had frank conversations. And what is dad gonna do to this guy?

Unknown Speaker (13:49): I didn't want them to be concerned about that.

Carlos Rodriguez (13:52): Yeah. Absolutely. And, you know, even when I started when I was in law enforcement, I didn't really talk about what I did around my kids just in in an effort to protect them from the things that I saw, whether it be when I was working crimes against children or when I worked in narcotics and I did those different things. And my kids didn't didn't really, well, my son, he didn't even know I was a police officer because when I think the last time I'd worn a uniform, he he wasn't, he was just a baby. And he didn't really see me in a uniform until I had to unfortunately, I had to go to a funeral for one of my friends.

Carlos Rodriguez (14:25): And and then he he realized, oh, my dad's a cop.

Unknown Speaker (14:29): I can imagine that conversation. Holy cow. That is the police.

Unknown Speaker (14:34): Yeah. It was it was it was really sad. I mean, I remember when he saw me with the uniform, I picked him up, and he grabbed my my badge. And then he says, I want you to take this off. And I thought, no.

Carlos Rodriguez (14:46): I gotta leave that I gotta leave that on, bub. And he's like, no, I want you to take the police suit off. And he told me it's because if I wear the police suit, then the bad guys are gonna kill me. They'll know I'm the cops and they'll kill me. If I don't have it on, they won't know.

Unknown Speaker (15:02): And so at that point, I was like, okay. We need to have a a talk with with both our with both my kids.

Unknown Speaker (15:08): Yeah. And For sure.

Unknown Speaker (15:09): So they know I'm I'm gonna be okay, you know, best I can. And I did the best I could. I mean, you can never you can't ever tell what's gonna happen. You do the best to protect yourself and your team, but, you know, you you really don't know. I'm very fortunate that I

John Jay Wiley (15:21): I need to to really be aware of it, and I'm very aware of now the shoulda, coulda, woulda. So I did the best I could. What I worked narcotics for a long time, and the hair grows, the beard grows, all that stuff grows, the clothing's different. And when I before I got promoted to sergeant, they put me back in patrol in a uniform car, and I was like, what a relief this is. People, yeah, you got a target on your back, you know, but they know exactly who you're dealing with.

Unknown Speaker (15:48): Yeah. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (15:49): Did you feel that, when your your time in uniform was a little bit different than all the responsibilities were the same, was a little bit different or a little bit more of a relief for you?

Unknown Speaker (16:01): I'll say, you know, I didn't quite look at it that way. I think when when I worked in narcotics, people would always ask me, hey. I go, I don't know if I could do this because we were trying to recruit someone into our task force. He's like, I don't know if I could do this because I shot we just did this this buy did a by walk. And he's like, I shop at this grocery store.

Carlos Rodriguez (16:24): You know, what if I were to run into someone? And I told him, I said, well, think of it this way. If you're in uniform and you run into somebody and you're in plain clothes, they're gonna know that you're alone.

Unknown Speaker (16:35): Right.

Unknown Speaker (16:35): But if you run into them and they recognize you, they're gonna look around and say, where's where's this guy's team?

Unknown Speaker (16:40): Right.

Carlos Rodriguez (16:41): And and and so then maybe it gives you an opportunity to to do something. And then with those instances, I don't know if it ever happened to you, but I I ran into, I think there's been three different times where I ran into someone that I had investigated and one guy had gone to prison. And this time I was with my kid, but we had a plan as to what we would do. And we got to implement the plan, anything that like eight. And the plan was depending on what happened on the severity of it.

Carlos Rodriguez (17:09): But with this one, could just say, hey, bub, it's it's time for you to go stand over there. That was the code. And he was to my surprise, he was super surprised. I mean, excited that he wants. He was like, it's right now it's happening.

Carlos Rodriguez (17:24): So he ran to the end of the aisle and and posted up. And then I had the conversation with with the guy and and then nothing happened. I mean, the guy actually he he he was on contract. He was a CI on contract and he didn't live up to his end sooner of going to prison. And then he got out, and he actually thanked me because he said he messed up, you know, on his part, which which surprised me.

Carlos Rodriguez (17:45): I wasn't Right.

Unknown Speaker (17:45): That's pretty rare, but does happen. Yeah. Yeah. The closest I came to that was I was working with the TEA, and I I came home early one day for whatever reason. I was a in a a a truly undercover car.

John Jay Wiley (17:57): I was in a Pontiac Firebird, Formula 400. And there were two guys who are targets of our investigation and on our front porch. And they were like their cover story was, we're looking for apartments for rent. Nothing's for rent in our house. And Yeah.

John Jay Wiley (18:13): I knew they're looking for me. So I called the uniformed troops. They came. They took care of business, and they interviewed them, and they left because there's nothing you could do. It's a free country.

John Jay Wiley (18:22): You could walk on front porches. We're talking with Carlos Rodriguez. He's retired from the Washington State Police. During his career, which we'll talk about in a few moments, he got involved for many years in investigating crimes against children. He's also author of the book, The Ugly Underneath, and his website is theuglyunderneath.com.

John Jay Wiley (18:41): That's theuglyunderneath.com. Don't go anywhere. I promise you, you don't want miss was coming your way. We'll be right back.

Speaker 2 (18:51): Someone asked, what's the catch? What's the cost? There is no cost for anything on the law enforcement talk radio show and podcast website. Letradio.com. Letradio.com.

Speaker 2 (19:03): Again, that's letradio.com.

John Jay Wiley (19:14): Current conversation with Carlos Rodriguez on a law enforcement talk radio show. Carlos is retired from the Washington State Police, and he is contacted from California. He is author of the book, the ugly underneath, and his website is theuglyunderneath.com. That's theuglyunderneath.com. He spent many years investigating crimes against children.

John Jay Wiley (19:35): Before we get into this, one of the things that I rarely watch police videos and and these undercover videos, The name that comes to mind the most often is Chris Hansen. And when he does to catch a predator and all this stuff, I'm like, look. One it's one thing to be in a room interviewing someone that's a suspect. I know the rules of engagement. I don't keep my hands to myself, all that stuff.

John Jay Wiley (19:56): I know it gotta be nice, but I don't know that I could do that sort of stuff. Did you did you wind up getting involved with catching these, and I'm air quoting, predators?

Carlos Rodriguez (20:08): Yes. I did. We we actually ran, We called them demand ops and we focused on people who are interested in having sex with kids ages 13 and younger. So I would run these undercover ops where we'd go into different cities around Washington State and we'd post up there for about a week at a time, either in a house or apartments and we'd set up, we have a command post, a place where the individual would go if they wanted to have sex with the kid. And, and then we'd, we'd go from there.

Carlos Rodriguez (20:40): So we thought we'd chat with them undercover online and we had received training through ICAC to do that, to make sure that we did everything the right way because we knew we were gonna, before we did these, that we may be challenged in court, which, which we were.

Unknown Speaker (20:53): Sure.

Carlos Rodriguez (20:53): So we wanted to make sure we're doing everything the right way so that person would be held accountable.

John Jay Wiley (20:58): How prevalent is this with sexual advances for people seeking sex with children online?

Carlos Rodriguez (21:04): Oh, it I I wish I could tell you that it wasn't prevalent, but it's it's it's overwhelmingly a problem. I mean, it's an epidemic. It's as easy as ordering a DoorDash or going to the store and buying something, unfortunately. And it's not just on the dark net. It's it's out there on different social sites where people wanna interact.

Carlos Rodriguez (21:29): That's that's where it's happening.

Unknown Speaker (21:31): And and part of this is look. I I think and I had to learn to adjust them. Sure. You did too. But I think like a normal person.

John Jay Wiley (21:37): I don't think like a criminal. And, what really helped me was if I was a murderer, what would I do? Where would I go next? If I was this, what would I do? The problem is a lot of these people, it's it's totally foreign that he wouldn't they would even do this.

Carlos Rodriguez (21:54): Yeah. Well, when I first when I first did our first, operation, I thought we were gonna fail. I thought no one was gonna show up. And within ten minutes of me posting our first ad, we had hundreds of responses before it was flagged and removed. And so, and I thought, well, here, here we go.

Carlos Rodriguez (22:14): And then we ended up as as we as we did each operation, we got better and we got more people who were trained to help us because my task force was small. I had two people, sometimes just one other detective and myself. And our area of responsibility was the the entire state to help help other people where they needed to, when they needed help and they didn't have our level of expertise. So we would travel around and as we started to get better at this and just more knew how to more organized, We would average about seven arrests a night for someone seeking sex with 13 and younger. And we could do more, but when you run those types of operations, have to look out for, you have to look out for your people as far as fatigue.

Carlos Rodriguez (22:59): Fatigue is really big because if you, if your people are tired, they start to make little mistakes. It could be in a report.

Unknown Speaker (23:05): Right.

Carlos Rodriguez (23:05): It could be maybe they don't type something correctly. It could be your use of force could go up. So there are a lot of things you and you want to do everything the right way and then to protect your people and to protect the case and then those you're doing this type of work for. So we would limit it to a certain time, but then if we had a target who still wanted to show up, we would just identify a small team and then we would handle that. And that's how we would do it.

Carlos Rodriguez (23:30): We would just work, just keep working it. And, and I said earlier that we would do these about a week at a time. If we were still communicating with someone that still wanted to do things outside of that week, we absolutely dedicated resources to it. But we would try to do these a week at a time because then we can bring all of these resources together. My little small team of one to two detectives plus myself became 60 or 70 people that were subject matter experts that could all had the same mission.

Carlos Rodriguez (23:59): And then we, so we got to do a lot of good in a short period of time. All the casework was done by the end of that time for the prosecutor and whatever area we went. And then it also minimized, yes, we had some overtime, but it minimized if you're just doing a one off or a two off, you can have overtime and then not even get anybody because they switched to a different date. So this time we could do that. And if they canceled one date, maybe they wanna do counter surveillance for to see if they're gonna get busted.

Carlos Rodriguez (24:24): And then nothing happens and then they say they show up and they go, oh, yeah. Okay. Well, yeah, I'm ready. I'm ready now. So we were able to do that.

John Jay Wiley (24:33): One thing that that and a lot of that bothers amazes me, and and and I don't think I'm easily shocked after years of police work, nothing really surprises me. But when you said up to seven a night, arrest, that is shocking.

Carlos Rodriguez (24:49): It is. And and as I did this work over and over, I had to remind myself that not everyone is bad in the world because you you you know, you live in it and you see it so much, and then you're you're pretending to be a parent that's offering their kids for sex. You're pretending to be someone who has control of the kid or you're pretending to be someone who's run away from a bad situation and is trying to do survival sex. You know, there's all these different scenarios that we and we based all of those off of actual cases that we've worked. So we weren't making this stuff up.

Carlos Rodriguez (25:20): You you would think that this is made up, but it's not. These are actual, this happens. So we're not basing it on fiction. This is real. But you have to start to remember, you know, you have to remind yourself that not everyone out there is like this.

Carlos Rodriguez (25:36): And and then also when you're off of work and you're going and you're interacting with your friends and other people, you have to remind yourself to, sanitize things because you just become so used to that world. Oh. You have to

Unknown Speaker (25:51): You you I'm not the guy you wanna you wanna talk to the barbecue about bad stuff.

Unknown Speaker (25:56): Yeah. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (25:58): Because I I remember it looks on just on people's faces, they're really curious until you start telling them. They're like, oh, wait. Wait. Stop. I don't wanna hear anymore.

John Jay Wiley (26:04): Stop.

Unknown Speaker (26:05): Yes. Yes.

Unknown Speaker (26:07): And with you out of

Unknown Speaker (26:08): work I went to

Unknown Speaker (26:09): I I really think that's a a huge problem.

Carlos Rodriguez (26:12): Yeah. I I'll say when when I did that, work, I would I'd find I'd try to because everyone wants to talk about what you do when you're a cop and you do stuff like that in undercover work. And I would have to sanitize it. And even when I sanitize it, it was still, I don't think enough because it's just hard. All this stuff is just so ugly and it's just hard to hear.

Carlos Rodriguez (26:33): But the other thing I found myself as I started to do is I started to when I would shut things down so I could cope to do the work. I found whenever I went to social functions, really didn't wanna be around anybody because I didn't wanna talk about it. And I wanted to just go off into a corner, do our time, get our food, and then get out of there and go home and just do something else to decompress. So because everyone wants to talk about what you're doing, and I really didn't wanna talk about it.

John Jay Wiley (26:58): No. I I get that. And there's two questions I have for you. One is, listen. I imagine there is a significant other that gave you an elbow and ribs when you were talking too much.

Carlos Rodriguez (27:09): Yeah. And and I'll say she was she was really good. She was great. And, you know, part of doing this work is if if you don't if you and that's one of the things that go in the book. If you don't talk about this and you don't take breaks and you don't take care of yourself, it ends up affecting you and it it affects your your family.

Carlos Rodriguez (27:31): Because I mean, imagine if you're you're married to somebody and you just want to spend time with them, you want to talk about their day when they get home and things like that. And you're always leaving to go help some stranger. And of course, it's a great cause. You have to do that. But if you don't build in those times or that time before you go home.

Carlos Rodriguez (27:51): So something that we would do is, and I wasn't the best at it, but I had my people do it is we had to review something that was horrible to look at. They had to do something totally different for two hours before they could go home and to just to get right in their head. And sometimes it meant, you know, going and grabbing a some parking in the parking lot and doing something totally different.

Unknown Speaker (28:12): So Right.

Unknown Speaker (28:12): That when you get home, you're there for your family because they they love you, and they just wanna be around you.

Unknown Speaker (28:16): They just want you

Unknown Speaker (28:17): to home. How often do you get the fifteen minutes you have?

John Jay Wiley (28:20): Right. We're we're gonna take a short break on that note. We're talking about Carlos Rodriguez. He is retired Washington state trooper, got involved in investigating crimes against children there for eight years, including a lot of sex crimes. We'll return that conversation for a few moments.

John Jay Wiley (28:33): Give you a hint. Who is the most usual suspect? It's not often who you think. He's author of the book, The Ugly Underneath, and his website is theuglyunderneath.com. This is law enforcement talk radio show.

Unknown Speaker (28:44): Don't get anywhere. We'll be right back.

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John Jay Wiley (29:26): Current conversation with Carlos Rodriguez on the Law Enforcement Talk Radio Show. Carlos is retired from the Washington State Police, and he did investigating crimes against children for about eight years. We'll return that conversation in a few moments. That included a lot of sex crimes, which we will talk about. He's authored the book, the ugly underneath, and his website is theuglyunderneath.com.

John Jay Wiley (29:47): That's theuglyunderneath.com. First of all, I can think about a a lot of police work. And by the way, there was a shooting in Baltimore where a police officer was shot in the leg and and survived. Thank god. The tourniquet and the SWAT team sniper wound up killing a guy.

John Jay Wiley (30:03): He's right in the area where he used to work, and it brought back a lot of memories and a lot of things that you said earlier in the conversation. I compartmentalize. I don't want that side of Jay to come out, but he's still there. He's still part of me. And other than being a patrol officer and encountering crimes against children, usually physical abuse, some sexual abuse, it was usually by loved ones.

John Jay Wiley (30:27): Those things can come to the surface quickly, and and it's usually what I don't want. And it's usually when I'm I'm not you said a good point. You go do something for a couple hours afterwards. It's usually when I'm tired, emotional, or I haven't eaten. That's usually when they tend to show up.

Carlos Rodriguez (30:45): Yeah. I I I agree. And I think it's, you know, when you do the work so long and you're in there and you've turned off, you literally start to turn off your emotions. And then I like to say it's it's kinda like a it's like when the light something doesn't work in your house and outlet and you start flipping off the breaker switches. It's kinda like that and then eventually turn off the master breaker.

Unknown Speaker (31:06): Just when you turn it back on, they don't always work.

Unknown Speaker (31:08): Right.

Carlos Rodriguez (31:09): It's kinda it's kinda the same thing. Like that's that's what I experienced. But, yeah, it's like almost your homeostasis changes where you're just in a and you're just high, go, go, go, and then down and go, go, go. You just it just starts to lower and you start to change. You gotta make yourself go do things so so then you're not always in that valley.

Unknown Speaker (31:29): Sometimes I like to think of myself as being cured of all this and that there was another guy in a lifetime ago, and all of a sudden, it's right back there with you. Did you ever feel like that was another part of your life or that was a different guy?

Carlos Rodriguez (31:42): Yeah. I'll say when it really really started to know that it it how where how I was to where I am now. It was when I quit doing the work, when I got switched to another assignment and then retired And then when I moved down to San Diego where I currently live now and it didn't have the same support structure, just a little, I'd see little things or hear something and I just have a flood of emotion that would come back. And that's when I was like, hey, maybe I should see someone about this because I haven't seen anyone in a while. And and that's when I started to write.

Unknown Speaker (32:17): And it was really more of a therapeutic journey.

John Jay Wiley (32:19): I was gonna ask you that. And and by the way, I did an interview probably about six months ago with a guy who's retired San Diego County police detective or San Diego County sheriff's detective, and he specialized in crimes against children. He was in the longest shootout, prolonged shootout with a pedophile in San Diego history. And I believe he's lost most use of one of his arms as a result of that, but it's a fascinating story. One of the things that and before we go into your book, I've gotta ask this question.

John Jay Wiley (32:54): Earlier, we we and Hollywood, I blame Hollywood for this. We have a stereotype about who the predator is. It's not often the case, is it?

Carlos Rodriguez (33:05): No. It isn't. I mean, most people think it's, you know, like we said, the creepy guy or it's some insidious person or it's a male. But I I like an example, I had a case where it was a young female. She was in her early twenties, and she's a mother, a sister.

Carlos Rodriguez (33:22): She was a nurse's I think a nurse's assistant. So you would never think that she was someone that was trying to traffic a kid and then trying to do I won't go in all the details, trying to do horrible seeking to do horrible things with with two little girls.

Unknown Speaker (33:37): It's amazing. Did that shock you when that suspect came when you found out who they were?

Carlos Rodriguez (33:44): At that point in my career, no. Because I had already unfortunately, I had already had instances where I had seen things where, you know, I've had judges, firemen, other women because you don't usually see women. Right. Teachers, you know, former police officers, police officers. So, I mean, you you you just see the gambit.

Carlos Rodriguez (34:08): And that's where, you know, I go back to have to remind myself not everyone is like this.

Unknown Speaker (34:12): No. And most people are.

Carlos Rodriguez (34:13): With a cop. I mean, when I was a cop, he's off so much because no matter where you are in the nation, whatever uniform you wear, the the society in our community sees us as all the same. Yep. And they entrust us with with, we're supposed to take care of them. Right?

Carlos Rodriguez (34:29): And when somebody screws up, you know, that that affects us all, everyone across the board.

Unknown Speaker (34:35): Well, I'll I'll just say this. I we used to get punished for stuff that LA did in Baltimore. And we're like, well, look. You're out to the other side of the country. I wasn't involved in that.

John Jay Wiley (34:44): Why you and it's because and and this is the one thing that I would say we wore in Baltimore, wore same uniform. We had what we could wear certain times of day, certain times of season, all that stuff. A lot of people have mustaches, and we all look similar, but we were all different. And I still to this day, when I see police that get caught up in these crimes against children, I am shocked, and I am devastated.

Unknown Speaker (35:14): Yeah. It it hurts.

Unknown Speaker (35:16): It's not supposed to be the case. I've never known anyone like that. And and and I'm not well, then to be honest with you, I've never known anybody that was into excessive force or corruption that we didn't tolerate that stuff.

Carlos Rodriguez (35:28): Yeah. Well, you can't. When, you know, when you sign on for this job, you live in a glass house. And if you aren't if you don't like that, then this is not the profession for you. You'd go do something else.

John Jay Wiley (35:39): One of the things I always say this is and I'm sure you'll get this is like and and I I see this all the time, especially on social media. On our Facebook page, we get it all the time. Oh, yeah. Police are investing in their own. They're never gonna find them guilty.

John Jay Wiley (35:53): Listen. We are not going to cover for someone and lose our health insurance for our family. We're not doing it.

Carlos Rodriguez (36:02): No. No. It's it's it's, you know, it's more about it's more about the mission than it is the single person. And then if you're if you buy into that, you're you're you're screwing up the whole system. I mean, I I never thought I'd be a cop.

Unknown Speaker (36:17): I did it because there was a a member of our family that was killed by a DUI. And I thought, you know what? I'm gonna be I'm gonna be a cop. I'm gonna be a state trooper because that's what do they do? They arrest DUIs.

Carlos Rodriguez (36:28): So that's why I I joined this, and then it took me on this.

Unknown Speaker (36:32): And now you are an author. Tell us about your book.

Carlos Rodriguez (36:36): So my book is called the ugly underneath. It's navigating the emotional toll of of investigating crimes against children. It's a memoir of sorts. It goes into some of the things that helped prepare me to do the work of investigating crimes against children. And it's, it goes into, there are some cases, but really it goes into how those things affected me and how I manage them, the good and the bad.

Carlos Rodriguez (36:59): So that if you are a law enforcement officer or you wanted the law enforcement officer and you're doing these cases, you can avoid some of the pitfalls I made and then you can improve upon my successes. And then if you're not in law enforcement, it really gives you some insight into those that are doing the work and hopefully garner some support for them because they they need your help. And it's it's this problem is just overwhelming, and it's it it can consume you. So they really need your help. There needs to be more people doing the work so that we can help protect your children.

John Jay Wiley (37:33): Can people get more information about the book and contact you on your website, theuglyunderneath.com?

Carlos Rodriguez (37:39): Yes. And I'm also if they wanna reach out to me on on TikTok or Instagram, it's c underscore Rodriguez, g u e z, is how you spell Rodriguez. So c underscore Rodriguez one nine eight is the the tag.

John Jay Wiley (37:53): Awesome. And I got a quick question for you. The number one thing, you're a father. I'm a father as my daughters are in their thirties now. But what's the number one piece of advice you give to parents or grandparents, uncles, aunts about protecting their children?

Carlos Rodriguez (38:10): Number one is make sure you have a good relationship with your kid or those children. And because if they don't trust you, if they don't trust to come forward when something happens, because no matter what safeguards you put in place, something could still happen. So make sure you build the trust so that they know they can come to you with anything. And then besides that be vigilant, get to know if they're going to go stay at a kid's house, need to, the parents need to know, they need to know you need to know them and just don't and don't feel weird about it. And and then explain things to your kids about if you're restricting them from something, why you're doing it.

Carlos Rodriguez (38:47): Just have that conversation. They may not like it, but they'll they'll thank you later if they realize why you're doing it.

Unknown Speaker (38:52): Well, my job as a parent is is to prepare them for adulthood, and we will make sure they're they're safe. Carlos, thanks for your service, and thanks for being a guest on Law Enforcement Talk Radio Show telling us all about it. We're both very much appreciated.

Unknown Speaker (39:05): Thanks for having me.

John Jay Wiley (39:06): I'd like to thank our guests for coming on the Law Enforcement Talk Radio Show. The Law Enforcement Talk Radio Show is a nationally syndicated weekly radio show broadcast on numerous AM and FM radio stations across the country. We're always adding more affiliate stations. If you enjoyed the podcast version of the show, which is always free, please do me a favor and tell a friend or two or three. I'll be back in just a few days with another episode of law enforcement talk radio show and podcast.

John Jay Wiley (39:34): Until then, this is John Jay Wiley. See you.