S209: The Good Cop, Bad Cop

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Javier Leiva

True Crime, Society & Culture, Technology

4.7 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 22 May 2018

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How does a good cop turn bad? For Ruben Palomares, a former corrupt LAPD Rampart division officer, the process was slow. He went from receiving LAPD’s highest honor to becoming one of the most corrupt cops in US history. Officer Palomares’ story begins with his first undercover assignment. In the late 1980s there was this show called 21 Jump Street. Johnny Depp starred in it. It was about undercover cops, who pretended to be students, in order to bust drug dealers in schools. But did you know that back in the 1994, the Los Angeles police department juvenile narcotics unit actually recruited young officers to infiltrate classrooms in order to investigate drug dealers? They couldn’t just get any cop to fill this undercover role. They needed a fresh face who could blend in with the students. So, they approached officer Ruben Palomares. In 1995, Ruben Palomares got transferred to LAPD’s Rampart Division where he continued to work undercover cases. He was specifically assigned to the anti-gang unit called CRASH. CRASH is an acronym for the Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums. This is when Ruben’s fate will be decided. -----BURNER PHONE PODCAST----- You can find Burner Phone Podcast on Apple Podcast and Twitter. -----MUSIC----- Theme Music composed by Joe Basile from The Chicken Music and Sound Design. Find out more about Joe and The Chicken at www.thechicken.net Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:35.4	tease and see supply. Today's story is a collaboration with my good friend Chris Niddle from the
0:49.7	Burnerphone Podcast. Burnerphone is a collection of intimate conversations with
0:54.9	former criminals. Chris is a documentarian whose work has been seen on Vice,
1:00.8	Netflix, A&E, and Nat Geo. His show is raw and unedited. I promise you, this is the real
1:08.8	deal. But today, Chris asked me if I could give his latest story the pretend radio treatment, and I'm like, yeah, wait till you hear this one.
1:19.0	Okay, let's start the show. In the late 1980s, early 90s, there was a show called 21 Jump Street.
1:30.0	Johnny Depp starred in it, and they recently turned it into a movie.
1:34.0	It was about undercover cops who pretended to be students in order to bust drug dealers in schools.
1:41.0	But did you know that back in 1994 the Los Angeles Police Department's juvenile narcotics unit actually recruited young officers to infiltrate classrooms in order to investigate drug deals? They couldn't just get any cop to
1:54.8	fill this undercover role. They needed a fresh face, someone who could blend in
1:59.6	with a crowd. So they approached Officer Rubinen Palomadas.
2:04.0	They called the undercover high school buy program.
2:06.0	It's the 21 Young Street program.
2:09.0	They thought I was a pretty good candidate.
2:11.0	I thought about it and so I took the job. I took a position.
	...

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