A New York Times crime reporter once contacted me to get the inside scoop on the Department.  I knew she was trouble – pretty infamous actually for having an affair with the former head of security for the Senate Intelligence Committee.  I also knew because in her introductory email, she writes that she was impressed reading my dissertation.

An obvious lie.  No sane person reads someone else’s dissertation.  I’m pretty sure half my committee didn’t.  I’ve barely even read mine.  It’s also thankfully not available anywhere remotely accessible.

In any case, for a non-scientific one, it is short , but reflects a lot of work.  I wrote on the relationship between the environment (cultural, political), leadership, controls, and corruption.  

Still awake?

Long story short, leaders matter.  A lot.  An experienced, ethical one has tremendous impact on an organization’s culture, policies, and operations.  One of my advisors (who looked like Megamind) pointed out that this factor even surpassed the role of formal controls.  The human factor surprisingly prevails.

I once read somewhere that people are fascinated, intrigued, even obsessed with leaders.  How they should be, how they are formed.  So many resources have been invested in trying to figure it out.  A much more intelligent mind, a former junior high classmate and Harvard professor wrote a pretty insightful book that I’ll plug here “Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter.”  Explains Trump, Lincoln, Churchill.

I used to quote this – “Look at the followers, you will know the leader.  Look at the leader, you will know the followers.”  I think this holds up pretty well.  I have virtually no interest in politics, but have noticed this principle in sports – teams really do reflect their head coach.  My undergraduate alma mater’s national championship basketball winning team were scrappers who played with chips on their shoulders, tenacious, and intense – exactly who Gary Williams was.

I’ve mentioned this before – that I was paid peanuts over my career.  And the thing is, I would have taken the exact same route if I was paid half the peanuts.  It wasn’t about honor, glory, insanity.

It was about belief.

Show me a man who doesn’t believe in anything and I’ll show you worthlessness.

Belief is the reason why it’s difficult to impossible to fight terrorism, insurgencies, revolutions.  That’s why the main principle of counterinsurgency is winning hearts and minds. The primacy of the moral and mental over the physical. Maybe the invisible as well over everything else.

Doctors make the most effective murderers.  Think about it.

They know intimately how the body works. How to heal. Just flip it around.

That knowledge also allows them to hurt.

And effectively cover it up and get away with it.

It’s in the plot of many shows, including a Predator spinoff.

My knowledge of the Rolling Stones catalogue is extremely limited although You Can’t Always Get What You Want and Wild Horses are hymns.  I did use to quote the following verse from Sympathy for the Devil at staff meetings – “Every cop is a criminal.”  The same skill set of a great detective is identical to that of a criminal mastermind.

We used m to have this 14 point checklist for investigations and if you knew those steps, you could reduce your chances of detection.

The homicide solve rate in this country hovers around 60 percent.  That means if you know what you’re doing, you have close to a 1 in 2 chance of getting away with murder. 

I joked with my undecover friend here’s how to do it properly.

1. Secluded area

2. No witnesses or CCTV

3. Tap tap to the head

4. Get rid of body, gun, shell casings (very, very important)

5. And here’s the key – don’t talk.

This is also why so much is invested in Internal Affairs, the need for internal discipline and controls.  It is integral to maintaining the integrity, perception, and reality of the institution. In fact, if you want a top post, especially Commissioner, you must spend time in IA.  No one really likes it, but it’s a crucial perspective and experience.

I was taught this stat my first week of training – only 17 percent of crimes get prosecuted.  As to actual convictions, it’s definitely lower.

Hold on tight to whatever good you have or who you love.  The wolf is always knocking at the door.

A final maybe funny note, I used to sing that part “Pleased to meet you, won’t you guess my name?” at church.  It wasn’t the most enthusiastic response.

Someone overheard me teaching my son this and he goes “That’s right!”  I immediately went to shake his hand.  I taught the kids that when you face difficult circumstances and you may even lose, go down fighting and swinging.

I would purposely guard the best offensive player in basketball, some of whom even played college hoops.  Surprisingly (or not), I could hold my own.  One time I guarded someone much bigger and taller than me.  He definitely had more than 50 pounds on me and at least 6 inches in height.  He, of course, chuckles when he first sees me coming after him.  He never scores, much less touches the ball.  After the game, he blames his shoes.  I go up to him and say no m———r, not the shoes.

One time in court, my first month actually, an experienced attorney challenges me to a fight.  He is trying to intimidate me.  I tell him, no problem sir, we don’t have to do it outside, we can do it right here.  Smoke and mirrors.  And at the NYPD, when I knew I was going down, I still fired everything I had left.

Absolutely difficult as an Asian male in this society.  And especially the fields I went into.  Doormat or threat. Those were my choices.  I know what I picked.

It was worth it.

This is how much I was listened to – few to no one knows what my favorite movie or book is.  Or even color. I listened and observed.  Unlike the self-absorbed people I’ve been generally surrounded with. Try listening for once – it gives you great power.  And if you’re curious it’s the Godfather and probably Les Miserables.  Up there is also the Great Gatsby, the Catcher in the Rye, Science, Strategy, and War, the Tao Te Ching, and the Godfather novel (one of the most insightful commentaries on human nature).

A recent movie that I found thought profound is Jane Campion’s Power of the Dog.  Many critics identify the main theme as toxic masculinity and while that is certainly present, it’s more than that.  To me, it is way more layered, deep, and complex.  I think it is about hiddenness, longing, true power, development, and learning to break free of what holds us back.  Some compare it to Brokeback Mountain but that’s not accurate – that’s a love story.  The Power of the Dog is something else.

I won’t spoil the plot but this one is worth watching multiple times because the scenes and dialogue are profound and well thought out.  It’s even biblical in nature – the title itself coming from one of David’s Psalms.  I will mention one key scene where two characters are looking at a mountain and they can see something that everyone else misses.  It’s a powerful moment of connection and realization.

The key is to not only be seen but to be seen correctly.  I’m not sure how many of us actually receive that.  I sure didn’t.  I found that the ones who really did weren’t the assclowns in the community and family I grew up in but more, unsurprisingly, within my law enforcement and educator family – and even this was rare.  They had the soft eyes – a  concept I often refer to that reflects the ability to see what’s really going on – depth, breadth, layers.  It’s often linked to age and life experience, but it’s also inherent and intuitive.  

The Power of the Dog also explores the issue of vulnerability and reality.  The former requires real strength and defines, reflects the latter.  The ability to make peace and embrace both is the path to salvation.  I’ve met a good array of people through my travels and found this sorely lacking in many.  Unsurprisingly, I found it in the ones who have suffered considerably and reflected well, making some peace with all of it.  The others just seemed to ignore, distract, and minimize.  I don’t think that’s the way to go.  It’s about confirming, accepting, even making love to the darkness to really live fully and authentically.  I haven’t figured it out yet but this I think leads to freedom.  

There are two main characters in the Power of the Dog.  Unlike what some critics say, both are extremely powerful.  It’s just one knows himself better and embraces it more fully and the other doesn’t, with devastating consequences for himself and others.  This is more than just simple self love – it’s about understanding of how one is created in the image of God while still being flawed.  Beautiful and broken.  The evidence of power and grace.

The true seeing.  That is priceless.  When you can do it.  When you can receive it.

It is both the power of the dog and what also frees you from it.

A while back, the girl picked up the trombone.  Her other choices for an instrument to learn in 5th grade were the flute or clarinet.  I suspect she got assigned the trombone because of her height.  It fits her personality – bright, strong, and loud.  I also told her that the trombone is versatile (jazz, symphonic band, orchestra).

I suspect her skill level will be approximately close to mine.  Needs a lot of practice, repetition, and failure to get up to speed.  She’s the less musical of the two (at least for now).  Her singing arcs toward mine – in the off-key direction.

But like me, she will play with heart.  I have a picture of her singing Let it Go at a church retreat talent show.  Could hear her even when not in the room.  It’s not the most in tune, but she is all in, all out.  You know it’s her.

I’m going to slip this in here – I manage to sneak in a stanza from U2s With or Without You into a worship song at church.  After the service, a dad comes up wanting to introduce his daughter to me.  He inquires whether I knew of her.  I did.  Soft eyes and all.  But back then, it was already the girl I lit the candles for.

This is why the map of the human genome may not be as accurate as it could be.  My colleagues and I used to spit in the plates containing the DNA for extraction and sequencing.  My first job out of college was at a company called Celera founded by J. Craig Venter (legend has it that his yacht’s sail had his face on it), he led the private sector charge to sequence the genome competing against NIH’s effort led by the equally formidable Francis Collins.  The job was repetitive, physically taxing, poor supervisor, so some nights we would play football with the plates and insert our own DNA as mentioned.  Regardless, I got to be a small part of history.  I did bump into Venter once.  I still have one of my lab coats (with my name embossed).  I gave the other to the girl I lit the candles for.

My second job was slightly better, but it was the makeup of the lab that was special.  Never have I worked with such a diverse group – Black, Vietnamese, Thai, Filipino, Egyptian, Caucasian, Ethiopian.  Our potlucks were amazing.  It got me ready for the future.  I used to put candy bars in the freezers to chill them for dessert.  And to this day, I don’t need an external timer, I got so good at internally measuring time.

Fun times aside, my science background came in the most useful in NYC.  At its heart, biology is the study of processes, systems, and their interconnectedness.  I viewed the city as an ecosystem (concrete jungle where dreams are made of right?) and the Department as a complex organism within it.

I was never going to be a scientist type.  I could barely function in a lab.  But for some reason, I felt led to major in biological science over business, history, political science (all which I was probably better suited for).  It makes sense now, it also helped me have a deeper appreciation for our world and universe.  Oh and baseball pitches.

The snake I write about is now termed the first Commissioner from his ethnic / religious group in NYC history. That’s the description on his agency’s website.   No doubt his daughter will boast of him that way to others.

What would I want mine to say about me?

It’s simple.

My father wasn’t him.

(From the DA years)

This week, I went to DA Camp in Pennsyltucky, near Hershey Park.  It was fun. 

We stayed at the Holiday Inn and listened to various lectures on being a prosecutor.  Some were more entertaining than others.  The best one was on interviewing children.  

An awkward moment occurred when one of the lecturers asked the audience to describe their last sexual encounter.  He asked to make a point that no one would answer because it was difficult.  Unfortunately, someone decided to answer the question – stating that he had relations with his fiancee the night before.  To which the lecturer remarked that the person who answered was either very courageous or foolish.  Methinks the latter. 

The food at the hotel was free but not so well cooked.  I’m not a picky eater but when it makes you go to the bathroom several times in a day, you know it cannot be good for you.  One of us had E. coli poisoning from eating at Outback.  Fortunately for us, we ate at other fine establishments (Applebee’s, Olive Garden, and Wendy’s). During the nights, the main forms of entertainment were spending time with friends named Jack, Jimmy, and Johnny and country line dancing.  They sure take their country line dancing seriously – our first night there was a fight over a woman. 

I got to shoot a .45 Glock semi-automatic.  That was also fun.  I think us Philly DA’s did very well for first timers.  After all, it is the water in the city that causes us to be quite murderous. Our office sent 15 DAs to camp.  There were a lot of outlets in the area.  At one point, more than half our group had skipped lectures to go shopping.  Definitely a good representation of our office. I managed to do quite a bit of reading and even rode an exercise bike.  A good time was had by all.

The current case I’ve been working on has made me do a lot of thinking.  Five-year old girl raped by stepbrother, brother, and another man.  On one incident, she was made to perform oral sex on one abuser while the other one penetrated her from behind.  Later on, her blood-brother made her also perform oral sex on him.