Part 1 of the Sean Gannon interview was rightly described by a number of UGers as the best thing they ever read in the UG Blog. This is part 2.
There have been public servants who feign injury to avoid work. Gannon's case is the reverse - he is seeking acknowledgment from the Boston Police Department that he is fit to serve and protect on the streets.
Gannon is a member of MENSA, a UFC vet, with championship experience in amateur boxing, grappling, and Judo. He famously beat Kimbo Slice in a bareknuckle session. And he's one of the smartest guys I've ever talked to. For a decade, the BPD has spent a fortune of the taxpayer's money to keep him stuck behind a desk.
Kirik Jenness: What kind of work did they make you do after they restricted you to desk duty?
Sean Gannon: They bounced me around a series of unpleasant assignments, trying to make me quit. One unit I was in was designed to make people quit, and a full one-third of the unit resigned short of a full pension.
The old doc (the one that got canned) heavily pressured my former boss, Sergeant Danny Coleman, to say something bad about me. They should have known better than to try that with an old school badass like him. He gave her a "F*** you very much and have a nice day." He had once been a Deputy Superintendent in charge of Homicide* (and very good at his job). The Commissioner had tried to pressure him into "juking the the stats" to make him look better. They wanted him to raise their homicide "clearance rate" by charging a bunch of people with inadequate evidence to make a case. He said "No way am I risking putting an innocent man in jail to make you look good. Or risking leaving murderers on the street because we charged them before we had the evidence to make a strong case. You can bust me back down to Sergeant [his Civil Service rank] before I'll do anything unethical/illegal like that for you." And so that's exactly what they did.
For a while, I was actually in charge of monitoring the secret system of government cameras and listening devices around the city. I don't think they really thought that one through - they gave me access to recording devices to follow THEM around with. For years, I had access to EVERYTHING, from minor things like everyone at headquarters that billed (scammed) the taxpayer for hours they didn't work to some truly SCANDALOUS stuff. I certainly hope they don't try to retaliate against my family, the witnesses, anyone who has spoken up on my behalf, release my medical records in violation of HIPPA or other personal information or any other form of dirty pool. I hope they try to keep this on the level from now on.
KJ: There's a secret system of government cameras?
SG: Yeah, some of this stuff would blow your mind. Or make you paranoid. If you weren't already.
Kirik, I've given you hours and hours of this stuff. We're starting with the small stuff, but if anything happens to me, even a temporary imprisonment on a trumped up charge, I want you to dump it ALL! Even the stuff I asked you to never release. Give it to Wikileaks, whatever it takes. Even the guys that aren't implicated directly by it will eventually be ratted out by those that are.
KJ: I will, I swear.
SG: Thanks.
KJ: Was it hard, leaving behind the street work you loved so much?
SG: Yes, I lived for that stuff, my entire life had been about training for that, especially the skills needed to apprehend dangerous suspects without using deadly force. I was good at it, and I loved it. I hated desk stuff. Some of the guys would call in sick if they found out they were getting assigned to do a day of desk duty doing what I do now. No comment on whether I was ever one of those guys.
It was really grinding sometimes, especially when you had to watch them put people on the street who had made grievous errors and killed innocent, unarmed people, day after day. The Department was basically saying "These people are better than you." Or at least "We consider what you did worse than what they did."
KJ: Did that happen a lot?
SG: Pretty much daily for a while. There is a guy at my station that has killed two innocent, unarmed people so far. When I was on his shift, they would commonly leave me inside and put him on the street. There are only so many inside slots available, and my Shift Commander isn't allowed to substitute his judgment for the Department's orders. I'm inside, he's outside.
My father tried to cheer me by buying me a new set of uniforms. He told me, "Someday you'll be allowed to be a cop again and wear these." Sadly, he died before he ever got to see me put them on. They're still sitting in my closet.
I was really letting it eat me up a lot, and becoming bitter, and I was given some advice from a senior officer that had once received similar treatment. Advice that saved my life. He told me, "No matter what they do to you, no matter what they make you do, you be the very best at it you can be. I don't care if they make you scrub toilets, you be the best damn toilet scrubber in the world. You do it for YOU not for THEM."
And he has 100% right. Just because I didn't like what they were doing to me didn't mean that anybody in the city should expect anything but stellar service from me, no matter what it was. It was better for them AND me. It really helped me turn a corner, and I found ways to help people even limited to a desk. I was even able to find some lost children sometimes, believe it or not, which made me feel a lot better.
KJ: How did you manage that?
SG: I got very good as using our various databases, and extremely good at interviewing people. East Boston is a very diverse neighborhood, and if they're a fundamentalist (Islamic or Christian), reporting their teenage daughter missing and telling me she's never had any boyfriends, I try to interview her sisters separately. They sometimes have a different take when their dad isn't around. A thousand little tricks and a deep database, you can sometimes figure out where someone is with very little initial info to go on. You send a cruiser out to that location, and you just eliminated that pesky Missing Persons report. It's so much paperwork, it's even environmental - you just saved a tree.
KJ: Can you give me an example of other ways you helped people?
SG: Sometimes it's little stuff like this.
Sometimes it's more serious. One day a guy staggered into the station, and said his roommate had beaten him up, whipped him with an electrical cord and threatened to shoot him if he didn't pay his share of the bills. He said she was very scary and showed me a text with a pic of her holding a gun.
Due to the gun, we had to send in the SWAT Team. She was crazy strong, and even somehow ripped the metal interior door handle of the cruiser (the rear doors don't open from the inside).
I interrogated her at the station, and she did a horrible job of dry snitching herself and confessing to every element of every crime. I saw into her soul and saw someone that was naively confessing because she thought everything she did was justified under the circumstances. She genuinely didn't even understand that there was any other way handling things, she had never even been exposed to the idea. She was an 18-year-old girl with no dad and a tough family history, out on her own for the first time, and she had never been taught there was any other way.
I didn't have a chance to talk to her long because she escaped from jail (long story) but she ended up calling the station back at a later date in an effort to recover her property, and I had an extended conversation with her. I told her, "You're better than that. There is another way to handle things." We talked for a long time, about different ways she could have done things, and different ways of thinking.
Two years later, I had a really athletic, crazy strong female athlete in my class at Peter Welch's Gym (the boxing coach from the early TUF seasons). She said her name was Kitauna. I said, "Kitauna Parker?" and she asked "How did you know?" I said, "I helped arrest you." She had completely turned her life around through martial arts, was going to college, had become an amazing painter, was working at Artists For Humanity, and was fighting out of our sister school Broadway Jiu-Jitsu (Kyle Bochniak's place). She had finally gotten real moral leadership from character guys like Professor John Clark (from TUF), who taught her that violence was only something you used to defend yourself and those weaker than yourself, and that the art of perfecting it was the art of perfecting yourself.
I've got to tell you that as cop, this was incredibly gratifying, because every time we arrest someone we try to talk some sense into them and they rarely listen. And if they do listen, we never see them again, so it feels like shoveling shit against the tide. This was a rare moment when worlds collided.
If you want to see her art and the amazing progress she's made as human being, check out https://www.facebook.com/Kitauna-Parker-220397111304553/?fref=ts and KitaunaArt.com.
Editor's Note: If anyone wants Sean to discuss any specific issues of high-level Boston Police corruption while he still has the protection of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and Whistleblower status, please email Tales.of.the.BPD@gmail.com
*Sean’s story reads like something out of The Wire, Part 2 - Beantown, but it is not fictionalized. Quick Google searches, quickly reveal corroboration. For example, check out this Boston Globe story on Sergeant Coleman's removal. This is real.
#JusticeForGannon
In for later
any stories about Aaron Hernandez that Gannon can share?
good luck Gannon, hope that you come out on top of this situation
This whole situation continues to blow my mind. I'm sure there's a few people that glossed over the bombs Gannon dropped in that interview. 
TTT
subbed
Secret Society stuff going on...Best of luck Sean.
Love it. 
Kinda reminds me of the Steve Avery case.
Fucked up. All the best Sean.
I missed the first one. Why they leaning on Gannon?
Underground Blog -*Sean’s story reads like something out of The Wire, Part 2 - Beantown, but it is not fictionalized. Quick Google searches, quickly reveal corroboration. For example, check out this Boston Globe story on Sergeant Coleman's removal. This is real.
The page you requested has either moved or been deleted.
Awesome stuff.
Like I said in the other thread, maybe now some of the people, including other cops here, will start believing that the systemic corruption in police departments that many people have been trying to bring to light is absolutely real.
Link to the article doesn't work for me... googled it and found this one that does tho: http://archive.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/07/15/da_condemns_shake_up_of_police_homicide_unit/?page=full
In for Gannon
Rogan podcast?
nocawk -Link to the article doesn't work for me... googled it and found this one that does tho: http://archive.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/07/15/da_condemns_shake_up_of_police_homicide_unit/?page=full
The new link works on this forum post but is/was broken on the main website page, because it wouldn't be a UG Blog post without some type of major fuck up.
That said, this Gannon series is a decent step on the way to redemption for Kirik.
Thanks for the support guys.