Mr. Pegues march 2013, officially retired. I was injured september 2000 11 so i was out of work for about a year and a half, almost two years. I had two back surgeries. I was injured at work. Trying to arrest someone. I popped a disk in my back. Brian at the time, what was your rank and where were you a policeman . Mr. Pegues at the time it was a Commanding Officer of the 57th precinct and my rank was Deputy Inspector which is an executive position at the nypd. Brian in the new york Police Department. Mr. Pegues yes. Brian talk about this moment because you talk about it in your book. [begin video] this is crack cocaine. Seized a few days ago by Drug Enforcement agents. It could have been heroin or pcp. It is as innocent looking as candy but it is turning our cities into battle zones and murdering children. Let there be no mistake this stuff is poison. Brian as you said your book almost right away, you sold that stuff. Why . Mr. Pegues i sold it because of the environment i grew up in. I grew up with gangsters and drug dealers and pimps. I was young. I grew up on welfare. I was in a family of 6, 5 girls and myself. My father left after the third grade. In my book i have a picture of me in the fifth grade and im sitting indian style of the front and im holding my feet because i have holes in the bottom of my shoes and i had cardboard in it so my socks wouldnt get wet. I had a rough upbringing. I got involved with friends who were selling drugs, it was the same and it was the thing to do. So we sold marijuana, cocaine, crack cocaine came out and we started selling that. 13 to 18 years old, five years. Brian what is the difference between cocaine and crack cocaine . Mr. Pegues crack cocaine is rock form. Brian like we saw it in the bag . Mr. Pegues yes. Brian what is mescaline . Mr. Pegues a tiny pill that people take. Back then i dont even know if that stuff is still around but they did back then. Brian what is a lucy . Mr. Pegues he got killed for buying lucy, those little cigarettes. Eric garner. The origin of lucy was a lucy joint. A loose joint. So instead of selling a nickel bag of weed or a dme bag of weed, you roll them up your self we would roll them up for you. We would roll you a loose joint. Brian what is a louie . Mr. Pegues it was a loose joint marijuana joint laced with cocaine. Sprinkle a little bit of it in there. You get the high and the low. Brian smooth . Mr. Pegues smooth was a very good friend of mine way grew up with. He introduced me to the streets. The irony about him was he did not have to. He had a two family home, mom worked for the telephone company, father worked for the post office. House, car, white picket fence. Just because of the environment he brought me in on the whole drug game and i started hanging out with him. Brian why did you want to write the book . Mr. Pegues im glad you asked that question. Nobody really asked. The role reason i wrote it is for the generations of pegues behind me. Kids, grandkids, i wanted to know this life transformation i made. Then it morphed into this book i had to write and tell my story because i was put on the front page of the newspaper in new york city. They really took some shots of my personality, my demeanor, my character, they tried to vilify me. I had to tell my story. The backdrop was that i wrote my own book and stopped walking across the stage, graduate. All this stuff i did in the streets, i was poor. I was in the streets selling drugs, which the military unit graduated and became a cop and it was over. That was the end of the book until this newspaper hit. That i had to go to my entire Police Career just so i could lessen some of the stuff that was put out about me that was all lies. Brian heres the front page of the New York Post that i think youre talking about. Right there. It says, i dealt crack as a gangsta, nypd honcho reveals. When you saw that, what was your reaction, and how did it happen . Mr. Pegues my reaction to that i was not happy. I never was a thug cop. I did so crack when i was out in the street i dont know if i would consider myself a gangster. A gangster to me is like john gotti. I was not out murdering people, putting hits on people. I was a street hustler come i sold drugs, so i was a criminal. It was really bad for my family. My family had to endure that waking up in the morning. You know, theres a picture of me with the president of United States and the book, maybe a future president , hillary clinton, michael bloomberg, l l cool j. I had such a fantastic life after those five years. Then with me being on the cover it took all that away and it was not an easy time for my family. And, i knew i was never a thug cop. I never committed a crime as a cop. I was probably the cleanest cop for 21 years and the reason being i thought they were always looking at me because of my past, because of how i came to work dressed, because of my tattoos. I was so clean, i always thought it was a setup. Brian lets go through some brief outline of your life. You were born in what year in where . Mr. Pegues 1968 in queens. In a hospital that is close now. Mary immaculate hospital in cleans. Queens. Brian where did you go to school . Mr. Pegues in jamaica, queens. I left in the third grade. I got kicked out for pushing a girl behind the stairs. I playfully pushed a girl down the stairs and a bunch of girls fell down the stairs. I went to high school for an Engineering Program and invited some of my friends, some of my crackhead friends to play basketball. They beat everyone up out of the game, but i get kicked out of there. I went to Andrew Jackson high school and ended up graduating in 1987. Brian what were the years that you ended up selling drugs on the Street Corners . And after high school wet happened to you . What happened to you . Mr. Pegues the u. S. Army. Brian how long . Mr. Pegues three years and eight months. In thirty war we won days. My enlistment was up. I had to stay a few more months. Brian were you actually on duty the alltime . Active duty in the National Guard . Mr. Pegues then i was in the National Guard for 14 years for i have 18 years of military service. Brian that takes us up to what year . Mr. Pegues march 1992. Actually, march 1991, i got out of the military. In january of 1992 i went to the police academy. I became a policeman january 13, 1992. Brian how long did you serve as an activeduty new york policeman . Well talk about what happened during your promotions. Mr. Pegues 21 years. As a new York City Police officer. Brian i want to show some video of you on the Street Corner talking about where you used to sell drugs so people can get a sense of what it was like. [begin video] this is my spot. Murdoch. I spent countless hours here. This is where the drug trade rise was. All day, every day. It was cool. Almost like a cool thing to do. I had this area here. I had this area here. All the tenants had different color caps on their crack cocaine. If you wanted blue, you came over here. It was cool, almost like a cool thing to do. The whole park was, like, i had this area here. All the lieutenants had different colored caps on their crack cocaine. We had somebody down here by the baseball field. There was crack over the park. Brian who was buying . Mr. Pegues everybody was buying. When crack hit, it decimated that community. I was one of the people who was supplying that poison. But everybody was buying. You had friends, family members. I had family members on drugs. Everybody. They came from all walks of life. People who do not have money. People who were affluent. A middleclass neighborhood for the nice part. You had some people, nice houses, they were buying. You had white people coming to predominantly black communities. Just driving in to buy crack. Brian talk about vials. How much did each of those cost . Mr. Pegues we had two vials, a small and a big one, the jumbo. That will go for 10 or five dollars. Five dollars for the little one, 10 for the big one or 20 for the big one. Brian how much should you make a day . Mr. Pegues i worked two different places. I was a freelancer, that was with the supreme team. But i was working on my own, what i would make 1000 a day. When i worked for the supreme team, they made upwards of 2000 a week. It was a drug crew ran by this guy named supreme. His nephew worked with him and he had a bunch of lieutenants, maybe five lieutenants. They had an iron fist organization. It was actually run like a fortune 500 company. I do not know if the drug dealers are doing this today, but we worked shifts. We got paid on fridays. Like, it was a job. The ironic thing with that was, we worked exact same hours as the Police Officers. These guys are smart. They emulated the Police Department schedule. They were so good that they started paying the police off. I talk about that in the book. Brian did you ever get paid off as a policeman . Mr. Pegues no. I could not be bought. I was deathly afraid. I always thought it was a setup. Nobody ever offered me money. I talked one time in the book about, we stopped somebody with a bag of money and he said, i do not know whose money it is, as if to insinuate take it, i do not care. And i was like, no. If he had 20,000 in there and i split with my partner, i can make 1 million if i keep the job for 20 years or this could be a setup for 10,000 i am going to embarrass my family. It just did not work. Brian where did you get the drugs on a daytoday basis and where did you keep it when you are standing on the corners . Or at the park . Mr. Pegues back then, a lot times we held drugs on us because the police were not as prevalent as they are today. They were not around. Ironically, there is like 50,000 Police Officers in new york city back then, but theres only 36,000 now, but they were not as react to. But we would just put it in a tire well, stick it in the tree. You keep some on you so you would not have to keep running to the stash. Obviously you cannot carry 200. I would have a package of 300 vials for the shift. We just lay them down somewhere. Brian other any team members that are still around that you know . Mr. Pegues yes. Brian in this book, there are so many names. How many of those are the actual names of the people . Mr. Pegues only two. Brian those two are . Mr. Pegues supreme and prince. And who was prince . Either way, when we saw you in that video, who was the other person in the video with you . Mr. Pegues smooth. He went on to become a highranking official in Law Enforcement also. People dont know. They will find out in the book. He changed his life. He went to catholic school. He went to catholic high school, and he went to a prestigious university. All while doing these things i was doing. He changed his life and become a Law Enforcement supervisor. He just recently retired also. Brian heres the mayor of new york city, rudolph giuliani. This is only about 25 seconds. [video clip] i do not know why the morale i do not know why the morale of the new York City Department is so low. He blames it on me, he blames it on you. The reason the morale is so low is one reason and one reason alone David Dinkins. Brian you called him a clown. Why . Mr. Pegues i worked that detail, i will never forget. I was on the steps of city hall because it was going to be a big protest so they had to have Police Officers there. I will never forget that protest. These rogue cops walk around with these were all cops Walking Around with nooses, signs with the nword. It was bad. I felt really, really bad to be a Police Officer. It was probably the worst day in my career. He wasngs he was saying, riling up. It was basically a major racist protest, that was what it was. You can just look back at the old footage. It is a bunch of drunk, white cops and a couple of white agitators such as giuliani egging them on. And saying these really nasty things about the mayor, sort of like what is going on right now. A bunch of cops saying these nasty things. Brian David Dinkins was black. And he was saying racist things . Mr. Pegues the whole crowd. Brian what was the reason for him making that particular speech . Mr. Pegues he wanted to become mayor. He had lost the election. David dinkins beat rudy giuliani. For the reelection, giuliani was going hard because he wanted to be the mayor. There were a few missteps by mayor dinkins. The riots, the Washington Heights riots. He tipped the scale, and he won. Brian someone else you call a clown is bernard. Mr. Pegues former Police Commissioner. Brian why a clown . Mr. Pegues here you have a guy who had a Police Career. It was cronyism at its best. His only claim to fame as a Police Officer was being a detective, which is on the same scale as a cop. In the rank structure it is cop, detective, sergeant, lieutenant, captain, deputy captain, chief, chief, chief. He became the mayor of new york city and he made this detective down here and brought him and made him the Police Commissioner, the number one person in this Paramilitary Organization which is the biggest Police Department in the country. I mean, after having ray kelly as the Police Commissioner to bring him you know, he just did four years of federal prison for corruption. Taking things. That would not happen to a seasoned veteran. You go through the ranks, you know you cannot do this, you can do that. You cant do this, you cant do that. Leadership dont start down here, you have to work your way to the top. You cannot spring board there because he was your bodyguard. When giuliani was running for mayor, he was a volunteer bodyguard and he was made corrections commissioner and brought him into the Police Department. He was the biggest joke in the department. It is well known he was not running the police. Brian what was your personal reaction when bernie went to prison . Mr. Pegues i was like, basically, he was not prepared for the job. That was basically it, in my estimation. It was like, he was not prepared for the job. Brian sent you published this book, since you published this book, you made some people very unhappy. I want to run some video of the fellow that runs the Police Benevolent association. You have seen this before. Explain it. I think this fellows name is patrick lynch. Before we watch it, tell us what his job is . Mr. Pegues he is the Union President for 35,000 cops in the nypd. He is the Union President. Brian right after this story came out by the way, before we do this, the thug life thing, where did it come from . The tattoos. That is what im getting at. Mr. Pegues someone said i had thug life on my neck, i do not have that on my neck. I didnt have it removed. You cant write over writing. You have to laser my tattoo off, then it would have a shadow. It just dont work. If you write cat and you try to write dog over it, it will not be legible. You cannot write over writing. Brian where is it . Mr. Pegues i have a tattoo of my wifes name on my neck. Brian you been married twice, which one is it . Mr. Pegues my current one, brenda. Thats what it says. That is where the thug life thing came from. Alright. Brian what was your highest rank . Mr. Pegues deputy insepector. Where does Deputy Inspector come in . Commissioner is about four or five ranks higher. In a department of 36,000, Deputy Inspector, you probably have 35,000 people under you. Brian here is patrick being interviewed on the streets of new york city. [video clip] a month ago a retired Deputy Inspector was on a podcast announcing he once sold crack in queens. He should not be collecting a pension. He was palling around with drug dealers. If you get information about drug dealers that killed a Police Officer, he never was a Police Officer. You should not be allowed to carry a retired id card in his pocket. That is a privilege. It is a privilege to serve, it is a privilege to say you did serve. You are not entitled to that privilege. They should look back, find out where he lied, was pension and never allow them to be a Police Officer. [end video clip] mr. Pegues that shows the major difference of a cop and an executive. Lets just say i lied on my application. He is so not informed that lying is what he called perjury and the statute of limitations is maybe five years. If he was an executive he would know that, but he is a cop just spewing venom. Brian why is he mad at you . Mr. Pegues he is standing next to eddie burns brother and he is the deputy commissioner. That is the battle they are fighting. They are upset because i know the killer of eddie burns. Brian when was he killed . Mr. Pegues february 1988. I went into the military 1987. Brian was the guy who killed him . Mr. Pegues three guys in jail for decades now. Brian the one they are upset about he is in prison. Again, thats his brother. Standing right there. Mr. Pegues you know what really gets me . Theres no pushback. With the reporter there. For him to say i withheld Vital Information on the killing of a cop, do you think for one iota of a second that if i had any information leading to probably the most infamous murder in the history of the nypd if my name was on any sheet, any tag, any sticky, do you think i wouldve been able to be a new York City Police officer . No way the world. I can guarantee you that if i was implicated in any crime of a murder. Forget about it any. Any murder. I never lied on t