On a dark street in East Boston, a large man with a knife is trying to abduct a small blonde woman. He slaps her, choke slams her against his car, and then starts stuffing her inside the vehicle. People are watching, and the police have already been called, but the cruisers are too far away to make a difference.
The assailant is huge, 6'2", 280 lbs, but the man who steps out of the darkness to confront him is bigger still. He flashes a badge from his wallet, disarms the suspect, and holds him with minimum force until the on-duty officers can get there.
This is the story of the toughest cop not allowed to protect you.
Sean Gannon is a 6-time Golden Gloves Champion, Massachusetts State Judo Champion, NAGA World Champion (Intermediate and Advanced Divisions), regional Mixed Martial Arts champion, UFC veteran, and perhaps most famously, was the best bareknuckle fighter in the US (taking that honor from Kimbo Slice in an epic war). He's also a decorated, 20-year veteran of the Boston Police Department.
He's larger than life, but that is just the beginning of it.
Sean is a member of MENSA (the high IQ society) and one of my favorite writers on The UnderGround. Ganon is amiable, well-read, witty, self-deprecating, and can chime in knowledgeably and compassionately on an extraordinarily wide variety of subjects. Maybe it's genetic. His brother Brian has a master's degree from MIT and is the Founder/CEO of California Labs - maker of Loop. And Brian describes Sean as "definitely the smartest one in the family."
Unfortunately, since fighting in the UFC (against orders) Sean has not been allowed to patrol or protect his own city and has been relegated to a series of desk jobs, while elderly grandfathers and grandmothers have been ordered back to the street to do crowd control or patrol in his stead.
I had the honor and privilege of interviewing Sean recently about what is going on.
Kirik Jenness: So what happened between you and the Boston Police Department when your UFC fight came up?
Sean Gannon: I had been granted official permission for state-sanctioned fights (no more Undergrounds) so I didn't think it would be an issue. However, a few weeks before the event, they suddenly withdrew permission to fight. I don't know exactly what happened, but there was no way I could NOT go to the UFC. That's like training your whole life for the Olympics, and then being told you can't go...you're going to go. In fact, that's how Boston got it's first Olympic gold medalist. A Harvard student was denied a Leave of Absence to row crew in the Olympics, he decided to go anyway and took the Gold. I think the BPD bean counters may have been so ignorant back then, they didn't even realize mixed martial arts WAS a state -anctioned sport, so they panicked when the UFC announced my fight. At the Internal Affairs hearing, they also argued that the Sovereign Tribal Nation of Mohegan People (who run the Mohegan Sun Casino) didn't have the right to regulate athletic events in their own territory, a deeply offensive argument to a people that had fought hard for that right and had it guaranteed by treaty. The Sergeant Detective running the IAD investigation actually found me innocent of those charges, so they transferred him out and replaced him with someone that Sustained the complaint and suspended me for it. The original detective much preferred chasing criminals to chasing cops, so he ended up happy in the end anyway, and with his honor intact.
KJ: What happened after your UFC fight?
SG: They dicked me around as long as they could, but I was cleared by multiple doctors, so eventually they had to let me back to work. However, they weren't done with me yet, and they Schoolcrafted* me soon after returning to work.
KJ: School me please on what is Schoolcrafted?
SG: It's like getting Serpico-ed, but they use bogus medical documents instead of bullets so it's less obvious. Adrian Schoolcraft was the New York Police Officer that exposed the illegal Stop and Frisk program that was going on at the time. The promotion-hungry police bosses were demanding that their officers create ever increasing numbers of police contacts and arrests; Schoolcraft pointed out that this was impossible in a Precinct that now had half the crime and half the cops. Impossible unless you were f***ing with a lot of innocent people and sometimes straight up making s*** up. When he complained to investigators, he had his weapon seized, was restricted to desk duty, and eventually had police illegally enter his apartment and forcibly commit him to a mental asylum.
The hospital's report states, "He expressed questionable paranoid ideas of conspiracy and cover-ups going [on] in the precinct. Since then, he started collecting 'evidence' to 'prove his point' and became suspicious 'They are after him.'"
Luckily, Schoolcraft had a concealed tape recorder left at his apartment which left an audio recording of them conspiring to put him away with zero evidence of anything wrong with him except for a willingness to say 'The Emperor has no clothes.' Medicals are incredibly useful against officers that you want to get, but can't (because they've done nothing wrong). If Schoolcraft hadn't had a hidden tape recorder, he would have been just another wack job in a nuthouse instead of sitting pretty on a pile of money.
KJ: So what happened to you?
SG: Same thing as Schoolcraft. The first time I overslept roll call, I woke up with officers illegally in my apartment. Like Schoolcraft, they seized my service weapon and put me on desk duty. Keep in mind, this is after I had already been cleared medically, and had been doing regular patrol again without incident. I had actually rescued several small children and also arrested a very dangerous pimp/rapist/human trafficker in the brief time between fighting in the UFC and being put on desk duty.
KJ: Sorry, you rescued several small children??
SG: There is a LOT of paperwork in a Missing Persons report, and I HATE paperwork, so I personally prefer to just go find their kids. And I've gotten pretty damn good at it. In the city, a lot of these problems come from root causes of poverty, and people just too young to have kids. They're simply not equipped to handle them. Just having a car can make a huge difference, so I'll throw one of the parents in my cruiser and just keep looking every place they could possibly be, talking with every friend's family, until we find them. And if the kid is genuinely at risk, I have no problem calling out the Emergency Deployment Team, and having half the cops in the city looking for their kid until they're found. Or at least that's what I used to do...I'm not allowed to do that anymore. Now I have to sit at the desk, just file the paperwork and hope they're found before something bad happens to them.
KJ: So they have kept you on desk duty, ever since you fought in the UFC over a decade ago? How did they pull that off?
SG: It wasn't easy, I've been fighting them the whole time, but they've spent over a million dollars of taxpayer money on lawyers and experts to "prove" I can't do the things I do every day in the dojo. And in addition to the hand to hand stuff, the VERY capable guys at the Spartan International Consulting Group (serious SWAT and FBI certified guys that are as good with guns as we are with our hands) evaluated me with simunitions, live scenarios, and electronic simulations, and I passed with flying colors. I even won their Kobayashi Maru scenario.
KJ: The Captain Kirk thing??
SG: Yes, from Star Trek. They have a "No Win" scenario to see how you handle the pressure. Kirk won it anyway. In the police training "Kobyashi Maru" you're placed in a situation where you MUST shoot somebody...or be shot yourself.
KJ: How did you handle it?
SG: I found a way to handle it without anyone getting shot.
KJ: How could they fight all that evidence?
SG: They just kept blowing through wads of taxpayer money. When we had Dr. Neal McGrath, the highly respected head injury expert for the New England Patriots, testify there was nothing wrong with me, they flew in the person that wrote the book he referred to - possibly the highest paid expert witness in the field - to disagree with him. Then they had her say that all the stuff Spartan International observed couldn't have happened based on her tests. And the Arbitrator bought it! I'm sorry, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, if they're trying to claim an elite martial arts expert/UFC vet/MENSA member can't do a job routinely done by elderly grandfathers and grandmothers with high school diplomas and limited training, they're going to have to go a lot further than that. And even unarmed, I've had a bunch of quality arrests doing the Batman thing. If one doctor says you'll never run again, and another doctor says you will, and then you run in five touchdowns in the pre-season, and another three in real games, it's safe to say the doctor that said you would never run again is wrong.
KJ: So they won the Arbitration?
SG: Yes, which was terrible for them, because it just expanded their liability now that we're hitting a genuine court of law, where there are real Rules of Evidence and they won't be able to play these kinds of games. And on top of their many other screw ups, they also missed the deadline to cap jury awards. There is NO LIMIT to the amount of damages a jury can award, and the facts are outrageous. They're also in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which means there is no higher court in Massachusetts to appeal to, so they're dancing on a tightrope with no safety net.
KJ: That sounds good for Sean Gannon, at last.
SG: It may be good for me, but I don't think it's good public policy. My kids go to Boston Public Schools, I don't want to see them going without books, computers, and sports equipment just because some bureaucrat had to play ego games. I don't need to be rich, I just want to be allowed to do my job, a job I happen to be very, very good at. I'm making a personal appeal to Mayor Walsh to take a look at what these guys are doing, because the million dollars the city has blown on this already is a drop in the bucket compared to what the city could lose if this case goes forward. And I've already been cleared by ten different doctors, including both of the current Boston Police Department doctors.
KJ: There was an ammy fighter, in New York I think, whose day job was a fireman. He was out on disability, but still training. He got busted for it, and sent to jail. This is the exact opposite scenario. You are busting them for not allowing you to work. This is verkakte, down the rabbit hole. How have they not returned you to duty?
SG: They "rescinded" my medical clearance and declared it never happened, but I still have the original documents. The original doctor that benched me years ago got canned for manufacturing fake medical documents against another officer they were looking to fire. And when the old Medical Director retired, I was seen by both new Department doctors, and both declared me fit for duty. Later, the new Medical Director looked me straight in the eye and said he was "told" I couldn't be cleared. He actually said it a few times over a couple of different meetings before he realized how ridiculous he sounded and modified it to "I was told to look at your records."
KJ: This is like something out of The Departed part II or something. I cannot believe they got away with that!
SG: They aren't getting away with it. They're going to have to explain every bit of it to the highest court in the state. It may not get that far, I doubt his own personal attorney will let him go forward with this ridiculous position when he hears what's going on. The previous Medical Director cleared me for full duty and washed his hands of the matter nine years ago. They still had their other doc, but when she got caught and was fired and disgraced, he walked away with his job, integrity and reputation intact.
KJ: After all these years, what drove you to finally speak out now?
SG: A lot of different reasons, but mostly because we're normally not allowed to talk to the media without Department permission. Media Relations made a ruling today that I'm allowed to talk to the media about this case.
KJ: What happened today that was different?
SG: I jiujitsu-ed it out of them. When the Department is desperate and knows they're going to lose, they commonly try to leak a slam piece to contaminate the jury pool and influence the court. Not something they use against criminals so much as cops that are bucking the system. If there is anything that we've learned in this last election it's that the less ethical reporters become beholden to the people in power that feed them the information that keeps them employed. It's a very slippery slope. Yesterday, I was finally given a date for my hearing - December 8th - and a reporter suddenly wanted to interview me. A quick google of her articles showed a definite slant towards the Department. It's like that scene in The Godfather where Vito Corleone warns his son that the first person asking to arrange a sit down with him was the one that would betray him.
KJ: How can you be sure?
SG: I would dearly love to be proven wrong, and we'll know very shortly when her article comes out. If she gives the Department side of things, she's corrupt, if she doesn't, she's just an honest reporter that was given a tip. It's a new era of journalism, and "by their deeds ye shall know them." Who knows, she might not appreciate being set up for a bag job herself.
KJ: How is this jiu-jitsu?
SG: For me to talk to her, Media Relations had to rule that I'm allowed to talk freely about this. That's why I'm finally being allowed to talk to you now. I used their own force against them, classic jiu-jitsu. This was also a massive waste of taxpayer money and negatively affected public safety, so I'm also invoking all Whistleblower protections as well as trusting in the good justices of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to protect my family from retaliation while this case is going on.
KJ: I'm still dumbfounded that they could find experts to say you weren't smart enough to be a cop.
SG: A million dollars will buy a lot of bulls***. I'm blessed to have multiple areas where I can do things most people can't. However, like most people, I have strengths and weaknesses, and their experts would look for weird stats like, "Less than 1% of the population is this good at this, and still has low scores in that," then claimed it proved I had permanent brain damage. Less than 1% of the population can do some things I do period, never mind having nothing that they're bad at. They would find ways to make it look like me scoring so highly in certain areas of the tests actually counted against me. And according to their expert, I'm also in the bottom 1% of basic verbal fluency in the English language. I'm not physically capable of having the conversation we're having right now. I'm not making this up, she actually testified to that!
KJ: That is absurd, it's Kafkaesque.
SG: Yeah, and I'm not asking anyone to just believe my side without evidence, which is why, in addition to the Patriots' doctor and the SWAT Team experts from Spartan International, I also had another expert witness send you a testimonial. I would appreciate it if you read it into the record.
KJ: "Javier Velasquez is a 3-0 Light Heavyweight in MMA, a very legit Brazilian Jiujitsu Brown Belt, and one of the toughest guys in the history of the Boston Police Department. Sean Gannon runs through him like he isn't even there. He can take him down with the same foot sweep over and over again, and commonly submits him on the ground in short order. Sean Gannon's game is far deeper and broader now than it was in his days with the UFC."
Professor Aaron MacKinnnon, Boston Brazilian Jiujitsu
FOR VARIOUS REASONS THE NEXT SECTION OF THE INTERVIEW WAS REDACTED. TO PRESERVE NARRATIVE FLOW, WE HAVE ADDED UPDATES FROM A NEW INTERVIEW.
SG: Here is a recent incident that highlights the absurdity and the tragedy of this situation – our last wannabe terrorist insurgent at the East Boston Shootout last month.
REDACTED.
EDITOR'S NOTE: All we can leave you with is a 2500-year-old quote from Heraclitus -
“Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn't even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.”
KJ: Jesus, my heart is beating fast just hearing about it. That is an extraordinary story!
FOR VARIOUS REASONS THE NEXT SECTION OF THE INTERVIEW WAS REDACTED. TO PRESERVE NARRATIVE FLOW, WE HAVE ADDED UPDATES FROM A NEW INTERVIEW.
SG: That it is. A lot of heroes that night. We were all hanging out together at the front desk of the East Boston station 10 minutes before this happened. Some of the guys are asking why they had to leave the best wrestler in Department sitting at a desk when they had to wrestle a maniac for his gun 10 minutes later, and that maybe nobody would have gotten shot at all if I had been allowed to back them up.
KJ: Jesus man, that's awful!
SG: Yes it is. I disagree with Black Lives Matter on a lot of things - my own children are African Americans, so I don't like any movement that promotes racial division or hatred - but they do have a couple of valid points, and if management are refusing to put the guys most capable of resolving situations without the use of firearms to these points of contact, then they absolutely don't believe Black Lives Matter much. Or white lives. Or any lives, including officer lives. They can't put petty politics above public safety like that, it's wrong. If someone like me had been the officer in Ferguson, there wouldn't have been any riots, Michael Brown would have been cuffed and stuffed inside of a minute and in a Second Chance program right now. The whole thing would have a two liner in the police blotter on page 9. Back in the day, I had a guy try and do suicide by cop. He came at me with a knife and begged that I shoot him. When it was clear my firearm wouldn't de-escalate the situation, I holstered it and was able to take him in with hand to hand. Most officers don't have that option, and if management is intentionally keeping the guys that DO have the proven ability (and desire) to de-escalate these situations off the street, it shows their moral compass is WAY off. Maybe someday they'll go after murderers as hard as athletes and the streets will be safer.
KJ: Godspeed sir, to your hearing on the 8th.
SG: Thanks. And hopefully, it won't even get that far and the whole thing will get resolved....before they blow another million dollars of our tax money. And if any other reporters want further interviews, I'm free to talk until they rescind that ruling saying I can. You can make arrangements through the Boston Police Patrolman's Association at 617.989.2772 or through Lichten & Riss-Riordan at 617.994.5800.
Author's Note - The fight Gannon is most often criticized for (vs. Kimbo Slice) was actually a charity fundraiser organized on this very website 12 years ago. Profits from the DVD sales of the Kimbo fight were donated to St. Jude's Children's Hospital. Sean was not allowed to speak to the press, so he was never allowed to tell anybody about it, and was instead portrayed as a barbarian.
Further, Gannon expressed the highest respect for Slice, who passed away far too young in June.
"Kimbo deserves a lot of credit here too, he essentially agreed to fight for free for charity, and never felt the need to brag about it," explained Gannon. "That's the kind of guy he was, despite the rough exterior, always doing the right thing and never looking for a pat on the back afterwards. And that's what this sport is all about."
*For more information on the Schoolcraft case, please visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft
Gannon is my hero
Crazy business. Good luck Gannon.
Wow, never knew any of that including the details about Sean's family life. Excellent read and quite shocking.
Good luck Sean! I sincerely hope everything works out the best for you, your family, your reputation and your career.
What a story.
Sean Gannon for Deputy Attorney General!
Damn, I had no idea that they were fucking with him that hard. I also didn't know that he was in MENSA. Good luck Sean.
Later 
Gannon 2020.
Epic story.
Reading that made me late for work. Worth every minute! Good luck Sean. 
So let me get this straight....
Boston Police have put Gannon on a desk for a decade because he fought Kimbo in an underground fight?
Bunch of fucking faggots running that dept. Any gayer they would have to be run by an archbishop.
Good luck! From me and all of middle earth
What a bunch of scum bags. Fuck them go for th money. At this point it sounds like you actually deserve it. 10 years is a long time
Gannon is quite the conundrum. An absolute beast of a man with intelligence to match.
I don't agree with him on everything but I have zero doubt he is a quality human being and to read that interview just shows how stupid this world can be.
Sean is one of the best posters on here. Tough as hell but always has good advice to give you on a number of different topics