Inside REAL Human Trafficking Investigations | Carlos Rodriguez | Ep. 399

Summary

The Team House Podcast – Ep. 399

Inside REAL Human Trafficking Investigations | Carlos Rodriguez

Host: Jack Murphy
Guest: Carlos Rodriguez (Former Washington State Patrol Detective, Author of The Ugly Underneath)
Date: February 28, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode delivers a deep, unvarnished look into the realities of investigating crimes against children and human trafficking in the United States. Carlos Rodriguez, a former police officer and sergeant with the Washington State Patrol, details the ugly truths and emotional toll of working these cases. He shares candid stories from his career, describes investigative tradecraft, reflects on the psychology of offenders and victims, and discusses the systemic and personal challenges in pursuing justice in such dark circumstances.

Rodriguez’s insights, drawn from direct “boots on the ground” experience, are intended to cut through public misconceptions and highlight the true complexities of both the crimes and the task of confronting them.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Early Career and Motivation to Enter Law Enforcement

• Personal Catalyst: Carlos’s journey began as a mailroom employee for the Washington State Patrol. The tragic death of his girlfriend’s brother due to a DUI motivated him to become a trooper.
  “I decided to write a letter to the chief... I just wrote the letter, put it into an envelope, started to deliver everything down the hall, and then went into his office and delivered it. And then about 30 minutes after that, he came and talked to me.” (04:14, Carlos Rodriguez)
• Underdog Status: Despite not fitting the typical law enforcement stereotype (“Most people in Washington state, there used to be a requirement that you had to be six feet tall. I’m five six.” – 06:21), Rodriguez persevered through biases and training struggles.

2. Transition to Undercover and Specialized Work

• Undercover Assignments: His youthful appearance and Hispanic background led to undercover work, initially in auto theft and narcotics.
  “Because I looked really young… I got to do a bunch of cool stuff because of how I look.” (07:28, Carlos)
• Drug Task Force Experience: Four years in a multi-agency narcotics unit taught him the tradecraft of investigation and collaboration.

3. Entering Crimes Against Children and Human Trafficking

• Chance Encounter: A missed opportunity at the fusion center redirected Carlos into the Missing and Exploited Children Task Force (MECTF), forever changing his professional focus.
  “I didn’t even know it was a thing that people would trade these images of kids getting raped, videos, photos. That was totally new to me. It’s just disgusting.” (19:29, Carlos)
• Severe Under-Resourcing: The unit suffered chronic lack of manpower and support. Often, they couldn’t even serve warrants alone.
  “We couldn’t even serve a warrant on our own. We always had to partner with other people.” (22:45, Carlos)

4. Casework: Paths to Detection and Notorious Cases

• Lead Sources: Cases came through community tips, observations by patrol officers, or “cybertips” from online reporting portals like NCMEC (MissingKids.org).
  “We’d get those cases. And then there’s something called cyber tips... and then proactive work.” (23:52, Carlos)
• Coach Case: Investigation into a beloved youth sports coach led to the discovery of extensive abuse spanning states – a case that hit home due to Rodriguez’s own child’s proximity to the situation.
  “My son was at this kid’s house the weekend before. So I'm freaking out because I'm like, did this... all these things are going through my head.” (25:38, Carlos)
• Haunting Details: Even after successful prosecution, the inability to identify certain victims haunted Carlos for years, until new technology enabled updates.
  “We were never, never able to identify who that kid was. So that, I mean, that really bugs me... there’s some closure now, so that’s good.” (32:45, Carlos)

5. Undercover "Demand" Operations (Predator Stings)

• Sting Operations: Rodriguez’s team ran decoy operations online (notably Craigslist’s “casual encounters”), posing as parents or children to catch those seeking sex with minors.
  “We could have worked around the clock. I just didn’t have the resources. It’s as easy as ordering pizza to get, grabbing a Doordash. I mean, that’s how easy it was.” (34:06, Carlos)
• Volume of Predators: Multiple arrests occurred during each operation—demand outstripped their operational capacity.
  “I participated in 16 of the ops... at one was like 29 people within a four or five day period that we arrested.” (50:08, Carlos)

6. Investigative Techniques and Interview Approaches

• Empathy and Interrogation: Evolution from standard Reid technique to more nuanced, empathetic approaches, influenced by experts like Dr. Joe Sullivan.
  “When you interview somebody, really what you’re doing is you’re creating a roadmap for the prosecutor.” (40:27, Carlos)
• Learning from Offenders: Interviews revealed patterns – not all victims become predators, and many offenders had a history of being abused, but there is not a direct causation in all cases.
  “If someone is offended upon, it does not mean that they’re going to become someone that abuses another person... But from what I’ve seen is there have been a lot of people who have, who are abusing kids that they were abused.” (46:47, Carlos)

7. Victim and Survivor Realities

• Victims' Reluctance and System Complexity: Many victims (especially of trafficking) don’t identify as such due to manipulation, trauma bonding, or lack of alternatives.
  “I did encounter where you have people who weren't aware that they were being trafficked, you know, and they did think they were doing this for... for whatever purpose, for love or for whatever.” (71:16, Carlos)
• Building Cases Without Victims’ Help: Investigations aim to gather sufficient evidence (hotel receipts, surveillance, phone records) so the prosecution doesn’t hinge on victim testimony. (71:16)

8. Psychological Toll on Investigators

• Desensitization and Burnout: Persistent exposure to abuse imagery and dark subject matter leads to compassion fatigue, emotional blunting, and negative effects at home.
  “You start to turn off your emotions so you can deal with this... But when I tried to turn things back on, it didn’t always work.” (57:22/57:27, Carlos)
• Mitigating Strategies: Rituals—such as decompressing with a tea and a mobile game—helped him avoid bringing work stress home, though not always successfully.
  “I’d get a tea, I’d park behind... Sizzler, so I’d park behind the Sizzler and I’d just play this little game...” (61:34, Carlos)

9. Leaving the Task Force & Ongoing Recovery

• Transition and Self-Reflection: Rodriguez left the unit for a governor’s detail and eventually retired after realizing the emotional toll of the job. Therapy and writing his book were key tools in processing the trauma.
  “I was just putting things into a box and putting it into a shelf, you know, up in my brain. And that's not the best way to manage things.” (80:42, Carlos)

10. Warnings About Misconceptions & the Nonprofit “Rescue” Industry

• Misinformation Risks: An explosion in public attention has spawned misguided NGOs and vigilante “operations” in the field, often doing more harm than good.
  “If you’re not involved in training, you don’t have the training and you don’t know how to handle these cases, you’ve got no business doing that type of work... You can’t arrest your way out of this problem.” (91:13, Carlos)
• Advice: Support established, multidisciplinary, survivor-informed organizations rather than flashy, untrained groups. (100:35)

11. Organizations Shouted Out

• Legitimate, Effective Groups:
  • International Association of Human Trafficking Investigators
  • Raven US (policy advocacy)
  • Rebecca Bender’s Elevate Academy
  • Rest (Seattle) — housing for trafficking survivors
  • Ever Strong/Stolen Youth (WA)
  • San Diego Youth Services
  • NCMEC (missingkids.org)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “How can people trade these images of these horrible things of these kids getting raped? How—how can... I even know it was a thing?” (19:29, Carlos Rodriguez)
• “We could have worked around the clock. It’s as easy as ordering pizza to get, grabbing a Doordash. I mean, that's how easy it was.” (34:06, Carlos Rodriguez)
• “You’re just surrounded by ugliness. And so it was. I had the subject matter to pull from, to play the role.” (54:21, Carlos Rodriguez on going undercover online)
• “You start to turn off your emotions so you can deal with this... But I wasn’t really there for [my family] to try to help them deal with what they needed to do.” (57:27, Carlos Rodriguez on compassion fatigue)
• “You can’t arrest your way out of this problem. You can't just go in and, and grab people. And then you see organizations or they’re doing a documentary of it and, you know, how does that look?” (91:13, Carlos Rodriguez)
• “You don’t get these days back. You have to be present in the moment, take care of the people that love you.” (97:48, Carlos Rodriguez)
• “When you interview somebody, really what you’re doing is you’re creating a roadmap for the prosecutor.” (40:27, Carlos Rodriguez)

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• Motivation for Joining Law Enforcement / Early Career — 03:17–07:28
• Undercover Work and Narcotics Experience — 07:28–10:02
• First Exposure to Crimes Against Children & Human Trafficking — 17:40–19:29
• Role in the Task Force & Under-resourcing — 21:20–22:45
• Discussion of Cybertips & Case Origination — 23:31–23:52
• Early Major “Coach” Case — 25:38–33:11
• Psychological Impact, Dealing with Fatigue — 57:22–61:34
• Demand Ops (“Chris Hansen” Stings) & Effectiveness — 48:42–54:04
• Victim Psychology & Building Cases Without Testimony — 71:16
• Critique of NGOs and Vigilante Anti-trafficking — 91:13–103:45
• Wellbeing Advice for Law Enforcement / Advocates — 104:04–106:23
• Shout-outs to Effective Organizations — 100:35–103:45

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Final Thoughts & Takeaways

Carlos Rodriguez provides a rare, unfiltered look into the practical and emotional realities of confronting human trafficking and crimes against children.
His message: There is no shortcut or blockbuster solution — only methodical, collaborative, trauma-informed and often invisible work in a system that rarely has enough resources or recognition.
He highlights the dire need for more awareness, better training, deeper collaboration with prosecutors and survivor communities, and, for those doing this work, prioritization of their own mental health.

For listeners and the broader public:

• Support credible, established anti-trafficking organizations.
• Understand that spectacular “rescue” missions often distract from the nuanced, difficult solutions.
• Honor law enforcement and support staff who quietly carry the psychological burdens of protecting society’s most vulnerable.

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Where to Find Carlos Rodriguez and His Work

• Website: theuglyunderneath.com
• Book: The Ugly Underneath: Navigating the Emotional Toll of Investigating Crimes Against Children (Launcher: March 31, 2026)
• Instagram/TikTok: Crodriguez198

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(This summary omits advertisements, sponsor plugs, and non-content interludes as per instructions.)

Transcript

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Visit your nearby Lowes on Colorado street in Kennewick. Hey everyone, I want to tell you about my new novel the Most Dangerous man out in June. It is a novel about a Regimental Reconnaissance Company soldier who gets kidnapped while he's on a mission to West Africa and when he wakes up he finds that he is now being hunted for sport by a group of tech billionaires through the wilds of West Africa. This book is based on stories that I heard over the years about safari guides taking wealthy clients hunting for poachers on game reserves in Africa. I took that and I took a century old short story, the Most Dangerous Game and modernized it and the product is this book which I think will feel contemporary and resonate with audiences today. Thank you and please check it out. Hey guys, welcome to the Team house. I'm Jack Murphy here with tonight's guest Carlos Rodriguez. He was is a former police officer with the Washington State Patrol. He is also the author of the book upcoming book. Hopefully it'll be out by the time most of you guys hear this. The Ugly Underneath Navigating the emotional toll of investigating crimes against children. So Carlos did a whole series of different cases throughout his career but one of them was getting involved in tracking down sexual predators, people who are engaged in human trafficking and other nasty stuff. And I'm really happy to have Carlos here today because I feel like in the last couple years, maybe five to 10 years maybe a lot of different players have gotten involved in this topic, and I think there's a lot of misconceptions around trafficking and what it is. So I'm really happy to have an expert like you on here, Carlos, somebody who actually worked, you know, boots on the ground to really shed some light on what this job is and what it does to the police officers as well.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yeah, yeah. Thanks for having me.

[Jack Murphy]

So let's start at the beginning, man. Tell us a little bit about how you grew up and why you became a cop. What pushed you in that direction?

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Well, I never, ever thought I was going to be going to law enforcement. I actually worked for the Washington State Patrol as the mailboy, and I worked in the mail room and. And my girlfriend at the time, her. Her oldest brother was killed by a dui. So when that happened is tragic. And I worked for the state Patrol, and I thought, well, who gets DUIs? It's state troopers. So I set out to become a state trooper and became a state trooper.

[Jack Murphy]

And there was an interesting moment in your book where you were, you know, the mail office guy. And what, you wrote a. You wrote a letter to. Was it the chief of police? Kind of jumped the chain of command. A few. A few links there.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yeah. I remember I. I drove to work, and I was just. I was stunned from what had happened with my. My girlfriend's brother had been killed, and on Mother's Day, of all days, early in the morning. And then I just went to work, and I remember just feeling numb. And I decided to write a letter to the chief. And I was the mailboy, so I'm the person who delivers everything. So I just wrote the letter, put it into an envelope, started to deliver everything down the hall, and then went into his office and delivered it. And then about 30 minutes after that, he came and talked to me.

[Jack Murphy]

What was that conversation like?

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Well, first thing, I mean, I'd never seen the. The chief in the mail room. That's the first thing. And I didn't think he would even. I don't even think he'd get to it, read it, because, you know, to me, I. I was. Shoot, I was early 20s, maybe 20, 21, and just didn't have any. Any interaction with him because I was low person on the totem pole and. But I remember him coming in and he told me, first he said my name, and I thought, shit, this guy knows my name. And then he told me I needed to go home, and I didn't want to go home. I thought I needed to stay there. And do my job. So we had a little back and forth, and then basically, he assured me that I shouldn't be there and that I should go and help the family. And then that's when I told him, I'm going to amend it. I'm going to be a state trooper. I want to be a state trooper. Because I told him that in the letter, that synopsis, that what had happened is horrible, shouldn't have happened, and I'm going to be a state trooper, so it doesn't happen to other people.

[Jack Murphy]

And so, yeah, you went home and you helped out the family a bit. And what was the process like to actually, you know, fulfilling that, you know, kind of a dream or obligation that you felt to become a state trooper?

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Well, it was terrifying. I mean, I was. I'd never done anything like that before. I'm. Most people in Washington state, there used to be a requirement that you had to be six feet tall. I'm five six. I'm just a little guy. So people were really shocked. They were surprised when they thought, oh, you're gonna. Yeah, right. You're gonna be a trooper. So. But I did it, you know, I went to the academy. I had asked some questions. I tried to get help. People told me, you know, you just got to blend in. You'll get through it. If you're. If you're. You don't want to be too good. You don't want to be really bad. If you're right in the middle, then people will leave you alone, and you'll get through it. And unfortunately, that didn't happen the first day. I was singled out because this lady that I worked with who I delivered mail to, her husband was our tac officer, and he singled me out immediately because I looked. I got gray hair now, so I don't look as young, but I. At the time, I looked like a kid. I looked super young. And. Yeah, so they used to call me kid. And I got to work. I got to do a bunch of cool stuff because of how I look, though, because I looked really young.

[Jack Murphy]

Yeah, right. It lent itself to undercover work.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yeah. Yeah. I got to do. When fast and the Furious first came out, they threw me a little Honda hatchback. So I got to do. Sell stolen property, which was awesome. It was fun because kids used to show me that, hey, look at my car, you know, don't steal my shit, you know, so. So I got to do that. And then. And then I also. So. And then my uncle, he's no longer here anymore, but he actually was on the other side of law enforcement. He worked for some drug cartels in washington state and ended up going to prison. He shot somebody. But he used to tell me, hey, mijo, don't grow goatee. Just look how you look when you're gonna go in before you do a deal with whoever you're doing with. He goes, get some grease. Put it all over your hands. Then go wash your hands so you look like you work, because cops don't look like they work. And you'll be good. Just be yourself. He goes, don't act like goatees. I don't know. The five' eleven pants. Your basic stuff.

[Jack Murphy]

Yeah. You didn't shave over the weekend. Oh, wow. That's real convincing.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yeah. Yeah. And it took me back then. I mean, it took me a couple weeks just to get a little bit of facial hair. So now I have some. But this is like, two weeks.

[Jack Murphy]

Well, this is also. I mean, not way back in the day, but, I mean, back in the day, undercover work was really like, oh, hey, you're a brown guy. You speak Spanish. Like, you can go out there and sling some drugs with the kids, right?

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yeah, it was totally different. I remember when I was going through detective basic, they were teaching this class, and then one guy stops and he goes, you are. You. Are you carlos? And I was like, yeah. And I was like, I heard about you. We got plans for you. And then I was like, great. You know, so it was fun. I mean, I got to do some cool things. And then after I did the auto theft, I got into. I went to a trap or a drug trafficking task force where we focused on mid to upper level DTOs, and it was called westnet west sound narcotics enforcement team. So I did that for about four years. And that. That was a lot of fun. I really learned that's. That's where I learned how to be a cop. I was a state trooper. But when I went there and the people that I was with because we had it was city, county, feds, that's where I learned from them how to actually be a police officer. Because state patrol, we had a different function, so I really learned a lot from. From that group, from my. My detectives.

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[Podcast Host]

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[Dan Morgan]

Hey, how's it going today?

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[Jack Murphy]

All right. So they pulled you into drug trafficking cases because you looked young and could do undercover work and then I think was the next thing for you working on the personal security detachment for the governor?

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yeah, so I got asked to go to. It's called the Executive Protection Unit. So I did that for a brief stint before going into crimes against children. And then right towards the end of my career I went back to that. With a different administration.

[Jack Murphy]

Yeah, I mean the first time around it sounded like you kind of got jammed up in a, in a shitty situation with. Was it like the chief of staff for the governor?

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yeah. So I'll say, you know, in that, that scenario, you know, people want to manage things in, in different ways, I think. And what, what ended up happening is there was a threat that come. Had come in and the way that it was handled, they didn't really, I think, care for a press release that went out. And so because of that I ended up having a talk with my principal. And I don't think I was the best person for that because if my principal needs to focus on how they're going to support their constituents, they shouldn't be worried about other things if they're not comfortable with a certain personnel. And really in that instance, I mean, if, if you've done protection work or people who do that, the job's not about the people doing the work, it's about your principal. And it's really thankless. And there's so much stuff that goes on behind the scenes that when everything. You're doing all these things, but it looks like absolutely everything's smooth and that's how it should be. No one should really know all of the things that you're doing. So. So in this instance it didn't work out and I left. I left the unit and went back to the road for a bit. Yeah.

[Jack Murphy]

And then how did you get pulled into this whole thing with crimes against children?

[Carlos Rodriguez]

So I was actually trying to get onto, to our Washington State Fusion center to work with someone I had worked with before. He was a person that recruited me to go into narcotics and he was at the Fusion center and I wanted to work with him again. I'd learned a lot from him. And so I was preparing to go to that spot, and then someone who was in the division slid over to that spot, so I wasn't able to get it. And he. He said, hey, do you know this guy? This guy's name was Bill Steen. He was a Marine recon guy. And I was like, yeah, I know Bill. We used to work together. And he's like, hey, why don't you contact him? He works for the Missing and Exploited Children's Task Force. I think you could do a lot of good there. They do a lot of good work. And I didn't even really know what the task force was. There's this other group that they're called Missing and Unidentified Persons Unit, and they deal with dental records, trying to recover people. They manage the Amber program, and they used to put pictures on the side of semi trucks to look for missing kids. And that's what I thought it was, but it wasn't like that at all. So I went and cross trained with them. I went to a warrant and saw how they were doing things, and I thought, how could I have not known that we even do this? You know, And. And the other thing is, how can people trade these images of these horrible things of these kids getting raped? How. How can I even know it was a thing? So I thought, yeah, I. I want to do this. This is. This is what I need to do.

[Jack Murphy]

Yeah. So car. Carlos told you. I mean, your audio cut out on my end, but you said you were talking about how you got into. Into investigating crimes against children, and, and you wanted to work with your buddy, but that didn't work out. And where did you end up. Where did you end up landing?

[Carlos Rodriguez]

So I. I had. I was. I was working the road, and it's called Bremerton, Washington. And then he had told me, he's like, hey, have you heard of the Missing and Exploited Children Task Force, or mechtef? And I thought it was. I thought it was this. We had another group in the patrol that would put pictures of missing kids on the side of semi trucks. And then they mantled. They managed dental records. They managed the Amber Alert program. I thought it was that, which it wasn't. He's like, no, that's. That's not the same outfit. I think you should go and cross train there. He asked me if I knew a guy named Bill Steen, who's an old Marine, Marine recon guy. And I'd worked the road with him. And he said, yeah, I know Bill you should go spend some time with Bill. So I connected with Bill cross train there. I went to a search warrant where it was for this guy. There was a residence that was suspected of trading child sexual abuse material or csam. And the reason why I say residents is we had a cyber tip that there was a or that they had a cyber tip that those images were being traded from an IP address. So they had written a warrant for the residents that the IP address belonged to. So you don't really know who's trading inside. I mean there may be some clues and you figure that out when you interview people, but you don't always know. So the warrant was for the residents to recover those images. So I went and cross trained and then I learned I didn't even know it was a thing that people would trade these images of kids getting raped, videos, photos, I just. That was totally new to me. It's just disgusting. And I thought this is something I could get behind. This is something I could go and try to hold these, help hold these people accountable. So. So yeah, I interviewed for it and ultimately got the position.

[Jack Murphy]

And what was that position?

[Carlos Rodriguez]

So I was the sergeant. So I was in the state patrol. If you are a part of a task force or detective then you're called detective sergeant. So I managed that, that task force. And you know, and I'd been in the narcotics task force where I had, I had a prosecutor assigned to me, I had six or seven detectives. People knew what we did, multiple agencies. I had admin support. When I went to this task force, I didn't have any of that. It was myself, I think I had two detectives at the time. And then because one was just about to retire, one from another agency and then Bill, the guy that I'd met, we had no admin support. They just cut it. And I'd learned that they were actually looking at cutting the task force. They were going to eliminate it, which ultimately that never happens because what member of the House or the Senate is going to vote on eliminating a team even if they don't provide the support to make that team successful? Because we didn't have enough people, we couldn't even serve a warrant on our own. We always had to partner with other people, ask people to help us so we could serve a warrant safely? So yeah, it wasn't the most ideal when I got there. There was a lot that it needed.

[Jack Murphy]

Yeah, the appropriate funding pretty severely. Under resourced.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Oh yeah, we had I think myself enough for two detectives. And then Bill ended up getting out of there. He promoted. And then we recruited two other people. One was from the narcotics task force I worked at because I knew what he was about, so I recruited him over. And then one other guy was a trooper who. He didn't really know how to do any detective work, but the guy just. He had potential and he was just motivated, so he was the good fit. And then we just. We just worked cases, made friends, and that's how we got stuff done in the beginning.

[Jack Murphy]

Yes. So tell us about, like, you know, your first big case that you recall. And like, how did those leads come about? Do they come about like people calling the cops, like, I think this guy's up to no good? Or is it like, I don't know how it works internally cyber crime reports, like, this guy's trading illegal materials, or how's that come about?

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yeah, so there are a number of ways. Yes. That your community can call and report something. Then there's. You can have someone who's out in the field, who's a beat cop trooper on the road. They may see something, and then they call another detective in another area that they don't have necessarily have the expertise to work with that. So we'd get those cases. And then there's something called cyber tips. And those are, let's say if you saw something online and you thought, this isn't right, or someone approached you, like, right now, it's Roblox. So let's say there was something with Roblox that was inappropriate. You could report a cyber tip through the national center of Missing and Exploited Children. It's called NCMEC or missingkids.org so you can go there, report whatever that you're seeing. And then that goes to. That's the clearinghouse. And then when those reports. Those reports come in, they're sent out to one of 61 Internet Crimes Against Children task forces, ICACs. And my task force was an affiliate, an ICAC affiliate. So we didn't manage it. We didn't manage ICAC for the entire state, even though we worked cases all over the state. But we didn't manage the icac. So we'd get cases. So we'd get cyber tips and then proactive work. So once you have the appropriate training, you can do undercover ops online. And we did a lot of that towards the. I'd say after I was there two or three years, we started doing a lot of the online undercover ops.

[Jack Murphy]

What were some of the first cases that you worked on when you got there?

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Oh, so I'll say the one that comes to mind that I think. Well, there's two. One was a coach case that I had. It was a coach who's a wrestling coach and a football coach for little kids. And the reason why that sticks out so much in my mind is Bill had already left. Uh, he was a sergeant. He said, hey, this buddy, I knew him from wrestling. He called me, his kids told him something, and this is gonna be a good case, but you should talk to him tomorrow because he's really angry and he's drunk. He got. The guy got loaded when he found out what happened. And one of his boys was ranked number one in state at the time for wrestling in his. His weight class, and was just under a lot of stress. He had recently reconnected with his mom, who had been out of his life for a while. She. She had shared something that had happened in his life that was tragic. So then he shared, hey, this is what coach did to me and, And. And my brother. And he goes, but I'm okay. I'm a man. You know, I can deal with it. She couldn't. She couldn't handle it. So she ends up calling dad. Dad ends up calling us. So on that one, you know, he wasn't even trying to report it, to disclose it. So when we went and met with him. But the thing why that. I mean, I have hundreds of cases like that. I mean, but the reason why this one sticks out is when I went and looked at the guy's Facebook, he was hugging a kid, and the kid he was hugging wasn't. Ended up not being a victim, but the kid he was hugging. My son was at this kid's house the weekend before. So I'm freaking out because I'm like, did this. You know, all these things are going through my head. Did this guy do anything to my kid? You know, what do I know any of these other children? So that. That one really stuck out. And the thing that really sucked about that case is all of the offenses, all the times that he had offended on this young man when he was a boy was. They were all out of state. They weren't in Washington from what we had. So it was when he'd go on wrestling trips. So it was in California, I believe Reno were the two. Were the two areas. So we didn't have anything in our area. So I'm trying to work with the feds to see if they can do something. I'm working with the law enforcement down in California to try to get something going on. And then they would say, we only had the one because the other brother didn't want to disclose what had happened, didn't want to meet with me. So we're interviewing all these other people, trying to get other things, and we start following, following this coach around because we have information. He's going to go to Canada. He's going to leave to Canada. We're thinking eventually he's going to figure something out because we're asking these questions. So we're doing surveillance on the guy following him. Call him in. We can't arrest him. I'm trying to get a warrant, arrest warrant from California, and I'm trying to work with the ausa, but they want the other brother to disclose before they do something because they want more.

[Jack Murphy]

The Assistant United States Attorney, the prosecutor, want more evidence?

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yes, they want more. So we don't have enough. So. But we follow this guy around for a couple hours, call him, he says he's three hours away, which of course he isn't because we're watching him. Then he ends up agreeing to come in. So we interview him, we ask him all these questions. We take him through this process timeline, and through that, we weren't able to arrest him that day, and he ended up going to Canada. But because of that, the timeline that he gave us of all the places he lived in different places, we were able to interview other people. And we had a lot of kids that came forward who were now adults. Some of them were adults, some were still kids. So we partnered with FBI. They actually flew in two of their child forensic interviewers. And we spent a week just interviewing, doing safety interviews of all these kids. And we had 10, 10 that came forward in that case. And then the guy fled. We ended up putting. We're tracking that. We had a. If he were to cross the border back and forth, we'd be notified through hsi. And we tried to go up on the guy's phone. We weren't able. He wasn't using the phone any longer. So the other thing about this story is where he was staying. He was living with his mom when he was in Washington. And I knew the neighbor, so I told the neighbor, I said, hey, if you see this car show up, you gotta call me, because it's this bad dude and we want him. So she calls one night and says, hey, the car's here. So we set up on the place. We didn't get notified that he had crossed. So we set up on the house, see a guy that looks like him, and it ends up not being the guy. We end up pulling him over. Once we do take away, pull them over. And the guy who. It was, this guy's uncle, used to be a detective who worked the same cases that, that we did. And he was actually one of the guys that helped write the law that created the task force I was in. So it's kind of weird, but he said, yeah, the guy's car is here because he got arrested in Montana. And his. They hadn't cleared his warrant yet, so we didn't know. He goes, yeah, he got arrested in Montana. So his parents went up, picked up the car, brought it down here and goes, there's a. There's a bunch of laptops in there and digital media in the car. So we end up getting a warrant for that. And he ends up coming down, we end up getting charges on him. He didn't, he didn't submit to another interview. But because of that first day when we were following him around and all the places he went, we had seen him go to a storage unit. So we're able to get a warrant for the storage unit. And we searched through this whole. It was about the size of a one car garage. In the very last box in the back that we were in, there we were. We recovered a bunch of child sexual abuse material that he had staved in the very. We searched the whole thing, pulled everything out, and that's where we, we found the material that, that case. The reason why I think about that one is because that one haunts me a little bit, because there's one, one kid in there. We found some images and we were never, never able to identify who that kid was. So that, I mean, that really bugs me. It bothered me for a long time until this year recently, because there's so many changes with software and technology. My detective, he still works there, he says, hey, I think we found that kit. So I don't know if they've reached out because he's an adult now, but at least see if we can get him some resources. And we knew that he had created. His name is Scott Carroll. He's in prison down in Oregon right now. But the reason why we knew it was him in the images is he had this unique tattoo. He had a barbell right here on his hand that was bent and it was in all the images. So we were able to track it to him. And we tried everything at the time to find that kid. And we had the GPS for his phone up all the towers. We looked to see where he was, the different timestamps we contacted, all the different School districts trying to identify who he was. And we went just up and down the i5 corridor where he went and tried to see if. If we could identify this kid. And he just weren't able to do it at the time. But at least there's some. Some closure now, so that's good.

[Jack Murphy]

And you said this guy's in prison now, thankfully. So this case did get prosecuted.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Oh, yeah. Yes. Yeah, I got prosecuted. They. We ended up working with law enforcement down in Oregon because some of the victims were from Oregon. So there he had offended on that. We know of people in California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and we believe Canada, but we didn't get. We didn't really get much feedback from. From them. Yeah.

[Jack Murphy]

And it sounds like as an early case, you know, this one's a little haunting in the sense that, you know, because of your. Your personal connection, your son being at one of the victim's homes at one point for just a normal, you know, playday or whatever.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yeah, that.

[Jack Murphy]

That must have opened your eyes about how this stuff is all around us all.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yeah. I'll tell you, people always say, well, one, like when you talk about crimes against children, it's everywhere. I mean, there are people out there. When we did our demand ops where people were seeking to have sex with kids 13 and younger, we'd average seven arrests a night doing that. And that was just. That's not on the darknet. That was on Craigslist or these different apps where people want to meet each other. It was on those types of apps. So it's as easy as ordering pizza to get grabbing a doordash. I mean, that's how easy it was. And we could have worked around the clock. I just didn't have the resources. Because when you work those cases, you have to worry about one your people and the fatigue of your people, because if you don't manage that, they're going to start to make little mistakes. They're going to. Maybe they. Maybe it increases the chance of a use of force. Maybe they miss something in a report. And then someone gets off on some little, you know, a problem that could have been avoided. Someone doesn't make the right decision. Someone doesn't review something and they miss something. So we would. When we built those teams and we're doing those operations, we would make sure that we. We scheduled it a certain way. We'd cap it at a certain time. If there was a target that we needed to handle later that night or early in the morning, we'd have. We'd pull a small team together and we'd. We'd focus on that so we can keep going. And we do those ops about a week at a time is when I was there. That's what we would do. So.

[Jack Murphy]

And what. What was that other case you mentioned from those early days that kind of stands out for you?

[Carlos Rodriguez]

There's another one where I'd say I'd been in there a couple months in the task force, and my buddy Bill called me and said, hey, we got a really bad one. And I was like, okay, I'll. I'll drive in. He's like, no, no, you don't need to come in. We can. We can handle it tomorrow. And I was like, well, can you cuss on here? I was like, well, you know, dude, okay. I was like, dude, everything we do is bad, you know?

[Jack Murphy]

Right?

[Carlos Rodriguez]

And you're calling me. He's like, no, no, it's. It's fine. And we had a lot of cases going on. He was working a case investigating a retired cop that was doing stuff. So, I mean, we're doing everything. So I. I stayed home, went in the next day, went in early, read the Cybertip, and it was just horrific. It was these two. They're, like, practically kids. They're in their 20s. They're on this application where they just go and meet each other. They can show pictures, they can do the live. Kind of like how TikTok is now. But it was one of the earlier applications, and they're talking about doing things with their kids. Like, she had a little baby boy. He was six months old. Sorry, some of the content's pretty graphic. I'll sanitize it, but. And then the other guy was doing stuff with his sister and brother, and then animals that were on the farm, and they were sharing these images, and she had shared an image with something that she had made with her kid. And so when I saw that, and I was new, this was the first time, I'll say it affected me. I mean, I had to take a breath. Luckily, I'm glad I was the only one I could come in early. So no one was there to see how it was affecting me. And I thought, we got to get this kid. I mean, I should have been out yesterday. So I called Bill, and I was like, man, we got to go get this kid. So on that case, I actually partnered with someone else in our crew, was great at interviewing because Bill was working this other case with this former cop. And we had two addresses that were about. About an hour from where my office was in one to two hours. If I remember correctly, from each other. So we set up on one place to try to find the mom first because she had the youngest child and wasn't there. So then we went to another city, it's called Montesino, and we set up on the house and didn't see anything. But then my other detective who was with me, he. There was a soccer game or something and he saw a cop that he knew and so he went talk to him and he's like, hey, do you, do you know about this house? He's like, yeah, I know the landlord. So call the landlord. End up, yes, she lives there. So we went out real early the next morning, end up grabbing her and the kid off a bus, they were on a school bus. While we had made contact at the residence and then interviewed her. And remember when we interviewed her, she was so matter of fact about what, what she had done, the different things that she was involved in. And actually later, after that case, I went back and interviewed her in prison, met with her a couple times, and she helped me develop my undercover role because I play the part of a mom with kids, but she, she helped me with, with that. So we.

[Jack Murphy]

Because she said when you interviewed her the first time that like she felt that you were sitting there judging her, right?

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yeah, so. So when we do interviews, we would have a one and a two. So if you're the one in an interview, you're the one who's asking most of the questions and explaining everything to the person. The two usually takes notes and then will come in and ask questions. That's how we were trained. So I was the two. And so I just really just sat there the whole time and listened because my detective was doing a great job and she was just engaging with him, talking back and forth. We're getting the evidence that we needed. And so I didn't really say anything. Then I went back and talked to her and she's like, you just sat there the whole time and you judged me. And I thought, well, here's. And then I explained what I just explained to you to her, and she's like, well, you need to tell the people that you are talking to. You need to tell them that because that will help you. So we actually started to do that. So when we did interviews, we'd introduce ourselves, we'd talk about what's going on. They have any questions, ask the questions, and we just told them what we were doing to a certain extent.

[Jack Murphy]

This is my note sometimes.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yeah, yeah. So we'd go through that and then Say, you know, if you see me write something down and then scratch it off, that's because you already answered the question. So, you know, don't think we're judging you in any way. So that's what we would do. Just a real empathetic approach.

[Jack Murphy]

Well, I take it you were trained on the Reid interrogation method.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yeah, so we did Reed. And I'll say with interviewing, I think you really should take. Go to as many interview courses as you can. And you really need to develop your own style. The one that I really like that really changed how I interview people, it's called the Guy's name is Dr. Joe Sullivan. He's from Ireland, and he trains people on how to interview people who are sexually attracted to kids. And he goes into the different behavioral analysis of different people and the Personas that they may present to you, whether they're a good guy, person of status, if it's a power of control. What type of power? Control more of a sadistic versus you can have someone else who's. It is just about. It is more about the sex or versus just the pain. So just these different. Different ways of these people may present to you this way. If you see this and you identify this, then these questions may work and these questions most likely won't. And going that approach and seeing how it. How it changes. And then you can also use that when you're chatting undercover because you're getting an idea of what type of person they're presenting and then seeing how they present when you're actually. They've been caught and you're talking to them. So I think if you, you know, you take that and that works, can work for anything, not just sex predators. But I think you take that, you take Reed, you take whatever. Whatever other trainings you've gone to, and you really develop your own. Your own style so you can have a conversation. And I train on interviewing on these types of cases. And that's really what I try to push is, you know, if you're here for my course, it's not. I'm not going to teach you all of these things because if you do the read method and let's say you step. You miss one of the steps, defense is going to try to attack you on that because you didn't do all of these things right. So as long as you can articulate it, you're usually okay. But sometimes your prosecutor's not as good. It's not going to ask the right question back if you. You can't get that information out. So really put something together and develop your style and then always improve. And then just realize is when you interview somebody, really what you're doing is you're creating a roadmap for the prosecutor. So when the case goes to them. Because I remember when I was new and we'd go to trial or whatever, and I'd have this. I thought it was this great interview, and I got the guy to say all this stuff, and then they wouldn't put me on for the interview or they wouldn't show the video. And I was like, why? I did such a great job. Why didn't you do this? And he's like, well, think of it this way. That's. You're giving me the roadmap. You're giving me all the tools to ask the questions. If I put you on, the guy's not going to go on the stand. If I do this, there's a better chance that he's going to go on the stand, and then I can ask all these questions while he's on the stand. And that was really helpful. Just learning from. I've been very fortunate to work with a lot of different prosecutors since I got to go all around the state and just learn a lot from. From them because it's really a team effort. But, yeah, I think I got off on a tangent there a little bit.

[Jack Murphy]

No, it's all good. I love the techniques and the tradecraft. But as I recall, on this case, you guys did pick up the boyfriend too, right?

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yeah. So after we recovered the little boy and the mom, mom went to jail. Then we. We needed to find the other guy. His name was Chris. So we needed to find Chris. And he was about an hour away. So same scenario. There were two houses that we had identified that he may be at. So I set up on one in an area called Spanaway, Washington. It's outside of Tacoma, Washington. And then the other house was actually close to our district headquarters in between Puyallup, Lakewood area in Washington State. And so we had. We had people with eyes on there. I had eyes on the other house, but we were. We were spread thin. I didn't have many people. So we're trying to get people to the area. And then we had. The detective was sitting at the PD getting ready to. He was working on the warrant for the two locations. So Chris ends up rolling by and I see him at the house. So I'm like, hey, I got eyes on this guy. Send me another. Leave someone with eyes on there. How far out of the other guys? So that we can go do a knock and talk on, on the house. And because I wanted to recover the phone. When he parked and exited, he was on an iPhone. And we knew he had communicated. She said he had an iPhone and they had exchanged these images. So we wanted that piece of evidence. But yeah, so we ended up getting Chris and finding evidence of he had received the image through the search warrants. We found things he had done, horrible things he had done to his sister.

[Jack Murphy]

He, he was.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

The conversations he had.

[Jack Murphy]

He had his sister's panties in a box under the bed, right?

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yes.

[Jack Murphy]

Yeah. Okay.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

He did, yeah.

[Jack Murphy]

So you guys got him. Thank God. You know, I, I, the thing I want to ask you too, from your experience in doing these interviews and part of the interview process is you have to try to empathize with them a little bit to get them to open up. And I know that's a, that's an interview technique, but at the same time, you have a lot of insight. And I realize the average American has an attitude and I understand where it comes from, of course, of like, we should just shoot these people in the street. But you and people like you come to understand who these criminals are and why they do the things that they do in some cases. And I want to ask you about, like, what insights you took away from that, because it seems like there are two types of people. There are some that are abused as children and they become abusers themselves. And then there's another type of person that gets abused and they come to the conclusion that I would never ever put another person through that. I want to know what your take is on it and what you think about all this.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

I'll say from my experience. Well, a couple of things is there are some studies that try to support statistics on, you know, what's more prevalent. But really it's a lot of that's. Unless it's documented that something happened to that person, you're having to listen, you know, are they telling you the truth or not? Right. So what I will say from my experience that if someone is offended upon, it does not mean that they're going to become someone that abuses another person or offends on someone. But from what I've seen is there have been a lot of people who have, who are abusing kids that they were abused, if that makes sense. There's more likely than not that did happen. From what I've seen, the people who I've talked to, when they said some people, they deny it. And then also, like the training I went through with Dr. Sullivan, he's, he's a psych psychiatrist or psychologist. So when people talk to him, they're not looking at, they're, they're already arrested. So it's easier for them to be more forthright versus me in the law enforcement, in my capacity as a law enforcement officer, interviewing them about things that even if I'm being successful with them giving me evidence, they still know the things I'm saying are it's going to get me in trouble. So they're not always as, as forthright.

[Jack Murphy]

And as time goes on, you started doing a lot of these, I don't want to call them entrapment operations because that'll get, get us in trouble. I don't know what the law enforcement term is, but you're out there trying to kind of bait in potential predators and catch them before they're able to do something really bad. Sort of the. What's his face? Chris Hansen? Yeah, that's operations.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yeah, that's what everybody relates to, to what we used to do, except I think. Well, first off, the major difference I think is when somebody shows up to rape a kid that's 13 and younger, because that's what we focused on. The youngest was three years old. That someone showed up to try to do something to a child is we don't have a reporter there that's there to interview it. You know, a lot of those cases, I don't know I'd have to do. I never have verified it, but I don't think a lot of them were held accountable as compared to like with us, the cases we did. And we had a lot of challenges about it to say that we were in trapping and things like that. But in Washington State, when people show up, they have to take a substantial step. And oftentimes these people took multiple substantial steps and then just leaving a way out where they don't have to show up. We're not coercing them into doing this. These are things that they're set out to do. When we first started doing those ops, we did it on Craigslist in an area called it's no Longer there. Craigslist got rid of the section when Backpage went down around that same time. And we'd go into an area called Casual Encounters, and it's an area specifically designed for people wanting to hook up. So you're already there people talking about sex. And there was everything in this place

[Jack Murphy]

like run of the mill prostitution as well.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Well, it could be people, you know, persons that are potentially trafficked for people that Are selling, selling themselves for money. Um, it could be, hey, I'm, I'm kinky. I'm looking, I'm looking to do this. And there's a lot of stuff that's. It was kinky as, as fuck but it was legal. Right, right. So. And we're not. That wasn't our focus. Right. Our focus was, you know, and when we first did it. So how I found out about doing this is I went to this training and I saw somebody do, do something they were out of. I believe it was Florida. I saw two but I think the one I remember is Florida. And they were doing. And the ages were older and I thought we could do something like this for younger because a lot of the images I'm seeing, you know, they're not all from a third world country or for Eastern Europe. They're from here. We're seeing images from here or these kids that are running away and that are being trafficked. You know, what are they one, what are they running from and where are they going? So there has to be a demand for this. You know, people are, this is going on. And I remember the first time I posted an ad on Craigslist that it was. One was flagged within about 10 minutes. But I had hundreds of responses like, like that. And I, I thought we were going to fail. You know, I, when I was planning it, I was like, I got together with my old drug task force unit said hey, I don't have the bodies. Can you guys be arrest team surveillance? I'm already familiar with the prosecutor there. You know, what do you think about trying this in that area first? We got two apartments. One was our command post, the other one is where we'd send the people and where the mom would answer the door. And so we kind of, we kind of ran it that way. And I thought, and I told him, I was like, hey, I don't know, I don't know if people are going to show up but we want to try to see if this would work. And yeah, it was like gangbusters. It was crazy. I think out of the. I participated in 16 of the OPS before I went to back to the gov detail. And I think the most at one was like 29 people within a four or five day period that we arrested. So and you look at the cases, I mean they're. I used to not testify a lot when we worked these cases but these cases in Washington state, what they were looking at if. For attempt rape of a child at the time, I don't know if the laws changed, but at the time, if it was 11 and younger, they were looking at potentially 10 years to life because they're indeterminate sentence sentences in Washington state. Send them off to this island. They have an island in Washington where, where they go. This sexual assessment center or I don't know exactly what it's called, but it's on McNeil Island. And then, but if it's ages 12 through 13, then it's five years to life that they can get. So we went to trial a lot more and the cases were solved. Their challenge, they went all the way up. We had some go all the way up to our Supreme Court, but the case law was good. There were some things where we learned, okay, don't do it necessarily that way, we should maybe do it this way. And you have to change and learn from that, lessons learned. But overall, when you read the cases, I mean what these people are showing up to do and the things that they say, yeah, it's horrific and it's easy. I went and taught something down in Oregon, a class on how to run the ops at a conference and I said, you guys want to see how easy it is? I pulled out the iPad, put my undercover Persona on there. We had someone offer us. He had a choice. He wanted two girls. Ended up only doing, wanting one and was offering her. I was, I was playing the part of a 13 year old runaway and offered her 200 bucks to meet. So got with the prosecutor and an officer that was there that worked in the unit and they had actually this was a target of theirs that they hadn't got before. So they ended up arresting him two days later. So I mean it's just, it's just that easy.

[Jack Murphy]

Was that difficult for you to like you're literally having to role play everything from a 13 year old runaway to a mother or father that's trying to prostitute their children. Was that kind of like difficult for you to play that role?

[Carlos Rodriguez]

I'll say. I wish I could say yes, but I think being surrounded with all of that material when you're doing the work, yeah, you have the subject matter. I mean you're, when you work those cases, you're, you're just surrounded by this. It's just shit. I mean it's ugly. That's why it's called the ugly underneath. I call it the ugly. I mean you're just surrounded by ugliness. And so it was. I had the subject matter to pull from, to play the role. I think the part that was difficult. Well, there were a couple Things one, not having that stuff stick to you so that you're thinking about it all the time. Not becoming really skeptical and thinking, everybody's like this because I'm in it all the time. And I had to remind myself, not everyone wants to do this, you know, because I'm deep in it. And then so I had to correct my thinking to know, hey, this is not how the world is. I'm here because I'm in this world trying to do this. But not everyone's like this. There are good people out there. And then I think it was just dealing with it. And what you do is you start to. Oh, sorry, that's my cat. Getting paid.

[Jack Murphy]

No, it's okay.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Or getting food.

[Podcast Host]

I've got Dan Morgan here on the pod. Say hi, Dan.

[Dan Morgan]

Hey, how's it going today?

[Podcast Host]

It's going good, man. Tell us who you are and what you do.

[Dan Morgan]

I'm Dan Morgan. I'm an attorney and a managing partner at Morgan and Morgan, which is America's largest injury law firm.

[Podcast Host]

That's pretty awesome. I think I saw a billboard of yours recently that said 20 billion one. 20 billion is an insane number.

[Dan Morgan]

Yeah, 20 billion recovered. It's actually, I think somewhere north. Probably closer to 22, 23 after this year. And each year we get bigger and badder and our army grows. So the number will hopefully keep getting bigger and bigger as time goes on.

[Jack Murphy]

Awesome.

[Podcast Host]

So how does someone get in contact with Morgan and Morgan? What would I do if I got into an accident?

[Dan Morgan]

Probably the easiest way is dialing pound law. That's £529 from your cell phone. We are always open. Our call center is always waiting to take your call. 24, 365.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Wow.

[Podcast Host]

Dan Morgan from Morgan and Morgan, America's large injury law firm. Thanks for coming by the show.

[Dan Morgan]

Thanks for having me. Visit forthepeople.com for an office near you.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

So I, I think for me it was. Sorry, I didn't know that was going to go on. But for. For me it was. You start to turn off your emotions so you can deal with this. Right. I just think it happens. I mean, I'm sure with. Listen, I didn't finish your book by listening to your book, your podcast. But, but just some of the. The things I hear is, you know, you have to. In order to do the work, to have the capacity to do the work, you have to shut certain things off so you can do it.

[Jack Murphy]

Yeah. You. You contextualize and disassociate from certain things.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yep, Yep. And I think the. The Thing that I had an issue with is when I tried to turn things back on, it didn't always work. And I really. I just became disassociated. I didn't. It was hard for me to feel certain things. I had compassion fatigue. You know, I would think, oh, well, I'm dealing with real problems. And I'd go home and, you know, my wife's telling me about her day or my kids, and I was like, you know, those aren't problems, you know, So I had the compassion fatigue where I didn't really. I wasn't really there for them to try to help them deal with what they needed to do. So that was difficult in an area that I think I could have done better.

[Jack Murphy]

Yeah, no. I want to ask you more about that, about kind of the psychological toll that it takes on the police that do this. You're wearing your T shirt. For the International association of Human Trafficking Investigators. And I got invited down to one of their symposiums years ago, and it was a huge eye opener for me. I remember afterwards sitting down with one of the cops and talking to him about, you know, what his job is. And he told me, he's like, you know, this morning I walked out into the beach, this was out in Tampa. And he's like, I just looked out at the ocean and I just thought, it feels so good to not have to look at kiddie porn today. And yeah, that's like struck me like, imagine what this dude's day to day life is like, that this conference is like a break from. From the horrible stuff that he has to see all the time. So I can only imagine what the police officers go through.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yeah, I was just talking to a guy, I'm going to a conference in April, and I was talking to the person who handles the vendors, and I actually told him about the book. And he's like, wow. He goes, I used to work those cases and I wish I would. I was telling him about this training. It's called the shift training. It's by the Innocent Justice Foundation. They provide mental health and wellness for people who do this type of work. And they travel around to different conferences. And I was telling him about it and he's like, yeah, I never got to go to any of that. He goes, I wish I would have done that. And it's just. It's something that I know at least our task force, it was mandatory, so we'd go. And I know the ICAT task forces want you to do it, but I just don't think everybody does it And I know with me doing the work, I tried to be a really good example for my people and take care of my people, but I didn't always follow what I said to do. And that took a toll about taking breaks when having that disconnect for when you're looking at that material and you work in the cases, you bring that stuff home. But having a built in process so that you have a break before you go home so you can be present for your family and because really, I mean, I don't know. Do you have kids?

[Jack Murphy]

Yeah.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yeah. So when you go home, you used to go home and you say, hey, give me 15 minutes. I mean, you don't ever get the 15 minutes. And that's because they want to see you, you know, dad's home, they're happy, they want to tell you about their day, they want to do these things. They love you and your significant other. It's the same thing. So you don't always get that. So we had built something in where if you, before you went home, you had to have at least two hours where you weren't focused on any of that stuff. You do something else you do where you're not looking at the image, you're not looking at the ugly, you're doing something. And then we had an hour commute home, so it was an hour at the end of the day. Then you had, we had to drive home and then you, you, you go and you be with your family.

[Jack Murphy]

You had, you had some ritual where you go and get like an iced tea at Dunkin Donuts or something, right?

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yeah. So I like, I'm in, I was worked in, you know, near Seattle. So a big Starbucks thing up there. My daughter worked for Starbucks for a time. So I'd go to Starbucks and I'd get. I don't drink coffee. Don't. I just never liked it. But I drink tea. So I would go there, I'd get a tea, I'd park behind, there was a Sizzler there. So I parked behind the Sizzlers and I just play this little game. I think they still have it. Clash of clans. It's like this dumb game. So I'd play that for a little bit, get my head straight and then I'd drive home and I'd see my kids. And I wish I could say I did that every day because I think that would have helped me get my head on straight and be present for them when we switched offices because that's when we were in Olympia, Washington, we ended up being co located with the FBI's SC, their CTEF, and so their Child Exploitation Task Force. And that changed my, my routine of going home. There wasn't a Starbucks on the way home, so I noticed. Well, actually it was my ex wife. She noticed that I, I was angry. I was a lot angrier. Sometimes I take things out on her or the kids. I'd like snap at him or something like that. And then she brought it to my attention and then I changed for a little bit, but I went back to what I was doing. I really, I really wasn't. I didn't hold myself accountable with my own mental wellness as much as I think as I could have.

[Jack Murphy]

It's hard when you're. When you're in it and you feel such a sense of urgency, right, that you're seeing these kids that are victimized and, you know, for reasons that you can kind of write off in your mind, you're like, I have. I'm sacrificing family life because I'm on this, you know, righteous mission. And I think finding that balance is something that's so hard and most of us don't get it. Right?

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's one of the reasons why. So this whole, this whole book journey is. I actually was writing it to try to write my own ship. It wasn't to write a book, like,

[Jack Murphy]

right through your experience and contextualize yourself.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

I was going to therapy and she was like, hey, you know, have you ever thought that maybe some people could learn from this if you were to share this and you could write a book or do a blog? And I was like, oh, yeah, I'll write a book. And then I just started to talk about it. And, and so that's how, that's how this journey started and where I'm at now. But. But yeah, I think, I think I have found that people who do this work, they tend to be very selfless and they're helping all of these other people that they don't even really know their life of service. But I found that they can be kind of selfish because they're keeping themselves away from those who do love them, their family. And that's one of the things I talk about, is you just be mindful of that. You have to carve out time and have the conversations with the people that love you so that they can, they can help you stay on your mission.

[Jack Murphy]

Right.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Because if you take breaks, you take care of yourself, you're actually going to be better at what you're setting out to do instead of just burning out and making. You can just make some horrible mistakes. It just can eat you up to.

[Jack Murphy]

Yeah. I want to get deeper into some of the fallout. But before we move on to the next part of your career, are any other big cases from this time that kind of stand out that you'd like to talk about?

[Carlos Rodriguez]

I mean. I mean, there are tons. I think the demands. The demand ones we did were. Were pretty cool just because of what we did and the different people that we saw. I'm trying to think of another one that would be good to share. There was a. So there aren't. I already talked about one where there's a female offender. You don't always hear a lot of female offenders. And there was one case that I had. I just finished an op with. I think we had arrested 22 people or something like that. And I get a call from. From our FBI officer or agent, and he says, hey, Los. So my nickname's Los, short for Carlos. Hey, can you talk to. There was another TFO task force officer. Can you talk to him and help him out? We've got something here. And I was like. And I really don't have the time. I'm putting all this stuff together. I got to get it for the prosecutor's office. So he's like, just hear him out. So I get on the phone with him, same as Ryan. I get on the phone with him, and he takes me through that. He has a CI that was. Who's a sex offender who's talking to. And they're trying to recover a juvenile who's. Who's potentially being trafficked by this person who's a female. And so as they're talking, the CIA says, hey, man, this. This lady, she's like. She's like, looking to. She wants to have sex with kids. She talks about hurting animals, like, all this weird stuff. And I remember as he's talking to me, just thinking, one, I got all this stuff I got to deal with, and I got to turn these cases over, but if I don't take this case, then what's going to happen? And then if nobody does this, then if something happens and she finds a kid, then it's my fault. So I need to do this. So I told the guys, like, yeah, I'll do it. So we had a software program where I generated a phone number for him to use to give. And then I was going to be the bad actor who had access to two little girls for this girl. So within. She hit me up pretty quick, and we start talking we end up setting up a meet. And she wanted to have. She wanted to have these kids drugged, these two little girls drugged. And we're talking, you know, prepubescent kids and.

[Jack Murphy]

Who are fiction God in this case.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yes.

[Jack Murphy]

Yeah.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yes. So. And that's good to point out. So when we're, when we're doing these cases, we're not offering, we're not using real kids there. Now I will say when we've worked these ops and looking at the evidence after the fact, we're not just arresting all these people and then we're done. You were looking through digital evidence, digital media, looking for potential of. Is there a live victim? Have they been hands on? That's what we call it. Hands on with somebody. And actually the first person that we ever arrested doing this, it took two years before the kids disclosed, but they disclosed what had happened. So we have had instances where we're removing these kids from harm and getting them the services and resources that they need. So. But in this instance. But the person that was live, she was potentially trying to traffic this other girl. I believe she was 16. And so the goal was, we identified who she was, try to recover the trafficked girl and then get her on, see if she's done anything with any other kids, and then bring her in for what she was trying to do with these. These two young kids. So she ends up. She agrees, she ends up showing up, she brings some cash, not. Not a ton of cash to pay for the ax. And then she brings all of these sex toys like she was. She had dildo, glass, dildos, speculum, all these clamps that she could put on her body. And then just went through the interview with her, and she was. She was a sadist. So she was really someone who enjoyed the, I think, the pain of it. And she. She had. She was someone who had been abused growing up some, and she had had a horrible life. But that doesn't. I'm a firm believer that that does not give you any pass.

[Jack Murphy]

Yeah.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

To be able to do this. Right. So. So yeah, she. She got. I. I don't remember. She didn't. I think eight years. Eight years in. In prison. She's still in prison. And she was early 20s.

[Jack Murphy]

Jesus.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

That showed up. Yeah.

[Jack Murphy]

Well, one of the things. One of the other things that jumped out at me from that conference, as far as the difficulty in prosecuting these cases, was that, you know, obviously when a minor is abused by somebody who's like a parent or someone who's in the circle of trust, it creates a Whole added dimension of difficulty in getting the victim to disclose. But even when you have a woman who is being trafficked by a pimp who is either very violent or very manipulative or both, that many times when law enforcement moves in and makes arrests, that the victims don't see themselves as victims, that they don't feel that they have been victimized. They still have in their mind, they think that they're in love with the pimp. And for police officers, you know, legally you have to have a victim in order to prosecute a crime. Was that something that you encountered during your career?

[Carlos Rodriguez]

So a couple of things. So, yes, I did encounter where you have people who weren't aware that they were being trafficked, you know, and they did think they were doing this for. For whatever purpose, for love or for whatever. When we built our cases dealing with. With trafficking, which is slightly different than what we were talking about earlier, we would build those cases so that we wanted a solid case so that if the. The person who was being trafficked or abused, raped, was not. We didn't need them. We didn't need their testimony. So we did extra work to make sure we had the records. We had. If they were at hotels, we had all the receipts. We had the cameras doing surveillance. So we can actually see what's going on if they choose to. If the trafficker, the pimp decides to talk to you. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. It really depends on, really their ego or if, you know, they have. If they make a wise decision or not. So trying to build it in such a way where if the person doesn't go that way, we don't really need them to testify because you have all of these other things. You have all of these, the records of what happened. And do you have coercion? Did they force them? Did they defraud them? Where's the money going? You know, who's keeping the money? Do you have your. Do you have your own id? Who's getting the hotel rooms? And then as. As you build more cases, then pimps start to realize, okay, well, now I don't do that. You know, they learn. They go back and forth. They get. They get the public disclosure and read the cases and try to see what your tactics are. So you kind of do. You have to change things up a little bit. But. But ultimately, in order for it to work, you. Someone has to show up. You have the exchange, and then you watch it so they're still at risk. So it's just depending on how you do it. And then sometimes people get tired of being in that life, or maybe they chose up or they're with a different trafficker. And they won't talk about their trafficker, but they'll talk about their other one. And you can build a case on that. So that happens a lot. I have friends that have life experience and just hearing their stories. Actually, one of them, before she was my friend, I listened to her speak. Her name's Rebecca Bender. She's amazing. And listening to her story and what she went through changed how we did things, how my task force did things. And I remember talking about, I remember talking about. That's pointing up at her at the stage when we were watching her. That's why we do this, you know, because of someone like that. You know, look at, look, this is. Even though everything that she went through that look, she's a success, you know, she's still here. She's a fighter. And so what can we do to try to keep other people from going through that? So. And then we changed how we did it. We made sure that we had, it's called trauma informed approach. Where truly, where we're actually spending the time making sure that they get resources. And not like when we would do ops, you'd set dates to try to recover somebody. But still you have your, your arrest team in a park portion of the house calling the dates. Maybe the, the pimp drop, trafficker drops person off. Person comes in, they get the buy, you get this, they push a little button. So, okay, arrest team come in, you go in, but you still, even if you're doing it really low key, you're still in, you're still the police with guns out, it isn't really right. It's very traumatic because when you see, you know, when you're a civilian and you see people with guns out, that they're not really processing everything that you're saying, guaranteed they're not remembering everything. And so just kind of changing how you, you do different things. I know there's a. Up in Canada, they have a way of doing things where they actually have someone with life experience who's in their task force and they'll set up the dates and then they just go knock on the door and explain who they are. She goes in and talks. They make sure it's clear, safe. She goes in and talks to him, says, hey, here's why we're here. She goes through her spiel because she knows how to speak with the person, goes through the spiel, offer resources. This is why we're Here, we're not here to arrest you. If you want to get out of this life, give me a call. And then they would leave. And if they could build the case on the trafficker, and they said the majority of the people that came back, they were very successful. They were able to build. I think it was over 90%, they actually were able to convict, charge and convict the traffickers from the. From doing it a different way. And. Because when you. When you meet people, like when I'd meet kids that are being trafficked, or you'd meet adults that are being trafficked that are in that life, they. They don't want to talk to you. You know, you're. You're the cops. And look at their life experience before, you know, where did they have someone that was addicted to them? Did they have someone, you know, who just kind of looked at them or treated them like they were nothing or trashed? And it takes while. It takes a while to build that up. I used to. I had one case where there was. She was 14 years old and was being trafficked. I remember the first time I talked to her, and I said, hey, look, I'm. I. Here's who I am. I know you don't trust me. You're not going to really trust me until, you know, we. We meet again. I said, no offense, I hope we don't meet again. I said, but I. When I'm doing this work, oftentimes I meet people again. And then she would say, so if I run and I go to Oregon, are you going to come get me? And I was like, yeah. I go, it may not be me, but we're going to come find you. She goes, what if I went to New York? What if I went to California? And she was asking all these questions and she ran. She ran a lot. So she had three traffickers. Two were the main one. The other one was just a brother trying to be cool like his older brother. So two went to prison. She ran again. We got her in Oregon, we got her in California. And then I think the last time I saw her, I got her out of a hotel. And it was always during the holidays, it was Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve that we'd recover her. And the last one, I think it was Christmas Eve, and pull her out of this hotel. And she's in the back of the car. And I just remember telling her. I was like, hey, you know, I'm not your dad. But, you know, I just. I just hate seeing you like this. And she's like, I know. She goes, I don't have a dad. And I. She goes, I don't hate. And I said, you probably hate me. And I was like, I don't. She goes, I don't hate you. But she points at the FBI guy. She goes, I hate that motherfucker. I don't know why. I don't know why she hated the guy. His name is Kyle was the nicest guy from Minnesota. He talks like. He talks like Owen Wilson. You know, jeepers. We. I mean, that was this guy, and he's like. But she just hated him. She could not stand him. And he was so nice. Well, he's still alive, so he's still nice. But I just remember that conversation with her, and it was horrible. I mean, part of what I missed about being in the work is I had these undercover profiles, and I was friends with her on Facebook, so I could kind of see. And she didn't know it was me, so I could kind of see when she'd post stuff that she was doing okay, which was really cool to see. And then when I retired or when I got out of it, you don't have access to that anymore. So I was like, you don't. You don't know what's happening in some of these people's lives. But hopefully, in my mind, hopefully, she's still doing really well.

[Jack Murphy]

Before we move on, I mean, are there any other ones you'd like to talk about that were particularly insightful as far as how law enforcement and prosecutors go after these cases and how people are victimized? Maybe there's some lessons learned.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

I'll say, you know, if you're. If you're doing this work and you. You have a prosecutor that's really motivated, you know, don't. Well, one, don't be afraid to go meet with your prosecutors and. Because it is a team effort and. But not all prosecutors are the same. Some suck, but you have some that are really good and really good at what they're doing and working together to just asking the questions, you know, what do you need? What do you need for me to build a case? Because everyone does things differently. So if you can get them the information that they need and jump through those extra hoops, it's totally worth it. Because what. I mean, what are you really doing this for? You're doing it to protect vulnerable people. You're doing it to keep kids from harm, get them out of a bad situation. So, I mean, that's the goal, right? So if it means that you have to do an extra report or go talk to another person or do something a certain way that you don't normally do it within reason, then you do it. You need to do it. So I think that's important. And just learning from that, learning from all your experiences, when you first start to testify, you're not going to be as good as the next time you testify. So just getting the feedback from those cases, I think is really important. I don't know if that's what you asked, but that's what sticks out in my mind with those cases.

[Jack Murphy]

The next thing I wanted to roll into was sort of you leaving this task force. Did you decide that you had had enough and you needed a break, or did the police actually decide, like, okay, this guy did his time and we need to cycle him off this job?

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Oh, it was not quite that. What had happened was the position opened back in the governor's detail, and it was when my principal at the time was also running for president and he didn't win. But they had two teams going, and the person who they thought would take that spot wasn't interested in staying there. He was only there temporarily. So they were trying to get people to go in to manage the Executive protection Unit, and they really weren't having. No one was really interested in it. I mean, it's a tough job. So I got asked a couple times, hey, you should put in for this. And I was like, oh, okay, well, I'll do it if you give, if you make sure there's a metaphor in every district in the state patrol, because there's eight districts. I go, well, you give me this and I'll leave, you know, and then we can go do this. I was joking. But then, then I started to get calls from different people saying, hey, just listen to me. You should do this. And I was like, no, I've been there, done that. That's not my, not what I want to do. And then one of my buddies called and said, hey, we're on the street. Is you're just gonna get put there. So because no one's interested, you have the experience, maybe you should just go have the big men save face. That's a call I got. So I was like, okay. So I put in for it. And I, I, I'll say, if that hadn't happened, I guaranteed I wouldn't have retired and I'd still be there working those cases for sure. And, But I'm glad that that happened because one I retired is after I did my short stint there, and then I, I, I retired after 25 years, because you can go at 25 years with the State Patrol. And it also showed me that. It showed me that I was actually affected by the work, by the, by that. That ugly, as I like to call it, that it was affecting me. And I didn't realize how it was, had affected me, just decisions I had made in my life. And I'd say, you know, I started to realize it then. It didn't really hit me until I moved to San Diego, where I live now, and the work I'd done and I didn't have the same support structure. And I just, you know, things would just trigger me on different things and I just. My emotions started to flood back and I didn't really know how to manage them. So just like, I'd see something and, you know, I get really super emotional. So just so I thought, you know, I should probably go talk to somebody. So. And then that's. I started to talk to someone and then I realized what a toll that it took on me. And you know, how. And I thought I was doing things really well, and I wasn't. I was just. I was just putting things into a box and putting it into a shelf, you know, up in my brain. And that's not the best way to manage things. I mean, everybody, when you do this work, you have to. You have to have the ability to compartmentalize certain things or you're just not going to get anything done. But you also need to make sure that you're mindful that you're taking care of yourself or pretty soon you're going to run out of boxes and you're not, you know, you're not going to be able to function at all with anything that you do. So, yeah, so that's kind of how I left. But I'm glad that it happened that way because now I'm still involved. I don't do the work, but I still help train. I still do the conference circuit. The job I do now, I still. I do Title IX investigations, sex assault type stuff on the policy side for the school district. So work in San Diego. It's the second largest school district in California. And so I do employee investigations. I also do some law enforcement investigations because we have our own police department and just really focused on accountability, compliance, and then making sure that kids are safe and they're able to go to school and learn and not have to worry about someone creeping on them or, you know, assaulting them in some way. So

[Jack Murphy]

what were some of the things that you did to start to like, recover from working this kind of job as it started to, like, affect your personal life. You said you. You mentioned that you were, you know, often being triggered by different things that kind of bring you back to that bad place. How did you start to deal with that?

[Carlos Rodriguez]

I'll say, well, the first thing I did, I mean, I. I still have some good friends, so I talked to them, but. But really, I. I interviewed a number of. Of therapists, and I just called them and I said, hey, here's. Here's what I used to do. I see that your background you deal with because down here there's a lot of military personnel, so there are a lot of people who say they're kind of. They try to advertise towards that for the ptsd. So I contacted a number of people. I said, well, I was law enforcement. I didn't really. I mean, I grew up in. My dad was in the service and family members in the service. So I kind of lived, you know, the cursory, but I wasn't in it, so. But I still. I think there's some similarities as far as the. The stress that you. You see and the things that you see. And then I finally found one that felt right and started to. To go see her, and that. That helped me a lot. And then just. And then actually listening and then actually saying, oh, okay, well, maybe that's why I did that, or because I think I had a really hard time with. I used to get really mad at people when that were in law enforcement that said, oh, I can't do. I could never do what you do. And I was like, well, you're a fucking cop. Why can't you do this? You're supposed to help people. And I was angry. I still was pissed off about that all the way till when I moved here in 2023. And one of the sessions, she's As. I shared that with her and she's like, well, well, can you do this? Can you. Are you on an NBA team? Can you build a rocket? I was like, well, no. She goes, well, everybody has their different skill set. I goes, you did it because you could do it. That's why you did it. And I'd never thought of it that way, so I know now that that's not. It wasn't necessarily fair for me to get angry, but it did. It used to piss me off. I was like, fuck, aren't you guys doing this? Come on, let's all go get these guys. But. So I think. I think that was. That was really big. And then really writing Writing things out. I'm a big Stephen King fan, so as a kid and I. So I got his book on writing. It's called On Writing. And I listened to that on Audible a couple times. So he's like, you know, this is your job. If this is your job, you should be doing this every day for this amount of time. Time or it's not really your job. So I just set one to two hours a day to write, to go through things once I decided it was going to be a book. But that was really good. I couldn't. It wasn't always every day because sometimes when I got to something that was heavy, I didn't want to have that stuff in my head when I went to bed. So I'd skip a day or maybe wait till I was off and then write during the day when before I went to sleep. I think that that was helpful. So it took a little longer to get things to go. But I've never written a book. I mean, it was. But the whole journey's been pretty cool. And then I got to meet. Get to meet a bunch of cool people so far. So that's fun and hopefully I'll be able to help people. That's the big goal.

[Jack Murphy]

And when is the release date for the book?

[Carlos Rodriguez]

So the Launch date is March 31st. I think it'll be available before then, but we're trying to. Trying to launch it on the 31st just to make sure everything is available on the website. So March 31 is the launch date.

[Jack Murphy]

So the ugly underneath. We'll put some links down in the description too, for folks to go and find the book. I really appreciate you doing this because I feel like there's a lot of misconceptions about this subject and I'm glad to, you know, hear a real expert on it. And I did want to touch upon briefly in the last five to 10 years, I think there's been sort of an explosion of interest is the wrong word, but concern about human trafficking and there's good reason.

[Podcast Host]

I've got Dan Morgan here on the pod. So say hi, Dan.

[Dan Morgan]

Hey, how's it going today?

[Podcast Host]

It's going good, man. Tell us who you are and what you do.

[Dan Morgan]

I'm Dan Morgan. I'm an attorney and a managing partner at Morgan and Morgan, which is America's largest injury law firm.

[Podcast Host]

That's pretty awesome. I think I saw a billboard of yours recently that said 20 billion won. 20 billion is an insane number.

[Dan Morgan]

Yeah, 20 billion recovered. It's actually, I think somewhere north, probably closer to 22, 23 after this year and each year we get bigger and badder and our army grows. So the number will hopefully keep getting bigger and bigger as time goes on.

[Jack Murphy]

Awesome.

[Podcast Host]

So how does someone get in contact with Morgan and Morgan? What, what would I do if I got into an accident?

[Dan Morgan]

Probably the easiest way is dialing pound law. That's £529 from your cell phone. We are always open. Our call center is always waiting to take your call. 247 365.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Wow.

[Podcast Host]

Dan Morgan from Morgan Morgan, America's largest injury law firm. Thanks for coming by the show.

[Dan Morgan]

Thanks for having me. Visit forthepeople.com for an office near you

[Jack Murphy]

isn't and I think that can lead to a lot of good things. Passing new laws, reforming the existing system and all kinds of things that, you know, could be done to help. But that has also led, I feel like to a lot more misconceptions and a lot of groups coming out there that, you know, some of them mean well, I'm sure. But a lot, a lot of them are, I mean the, the extreme end of it was what was that that group Save the Children or something like that where the guy was actually a predator.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

I'm not sure which organization. But there, there are, I mean, something I learned with working these cases is people tend to create, to put themselves where they can create an opportunity to get what they want. So if you like cars, you're going to go to car shows, right? If you like sports, you're going to go to sporting events. If you're sexually attracted to kids, you're going to do things where there are kids around and you have the opportunity to offend. So that's why you see people, I mean, I'm not saying everyone who's is bad, who's a coach or a janitor or a teacher or you know, people who are around kids. But that's why you see those instances where there are people that are in those professions that are doing those things because they're around it. They have this, it's available. So but yeah, I'll say there I do. I agree with you. There are a lot of organizations that, you know, I don't, I don't know all of these people that come up. You have people who, who have the same background as, you know, you or they were or say they do in special ops. And I don't know cause I'm vetting any of them. But people say that they've done all these things and I'm sure they're Very good at what, some of them are very good at what they do. But if you're not involved in training, you don't have the training and you don't know how to handle these cases. You've got no business doing that type of work. And then if you're just going to go rip someone, go to another country and rip someone out of a situation and say, yeah, we saved this kid, but what happens afterwards? You know what's going to happen? Why are they, why are they in that situation in the first place? Are they doing that because are they being trafficked or are they doing that because they don't have any other options? So why don't we focus on, on, you know, do they have water, do they have food? What other things are we can do there where, where they can get a job where maybe that isn't a choice anymore? You know, there, there's so many other ways to tackle it. You can't arrest your way out of this problem. You can't just go in and, and grab people. And then you see organizations or they're doing, and they're doing a documentary of it and you know, how does that look? They're just running with the boom mic. I mean, that's like, I mean that, that stuff is crazy to me, but. And then you see influencers that are out there and they call a pedophile and they're trying to, you know, then they try to beat the guy up and everyone thinks it's cool, but you're keeping someone from being able to do, do the work. Because if we had a case where there was someone who would go meet with people that they were called pedophiles, I don't know because I didn't work any of those cases because they would get in the way of us being able to work the case and they tried to beat the guy up. But how's that person ever going to be held accountable? Maybe they meet the guy or this person or what other victims do they have? Are they, are they able to do a forensic dump? And look at, look at there, who else have they talked to? Are there any other kids or, you know, do they have kids that they're offending upon? So those are things I think people don't think about. But back, back to the nonprofits, you know, you have, I'm sure there are, there are tons of organizations that have a really good, you know, knee jerk reaction. They want to do good. You know, they, they, they may have a good heart, want to do these good things, but There are so many organizations that are already out there that are really good at what they do and have the training and they can get these other people, they can get, they can do awareness. So just support those groups that are already there. You don't need. Seems like for a while I quit following it because it gets old. But you see like it seemed like every month you'd have one or two new NGOs up and they're saying, oh, I was a SWAT commander or I was, you know, this member of this special operations group and member of this. And I'm thinking, well what, what did you do in. Yeah, what'd you do in trafficking? Do you know how to work a case? You know how to do uc? Are you trauma informed? Have you worked with anyone who has live, live life experience that's actually lived it, you know, how do you know? Because I, I was in law enforcement. I had all the training. I for once first went to the task force. I didn't know what the I was doing. I mean I, I knew how to work dope. I applied that to that, but I, I didn't, I didn't know that. I hadn't listened to a survivor yet. I hadn't, I didn't seen that. I hadn't been confronted yet with those images and what these people are doing. You learn those things and the best way to do it is you build your team with people who have one, the potential and then the capacity to do it and you get them the resources so they're successful. That's mentally. And then also just the training so that they can stay, they can stay sharp and they can do the work. And it's ever changing. I mean you always have to be on top of things. And that's why you mentioned earlier about the iati when you got to go to that. I love going to those events because you do get to unwind. But then you meet other like minded people who are experts and they know what they're doing and you can sit down, you can, you can have a drink with them, eat pizza or whatever you do, have a conversation with them, ask how they're doing it in their area and they go, oh, that's something I think we can do over here. Here's what we do. Have you experienced this? And then you just, you just come back, just rejuvenated and going back and you just knock it out of the park when you get back. And that's what kept, kept our people going. And then supervisors, if you're a supervisor and you're listening to this, and you're one of these teams. You got to get your people the resources they need. Your, your people are your number one resource. If you don't, if you don't take care of them, you're, you're, you're, you're losing it. I mean, I stayed with the State Patrol because I felt I could have went to another department who got paid twice as much because we didn't get paid a ton with State Patrol till just towards the end of my career. But I felt like, I felt valued. I felt valued by my command staff and the people that were there. And then I had a good team. It was like another family, and that was important. And then we were able to do a lot of great good things. So I think a lot of agencies get that wrong. I went off on a tangent. I do that a lot.

[Jack Murphy]

No, no, it's all good. No, I have my tangent to that. You know, just because you are a Navy SEAL doesn't mean that you should be going into human trafficking interdiction in foreign countries down in Central America or.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yeah.

[Jack Murphy]

Whatever the case may be. And, you know, some of these guys are, again, I know some mean well.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yeah.

[Jack Murphy]

Others, I think, are more involved in fundraising and grifting than they are in actually helping people.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yeah.

[Jack Murphy]

And then the other thing is that the, it gets blended in with, like, Christian evangelical stuff, and they start talking about spiritual warfare and fighting demons and.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yeah.

[Jack Murphy]

All kinds of weird shit.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yeah. I, I, so I grew up in the Bible Belt and I used to carry Bible to school and. But I'm not, and I don't anymore. I mean, when I moved to Washington and I kind of got out of that area, I realized, you know, well, this doesn't make sense or that doesn't make sense. But my philosophy is do good, put good out there. I mean, you can't tell me if I don't do all of these good things in the world that if they're right and I get up there and there's a pearly gates, that some guy's not going to let me in, you know, because I, because I, I didn't say, yes, I did this or, you know, or did that way. And then there's so many different religions, you know, how do you know which one's right? I mean, some people are probably going to hate me for saying that, but that's, that's my belief, you know, do good, help people, protect others less fortunate from you, and then, you know, be present. You know, we don't. Something we Say you don't get these days back. You have to be present in the moment, take care of the people that love you. Tell people that you. You care about them because there's so many. You know, the life is short. You don't get. You do not get these days back. But that's. That's what I think do. Good. Yeah, there are. There are a lot of NGOs that are like that. I'm very skeptical when I'm. I am connected with somebody like that because I've. I have prior experience in that world, and it should be about what's the mission. And in this case, when you're talking about kids and keeping people from being raped for money or for anything of value and then putting that on the Internet for people to share, the cost is too high. What's more important than that? That's the mission. It shouldn't be the man over the mission or the person over the mission. It's the mission. How do you focus and work together to build a team to make sure that you can combat that on multiple, multiple areas? And it isn't just one team. That's why we in law enforcement, we have multidisciplinary teams. Because my lane is I'm good at logistics. I can do the undercover stuff, some tech. I mean, I'm not. I was never a SWAT guy. I was lucky. I got to go to sub gun school, which was awesome. But, you know, that wasn't my lane. I didn't pretend to be, but I had people on my team that were SWAT or SWAT commanders, and they knew what to do. Digital forensics. You have them there, and that's their lane. And you pull that team together and you build them so you can support the mission the best that you can. And if you don't do something quite right, you accept it and you make the change. So it is right, because what are we doing it for? To protect others. So you got to be a little selfless there.

[Jack Murphy]

Are there any NGOs that you are involved with that you'd feel comfortable shouting

[Carlos Rodriguez]

out, oh, yeah, one Internet. Or the International association of Human Trafficking Investigators. Great group of guys. They have a conference. They do. The main conference they do is in St. Pete's now. It's a new venue this year in Florida. But they're doing stuff in Maryland. Conferences in Maryland. Canada. They're doing a bunch of stuff in Canada. And they're great because they provide training to people who are. Have the commission they're tasked to do this work. They're providing them the training that they need. They're providing a venue where you can go to a location and learn from others that are doing this. And they bring subject matter experts together. And not just law enforcement. You have, well, prosecutors are part of law enforcement. You have prosecutors, you have social workers, you have people with lived in experience. So survivors of sex trafficking from all over. And you get to. I've got tons of friends from that. And you learn how to do that. So they're great. They provide that. There's an organization called Raven Us. And the thing that's great about them is there are subject matter experts in the space. Some of them were retired ICAT commanders. You have people who are writing the laws, if you're familiar with the laws they've had recently, like the SAFE act, the Take It down act, things dealing with protecting children. The CEO of that group, she's the one who was helped write those bills. And so they're working on the policy side and getting funding for those that are doing the work and funding these ICAC organizations. So they're great. Raven Us are working the policy side. Rebecca Bender has an organization that helps survivors. It's called Elevate Academy. Awesome. I know I'm going to miss some. There's tons. In Seattle, there's a place called rest. They provide housing, low barrier housing for trafficking victims. So they're great. I know I'm going to miss some. There's so many of them. Ever strong. They used to be called stolen youth. They're in the Washington area. They're great. They help raise money for funding training in schools in San Diego. San Diego Youth Services. They provide wraparound services for families and potential trafficked victims. They have bullying programs, training for kids in school. So they're changing because how do you prevent someone from becoming a sex buyer? You got to focus on the people who are buying when they're younger. Right. So they have training on, hey, this is why this is wrong. This is how you build a healthy relationship. So that's something we partnered with in San Diego so that we have that available to our students when we, when we start to have these, see these problems. We actually just launched our human trafficking prevention program in San Diego Unified School District. Pretty excited about. That way we can track different things and get students resources. It's like another job, but it's well worth it. I'm sure I missed NCMEC National Center Missing Exploited Children. Missingkids.org that's the big one. But they the clearinghouse for all the cyber tips.

[Jack Murphy]

So the book due out in March. The ugly underneath is there. I mean, you told us a little bit about where you're at today and you're still involved in investigations. Is there anything else you want to talk about or anything else you want to shout out before we wrap up tonight?

[Carlos Rodriguez]

I'd say the big thing is if you, if you're in this line of work, just know that it affects you. And you need to make sure you take breaks. Take breaks so you can care for yourself and you can care for your family. Because if you don't, it's going to tear you down and surround yourself with good people. I'd say that's number one for those that are in the work. If you are someone who is not. But there are a lot of people who are interested in this, like with all the true crime stuff, if they read the book, they'll get a look into what that's about and support those that are out there protecting your kids and protecting your family and trying to get them to a better place because they need it. You don't get a lot of thank yous. Usually when you're a cop and you're in a restaurant, it's usually like, oh, behave or he's going to arrest you. You know, it isn't like the firemen who get like, you know, all the cool stuff. It's like people usually only reach out to you when you're a cop if, you know, they, when they need you, they need your help or, or they're trying to scare their kid, you know, the Pizza Hut or something.

[Jack Murphy]

I, I did want to point that out too tonight that, you know, I, I understand there's a thought process out there that all cops are bastards and defund the police, this sort of stuff. And I totally get that there are corrupt cops out there, there are racist cops, there are guys that should not have a gun in a badge, for sure, but absolutely. On the other hand, there are cops out there who are heroic and are doing vitally important work to protect our citizens every day. And like I mentioned earlier, I think back to that cop I spoke to who was like looking out over at the ocean, like, man, it feels good not to have to look at that crap today. Think about that guy and what, and what him and people like him are doing every day to protect our citizens. And as you point out, the psychological toll that it takes on them. And you know, you guys really, you know, and I think most police departments get it now that, you know, you guys need to be cycled on and off this job you know, to protect your own well being.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yeah. And you know, the part about, you know, the good and the bad. I think what, maybe a lot of people. This is what, what I hate when someone does something really bad. It used to make me so angry. That's law enforcement because no matter what uniform they have on, it's still a police uniform and they represent everybody else and they need, that's why that you need to have good investigations. When someone doesn't abide by their policy, so they're held accountable. So they can't do that because they're making it bad for everybody. And if they're not doing what they should, then they shouldn't be a cop. You know, get rid of them. Yeah, that's, that's my two cents on that. I think accountability is important. When, when we went in the academy, one of the first things they said on day one was, you live in a glass house and you're held to a higher standard. And if, if you're not okay with that, this isn't the job for you. You are. Yeah, it's different. You're held to a higher standard because of what you do. The community has it. They, they're trusting you with their safety and if you do anything to mess that up, you're not going to have the trust of your community. And it's just. And that's. I mean, you see a lot of that. I've been seeing a lot of that lately, but yeah.

[Jack Murphy]

And where can people find you online? Do you have a website, a LinkedIn, anywhere you'd like to direct people?

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Yeah. So the website right now is the uglyunderneath.com on TikTok or Instagram. It's. I should have it memorized, but it's. I believe it's Crodriguez198, but Carlos Rodriguez, that's my name. But the website has that. The Ugly underneath, there's a link for it. So not everything's up yet till the book's published. I think the links will start to

[Jack Murphy]

work on the website and we will shout it out when it comes out. And actually, you reminded me, this conversation reminded me something I want to shout out real quick. A previous guest on the show, General Remo Butler, because of the interview he did on this show, he went ahead and he wrote his memoir. The book is out on Amazon now. It's called Lead from the Front Lessons and legacy from the first black U.S. army Special Forces General. Author again is Remo Butler, previous guest on the show. I just want to shout out to our listeners, let you know that his book is out now and you should go check it out on Amazon. So, Carlos, again, thank you for coming on the show with the book. I thought it was great. I read it on the, on the airplane over to Japan. Went right, right through it. I mean, it's, it's a quick read and it's really engaging and really informative. So I hope that people, whether they're in law enforcement or there are civilians out there, hoping to gain a bit of better understanding about this topic. We'll go and check it out.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

All right. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on. It's great. Great to meet you.

[Jack Murphy]

Yeah, you too, Carlos.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Thank you.

[Jack Murphy]

And for all of our listeners out there, we will see you next week. Thank you for joining us tonight. Hey, guys, I want to tell I've

[Podcast Host]

got Dan Morgan here on the pod. So say hi, Dan.

[Dan Morgan]

Hey, how's it going today?

[Podcast Host]

It's going good, man. Tell us who you are and what you do.

[Dan Morgan]

I'm Dan Morgan. I'm an attorney and a managing partner at Morgan and Morgan, which is America's largest injury law firm.

[Podcast Host]

That's pretty awesome. I think I saw a billboard of yours recently that said 20 billion won. 20 billion is an insane number.

[Dan Morgan]

Yeah, 20 billion recovered. It's actually, I think somewhere north, probably closer to 22, 23 after this year. And each year we get bigger and badder and our army grows. So the number will hopefully keep getting bigger and bigger as time goes on.

[Jack Murphy]

Awesome.

[Podcast Host]

So how does someone get in contact with Morgan and Morgan? What would I do if I got into an accident?

[Dan Morgan]

Probably the easiest way is dialing pound law. That's £529 from your cell phone. We are always open. Our call center is always waiting to take your call. 24. 7 365.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Wow.

[Podcast Host]

Dan Morgan from Morgan and Morgan, America's large injury law firm. Thanks for coming by the show.

[Dan Morgan]

Thanks for having me. Visit forthepeople.com for an office near you.

[Jack Murphy]

All of you today about a new newsletter that we're launching that encompasses both the Team House podcast, the Eyes on podcast and the High side news outlet, which I run with Sean Naylor. The newsletter is going to be once a week. It's going to come into your inbox and you're going to get the most current podcasts on Eyes on and the Team House and whatever's topical or current on the High side. So it's another way for us to get the information out to you. As social media algorithms are pretty iffy and you never really know what you're going to get. So this is a once a week email. It'll slide into your inbox and it will have, you know, the greatest hits of that week.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

It's really good, man. Checking it out.

[Jack Murphy]

The website for it is teamhousepodcast.kit.com join teamhousepodcast kit kit.com join go there and you enter into your email list or you enter your email into the little thing on the website and you're good to go and that'll be it. So we really appreciate your support and hope you'll consider signing up. The link will also be down in the description if you're looking for it there.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

And That's Teamhouse podcast kit k I t k tango.com join.

[Podcast Host]

I've got Dan Morgan here on the pod. Say hi, Dan.

[Dan Morgan]

Hey, how's it going today?

[Podcast Host]

It's going good, man. Tell us who you are and what you do.

[Dan Morgan]

I'm Dan Morgan. I'm an attorney and a managing partner at Morgan and Morgan, which is America's largest injury law firm.

[Podcast Host]

That's pretty awesome. I think I saw a billboard of yours recently that said 20 billion. 120 billion is an insane number.

[Dan Morgan]

Yeah, 20 billion recovered. It's actually, I think somewhere north, probably closer to 22, 23 after this year. And each year we get bigger and badder and our army grows. So the number will hopefully keep getting bigger and bigger as time goes on.

[Jack Murphy]

Awesome.

[Podcast Host]

So how does someone get in contact with Morgan and Morgan? What would I do if I got into an accident?

[Dan Morgan]

Probably the easiest way is dialing pound law. That's £529 from your cell phone. We are always open. Our call center is always waiting to take your call. 247365.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Wow.

[Podcast Host]

Dan Morgan from Morgan and Morgan, America's largest injury law firm. Thanks for coming by the show.

[Dan Morgan]

Thanks for having me. Visit forththepeope.com for an office near you.

[Podcast Host]

I've got Dan Morgan here on the pod. Say hi, Dan.

[Dan Morgan]

Hey, how's it going today?

[Podcast Host]

It's going good, man. Tell us who you are and what you do.

[Dan Morgan]

I'm Dan Morgan. I'm an attorney and a managing partner at Morgan and Morgan, which is America's largest injury law firm.

[Podcast Host]

That's pretty awesome. I think I saw a billboard of yours recently that said 20 billion. 120 billion is an insane number.

[Dan Morgan]

Yeah, 20 billion recovered. It's actually, I think somewhere north, probably closer to 22, 23 after this year. And each year we get bigger and better and our army grows so the number will hopefully keep getting bigger and bigger as time goes on.

[Jack Murphy]

Awesome.

[Podcast Host]

So how does someone get in contact with Morgan and Morgan?

[Carlos Rodriguez]

What.

[Podcast Host]

What would I do if I got into an accident?

[Dan Morgan]

Probably the easiest way is dialing pound law. That's £529 from your cell phone. We are always open. Our call center is always waiting to take your call. 24 7. 365.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Wow.

[Podcast Host]

Dan Morgan from Morgan and Morgan, America's largest injury law firm. Thanks for coming by the show.

[Dan Morgan]

Thanks for having me. Visit forthepeople.com for an office near you.

[Podcast Host]

I've got Dan Morgan here on the pod. Say hi, Dan.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Hey.

[Dan Morgan]

How's it going today?

[Podcast Host]

It's going good, man. Tell us who you are and what you do.

[Dan Morgan]

I'm Dan Morgan. I'm an attorney and a managing partner at Morgan and Morgan, which is America's largest injury law firm.

[Podcast Host]

That's pretty awesome. I think I saw a billboard of yours recently that said 20 billion. Wonderful. 20 million is an insane number.

[Dan Morgan]

Yeah, 20 billion recovered. It's actually, I think somewhere north, probably closer to 22, 23 after this year. And each year we get bigger and badder and our army grows. So the number will hopefully keep getting bigger and bigger as time goes on.

[Jack Murphy]

Awesome.

[Podcast Host]

So how does someone get in contact with Morgan and Morgan? What would I do if I got into an accident?

[Dan Morgan]

Probably the easiest way is dialing pound law. That's £529 from your cell phone. We are always open. Our call center is always waiting to take your call. 247365.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Wow.

[Podcast Host]

Dan Morgan from Morgan and Morgan, America's large injury law firm. Thanks for coming by the show.

[Dan Morgan]

Thanks for having me. Visit forthepeople.com for an office near you.

[Podcast Host]

I've got Dan Morgan here on the pod. Say hi, Dan.

[Dan Morgan]

Hey, how's it going today?

[Podcast Host]

It's going good, man. Tell us who you are and what you do.

[Dan Morgan]

I'm Dan Morgan. I'm an attorney and a managing partner at Morgan and Morgan, which is America's largest injury law firm.

[Podcast Host]

That's pretty awesome. I think I saw a billboard of yours recently. It said 20 billion one. 20 billion is an insane number.

[Dan Morgan]

Yeah, 20 billion recovered. It's actually, I think somewhere north, probably closer to 22, 23 after this year. And each year we get bigger and better and our army grows. So the. The number will hopefully keep getting bigger and bigger as time goes on.

[Jack Murphy]

Awesome.

[Podcast Host]

So how does someone get in contact with Morgan and Morgan? What would I do if I got into an accident?

[Dan Morgan]

Probably the Easiest way is dialing pound law. That's £529 from your cell phone. We are always open. Our call center is always waiting to take your call. 247 365.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Wow.

[Podcast Host]

Dan Morgan from Morgan and Morgan, America's largest injury law firm. Thanks for coming by the show.

[Dan Morgan]

Thanks for having me. Visit forthepeople.com for an office near you.

[Podcast Host]

I've got Dan Morgan here on the pod. Say hi, Dan.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Hey.

[Dan Morgan]

How's it going today?

[Podcast Host]

It's going good, man. Tell us who you are and what you do.

[Dan Morgan]

I'm Dan Morgan. I'm an attorney and a managing partner at Morgan and Morgan, which is America's largest injury law firm.

[Podcast Host]

That's pretty awesome. I think I saw a billboard of yours recently that said 20 billion won. 20 million is an insane number.

[Dan Morgan]

Yeah, 20 billion recovered. It's actually, I think somewhere north. Probably closer to 22, 23 after this year. And each year we get bigger and badder and our army grows. So the number will hopefully keep getting bigger and bigger as time goes on.

[Jack Murphy]

Awesome.

[Podcast Host]

So how does someone get in contact with Morgan and Morgan? What would I do if I got into an accident?

[Dan Morgan]

Probably the easiest way is dialing pound law. That's £529 from your cell phone. We are always open. Our call center is always waiting to take your call. 247365.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Wow.

[Podcast Host]

Dan Morgan from Morgan and Morgan, America's large injury law firm. Thanks for coming by the show.

[Dan Morgan]

Thanks for having me. Visit forthepeople.com for an office near you.

[Podcast Host]

I've got Dan Morgan here on the pod. Say hi, Dan.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Hey.

[Dan Morgan]

How's it going today?

[Podcast Host]

It's going good, man. Tell us who you are, what you do.

[Dan Morgan]

I'm Dan Morgan. I'm an attorney and a managing partner at Morgan and Morgan, which is America's largest injury law firm.

[Podcast Host]

That's pretty awesome. I think I saw a billboard of yours recently that said 20 billion one 20 billion is an insane number.

[Dan Morgan]

Yeah, 20 billion recovered. It's actually, I think somewhere north. Probably closer to 22, 23 after this year. And each year we get bigger and badder and our army grows. So the number will hopefully keep getting bigger and bigger as time goes on.

[Jack Murphy]

Awesome.

[Podcast Host]

So how does someone get in contact with Morgan and Morgan?

[Carlos Rodriguez]

What.

[Podcast Host]

What would I do if I got into an accident?

[Dan Morgan]

Probably the easiest way is dialing pound law. That's £529 from your cell phone. We are always open. Our call center is always waiting to take your call. 247 365.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Wow.

[Podcast Host]

Dan Morgan from Morgan and Morgan, America's largest injury law firm. Thanks for coming by the show.

[Dan Morgan]

Thanks for having me. Visit forthepeople.com for an office near you.

[Podcast Host]

I've got Dan Morgan here on the pod. Say hi, Dan.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Hey.

[Dan Morgan]

How's it going today?

[Podcast Host]

It's going good, man. Tell us who you are and what you do.

[Dan Morgan]

I'm Dan Morgan. I'm an attorney and a managing partner at Morgan and Morgan, which is America's largest injury law firm.

[Podcast Host]

That's pretty awesome. I think I saw a billboard of yours recently that said 20 billion won. 20 million is an insane number.

[Dan Morgan]

Yeah, 20 billion recovered. It's actually, I think somewhere north. Probably closer to 22, 23 after this year. And each year we get bigger and badder and our army grows. So the number will hopefully keep getting bigger and bigger as time goes on.

[Jack Murphy]

Awesome.

[Podcast Host]

So how does someone get in contact with Morgan and Morgan? What would I do if I got into an accident?

[Dan Morgan]

Probably the easiest way is dialing pound law. That's £529 from your cell phone. We are always open or call center is always waiting to take your call. 247. 365.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Wow.

[Podcast Host]

Dan Morgan from Morgan and Morgan, America's largest injury law firm. Thanks for coming by the show.

[Dan Morgan]

Thanks for having me. Visit forthepeople.com for an office near you.

[Podcast Host]

I've got Dan Morgan here on the pod. Say hi, Dan.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Hey.

[Dan Morgan]

How's it going today?

[Podcast Host]

It's going good. Good, man. Tell us who you are and what you do.

[Dan Morgan]

I'm Dan Morgan. I'm an attorney and a managing partner at Morgan and Morgan, which is America's largest injury law firm.

[Podcast Host]

That's pretty awesome. I think I saw a billboard of yours recently that said 20 billion one. 20 billion is an insane number.

[Dan Morgan]

Yeah, 20 billion recovered. It's actually, I think somewhere north, probably closer to 22, 23 after this year. And each year we get bigger and badder and our army grows. So the number will hopefully keep getting bigger and bigger as time goes on.

[Jack Murphy]

Awesome.

[Podcast Host]

So how does someone get in contact with Morgan and Morgan? What would I do if I got into an accident?

[Dan Morgan]

Probably the easiest way is dialing pound law. That's £529 from your cell phone. We are always open. Our call center is always waiting to take your call. 24 7. 365.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

Wow.

[Podcast Host]

Dan Morgan from Morgan and Morgan, America's large injury law firm. Thanks for coming by the show.

[Dan Morgan]

Thanks for having me. Visit forthepeople.com for an office near you.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

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