Heroes Behind the Badge

Rick Harcrow spent 37 years as a correctional officer at Attica Correctional Facility — home of the deadliest prison riot in American history. In Part 2, the conversation goes deeper: from the daily realities of working inside one of America's most dangerous institutions to the political decisions that shaped how officers and their families were treated for decades. Rick opens the episode with a s...

Rick Harcrow spent 37 years as a correctional officer in the New York State prison system — 30 of them at Attica Correctional Facility. He wasn't there on September 9, 1971, when the riot began. But he worked with the men who were. He heard their stories, sat with their families, and spent three decades living in the shadow of the deadliest prison riot in American history. This is what he knows. T...

Tom Lange was the lead homicide detective for the Los Angeles Police Department assigned to the OJ Simpson murder case — one of the most watched criminal trials in American history. In this second part of a two-part conversation, Lange picks up where Part 1 left off, going deeper into the evidence, the decision-making, and the failures that defined the case. The interview opens with OJ's first int...

Tom Lange was the lead homicide detective for the LAPD on the night of June 12, 1994. When a call came in about a double homicide on the west side of Los Angeles, Lange and his partner Phil Vannatter were the detectives the department trusted with its highest-profile cases. What they were about to work would become the most watched criminal trial in American history. In this first of two parts, La...

Sheriff Michael Neal was a wildlife officer with no business being at a West Memphis crime scene the afternoon of May 20th, 2010. He was over an hour away when two police officers were shot and killed during a traffic stop. He drove there anyway. Part 2 of this conversation is the story of what happened when he got there — and what he carried home from it. The episode opens with Neal describing hi...

Sheriff Michael Neal is a law enforcement officer, a combat veteran of one of the most dramatic police incidents in modern American history, and today the elected Sheriff of Lee County, Arkansas. In May 2010, he was a wildlife officer who drove over an hour, lights and sirens, to respond to a cop-killer ambush in West Memphis and ended it himself in a Walmart parking lot with dozens of rounds hitt...

In Part 2 of his Heroes Behind the Badge conversation, Rafael Mangual opens with the story that drove him to write his book. In July 2019, Brittany Hill, 24 years old, holding her one-year-old daughter outside her home on Chicago's west side, was shot dead when a car pulled up and opened fire. She turned, shielded her daughter, took the bullets, stumbled three steps, and collapsed with the child s...

Rafael A. Mangual is a senior fellow and head of research at the Manhattan Institute's Policing and Public Safety Initiative, and the author of "Criminal [In]Justice." He is one of the most data-driven and unsparing voices in the national debate on criminal justice policy - a lawyer by training who chose research over the courtroom. In Part 1 of this conversation, Mangual opens with the two New Yo...

Blake Boteler is a retired ATF Special Agent and former petroleum geologist whose two-year undercover infiltration of the Sons of Silence outlaw motorcycle gang stands as one of the deepest and most successful operations in ATF history. His 1963 Harley Davidson and undercover jacket are preserved at the National Law Enforcement Museum. Craig Floyd, former head of the National Law Enforcement Offic...

What does it actually cost to go undercover for two years with one of America's most violent outlaw motorcycle gangs? Blake Boteler knows. He's the retired ATF special agent who spent two years as "Bo" — a prospect, then a patch-wearing member of the Sons of Silence — in Colorado Springs, Colorado. His 1963 Harley Davidson and undercover jacket are now in the National Law Enforcement Museum. Craig...

Part 1 ended on the Thanksgiving 1983 murders of Rick Rossman's Metro-Dade partners Richie Boles and David Strzalkowski — shot with their own service weapons by ex-con Charlie Street — and Rick's admission that in more than four decades since, he has never spoken to anyone professionally about that night. Part 2 opens with Rick off-duty at a Miami nightclub when the radio erupts: a chase, shots fi...

Thanksgiving weekend, 1983. Only five officers were assigned to cover an entire Miami-Dade, Florida district that night. Before his first call, Rick Rossman told his sergeant it felt like suicide going out that short-staffed. By 2:14 that morning, two of his partners were dead. Richie Boles and David Strzalkowski responded to a disturbance call — the same call Rick couldn't take because he had a r...

In Part 1, Vivian Eney Cross revealed how her husband — U.S. Capitol Police Sergeant Chris Eney — was killed in a 1984 training accident, and how the system failed her completely in the aftermath. In Part 2, we hear the rest of the story. Vivian finally learns the full circumstances of how Chris died: the abandoned Capitol Hill building, the zigzag stairwells, the training drill that went wrong in...

On August 24, 1984, U.S. Capitol Police Sergeant Chris Eney was shot and killed in a training exercise — accidentally, by a fellow officer and friend. When his wife Vivian got the call, she was told someone was coming to take her to him. They took her to the wrong hospital. By the time she reached the right one, Chris was gone. What followed was a cascade of institutional failures. No death benefi...

In Part 1 , Mindhunter co-author Mark Olshaker traced how FBI legend John Douglas unlocked the psychology of serial predators through audacious prison interviews and left us at the doorstep of the most baffling double life in American criminal history. Part 2 opens there: how does a church president, Boy Scout leader, and devoted family man spend decades as BTK - one of the most feared serial kill...

Documentary filmmaker and Mindhunter co-author Mark Olshaker opens with one of the most chilling sequences in American criminal history: Ed Kemper - a 6-foot-8 serial predator who targeted hitchhiking co-eds to punish a mother who told him he'd never be loved - then drove to Nevada, called the Santa Cruz police from a payphone, and said, "It's me. I've done it. Come and get me." In this Part 1 con...

What if the technology to solve cold cases already exists — and most law enforcement doesn't know how to use it? In Part 2 of this two-part conversation on Heroes Behind the Badge, Morgan Wright goes beyond the Guthrie case and reveals what's actually changing in cold case investigation. This episode is not about hope or hype. It's not about what AI might do someday. And it's not about replacing i...

Was Nancy Guthrie abducted, or was it something else entirely? In Part 1 of this two-part conversation on Heroes Behind the Badge, we sit down with Morgan Wright, former state trooper, former detective, technical advisor to America's Most Wanted, and one of the most innovative investigative minds in law enforcement today. This episode is not about speculation. It's not about true crime sensational...

What does it actually mean to say officer deaths dropped below 100? In Part 2 of this two-part conversation on Heroes Behind the Badge, we sit down again with Bill Alexander, CEO of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund and a 25-year law enforcement veteran. This episode is not about celebration. It’s not about spin. And it’s not about minimizing loss. It’s about what the numbers act...

Before the names are etched in stone, there are lives. Families. Communities forever changed. In Part 1 of this two-part conversation on Heroes Behind the Badge, we sit down with Bill Alexander, CEO of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund and a 25-year veteran of law enforcement. This episode is not about headlines. It’s not about politics. And it’s not about statistics. It’s about...

What happens when the people sworn to enforce the law are treated as the problem? In this episode of Heroes Behind the Badge , we sit down with Chuck Marino, a former Secret Service agent and senior Department of Homeland Security official, for a clear-eyed conversation about a moment many people feel but struggle to explain. This is not an argument. It’s not a rally. And it’s not a soundbite epis...

In this episode of Heroes Behind the Badge, we sit down with Rich Stanek for a candid conversation about policing in the age of viral video—and what happens when the same footage produces radically different interpretations. This is not a breakdown of one incident. It’s a discussion about power, perception, and trust. Why do viral videos shape public opinion so quickly? How do leaders respond when...

Most people think the Beltway Sniper case ended with a dramatic takedown. It didn’t. It ended with a quiet rest stop, two officers, and a decision that sounds backwards: don’t rush in. Retired Maryland State Police Lieutenant Dave Reichenbaugh was there, the on-scene commander during the capture of John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo. In this episode, he explains the real friction inside the ma...

On January 6, 2021, the failure wasn’t a lack of warning. It wasn’t a lack of experience. It was a failure of permission. In this episode of Heroes Behind the Badge, former U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund takes listeners inside the command center as the attack on the Capitol unfolded—minute by minute, decision by decision. Chief Sund explains what he saw in real time, why requests for reinfo...

In this Episode 1 of Heroes Behind the Badge, former U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund joins the conversation to take viewers inside one of the most scrutinized moments in modern American law enforcement - and the deeper leadership failures surrounding it. Steven Sund shares firsthand insight into: what really happened before January 6 systemic breakdowns in leadership and accountability how d...