Seth Horst and Eric Boardman are joined by Andy Chace, a retired Homeland Security Investigator. They discuss various topics related to law enforcement, including human trafficking and the work of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). Andy shares his experiences working on the border, specifically in dealing with narco tunnels. They also touch on the challenges and frustrations of law enforcement, the changing enforcement posture at the border, and the impact of policies on the ground. Andy explains the difference between human smuggling and human trafficking, highlighting the various facets of human trafficking, including sex trafficking and labor trafficking. They also discuss the vulnerability of individuals who are targeted for trafficking and the leverage factors that traffickers use to exploit them. In this conversation, Andy discusses his experience working in Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) and the challenges of investigating child exploitation cases. He also touches on the issue of human trafficking and the misconception that it is more prevalent than it actually is. Andy shares the emotional toll of working on these cases and the different ways people handle it. He highlights the importance of understanding the connection between internet crimes and more violent crimes, as well as the need for effective collaboration between law enforcement agencies. The conversation also touches on the challenges of policing during riots and the impact of political factors on law enforcement operations.

If you’re thinking about moving to North Idaho be sure to give us a call, shoot us a text, send us an email, or schedule a Zoom call. We’d love to help you make a smooth move to North Idaho!

Seth Horst (00:00.334)
Just make it awkward. That’s why I just yelled me about this. You’re yelling me about the block task and I’m giving you the mic in your face. If I position you like, yeah, welcome everybody. Hey, I’m really excited about this podcast today. It’s been weeks in the making, at least in my own mind. So we’ve got my good buddy, Andy chase with us retired.

Can’t believe you’re retired because you don’t look old enough. This blows my mind. It’s over 50. Is that shocking? What’s the problem? Should be like, I’m going to go, how old do you think all of us are? Good question. I’m going to be dropping it in the comments. It retired a Homeland Security investigator. So you’ve got a cool background. And I know this because we’ve podcasted before on a different podcast. So I got a little bit of your story and it’s pretty damn cool.

So that’s the topic. Wait, did I say the topic? No, I just introduced you. The topic today is we’re going to talk about some even trafficking and things related to that. I think I want to touch on some of the stuff you were doing down the border back in the day in the narco tunnels. Yeah, absolutely. Narco tunnels. That shit blows my mind too. So we have a donated bottle of bourbon today that I need to give a shout out to my buddy John. John’s a retired US Marshal.

buddy of mine and he saw us drinking maker’s mark on here and he mocked me for it. And I was like, dude, I’m open for donations. He calls me up the next day. He’s like, it’s on my porch, bro. And I, I fricking pull up and he gave me this bottle of trails. And the stuff looks pretty good. Yes. Actually call this basic basic roads. And I appreciate that. So if you’re out there and you’re itching to donate a bottle of bourbon, don’t hesitate, please shoot me a comment. I’ll send you, I’ll tell you where to send it.

These glasses are gently used to be honest with you, but I don’t think a man cares, right? Like, go. That’s a weird thing to say. We’re just doing a photo shoot and you may or may not be drinking these, but. So you look at me. It’s really clean to me. I think the I think the bourbon kills any any germs on this when they sure when they say lifestyle pictures, we can bet. Yeah, yeah, that was a good time. Nicely done. A lot of laughs. Let me just tell you, because.

Seth Horst (02:21.582)
the three did well and we had big John with us too. We don’t do style. Well, John did though. Do you show up in a cardigan with like, I’m like, he, he’s a big boy too. Like you wouldn’t go calling him Metro sexual or anything by any means, but not calling woodsman sexual. Like John, that’s very accurate. Yeah. It was pretty damn cool. I got to give this bourbon a swirl, man. So when did you retire? I retired March of last year, end of March.

So that was just about the end of my 20 years. I did 20 years and one month with HSI. I did a brief stint with immigration back in the 90s. I was an immigration enforcement agent there. How’s that possible? You were 10 years old in the 90s. It was my kind of my first job out of college. Like I graduated college, didn’t know what I wanted to do. Being an investigator agent, cop sounded cool. So that’s what I went with and went through the academy, got back to LA, got put in Orange County jail, processed aliens all day in the fishbowl.

decided that working in the jail wasn’t for me full time. So went back to doing what I was doing, selling hardware, doing construction and, was on the street for a little while. Got into, working in software for a few years, kind of had a computer background. And then I applied for us customs and was accepted on in 2003. How’s the bed since retirement, man, March, you go from kind of a crazy fast paced job that retired.

How’d that go? I kind of went from the fire into the fire. So retired in March and most of what I did with HSI was digital forensics. Like I started off working dope at the border, did that for about three and a half years. Got on our special response team, did that for a while. Then I got a chance to take the digital forensics test to get sent to trading and I got pulled into that. Started doing that, realized how interested I was because it touched so many different investigations. So.

Anytime you got like anything that would deal with electronics, whether that be phones, computers, internet of things like cameras and things like that, they would bring to us. We’d figure out, you know, a how to get the evidence off and then be what tool we would need to process and then view the evidence from investigators lens. Yeah. There’s no investigation nowadays that doesn’t involve electronics. Exactly right. Yeah. And I started that back in 2007 when it was mostly just, you know,

Seth Horst (04:43.311)
hard drives and floppy disks. And so it was a little less complicated. The tools weren’t as good though. So you kind of had to learn some basics that may or may not be lost these days. I know there’s still people out there teach him, but a lot of people just kind of learn, you know, get that evidence off there quickly, process it through, and then have your detective look at it. You have noticed that it seems like a lot of the investigations you just came to be trained as a user of an application as opposed to understanding what the, I guess science is behind extracting that.

It’s all just applications that break down hardware. At least it seems that way. Yeah. That field has progressed rapidly, huh? Because I mean, I came on in seven and like we never downloaded cell phone, nothing by the time I was leaving, I was fairly common. I mean, I didn’t do it, but you know, people did it downloading cell phones, getting all of that data off there as far as like locations. So, you know, we had a hidden run fatal. It’s like now, now we’re paying it cell phones and it’s like, this is a whole different game.

yeah, whole different game. Yeah. And it just seems like it’s a moving target constantly. You have to stay up to speed with current transfer. It’s lost those skills atrophies fast now just because applications or security software and cell phones are different companies. Even when you go iPhone or Apple, it’s totally different. Yeah. Galaxy, Samsung or Google. Absolutely right. Yeah. No, and it’s, it’s gotten a little easier because we used to get all kinds of different cell phones and every cell phone you would get like in the

you know, 2010s or whatever it would be, you know, some weird Nokia model that had its own operating system. And so you had to figure out how to find the decode, the data for that particular operating system for that phone. And then now you pretty much have Apple and INX. So that makes it a little bit easier. Right. Everything’s a little standardized. And like I said, the tools are better. You don’t have to do as much manual carving going through the bits and bytes trying to figure out where a file starts and where it ends, things like that. What are you going to use to view it in? Right.

Yeah, so that it’s getting a lot better now. And like you said, a lot of people kind of are button pushers. They, they learn how to run the application and they basically want to get the evidence off and give it to somebody that’s going to look at it as an investigator’s standpoint. I think the advantage that we have and a lot of other places do too, it’s not just HSI or FBI, but a lot of people will have investigators go to forensic school so they can kind of bring that mindset to the examination.

Seth Horst (07:07.79)
But a lot of people that do start out just kind of kicking out the reports and whatever, like they learn a lot in their first court case. Right. Like you have to get out there and explain why that evidence is the same, how you found it, what it means, everything. So it’s the testimony for forensics. It’s very complicated. That’s good to hear. I think it’s like that across the board and law enforcement, whether you’re fed or local, you can be a small agency. you learn in the courtroom. You step on your D a couple of times in court and you’re like, all right, I look like an idiot. I don’t want to do that again. So then you go back and start.

mining data, learning from other people’s mistakes. You’re like, that feels right. I’m going to listen to that guy next time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For me, it was like field sobriety tests and truly knowing all of the steps, all of it. it’s just, dude, stressful. Yes. And then you get up there and they want to treat you like a man. Well, what is this? What does this word mean? Like, look, just a dumb door kicker. I don’t know. Come on. Dude, this bird ate something. Yeah, it’s tasty. It’s got a trail’s neck.

Yeah. You’ll know when you messed up right away because you’ll look over at the prosecutor and you see that was, that was not good. Yeah. Next time I was ever rules. I’m like, blink, blink really hard if I’m talking too much. What am I used to? And every time I testified, that’s the hardest thing, man. It’s just not giving too much. It’s like, and then you feel like you’re just like answering this very short question. You know, you’re very short answer to a question. Like I said, two, seven, I’m enough. Like, what do I do here? It’s like it’s a dance.

The weird thing about being a cop, and I’m sure it’s similar, is that you’re prepared to go to active in progress calls for service or things that are potentially violent or unknown circumstances, right? Where you’re going to have to make a rapid decision that may or may not end your life for somebody else in somebody else’s courtroom? Dude, you feel like a caged animal. It’s like different rules. You can’t say certain things. And it is one of the things that I think law enforcement is the least prepared for. Like, don’t be trained for that. No.

Man, they don’t tell you that when you’re getting recruited. Like, yeah, she’s spent a lot of time in court. Right. And then lawyers does they have all the rules. They got it all figured out. It’s their games. They can beat you up, make you look foolish the whole time. You’re like, I had to step outside of this courtroom to you. So you wouldn’t say it was just a different, totally different subset. Definitely. Definitely. And it’s a, it’s a pond that we’re not used to swimming in. The only way to get better at it is to do it. Yeah. To get beat up. That’s you got to get beat up a couple of times.

Seth Horst (09:35.918)
But yeah, so I retired from law enforcement, now I’m doing private cybersecurity work. So that’s a little bit different. Still working with lawyers and insurance companies and, you know, keeping people from losing their jobs. Basically, you know, somebody gets hacked and there’s a big financial loss. Like somebody is going to lose their job, whether that’s because they messed something up or because the company has to pay out money. It affects people’s lives. So that’s, so can we call you next time our Instagram gets hacked and we lose all of our account?

Yeah. You got skills in that. I can see what I can do. I should have thought of that. I know. I know. It’s funny, man. You just like, you don’t look like a bird. This is what throws you down here at the time, but like, this is some nerdy shit. I’m going to be honest with you. It’s like, it’s cool. You guys are not my world. There’s a term out there and on LinkedIn with the forensic law enforcement people and nerd cops is effective. But you didn’t start out that way. That’s the, you’ve done the shit. I actually want to dive into that.

Cause when you were down working on the border and you were doing narco, do your narco tunnel stories to like give me chills. Cause it’s so freaking terrifying. Greta, like we got to get into that. It’s not a comfortable place to be. No, it’s like, I mean, it’s like terrifying and like dumb, right? And it’s not your fault, right? I know that like you guys are just pushed into that position, but you looked back on it and you’re like, Holy shit, I can’t even get that. Yeah. Yeah. And they, they definitely do it better now. And so basically,

My team was an SRT. So we would handle all the high risk warrants. Like you would picture a traditional SWAT team. But then in addition to that, if we got any other call that our agency didn’t really know who to send, they would send my team. So if it was something out, driving along the wall with board patrol, looking for somebody or escorting, people down by the border wall, they would send our team out there to do protection mission, which at the time we weren’t really trained for, but they’re like, well, Hey, you guys have cool guns and you do a lot of these, high risk.

activities, so go and handle it. And that would include the tunnels. So we would figure out where a tunnel entrance came up in the US and they would send us there to execute the warrant on the tunnel entrance or suspected tunnel entrance. And then we would have to go down into the tunnel and clear the tunnel out to the other end, basically. So most of the time if you GPSed where the end of that was, it would be in Mexico. So we were underground in Mexico.

Seth Horst (11:57.966)
And we would usually push to the end and then just hold it and we would have foreign operators come in behind us and clear on the other side. Explain how that feels having a foreign operator come in behind you. That’s very uncomfortable. And, you know, I can understand from both governments’ perspectives why they wouldn’t want a bunch of, you know, U .S. knuckle -draggers popping up in a foreign country and operating over there. If something went south, it would be really bad. Yeah.

But at the same time, like it wasn’t very comfortable being down in a five foot tall hole basically that you can barely fit in with all your gear on. And you’ve got, you know, 10 or 12 guys from foreign government with weapons coming in through through their behind you that you don’t know. So squeezing by you in the tunnel. Yeah. Yeah. It was not good. Yeah. That’s the best. See if it’s a government is just rot. Yeah. Right. And local state federal level. That’s yeah.

So like break down these tunnels for me. Like what do they look like? Are they shored up? Are they set like, what’s the deal with concrete? It kind of depends. and you know, I’m speaking only in the San Diego area. We were down there along the Tijuana river. And so it was all kind of sandstone and, you know, mostly smooth wall sandstone, but with big rocks that occasionally fall into zone. they’re not very stable. they’re set up with these kinds of makeshift ladders made out of two by four sometimes.

But then you get down to the bottom and in the middle of it, you’ll see shoring like there’ll be plywood and two by four set up to kind of short it up to keep stuff from falling in there. And some of them even had like car tracks so that you could use a railroad cart to kind of push the dope across. And what, what year was this roughly? 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 rare on there. I moved out of San Diego. I moved up to Portland in beginning of 2011. So that was kind of.

I retired from SRT when I moved up to Portland because I didn’t have a team at the time. OK, so going into these tunnels, like how deep are they? How long are they? No fairies, but what’s some numbers? Yeah, I think the last one we did was about a mile and a half long. Came up in a warehouse and went to, I believe it was a house on the Mexican side. Sometimes it’s a warehouse or like a commercial location and sometimes it just comes up in a house there that’s close to the border. And wow.

Seth Horst (14:23.438)
Yeah. Like how deep are they under the ground? Roughly. I’m trying to remember what they told us. Cause there, there was a, I think it was a little over a hundred feet. It was like 90 feet or a hundred feet or dirt over your head. They’re fairly deep. So they, they go down. Like basically there’s kind of a, like a gradual slope, where it comes up in the warehouse. Cause everybody’s kind of digging by hand and trying to figure out where they’re at when they’re digging these tunnels. And so, they come up in the warehouse on the U S side.

And you go in and there’s like the slope down and then there’ll be like kind of a shaft that you have to go down. You know, where they figured out like, okay, we’re far enough, we should dig up and then we’ll figure out, you know, how to get into that warehouse from where we’re at. And so you get down to the bottom, there’d be like these crazy offshoots that would kind of go nowhere because they’re digging this way. And then they figure out, you know, it’s not going to come up where they think it’s going to come up. So they stopped digging there and dig over here. And that is a lot of work.

It is. It is. I mean, like they’re hauling it out with buckets, I’m guessing. That’s insane. A lot of earths here moving like a mile tunnel. Holy shit. Yeah. And there’s there’s water pumps down there because you’re below the water table and electricity. And of course, that gets shut off as soon as we’re in there because people figure out like, hey, they found the entrance. Let’s shut off all the electricity. So the pumps start stop working. They start filling up with water. There’s generally like lights that kind of go along that lights don’t work anymore once the electricity goes off. So.

You’re kind of carrying a lot of gear. You’re bringing, chem lights to kind of work, where the viable tunnel is versus the offshoots that go nowhere. you got your emergency breathing supply, which that thing collapses. It’s probably not going to keep you alive long enough to get out here a hundred feet deep. Yeah. And I think the worst part is just, it’s real tight in there. It’s not built for six foot dudes wearing eight pounds of gear or whatever. It’s built for smaller people. And so you’re in there and like, if there’s somebody in the dark down that tunnel,

and they decide to shoot at you like you’re getting shot. Right. There’s nowhere to hide from that. Is the point man have a shield or anything? Sometimes. But still carry a shield for a while. Yeah, exactly. That’s the thing. And then, you know, you’re in there for two or three hours sometimes and the air is bad. And we would have people come after the fact like mine experts and they’d look at it and be like, that looks really unstable. And I don’t think the air is very good down there at the bottom. So don’t go in there again. We’re like, okay. Just got three hours in there. Cool. Exactly. Wow. Yeah.

Seth Horst (16:48.174)
So yeah, dude, if you got a shooting, I mean what you maybe get two guns down range, you got like point man and a guy with a rifle over his shoulder and that’s it. Yup. Yup. Yeah. And you know, you can’t bring non -tunnel guns down there because like if you start cranking off a rifle, no suppressor on it, like it’s going to be a problem. So we did have a few tunnel guns, like a few guys would have long guns down there that were suppressed and then the rest of us had our sidearms. So that’s not where I wanted to be.

I’m guessing no shootings while you were doing that. No, no, unfortunately. Did you ever run into anybody down there? No, although we had several where we made entry in the warehouse and cleared out the warehouse and you could tell somebody had rabided. Just taken off. When we were hitting the door. Yeah. Radio’s still on. They got their little bedroll over here and there’s usually like a little, I don’t know, cover for the tunnel entrance and you know, it would be off and obviously somebody had just gone in there. Right.

tunnel rats. Here I was thinking Vietnam was the last time that’s exactly what that is. Yeah. Going into an unknown situation, completely different, no idea what the opposition forces numbers wise. Now that that’s wild. How common are these? Where were they? Now you don’t have to anymore. He has a lot cross border. Yeah. I mean, I’m sure they still have them and usually we would find one or two a year. Yeah. I can’t, I guess I can’t really talk about how we would get.

the entrances to. I can guess as a civilian, I can guess based on construction background, maybe there was ground penetrating radar or something. Cause I don’t know what are the indicators you would have other than moving dirt. They’d probably move it on the Mexican side. So that’s just my guess. Yeah. Yeah. Hypothetically, you can neither confirm nor deny. I’m sure, but that’s just my guess. Interesting. Yeah. Maybe one or two a year. Usually I don’t know what they’re getting now. Now the tunnels they’re finding them in Arizona and Texas. It used to be kind of just the.

part of the border that we were at, at least the ones that we were finding. So that was all down in San Diego. And the agency’s gotten a lot smarter about clearing those things out. They have robots and drones that they use now and stuff smart. So then the TAC team. Yeah. Damn good idea. I mean, SWAT teams now are using drones and robots a lot more just because it’s not worth the risk to human life. I think about yours, think about your team down there. R &B just says, hey, let’s just roll this on down here. Right. Yeah. Yeah. As opposed to risking you.

Seth Horst (19:15.118)
How did you guys get rid of them? Filling in, like seal them? What did you do? What happened? So basically we would do the dog and phony show with the media. The media would always be interested in seeing the tunnels and, you know, linking up a big story about, you know, how much dope had gone through there speculatively and, you know, kind of making the story about the tunnel. So we would sit on basically 24 hours a day until it was, remediated basically. And that would involve bringing a big drilling company, drilling these plugs down.

And then fill in points with concrete. So it was a slurry, I guess. But yeah, they called it a slurry. But yeah, they drill a bunch of holes and then show it in there and fill in plugs. Done. Yep. My my that’s you put a clay war right? Yeah, dude. Motion detect. It should be. It should be. That’ll see real consequences. Yeah, that’ll see. You would think so. The problem is though, on the US side, you’ve got a lot of commerce down there. So you got warehouses, you got roads. There’s all the order and for statuette. And so.

you know, popping those with, constantly problems for business and border patrol. I hadn’t gotten that far with that process. All right. That’s like the idea. No, I hear you proximity mugs. So you didn’t, I mean, you didn’t do border patrol stuff like, like you weren’t necessarily, I guess, where I was going with that is like, what are your thoughts on what’s going on the border now? Does that piss you off? It’s having work down there. yeah. Yeah. I mean, the whole enforcement posture is a lot different now than it used to be.

Do you have friends down there that are working in that area? What are their thoughts on what’s going on? I mean, everybody’s there to do their job as best they can, but it’s getting real hard. Like it’s definitely taking an enforcement posture to a non -enforcement posture, I guess is the best way to put it. And yeah, I don’t think anybody that’s doing the kind of work that they were hired to do is happy about what’s going on right now. Yeah. Yeah. I…

I imagine that would be incredibly frustrating to just sit there. I would be livid, livid, vocally pissed off and yelling at these people because it’s like, fuck man, like just going to let people walk in. And these guys, you know, I imagine a lot, they live in those communities right across the border. And it’s like, now you’ve got all these people that are unvetted coming into your community. My kids live here. Like, I don’t know who this person is. Don’t piss me off. Well, the Border Patrol is one of the best agencies I’ve ever worked with. Those are all great men and women.

Seth Horst (21:38.35)
Yeah, they were pleasure to work with. They’re always there to show up and do their job every day. And, you know, when you’re told there’s new rules of engagement, you can’t do this. And, you know, we’re going to bring everybody in now and process them instead of VR and back to Mexico or whatever. That’s got to just be soul crushing. And, you know, that was one of the deciding factors in deciding to retire to eligibility instead of mandatory was, you know, one was the COVID shot and two was the immigration posture like it.

everybody was kind of taking a turn, getting sent down to the Southern border to do a detailed on there. but not to enforce it the way that it’s been enforced in the past. Yeah. That, that didn’t sit well with me. I mean, I’ll always do my job. I swear enough to do it, but if the option to retire came up and that’s what I decided to do. And you know, while I’m down there doing border related stuff, I’m not, doing ICOG stuff.

Yeah, we have a mutual friend. I won’t say his name. He was down there fairly recently and he made the observation and I’ve heard this before, but you know, I know him. So I believe it out of his mouth that it’s a lot of like military aged Chinese people coming across the border. And that just like really boggles my mind what’s going on there. It has to just be brutal by its very name, your homeland security.

Right. That’s your job. You’re risking your life. What you’re talking about is freaking dangerous. Like you’re going through tunnels to do what? At the end of the day, you’re saying I’m protecting my country from threats, right? Whether that be drugs, whether that be human trafficking, whether you’re bringing in solicits or whatever that is. Right. So the people in homeland security are saying, look, we got to secure our borders to keep our countrymen and women safe. Yeah. And that’s just it just seems like every federal agency right now is just being weaponized for politics. Yeah.

the ones that are down there that know we’re saying, Hey, this is, this is a huge threat. It’s significant. You know, I’m not passionate about that and all stuff, right? I know for that moment. Yeah. There’s just no way, you know, that those guys can adequately protect that with subscript with those policies. How are you supposed to do that? Yeah, it’s, it’s definitely not what we envision as people that are enforcement minded. It’s not being handled the way that we would agree with. And granted, it’s not our job to come up with the policy and how to enforce these laws, but.

Seth Horst (23:59.022)
You know, at the same time, it doesn’t sit well with you as a person. And, you know, you mentioned the dangerous aspect of it. And when you do find the fentanyl, I mean, you know how it is, you get a little pin needle on your skin and you can pass out and die. So, you know, you could be, looking for drugs in a car that’s coming through the border and you accidentally puncture a package and you just killed you and three of your friends. Right. So it’s scary stuff. Well, and that’s, that’s even with that, you’re risking.

lives going through tunnels and trying to intervene and interdict and the criminal activity that’s coming across. And then what happens when you actually do find somebody that’s responsible? There’s no more dear, at least to peers, especially at a federal level, there’s no more teeth in the enforcement action part of it. Where we’re led allowing felons in our country that aren’t US citizens that were here illegally back. There’s no – That’s a slippery slope because now, you know, the people that are doing the enforcing, they lose all desire to do that job.

Morale goes downhill. I’m sure people are just retiring in droves as soon as they can or quitting. I mean, I remember in California when, you know, like meth was decriminalized and I was like, I can’t arrest somebody anymore for a small amount of meth. And I was like, I didn’t want to do it anymore. I’m not gonna get fucked. Right. Stupid. Right. Cause you’re mad as hell. That’s like, but nobody yelling at the wall. Nobody does anything. It doesn’t matter. Right. Well, then that’s at a street level, you know, the inherent dangers of meth on fetish. Those are some of the

Whether it’s anxiety driven or psychotic, I don’t know if the psychosis comes before the meth or the meth before the psychosis. It’s a chicken and egg conversation. You know the in there dangerous people that are high on methamphetamine, right? And you’re just screaming at the people that have no idea. Yeah. This is like, wait, you want me to write them a ticket? What? Yeah. What? It emboldens them. And I feel that way at the border. It’s just the stakes are higher. Yeah. And it makes you wonder.

how these decisions are being made because if you talk to anybody that’s on the street level, that’s, that’s doing the work day in and day out, they’re going to have a different opinion than what’s being pushed down from where it’s coming. Yeah. When it comes to government, I always defer to incompetence first, but this is beyond incompetence, right? It’s like, there are people screaming to the Hills that this is bad. And it’s like, okay, it’s complex. People are not listening. Yes. It’s why I don’t know, but yes. yeah, you do. What does it always, what does it always boil down to folks?

Seth Horst (26:27.182)
Money. Right? This is a moldy billion dollar industry. You can’t tell me that some of those policies didn’t directly line somebody’s pockets. Yeah. Just stop. I teach like drug classes to like middle school and high school and stuff. I have this super innocent seventh grade girl ask me, said, well, I guess I can say, send my name and then said, well, if you know, because I was talking about clandestine labs on the other side of the border in Mexico where they used to make crystal mass and other outfitted to make these counterfeit fentanyl pills.

You have a glass bucket, right? But, we, they have lads over there and she said, well, if you guys guys, why don’t you stop them? You should. So I got as such and it hit me like it was like a gut punch and immediately piss me off. Weird. I mean that, but immediately pissed me off as well. To be completely honest, that’s a complicated question. I count a quarterlings, whatever I am right now. I’m with my own jurisdiction. Right. But.

because somebody somewhere has assigned a dollar value to your life. That’s the truth. Yeah. Because somebody is making enough money that you’re spending because we have the means to stop it. We have the dudes who know what’s going on and where to stop it. But because of some political crap, we don’t. And at the end of the day, why? It’s money. Yeah. You know what I mean? And it sucks to think about that, but that’s the truth. Yeah.

Like why else wouldn’t we? Why, why were those pills 20 bucks a piece and now they’re less than 50 cents? Yeah. You weren’t the board. Why is that supply and demand, man? Cause they’re coming across and your roads takes the seventh grader to come in and use the outcomes razor and just, and you’re like, that’s a good question. I think you’re smart. Okay. There you go. I can’t argue that yet. Yeah. But it’s a, it’s a brutal, it’s a brutal reality. Yeah. He’s assigned a dollar credit in life and they decided that’s worth more to put that money in the pocket and save you. Yeah.

Sorry. Can we, sorry. It’s all good. That’s reality. It’s real. Can we jump up to Portland and what you were doing up there? Yep. So you transferred from the border to Portland. Yep. Yep. Well, the, the crotch of America. No, it didn’t start that way. That’s true. Right. 2011 is when we, so it used to be so, it was okay. I applied for Portland PD back in like, sex.

Seth Horst (28:53.966)
And I tested really well. I ended up getting picked up by the highway patrol first. I was this close to going to Portland and being a cop there. I was like, whoosh. And I sound like a bully. One of my best friends growing up went to, I think it was Portland State. I don’t remember which, but gosh, going to visit them, Portland was legit. Downtown city was like safe. It was fun. It was cool. Portland used to be. Yeah. And that was my assessment. Like I went to visit a buddy when he went to Oregon State up there. And so I had a little bit of time.

poking around and seeing the whole state and not just Portland itself. So when we got to Portland, it was still pretty kooky. Like there, there was a lot of kind of earthy hippie -ish type places and lots of good food and, and all that good stuff, but it wasn’t like violent angry, like it turned into. And so we were up there until 2021. That’s when we came here. Yeah. Portland was like hipster before hipster was a thing. You know, Portland was like the original hipster, but it was still a cool.

It was a clinic city. Yeah. I mean, definitely on the left side of the spectrum, but everybody was pretty chill. The city was functional and there were jobs there and yeah, you got Intel, you got Nike. Like it was a good place to live. Like cities on the left side used to be kind of fun like that. Like I don’t mind the artsy city and I don’t, I don’t care about hit these men. Like people having a good time. It can be really cool. Those are the damn cities that all fell and now they’re just filled with homeless people. Filth. And.

It’s a consequence of people getting away with doing whatever they want for too long. 2020 happened and it was just horrible. Yeah. Decriminalizing criminal abuse. Yeah. That’s the society. Doesn’t work. Sounds nice. Yes. Sounds like a great utopia, man, if everybody was cool, but there’s a lot of shitty people out there. And that’s not the sale. Everybody needs to, you can’t arrest your way out of every single trial, but you also can’t just forgo the enforcement portion of corrective problems. Yeah.

Right. You still have to have criminal behaviors to criminal. There’s no consequences. People are going to default to chaos. Exactly. Right. There is a segment of the population that’s just psychopaths or whatever, and they’re always going to make the bad choice. It’s going to hurt someone. Right. 100%. So what’d you do up there? So most of the time that I was up there, I was a computer forensics expert. So I was doing computer forensics on all of our cases, which with HSI, it pretty much touches everything. It’s…

Seth Horst (31:17.166)
Our agency is almost like FBI where we have a pretty big range of enforcement. And so we would do financial cases. We would do immigration cases, human trafficking, narcotics cases, crimes against children. That was kind of the focus I was in. So I carried some cases while I was up there in addition to doing forensics. I would say I definitely leaned more heavily towards forensics because I was able to take a break from the kiddie porn cases, basically.

So most of our work was still centered around that, but you know, you would be able to take a financial case if you couldn’t look at that stuff anymore for a while. And so that’s kind of how we got through doing these exams for years and years. How would you guys get brought into it? Is it one across the state lines, crossing a border into the US? Like what’s the level? So the internet is considered interstate commerce. So we could work our own cases, which we did. We would get leads from headquarters. We would have our agents doing.

online undercover stuff, getting leads on our own. And we also worked with a lot of state and local agencies up there on task forces. So worked with Vancouver PD a lot. They have a super group of people that did that. There was a Sergeant there that was just awesome that I looked and we worked with them a lot. We worked with the guys in Oregon, Multnomah County, Clackamas County, both very good agencies. So we did a lot of support for state and locals, especially because forensics resources weren’t super common. And so.

me and my partner would get pulled into a lot of state and local cases in addition to our own. Okay. I feel like I have the definition. I get the definition wrong. No trafficking is there. I think there’s a common misconception right there. Like when someone’s being trafficked and yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So that there’s a lot of different

kind of facets to human trafficking. So everybody kind of thinks of the whole, you know, the movie taken where that’s exactly where my mind goes. People get kidnapped, they get forced into prostitution. And actually that’s very uncommon. Usually what it is, is, you know, people, following a prostitution for different factors, and sex trafficking is only one part of it. there’s also labor trafficking, people that are kind of being forced to work against their will or there’s some sort of factor that’s holding them.

Seth Horst (33:27.726)
to a specific company and it’s basically, it’s different than smuggling though. I think the most common misconception that people conflate is trafficking with human smuggling. Human smuggling is basically where you got the coyotes, you’re bringing people in from foreign country, whether that be Mexico or wherever they lead them across and then, okay, you made it by. That’s human smuggling. Human trafficking is where, it’s kind of a modern day slavery where,

You got these gangs that are running these girls and sometimes they’ll stay in one spot. A lot of the times they’ll cross state lines. So, you know, you’ll get like an MS 13 or, what’s the one in LA 18th street. You got somebody like that. And so, so they’re running girls, you know, they’re running dope. They’re running girls, like typical gang. They, they’re got their fingers and everything elicited. And so they’re moving around between cities. They’ll put ads up on Craigslist or whatever, and, you know, prostitution. And so.

That would be more the human trafficking aspect, massage parlors, things like that. And it’s not just immigrants, but immigrants are kind of predisposed to that because a lot of the times they’re kind of limited in their associations with their own little enclaves within the US because they may not be here legally. There’s a language barrier and they’re dependent upon these traffickers sometimes. And so they’ll force them into doing sex acts and massage parlors. They’ll force them into prostitution, desperation.

Yeah, they’ll force people to go harvest marijuana at one of the big marijuana farms. You know, these are all places where human trafficking is pretty common. You know, we see them across the country and meatpacking clinics and things like that. They’re very labor intensive jobs and it’s very hard to get people to do them. So that’s kind of the incentive. That blows my mind. Like, I don’t think most people realize that kind of stuff is even going on at that level.

a meatpacking plant that surprised me. In my mind, I would think they all had to be, you know, on paper employed. Right. And some to some extent they do like sometimes they’ll use fake ID. They’re still being forced into. I got you. Right, right, right. Or, you know, even in kind of a white collar position, you’ve got somebody that is an immigrant working in a good job seemingly, but the employer kind of holds their destiny in their hand as far as like, hey, we’re sponsoring you to be here. So you’re going to work sex or extra overtime, right?

Seth Horst (35:54.062)
things like that, even that could be considered human trafficking. So if they’re, if they’re sponsored, if a company’s sponsoring somebody from another country, how long do they have their hooks into them? Right? Like how long do they, does it take to pay that off? If you will, like what’s that contractual obligation tradition? and it varies. And I wouldn’t be able to say right off hand, but you know, there’s also legitimate, like H1B visa is a legitimate thing.

It’s just when it gets misused, like if the company kind of holds that over them, right. And it makes them work extra or. What is that? Can you explain that? It’s H1. What was it? H1B Visa. Yeah, it’s basically like a somebody that will come in and work for a company for a position that the company is saying they can’t fill with an American order. So it’s somebody that is coming from overseas that is sponsored by the company to do a specific job for them. And it’s completely legitimate. It happens all the time. It’s just sometimes it can be abused and.

you know, that person is doing something that’s not on the level. Like they’re making more extra or they’re not paying them enough for or whatever else. You can see that happening though, right? Like that’s against free market capitalism because it’s the or moves competition. Whereas somebody that’s just employed with that company look at it like, I get way better benefits and this dude’s way cooler and the hours are way better. Whatever goes with it. They just don’t have that option. Right. I’m super curious about.

like the human trafficking portion where, you know, they are brought in for either like sexual exploitation or slavery or anything like that. Is there a particular profile that’s targeted? Not really. It’s just anybody that’s vulnerable. Like, when we’re by nature more vulnerable when they’re, when they’re brought in here, you know, I think they’re just victimized more. and then, you know, you have people that are addicted to drugs. You got people that,

have children that they’re worried about taking care of, things like that. There’s always going to be leverage factors that some of these organizations are going to use to try and force this person to do what is generally against their will. Crazy. So was that a transition when you went from border and some of the human trafficking stuff to when you went ICAC? Because those have to be related, right? Like you go into ICAC and then you start to, that background and human trafficking and what they did and…

Seth Horst (38:17.39)
Then you go to ICAC and you start to recognize. Can you guys say what ICAC is? I don’t think most people know. So ICAC is Internet Crimes Against Children. That’s basically the child exploitation cases. OK. And we didn’t see a lot of human trafficking on that side. It was mostly Internet related people that would, you know, try and meet up with a child, you know, undercover or something online for sex or they would be trading images, things like that. That was the most common thing that we would see.

The, you always hear the stories about the underage prostitution and the human trafficking. And I didn’t really see much of that myself. These are all kinds of stories that we heard at the time, but I know it happens. I know there’s underage people that are involved in the human trafficking that is involved in the substrate. I just didn’t run across that myself. Well, that’s actually good to hear that. That just seemed to be the Hollywood hook. Maybe, you know, they’re using that for other things, but.

Man, some of those cases, I don’t envy what you had to see in the watch. I don’t envy that portion. With my limited experience with that, I don’t envy, but that’s God’s work, bro. Yeah, that’s be super satisfying for some of those people. It is, and it affects everybody differently. Some people can do it for a little bit of time. Some people can do it a longer time, and some people can’t do it at all. People are just built differently, and they compartmentalize differently. And I’m sure there’s other investigations that I would be able to do.

Sorry, I just counted it as a blessing that I have my interest in technology and I intersected that and I was able to handle it, so it didn’t matter. I think one of the things that’s the scariest about that stuff, like the internet child crimes, the training of child pornography and stuff like that is it’s that segue into the next more violent crimes where it’s direct, where you’re starting to prey on the child. How many times did you come across that where there was actually something indicative of?

you know, an actual act. Does that make sense? Like an act in person as opposed to something that could online? Yeah, rather than just like sharing pictures like, hey, we’ve got an actual victim locally escalate. I mean, obviously it’s a victim anywhere, but maybe one that you can affect change, not some kid in Russia or something. Yeah, yeah. No, and I think that it is getting better now. We’re identifying more victims now. It used to be when I first started and this could have just been.

Seth Horst (40:40.046)
you know, the collective skill level or my skill levels and examiner, like we would, we would see the training and the pictures and that was it. And in the later years, you know, you find out when you’re interviewing this guy for pictures that, you know, there’s hands on the fences. And so there’s other victims that we now need to go interview, find out what happened. And so now there’s going to be some hands on churches. And that became a lot more common probably the last five years I was doing it. And then in addition to that, doing the, the undercover ops and putting the ads up and seeing.

how many people show up to all these undercover ops to ostensibly have sex with the child. That’s the crazy part to me is like how many people would show up and then also who would show up. Like these aren’t all the stereotypical child predators. Some of them are professionals. Like there’s been ops around the country where like cops have shown up, firefighters, things like that where you just wouldn’t expect it. Yeah. I would never expect it, right? Like.

There was a sergeant in the office next to mine, CHP office, that I was telling him. He transferred out of that office when he promoted and he’s somewhere in the Bay area. And he would go to a parking lot in his patrol car and hit a wifi in this parking lot from some business there and was like downloading pictures of kids. And it went on for a while. Somehow somebody caught wind and then they did it all up and caught him in the act, like in his patrol car, in uniform.

Freaking gross, man. He’s kind of weird. Like he’s one of those things where you’re like, I can see that. Right. It’s super, well, I don’t want to say more common than I guess average folks, but military too. We’ve seen some cases that are really, really ugly. Some with their own kids and then other ones, internet stuff. And you just realize there is something with certain people. Who knows what that is, but there’s just something that it doesn’t matter what walk of life. Yeah.

We, I was, I was, that same guy. We, I was on the warrant service team. We served arrest warrant for his house. He was in the town next to us and he was such an arrogant prick. When we hit that door, so satisfied. Yeah. He’s an attorney too. So it was like extra arrogant. He wants to see the warrant, he took a warrant. Like he had little kids in the house too. That was the other one. It was like, man, right. All of us were like,

Seth Horst (43:01.838)
fucking try it, dude. Let’s go. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Please. Let’s go. Yes. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead and plead guilty. Right. Right. So that’s, that’s like, I think I’d have a hard time with that job because I have a lot of empathy and, and I’d get to that finish line and be like, I just try a little, I’ll shoot this dude. Yeah. Right. I think the worst ones were the ones where you, you’d seen the pictures that were traded. Yeah. And so you kind of knew what you were looking at going in, but then you’d get in that house and see one of the kids.

It’s like, fuck it. dude. That’s what you said was kind of cool though, man. You were talking about how when you were a new agent, see that better, better on the bike. Yeah. It’s the very white voice. No, but when you, you’re a new agent, so you’d go and you guys who did any of the internet stuff for the transfer of the deals or pictures, whatever. Then you said later on, we’d start to realize that there was hands on how much I would venture to guess that a lot of that was you. Like what we talked about before this podcast where you’re redeemed human behavior.

And as you’re interviewing, you’re going, wait a minute, there’s more. He isn’t relaxed like that sympathetic nervous system response hasn’t, it hasn’t chilled yet. There’s something else going on. And then your question strings a little bit, you know, that’s only that’s reps, you know, and yeah, doing that, that’s freaking cool. That’s the stuff that boggles my mind where you start to begin in the human mind tricks when you’re interviewing, you’re doing the investigation, your game starts to get a little better. And yeah, I definitely was not a great interviewer when I started.

I definitely got better later on, just being more comfortable with myself and my own knowledge level. And then also, like you said, being comfortable and being able to, talk to the read the other person and let them talk instead of thinking about what I’m going to ask them. That’s the hardest part, man. The pregnant pots, dude, like I’m really trying to learn that in interrogation class. He was like, terrible at that. I just like to talk about, and, every time I watched my body care, I’ll go by my name. I’d go back and be like, you had him.

You just had to shut up. You had to open your big fat mouth, didn’t you? You just couldn’t shut up. And I do know about it. Yes, about the spill it. And I think you also look at, like, you have these notions going in. You’re like, this is the crime I’m investigating. This is what I’m going to get him to confess to. This is it. Criminal behavior. Criminal behavior. So sometimes it’s like, let’s open questions. You don’t know what all he’s got in the closet. Yeah. You think you do, right? But sometimes.

Seth Horst (45:29.422)
That little thing, he was like, yeah, I’ll give you that, cool guy. You know what I mean? There’s more, you know, it just depends on, and I think later on you start to realize, holy crap, it’s all connected. I know I hustle dope, but what I found a lot through drug investigations, I was amazed at how many sex crime investigations we ended up in. Because they’re just interconnected. Yeah. And it’s kind of the same with dope and human trafficking. It’s kind of the same methods and the same…

SOPs, it’s just a different commodity. You know, you got your dope that isn’t a walking, talking entity. And so there’s less concerns around that. But then moving people is the same as moving dope. Yeah. You just got a few more variables thrown in there because you got a person that can exercise free will at some point. Right. Right. Unless you really subdue all that. Right. Yeah. That’s wild. Yeah. And they help them out sometimes too. Like, you know, they get in these people’s heads and then, you know, people don’t want to come forward and they don’t want to.

turn on their person that they’re sort of sympathetic to. And it’s kind of frustrating sometimes. It goes back to leverage you were talking about. What are they threatening and what were they threatening? What do they have on that deal? What did they tell them about what US law enforcement will do? They told them that they’ll be immediately ejected out of the United States and back into the, you know, a lot of those things. That’s absolutely it. They think like, hey, if I come forward and turn to this person that’s doing all this bad stuff to me, like I’m going to get deported and that’s worse than what they’re doing to me here.

So they will come forward. You have also put up with this for however long you want to put up with it. In whatever country they come from, like you can’t trust the cops there. So they don’t know that they can trust us here. They can come forward with that information and it could completely backfire. Right. And they’ve scared to the point where it doesn’t matter what you say. Right. That’s, that is a tough part as a cop where you’re trying to break through that barrier and develop some trust. And the best way to do it is conversation where you start to conversations like this, where you start to understand what their mindset is coming across.

It’s a life for them. It’s a life or death decision to make across the border. Right. So you have to understand what the threat. Yeah. So for Portland, did you come and work closer to Idaho? Yes. So 2020 happened and we got wrapped into that whole riot situation and we were at the courthouse and people were trying to burn us every night almost. Yeah. So that was the other factor in retirement. I saw that happen and I saw kind of how that went that.

Seth Horst (47:52.334)
Every law enforcement agency that was there was under intense scrutiny. Like, you know, we were getting FOIA requests all the time. PPB was told they weren’t supposed to work with us, things like that. Like there, there was a whole lot of weird stuff going on behind the scenes politically. And then what’s a FOIA request? A free movement for information acts. You know, people just randomly will call FOIA. They’re like, yeah, we want to look at all your emails between, you know, these dates or whatever. I know what you’re seeing across emails.

Dude, I remember right at that time, I was working in the office for doing training stuff, but I worked front desk. And dudes would come in all camored up. I’m like, I want all of this. So I’m like, you know, freaking time you’re going to waste for admin to pull all of these freaking whatever they want, tickets or bar, which is our cameras in the car, whatever it was, it didn’t matter. It was pointless, but you have to do it. Yep.

can you do it? It’s, it’s, people are entitled to it. So you got to do it. And, you know, nobody did anything stupid or anything, but it was just one of those things that it was a process. It’s a punishment. And so we’re dealing with that. We’re in the courthouse and people are trying to burn the courthouse every night. there was one night we were in there where, we’re deploying gas and they were pulling the gas back into the courthouse using leaf blowers and stuff. And so we’re sitting there and it’s rather creative. We’re sitting there with gas masks on, like trying to type.

affidavits and stuff to search these phones and stuff that we’re getting hit. There was just a massive… she had pictures of that, dude. Gas mask, type of your reports just in blowing in. But just the chaos and… Is there a little part of you that… At least to my mind, I wasn’t happy with the way that the chaos was responded to. And I’m like, maybe I need to find a different job. And first I’m going to try it in a different city. And Spokane was great. I had no issue with Spokane. We had a good time, but I was only working for a year and a half. And then the…

Florida deployments happened and I didn’t see that going away and they were trying to force the COVID shot and I’m like, yeah, I’m just going to retire. What is your opinion, dude? I got to go back and support like what happened down there with the federal courthouse. All of it was protest. What is your opinion on the level of organization and funding for the groups that committed these acts? I think it’s absolutely there.

Seth Horst (50:16.27)
the, you can see the ringleaders out there every night. It’s the same group of people. And then there’s, you know, periphery people that just show up for the party or the violence or whatever they’re going to do. so it’s the same people that are doing it all the time. And I can’t imagine that they’re not being funded. Yeah. Yeah. I dealt with that a lot in California and, there was a definite level of, equipment that they had. There was a lot of consistency in the equipment, you know, they have rock climbing helmets.

gas masks and a lot of it would look very similar. So it was like, not all was it was pieced together by just a GP. Right. And it cost shields. They had, you know, makeshift riot shields that they’d bring. They were very well prepared. We would have routinely find piles of like bricks, like pallets dropped off. Who’s paying for that? Right. Someone’s paying for that. It’s organized. It’s very organized, right? They’d send scouts out and just like, are we up?

Tricking pallet of bricks over here. Looking for soft targets to experience with that. But honestly, like the most fun I had on the job was dealing with that shit. To be honest. Clearly, I must have had a very boring career because that was the fun stuff for me. no, it’s got wine out there mixing it up. And you get to put a hurt on right a little bit where that was that felt good because, you know, as a street cop, you like, you can’t really do that much. Right. If they’re not arrestable, it’s like they can.

and that few all day long. I just get to sit there and take it. But within policy and procedure of 100 % Yes. 100%. Yeah. Time has been wild. So sitting in that building, because I was watching on TV, it looked like they were trying to burn the federal courthouse. They were every night. That’s crazy. I think that would be the frustrating part, right? It’s like, you guys just want to allow to respond appropriately. Is that accurate? Otherwise, you would have been able to shut that down. Yeah. Yeah, that’s my opinion. Yeah. Yeah.

Because I can use a little bit of force, but you can’t use the force necessary. Don’t want to look too scary. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I’ve seen both sides of that too. I’ve had deployments where it was like very hands -off at the state Capitol in California. There were times when it was BLM Antifa and it’s like, Hey, we’re going to, we’re going to let them tear these statues down and just whatever. That shit sucks. Yeah. There’s nothing more frustrating. The stuff we were dealing with at the courthouse, like PPV was getting it just as bad. Like it.

Seth Horst (52:44.398)
It would, they would focus on us for a while. Like everybody would be at the courthouse for a couple of weeks and then they would be like, Hey, let’s go mess with Portland police headquarters. And those guys were getting it bad. And, you know, fortunately I would say that as feds, we got a little more support than they did as far as, you know, what, what we were doing and what our mission was. Those guys were kind of thrown into the wolves. And yeah, well, I mean, they’re, they’re the city politics for them, right? Like they’re stuck. Whatever the mayor’s gonna tell them. yeah.

And then knowing that even if you’re putting the situation where it’s you or them, like it’s a, you’re going to be screwed. No matter what you do, there’s no, there’s no right way. We had, I mean, we had George Floyd riots. I’m talking about specifically, they were the most violent I’ve been to, but like full on 80s getting thrown at us in the line. Like, yeah, those shits fuck you up. Like, yeah, they will wreck you. So, it was terrifying. Yeah. Word piss on us. Same thing. There were some, those mortar fireworks. too fair people.

fire and frozen water bottles from balloon launchers. Like those things hurt when they hit you. But yeah, our FPS guys were getting injured all the time. Yeah. Ours too were taking breaks in bottles, rocks all the time. Yeah. And yeah, so it’s weird. Now there was a brief period, like two weeks when the handcuffs came off of us and it was like, we put the hurt on. And it was…

Freaking satisfying. Well, that must’ve been when somebody a lot higher than we are decided like we’ve had enough of this. Yeah, right. And it works, right? We hit them hard and fast and super violent and they backed out quick. Right. So, you know, if we could have that response immediately every time, right. It takes away all of it. It makes it so much safer. Or for everybody too. Idaho’s a little different. I imagine. I imagine. A little bit different.

But reputation of being very tolerant of violence towards our citizens or their property. You can come out peacefully protest. You have your first amendment. Sure, I’m all for that. We go for it. But the rest of that, you don’t get to destroy our city or have anarchy and chaos. No. And that’s the way it should be because the taxpaying citizens expect that. That should be a right for them. You see these small business owners in some of these cities just…

Seth Horst (55:02.83)
They’re done. They’re stored and ruined. They’re not coming back. They don’t have a shirt. It’s a wonder we’re leaving in dead roads, which, you know, they’re leaving major metropolitan cities. Now why? Because number one, you go to Portland, how are you going to start a business down there? You can’t even run the transient off your front steps while he’s taking a dump in front of your door for your high end closed door. Like how are you supposed to run a business there? Yeah, the wonders are. And at these riots, man, like, I mean, there were times we’d have a hired cop standing right there and we’re not allowed to do anything about it.

I’m watching this business get destroyed. I’m like, how would that citizen feel? They knew. We could have stopped it. Right. Some higher up was like, mm -mm. No, but you read the interviews with the business owners and they’re blaming the cops. And that’s what hurt the most. It’s like, don’t worry. We’re standing here sitting on our hands. And yeah, I don’t know if the city’s repaired itself in Portland at all, but like, it was all boarded up when I left and it may be okay now, but it was wrecked downtown.

There was all these stories coming out about how it wasn’t that bad and this and that. And that, yeah, that’s all BS. It was correct. Yeah. So I was explaining that to somebody when, when, when cops leave Idaho, sometimes that happens, right? And either you chase pay fair enough. You do what you need to do or fail the situations. You’re going to go be a cop and spoken or Seattle or whatever. And they change. You just try to advise him. Just understand that when you go there, you are doing what the citizens want you to do by way of elections.

Right? So whoever they’ve elected to be put in charge, that’s your job. That doesn’t mean your job is to go out and be proactive and find violent felons. It’s not that way everywhere. You’re doing what the citizens want you to do. You’re acting on their behalf by way of the elected officials that employ you. And that’s a tough pill to swallow for some people, but you have to accept that when you go there and you can see the difference in cities. Absolutely. Here, I think I’ve been pretty clear about what we think is an effective policing strategy for

keeping our city safe, a good place for kids to grow up and all that stuff, but other cities, man, it’s not that way. Well, and that’s why my wife and I made the conscious decision to move to Idaho because, you know, Spokane is not a bad place. Spokane is still a pretty good place, but it’s in Washington and the state politics are going to influence what happens in Spokane and you’re going to be subject to those rules no matter what. So, yeah, I remember my boss saying like, hey, just move to Liberty Lake. It’s a lot cheaper where I live. I’m like, no, we’re going to move on the Idaho side. Right. We did. And I’m glad I did.

Seth Horst (57:27.79)
When you could see the difference. I went to school downtown and spoke in Lucent Park. Right. So right there, right there downtown and seeing the difference that I’m not going to say how long ago, cause that’s embarrassing. Shit. Well, I’ve seen the difference. You’re the youngest in the room. Let me just say that. I see the numbers. But, yeah. Seeing the difference in downtown, you know, such, we joke all the time, but it’s kind of serious. Like you cross that border into Washington. You can almost feel it.

It’s got a bug here. Yes. Growing up there. Well, especially with my family. Right. Law enforcement and what’s happened since his mom was a badass cop. They’re legit. That’s what she does. Cool. I’d stand in a shot, dude. Like whose mom can say that? You’d never know. No, she’s like the sweetest thing. Yes. yeah. she did some cool stuff. Get on her rocks. You see in a couple of details. Like a bitch. So here’s us. So I should put on a side. Yeah. Going to work in some of those cases. Yeah. It was pretty cool.

you know, growing up and seeing her as a cop and then spoke to him as a super six, so he can be still up and then see what’s turning out. It’s just the start of what we talked about. You’re decriminalizing criminal behaviors. You know, drugs are the reason, you know, that right there, it’s the catalyst for so much other crimes. Some of the guys all the time, it’s really hard for me to catch somebody double rising a card that’s just luck. You know, the drugs that prompted it. And then you start to realize when you get into more and death cases, how many sex offenses or internet crimes or child part, meth fuel.

true me most of the time it’s meh. But yeah, that’s why I’m super passionate about that. Again, that’s great direct attribute to keep making it safe. I think it’s important. I hear people make the argument of I should just decriminalize everything. I just don’t think that works. It’s funny because they tried that in Oregon and now it’s back on the ballot to criminalize things again because it’s not working. Yeah, I see. I get comments on our YouTube channel like Idaho would be cool if they, you know, marijuana was legal. I’m like,

No, I don’t personally have any moral issues with to me, marijuana and alcohol are really similar in my mind, morally speaking. But I feel like it is a slippery slope because that’s how it started in other states and I’ve seen it firsthand. And I was just like, you know what, I’d rather not. I haven’t really seen.

Seth Horst (59:47.406)
any sort of study come out to show where it is working. You know, it’s like, I’ve seen the policies implemented and like, this is supposed to work, but I’ve never seen any confirmation that like, yeah, this is saving us a bunch of money by not going after this. Yeah. And like I said, the morality of it, like as a trooper, man, I’ve seen a lot of bad car crashes, right? And I cannot really attribute many or even any to marijuana. Maybe a few, you know, where I’ve heard some marijuana deuces for sure in my time, but I can see a lot of them with alcohol. Yeah. That’s where I’m like, well.

Man, I get it. And so I’m really glad some other states have jumped in front of the round and given us some case studies. And I’m sure they’re out there. The case studies you’re asking for, they’re just maybe not favorable. So they don’t make them public. But I’d love to see them. I really would, because man, we’d first be in the same boat. But I will say this, and I tell people this all the time. Kids will ask me about it. Great. I’m glad that they ask me questions in drug classes.

Just because it’s legal, let’s don’t start away from here. You can walk into a dispensary. You go to the dispensary over the border, it’s all Idaho plates. Right. I am not going to sit here and say that, my gosh, you smoked marijuana, you’re going to be fed all three weeks. I don’t think that the gateway drug was like a dare thing, you know, and you just don’t see the same path being followed that it once was. But I will say, oftentimes we’re finding hard, illicit drugs. Marijuana is right there along. Yeah.

I’m not saying that it’s like a direct correlation, but oftentimes it’s right there with it. So it is, you have to have like a pretty solid understanding. And I think it’s like many other things where if it’s used in moderation, you know, like then it doesn’t become a crush that you use every single day. Did you know that in California, I don’t know if it’s statewide, it might just be department by department. They are allowing peace officers to use marijuana. New Jersey’s the same way. But you can’t have gun.

Yeah, they just can’t show up with obvious impairment, right? Obviously it will be in their blood to some level. They just can’t show up impaired. I’m like, well, that’s interesting. What a… Who’s going to be the first one in the office to test that out? Well, who’s going to be the first one to get sued in the civil room and say that it impaired their judgment because of the conclusive widening of synapse gaps that can occur with prolonged marijuana use, right? Like that’s where it’s going to get free slow, dude. It’s got to get funky. Do you want to hear one that’s going to blow your mind even more?

Seth Horst (01:02:10.766)
Yes. There are, I know for a fact, at least with the old department that I worked for, the CHP, there are more than one non -citizen officers. They are not US citizens. They were illegal immigrants and they have gone through the academy and they are police officers, sworn officers. They have to turn their gun into the sergeant at the end of their shift because they cannot legally possess a chair. I would imagine they have to have some sort of…

legal status, but I don’t know how that works, but yeah, it’s crazy. But they cannot take their guns on. Huh? So there was how’s that work? I don’t know. I know that the military for a while had something worked. Look, this is just the world we live in. Like we’re going to talk about policies. I think a lot of us probably agree on a lot of policies, but there are some kids that are caught up in the middle of all this. They grew up here, right? Yeah. They are willing to work their ass off and go out and protect their community and all of that. And I knew some of the military workers, almost like a naturalization.

in order for them to go serve honorably for four or five years. If there are those folks that really want to do it, then you have to go through the process, go get naturalized. Sure. I’d take them with open arms. Sure. Because a lot of them are much more appreciative of our sense of nationality and how we operate as a country than our own freaking entitled citizens. Because they, where they came from. You know, so sometimes I look at that, but that’s crazy. Check this out. Here’s where MindMind goes. Yes.

There’s going to be a discrimination suit at some point because this guy that turns his gun every day and all the other cops are going to be like, he’s a motherfucker. He’s going to file a discrimination suit. He’s going to win. Yeah. He’s going to get paid out. He’s like, there you go, dude. That’s what’s going to happen. Hey, that’s my idea. If you do that, get back. It’s a donate. 10%. Just send us a bottle. Just send us a bottle with some coins. That’s fine. Good for you. Take that money. Yeah. Anyway, that’s weird.

Yeah, it’s watch your each world. Well, you’ll appreciate this from California. You remember when legalization happened and they told us it’ll shut down the smuggling from Mexico. yeah. And all of us that were working dope at the time were like, well, no, they’re just going to smuggle something else. And what happens? Something much worse. Something bigger dragons started coming over. Yeah. Make money off of weed. Well, I’m still a smuggler. So yeah, but as in Sloan County, the black market stuff, interdiction of interstate. My God.

Seth Horst (01:04:34.094)
Because you have dispensaries or you have grows and they grow too much because they’re contracted. They’re not on the scale. That’d be the rest of the podcast. We gave out of Washington, but they’re just peddling out the back door. You know what I mean? And it’s going because it’s all like, it’s vacuum sealed, real good, high quality hydroponic shit. And then it’s just getting traffic to other states where it’s not legally. It hasn’t slowed or ebbed it even a little. If anything, it’s made it more.

And those were the weak cases we got in Oregon where was that it was people smuggling to states that they weren’t supposed to. And it was also, you know, there’s so much competition that some of them thought it would be a good idea to just not pay taxes. Yeah. So it was all, it’s out the back door because then they’re just getting paid. They don’t have to pay the state taxes. Cause that was the other big boom, right? Colorado’s like, we’re going to make so much money off this little, maybe they haven’t made a lot of money. I don’t know. I keep losing good people though.

And you know what, like that game, the marijuana game. So I started out in Humboldt County when I got out of the Academy. It’s he was over in Humboldt and did the marijuana cap of the world. Yep. I would routinely stop cars with like 20 pounds of process green dope in the back. And it was like, he doesn’t care at all, man. He’d take their dope, impound the car. I’d be like, you know, doing an inventory of the vehicle before you impound it. And like there’s five grand in a paper bag under the floor mat, like money. It was crazy. But.

with that like massive crime. People disappeared over there all the freaking time. They have drifters coming through and they’re trimming dope on the side, making 400 bucks a day or whatever. They were disappearing all the freaking time. It’s like prostitution, heroin, meth, all of that, like in massive amounts. That came about. The case in Spokane, it did grow up in the SPAC, B15, 2016, that was fairly new, but they had a guy get cut down like Highlander style.

get a marijuana girl. Like with a sword? Yes. That’s kind of cool. Yeah. Literally cut down. It was just wild the way that like it’s supposed to be all legal and legitimate, but it’s still weird how violent, pretty violent, heinous crime follows that. And that’s still happening. Yeah. Yeah. Big dope rip. All right. Dope rips. Like we’d get guys out of the Bay area coming into where I worked over in Vue County and do dope rips and like, they fuck shit up, man. Kills people. Yeah. Well, that’s got a…

Seth Horst (01:06:54.382)
guy that came up from a certain area from a state that you’re familiar with that worked kind of out in the country, in the woods and stuff like that for me and talked about how bad and violent grows used to be. And now there was like armed security and protections and stuff. It’s a lot of money. At the end of the day, it’s a lot of money. Those are our service team would hit and grows occasionally and dude, these freaking tree trunks on these things. We’d have to bring chainsaws to cut these freaking plants out.

I remember those and we had to seize all of it because they wanted to weigh it all up. So it was a bigger number or whatever. So like you said, you’re cutting down these ones that are not very good plants or whatever, but it’s weight. So you’re having to take it all on trailers. Yeah. Yeah. They would, they would hang Christmas ornaments on them. So from a helicopter looked like an apple tree. It’s genius. They’re that big. Mark. Yeah. Yeah. It was cool. Those are fun to go ahead. And you’d be thrown in the trailer. It gets like a reek.

of processed weed. I’d go, I’m like, what did you do? The worst part for me was like in California, you know, you grow up like learning that there’s no water, like there’s no water, there’s almost a drought and whatever. And so you’d go up there and you’d see just the shenaniganry with like tapping into pipes and like all this water is spilling all over everywhere for this grow operation. And you’re like, that wasted water. Yeah, bastards. That’s where we’re going to get a week of wasted water. Yeah. Then the complexity of.

So I’m kind of like creative and this is back. I was doing this 15 years ago. I was like, you know underground storage containers, like everything’s run off the generator 24 seven and like just very complex air filtration. Holy shit. Wow. UV lights. Those are those high -end. Didn’t need soil anymore. Then you pop it all through the PVC pipe and you’re supplying all the nutrients for. Way better than doing it in the ground.

Yeah. Then you’d find the bed roll with the AK -47 and all the Porto Max. It’s like, well, I guess I know who’s watching the weed. Yeah. It’s a rough light. Yeah. That’s the guy. Dude. So, well, we’re creeping over an hour. I guess we should call it films. It was pretty good. It was by fast. Yeah. No, that’s good. Especially when we’re talking about something cool. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, dude, I appreciate guys that do what you did because that stuff. Well, child stuff is rough, man.

Seth Horst (01:09:17.55)
Like what everybody’s doing out there is important. So you’re right. I was able to fit in somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. But I love hearing about the relationship you had with Bokobini. That’s legit. Like that networking with the agencies because everybody’s got a different jurisdiction and a different focus. And so many times in long -forth, it’s just like alpha dogs butting heads and they can’t get along and they can’t work with each other. And it’s so important that we do and that you stop giving a shit who slaps bracelets on.

Right. Just as long as bad people that are victimizing good people go to jail, it ain’t about us. That’s what which bad puts. That’s what makes it all worth it is doing some good at the end of the day. And yeah, like I think the big hammer we bring is feds is, you know, with human trafficking, sort of go back to that. You got the man act. So you can hit somebody for prostitution or you can end with man act, which is like a five year mandatory minimum. So, you know, being able to bring that hammer and contribute something is great. Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Again, all of it crosses over. And.

I know I always go back to drugs, but it’s, it is such a good tool to get into some of these other investigations. Yep. And I was telling you before this, Idaho is kind of funky. Sometimes we’re, we’re a little bit behind the times because we’re lucky. Truth is you look around and you just go through and we go through it for crime statistics and we just, we don’t have a lot. Doesn’t mean it’s not happening. We just need to get more effective in interdicting it. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I always try to tie this back to North Idaho, right? Our podcast is community focused and it’s like,

I guess it surprised me when we met and I was like, you worked in Spokane, but you worked for Homeland security. It’s like, yeah. That was surprising. I would have assumed you’d be on a border or somewhere out on the edge of the US. Right. but no, you guys are right here in the middle. Kind of. Yep. Well, I’m very lucky and, border patrols the same way up here. Like there’s a presence here, but very few guys get to come out here. Right. And that’s another thing people might not realize, right? We do have border patrol here on the North border. I worked with one of his.

Stunned. They’re gonna be old man. We have some fun. We have some fun stuff just because again you network and go out and be like, bro, that’s pretty shit. Here’s what I think it’s like. That’s pretty shit. Wait a minute. We can help each other. Yeah, we can both eat rice and bad guys go to jail. Everybody’s decide who’s gonna go to more jail. You know, that’s what I love. You’re like working with the local SO where I worked at the PD. It was like, you know, like a DUI is like my jam. Yeah, but these guys were good at other skill sets. Yeah, just like man. We get the other on scene. It’s like hey,

Seth Horst (01:11:39.022)
Yeah. Let’s freaking handle this. Like whoever’s going to handle it best, they’ll jump in and handle it. You do your SSTs bro, and go get the guns and go back. I understand, right? That’s my thing. Then you learn something from the new tool in the tool. Yeah. That’s freaking the way to do it. Yeah. I’m pretty stoked that there’s a lot of people that still want to do this job and do it well. Let’s hope it stays that way. Yep. Exactly. So on that note, we’re recruiting cops up here. If you’re looking to work, come on up to North Idaho. You won’t regret it. You can do the job you signed up for. Yeah.

Yeah. Give us a holler. Anyway, dude, let’s call it. Thanks brother. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Yeah. That was a, that was a good conversation. Love it. Have to do it again sometime. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, we’re going to talk more about ICAC stuff offline. He’s going to be a good resource for you. yeah. I’m trying to get him hired up here by somebody cause he wants to get back in the game. Not uniform though. no, I totally get that. It’s just a matter of sometimes it’s recognizing where there’s a need.

before a case makes it a need, if that makes sense. So many of our, so much of our stuff is reactionary. Like, why do we have to wait for Melissa’s law, right? Like, why can’t we recognize and learn from other states that have this significant problem and then start to implement policies? Too much of our jobs are corrective. I got to go there after the fact. You know what my task force does? Like, by then it’s too late in a lot of ways. So I have jobs to go take this shitty thing and then prevent that from happening again. So why do we have to wait?

Look at other states and go, wait, why don’t we get out in front of this and get a reputation for not being tolerant of those assholes? Yeah. Sorry, but we’re going to push you to another community that gives less of a shit because our kids grow up here. That’s all we can do. Right. Next step is. So that’s where we get it’s cool working in a place where they recognize that. And you can go talk to them and say, hey, here’s a problem. It just isn’t we haven’t been slapped in the face with it yet, but it’s here. Let’s fix it now.

And Archie was like, okay, wait a minute, that makes some sense. What, what can we do to stop this from happening? That’s cool that he’s over to that. Yeah. Well, it’s you put good, you know, he puts good people around them. They’re forward thinking and recognize. I mean, you guys all, unfortunately that those skills atrophy in six months. You don’t just get to unplug and then the gains change about it. The apps change. Like we were talking about that with apps on the phone. My God, I got to stay up and like read kids phones. You know, look at apps.

Seth Horst (01:14:03.47)
is that okay hell with a freaking snapchat what’s text now what is this funky crap what’s whisper you know all these things yeah you gotta stay up to speed as the game changes the rules change what do you mean those things self -delete yeah exactly that’s impressive yeah crypto stuff you and i are so yeah those are good i got whole work you know like doing this podcast and we just did wild fentanyl in north idaho it’s like

It’s good. And people are like, I thought it was safe. I’m like, it is safe. Like this place is super safe. Yeah. You know, we’re having these conversations because it is here a little bit and it’s important to stay ahead of it. You’re talking about, if we start having these conversations now, you know, we can start putting the pieces of place to keep it from happening in our community. Cause we all break. We cherish it. Man. I’ve done some classes and I’m going to speak to people that are listening to right now. When I talked to parents, kids that were in a, there was private school out here with.

What is out there? The journey of our kids is much different than ours. We can no longer afford to be ignorant to what’s out there. That’s just the truth. This matters. You can’t be because the old mentality of, they got to make mistakes and learn. I agree. But man, some of these, you really have to know what’s up and recognize the signs. You just have to, whether or not somebody’s trying to bait them on the internet on some app, right? Which happened early AOL that was happening, right? But now it’s just so much easier with different apps. And then honestly, when they’re using.

You know, where they’re getting pills, it’s just, those are significant traps that can come back from. So it is safe in North Idaho comparatively. It does go for sure forward to be ignorant of what’s out there. Yeah. Well said. All right. Thanks, fella’s Yeah.