Here’s What’s Wrong With the War on Drugs

HS - Jason Hartman Income Property InvestingJoin Jason Hartman as he leads author, Ted Sumner, through a fascinating true story about Ted’s undercover police work with the San Jose Police Department and how the War on Drugs could be approached much differently. Ted began his undercover work in the ‘70s at the age of 25, as an undercover cop in a high school, where he passed for a 17-year-old. An unbelievable amount of drugs were going into high schools, with phenomenal use of recreation drugs. Ted talks about how the types of drugs used have changed somewhat through the years, with an increased use of methamphetamines. Drugs are pervasive and it’s easier to obtain various drugs than it is to buy alcohol. Additionally, there is a huge profit base in the sale of drugs. Ted continues his story of undercover work, relating the dangers of being found out or being labeled as an informant, recounting his own close call of being pegged for either a Hell’s Angel or an informant. He was tied up, listening to the group debate how they were going to kill him and dispose of him.

Ted feels the War on Drugs is ineffective. Anything can be bought on the black market, which now consists of designer drugs and is run by cartels. Ted talks about the alternative of legalizing certain drugs, particularly marijuana, but with control factors and accountability, controlling the production, distribution and safety to remove the high profit motive. Simply legalizing drugs leaves the black market open. Ted gives the example of Switzerland’s success in the legalizing of marijuana, where there are controls and regulations in place. Ted Sumner looked like a kid, but he was a battle hardened veteran who was given an undercover assignment that no one had ever tried before. He worked alone. He couldn’t wear a wire; he had no way to call for backup. He lived by his wits and cunning. Working alone and unaided in his capacity as a deep undercover narcotics agent, Sumner faded into the shadowy purgatory of drugs and crime meticulously building case after case that brought to justice hundreds of dealers and wrecked and dismantled dozens of narcotic distribution organizations.

He walked through a dark, demonic world of outlaws, drug addicts and pushers, befriending and trafficking with criminals from the street level dealer to the kingpins of syndicates with international connections. His story reads like action fiction; but it’s all true. No work of fiction could come closer to the realities of what happened to this Deep Cover Cop. In addition to his work in law enforcement, Ted has taught martial arts for 45 years, and he is the creator and instructor of the Rehabilitation through Kenpo program to rehab veterans with brain trauma injuries. His goal in writing his book was to illustrate the great value of martial arts training and to shed light on the drug abuse problem in America, as well as the inadequate government drug policies.

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Jason Hartman: Welcome to the Holistic Survival Show. This is your host Jason Hartman, where we talk about protecting the people places and profits you care about in these uncertain times. We have a great interview for you today. And we will be back with that in less than 60 seconds on the Holistic Survival Show. And by the way, be sure to visit our website at HolisticSurvival.com. You can subscribe to our blog, which is totally free, has loads of great information, and there’s just a lot of good content for you on the site, so make sure you take advantage of that at HolisticSurvival.com. We’ll be right back.

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Start of Interview with Ted Sumner

Jason Hartman: My pleasure to welcome Ted Sumner to the show. He was a deep cover cop and he’s got all sorts of interesting adventures to share along those lines. He’s also owner and lead instructor for San Jose Kenpo Karate. And we’re just going to hear about what went on during his very long career, and also maybe what he feels about laws and maybe specifically drug legislation and so forth and kind of where we should go with that. So Ted, welcome, how are you?

Ted Sumner: Very good, sir. How are you?

Jason Hartman: Good, good. You’re coming to us from San Jose, I assume? Silicone Valley?

Ted Sumner: Correct.

Jason Hartman: Fantastic. Well, tell us about your adventures and who you are and your background and so forth.

Ted Sumner: Well, I started out in law enforcement. When I got out of the military, I had wanted to go to work for San Jose police, but after placing high on the test it was challenged. So, I would up working for the sheriff’s department in a jail for a year and I got to know certain aspects of the criminal element quite well. A year later, San Jose hired me on. And then in 1974, they asked me to come into narcotics specifically to work a deep undercover operation to infiltrate the high schools and find out what was going on there, what the drug culture was, who was supplying the high school students and with what.

Jason Hartman: How old were you at the time?

Ted Sumner: I was 25.

Jason Hartman: And you passed as a high school student?

Ted Sumner: I passed for 17, yeah.

Jason Hartman: Oh, okay. This is just like 21 Jump Street, that comedy movie that’s out.

Ted Sumner: I haven’t seen the movie, but I’ve heard of it.

Jason Hartman: It’s not that great, but I did see it. So you passed for 17. And that must have been pretty intense to kind of just pull that off, huh? I mean, how do you do it?

Ted Sumner: What you have to do in that type of work is you have to wholly immerse yourself in the culture. So what you do is you go to places where the high school kids go. You meet people, you make friends, and you get introductions to people. Ultimately, it turned out that the sources of drugs for the high schools were the same were supplying the population in general.

Jason Hartman: And so were you looking to bust a dealer ring of high school students dealing drugs? Or you were looking to find out who was supplying to them I assume, the bigger fish, right?

Ted Sumner: Well, we didn’t really know what we were going to encounter and that’s why they put me in there and allowed me to go deep. That was the first type of operation like that. But they wanted to know what are the kids using and how are they getting it, who are they getting it from? Well, the sources were pretty much the same as for everything else. Amphetamines were coming from primarily the Hells Angels. The marijuana was largely homegrown. And then the cocaine was from a supplier who was a fairly affluent and successful man but he controlled all the cocaine coming into the area.

Jason Hartman: Well, no wonder he was affluent and successful. I hope you don’t mean by that way, though. Maybe he made his money elsewhere.

Ted Sumner: Well, let me rephrase that. He was socially and politically connected.

Jason Hartman: Yeah, don’t be surprised. It’s not necessarily some dreggy looking guy on the street corner. I would assume that during a deep cover operation…First of all, how long were you deep cover?

Ted Sumner: A little over 3 years.

Jason Hartman: That is a long time. So you passed for 17 but kept staying in school? Did everybody assume you just never graduated?

Ted Sumner: Well, no. What they did is we finished up the high school operation. That was a 6 month operation. They brought me up – it was timed to make massive arrests, basically a big dragnet, one week before graduation. And the intention of the mayor and the chief of police was to put the fear of God into the drug dealer’s hand to users. After that, I was supposed to go back to regular patrol duties and they decided that it was so successful that they wanted me to continue, not so much in the high schools but to target the sources that we’re supplying the high school people as well as everybody else.

Jason Hartman: What did you learn about these kids and their suppliers and what was going on? I mean, that just had to be crazy. Very rarely do you ever get to talk to a deep cover cop. So tell us about it. How did it all work?

Ted Sumner: Well, the alarming thing about it is the volume of drugs that were going into the high schools and how many kids were using them. On the other hand, a great percentage of it was recreational. The number of addicts, people really addicted to the drugs, were much smaller than you might think. But the recreational use of the drugs was just phenomenal. They originally told me, well, you’ll probably buy some LSD and maybe some cocaine. I was buying massive quantities of LSD, PCP, cocaine, and then even heroin.

Jason Hartman: And what do you think the most dangerous drug is? Did they have methamphetamines back then like they do now?

Ted Sumner: The way that they consumed it was different back then.

Jason Hartman: What year are you talking about?

Ted Sumner: I started there in ’74 and that was the year that Nixon started the war on drugs or declared the war on drugs.

Jason Hartman: Oh, that wasn’t Reagan. That’s my misconception then.

Ted Sumner: That goes all the way back. This war on drugs is almost 40 years old.

Jason Hartman: I’m gonna ask you a lot about that in a moment, but go ahead.

Ted Sumner: Well, the first thing they did is the state department put pressure on the pharmaceutical companies to stop overproducing. The drugs that we were finding here, aside from marijuana and heroin and cocaine, they all 3 fell into the legal classification of narcotic, meaning no medical use, although they don’t fit that medically. But all of the other drugs were pharmaceuticals that were coming in. Well, the state department put the pressure on, they stopped overproducing, that source dried up. So, instead of say pharmaceuticals, which usually when you had an overdose it involved drugs and alcohol, now you had home produced type of drugs and so the amphetamines came in the little white tablets. They’re called whites with a little X on them. College kids in the 60s and 70s remember taking those before finals.

Jason Hartman: Those were speed then, right?

Ted Sumner: That was speed. But then the methamphetamine was what they were injecting and taking like cocaine.

Jason Hartman: The meth has got to be the scariest one. I mean, I’m no expert at this stuff, but I hear stories and see stuff and read stuff about meth and, wow, that is just one ugly, ugly drug from what I can tell.

Ted Sumner: You take a normal healthy person and you speed their heart rate up to 250 beats a minute.

Jason Hartman: That doesn’t kill them?

Ted Sumner: Well, it can, sure. We’ve had a number of overdoses from amphetamines. And now they’re smoking it as crack cocaine and crystal meth and it’s tough on the body. You see their teeth turn black, their fingernails turn back, there’s a decalcification of the body that’s taking place.

Jason Hartman: Oh, their face just looks disgusting.

Ted Sumner: They age like crazy. It’s almost as if they turned the speed up of their metabolism and they age 10 times faster.

Jason Hartman: Unbelievable, yeah, really bad stuff. I’m curious. Do you have anything bad to say about law enforcement or government from the legislative side? And I want to talk about the war on drugs, obviously.

Ted Sumner: Well, I think it’s become pretty obvious that the war on drugs is a dismal failure the way it’s being conducted. We’ve been doing this 40 years – it only took 10 years for prohibition to be abolished because they saw that it wasn’t working. The other thing that it does in criminalizing it like this is it creates a black market run by criminals. When I would arrest a rapist or a murder, I’d take a murderer or rapist off the street. When I arrest a drug dealer, there were 10 or 15 people showing up wanting his job. And they didn’t come with resumes and Brooks Brothers suits, they came with gun and it’s very violent. The potential for money making in that is just incredible. And the only way they’re gonna put the cartels out of business is with anything else, government regulation.

Jason Hartman: Or, in essence, really less government regulation, legalization, right? Decriminalization?

Ted Sumner: Legalization, but heavy regulation like they have with tobacco and alcohol. I mean, I ask kids why do you use these drugs. I wanted to just drink. Well, it’s easier to get the drugs.

Jason Hartman: Yeah, that’s an interesting thing that you just said. Alcohol is regulated and you gotta find someone to buy it for you. Is it really easier for say an 18 year old or a 16 year old to get drugs than it is for them to get alcohol.

Ted Sumner: Well, absolutely. It’s pervasive. And because it’s being supplied by a criminal element, there’s no adherence to any regulation whatsoever. And the profit motive is phenomenal. I mean, we were seizing literally rooms full of money and I’m talking about $100 bills. And the cartels, they can easily write that off as acceptable losses. That’s how money is changing hands here.

Jason Hartman: Let’s drill down into the war on drugs issue for a moment. And I agree with you, I think it has been a dismal failure. As long as there is demand and profit, there will be supply. People will find a way. And you look even in the countries that are incredibly strict about it, and I believe they call it the golden triangle there in Southeast Asia, right?

Ted Sumner: Yes.

Jason Hartman: And I’ve been to Singapore, I’ve been all over Malaysia, and I couldn’t believe it. On the immigration card that they hand out on the airplane, it will be in either blue or black ink, but in red ink in big print right on that form it says “Death to Drug Traffickers”. In the beautiful airport in Singapore, there are signs on the marble posts and the marble walls – gorgeous airport, everything’s so clean and nice in Singapore – that just says “Death to Drug Traffickers” right on the wall, and they still have a problem.

Ted Sumner: Yeah. And that is because there is such a phenomenal profit potential. But if you legalized and regulated it, I use the analogy would you drink bootleg liquor that could possibly make you very sick when you could just as easily buy it with a stamp approved by the government at a store? And people still make their own wine and they make their own beer, but would you buy marijuana from somebody that was possibly laced with paraquat when you could buy it at a government regulated store?

Jason Hartman: What’s paraquat?

Ted Sumner: That was a defoliant that we used in the war on drugs to destroy the crops and it would spray it aerially and it was supposed to kill the plant and a lot of it just got harvested up right with the plant, made its way into the drug using mainstream and made some people very, very ill.

Jason Hartman: And is that still around nowadays? I haven’t heard about that. Or is that something back from the 70’s.

Ted Sumner: No, they haven’t been doing that. Mostly in the United States, they go in and burn it.

Jason Hartman: Yeah, so that’s a good question. But drilling down into the specifics of maybe another solution here, I mean, listen, certainly I think they should just legalize pot. I don’t have a big issue with that, but things like cocaine and heroin and LSD and meth, I mean that is serious, serious stuff.

Ted Sumner: Again, I go back to the point that most of the people who smoke marijuana are like most of the people who drink. It’s recreational. You’ve got that percentage of alcoholics who have a real problem. And you have a small percentage of marijuana users that have a real problem. But when you get into heroin addicts, that gets out of control real fast, same thing with the meth and to a lesser extent the cocaine. It doesn’t have quite the addictive properties that meth and heroin do. So, what you’ve got is you got a large group of those people who they’re under control, they’re fine. If they were able to legally buy it, they would use it responsibly. You still are gonna have to deal with that drug addicted group – for lack of a better word, the addicted.

Jason Hartman: So what are you gonna do with them? I mean, you legalize all these hard drugs, what are you gonna do with the addicted crowd? And I mean, when you talk about these hard drugs, I mean anybody who uses them is gonna become addicted, right?

Ted Sumner: Well, with any regularity if they use them, yes. But what you have to do then is with those people it has to be controlled. And most of them, by the time that their addiction has gotten out of hand, they want help with it anyway because they are usually committing addict supporting crimes to pay for the addiction, whereas if they could enter a program whereby they are supplied with it and given safe doses, when Switzerland did this and Portugal, they have not had a single death by overdose since instituting this type of program. But, again, even with marijuana, legalizing it, but control it like alcohol or cigarettes. Nobody buys black market cigarettes. Why when you can buy a perfectly safe product out of a machine?

Jason Hartman: I remember my first trip to Amsterdam. I’m pretty much a libertarian. I went there thinking we should just legalize pot, and I came back thinking it’s kind of scuzzy over there and I don’t know if I like the idea anymore.

Ted Sumner: Again, total legalization with no control, there’s got to be accountability just like there is with alcohol. You’re not allowed to be drunk in public. You’re not allowed to go to work drunk, you’re not allowed to operate a motor vehicle drunk. Same thing with drugs, they have to be used responsibly. And most of the population who uses marijuana, they do. And over 50% of the people who are in prison for drug convictions, it’s marijuana.

Jason Hartman: You gotta be kidding me. 50% of the drug population in prison is marijuana. Now, this is a step that I found pretty discouraging also. Here’s another one for you is that they can’t control the drugs in the prisons. How are they gonna control…I hear drug use in prison is much higher than it is in general society. Now, if it’s that easy to get drugs into a prison, a high security prison, how do they ever think they’re going to control it in the general civilian population?

Ted Sumner: Well, there’s always going to be rogue use, but if you can control the production, take that profit motive away, control production, the safety impurity, and the distribution. The you’re just dealing with a very small percentage of a criminal element rather than actually creating by policy a much larger criminal element.

Jason Hartman: So how would this work? I mean, kind of outline how it would work if it really did happen. I mean, would you go into a bar and they’d sell you pot, cocaine, LSD? Or do you go to the store to buy it or get a prescription from your doctor? Is it like the medical marijuana type idea? Or what happens here?

Ted Sumner: All the particulars would have to be worked out, but it would probably be like buying a pack of cigarettes. You show your ID to show that you’re of age and you make your purchase at a licensed legally operated store.

Jason Hartman: Of anything?

Ted Sumner: Well, again, when you’re talking about marijuana, if we start getting into hard drugs, it’s gotta be more closely regulated.

Jason Hartman: See, I don’t think the marijuana thing’s that big a deal. I don’t think society would be all that much worse off, and it might be a lot better for it in many ways. Certainly it’ll take one whole profit stream away from the criminal drug cartels right away. That’s the most commonly used one I assume. Okay, so that’ll just take that one right off their plate. They’ll lose that whole product line which would be great. Now, who would probably produce it? Philip Morris?

Ted Sumner: I believe that there are several tobacco companies that have actually applied for licenses in the anticipation that it would someday be legalized.

Jason Hartman: But what are your thoughts on how they do the more serious stuff? If that was all legal, what would happen?

Ted Sumner: Again, a person doesn’t wake up one day and say I want to become a heroin addict. Usually, they’re exposed to it somehow usually by a friend contrary to the popular belief that the pusher is there. It’s usually a friend and they describe the great rush. Well, the great rush is there with the first injection, maybe even the second. But it gradually goes away and then after a while all they’re doing is maintaining.

Jason Hartman: They gotta keep upping the dosage.

Ted Sumner: There is a ferocious tolerance level that’s developed very quickly with heroin. So most of those people, they just don’t want to get sick. They use the method on maintenance program but it doesn’t do the job. If they can use it with clean needles and safe dosage, we’re only talking about pennies. If it weren’t for the black market effect on it, pennies per dose, they wouldn’t be able to maintain themselves.

Jason Hartman: What if it was just decriminalized and we treated it more like they do in Europe like a social problem or a psychological problem or a medical problem? But it was decriminalized in that sense but it wasn’t legal to just start rampantly producing it. At least maybe you’d take away the taboo which is attractive to some, especially rebellious teenagers, but that probably wouldn’t solve the problem. I mean, would the price go down if the usage was decriminalized? Or maybe not, maybe the demand would increase actually. That might have the reverse effect.

Ted Sumner: When there is legalization or decriminalization, there’s an immediate uptick in the use.

Jason Hartman: Initially.

Ted Sumner: Initially, and then it comes down. At least that’s the experience we’ve had in Switzerland and Portugal and the countries that have done that. So, yes, you deal with that. But if you decriminalize, you still leave that black market open. You have to legalize it and control the production and the distribution.

Jason Hartman: Talk a little bit about maybe some of your most interesting busts. And when you’re a deep cover cop, how do you come out of cover? What happens?

Ted Sumner: Well, the way that we did the operation was I would stay immersed in the culture until I felt we had or I had completed an operation, I had a complete organization I could take down at one time. And then we would go get grand jury indictments and then usually the SWAT team would come in about 3 in the morning and they’d make the sweep and pick everybody up all at once. Then my cover is blown. So I would just clean up a bit because I was going to be in court for the next few months on motions and trials and everything else. Then I would identify another target organization, change my appearance and then begin the process of immersing into that culture.

Jason Hartman: Amazing, yeah. So you’d go in and out of it then. I’m sure you had to be worried that some of these guys would come after you and kill you or harm you in some way, right?

Ted Sumner: Well, the danger is in them perceiving you as being possibly an informant rather than a police officer. If they think you’re a police officer, they just won’t do business with you. They’ll just close down.

Jason Hartman: So what’s the distinction with informant?

Ted Sumner: Well, you’re an informant, you’re a snitch. You’re usually somebody who’s either working for pay from the police or you’ve been arrested and you’re trying to work your charges off by…

Jason Hartman: By selling out.

Ted Sumner: Selling out, yeah, that’s how they look at it. So, the closest call I had on that was a long time dealer that had alluded us for many, many years. His name was old man Richard. He was black gentleman, operated out of an area called East Palo Alto in Northern California here. And he sold methamphetamines. And he sold primarily to the black community. The Hells Angels had their own production and they sold primarily to the white. So my cover was that the Angels cooker had been arrested and they were looking to buy some meth from him to keep their supply going until they got a new cooker. And it worked. I was able to insert myself into the organization.

And then one night I was gonna make a multiple ounce buy. It was a Saturday night I arrived on a motorcycle, which in retrospect was a very bad move. He invited me into his house or somebody else who answered the door, and there were about 6 of his lieutenants there and they had decided that I was either a Hells Angel who was gonna set them up to rip them off or I was an informant. And then here I show up on a motorcycle. So they had a gun to my head and they wanted me to try the drug which was obviously set up as a hot shot so I wouldn’t shoot the drug. And then they were deciding how they were gonna dispose of me. And the guy with the gun to my head, he just wanted to shoot me. He was a young guy. And Old Man Richard said, no, you’ll blow brains all over my living room and his companion wouldn’t like that.

Jason Hartman: I mean, were you just scared like crazy or was this just part of the job they prepared you for?

Ted Sumner: There was no way to prepare for that. When you figure you’re dead and they’re just talking about how they’re gonna do it and they decided to dispose of the body by taking me into the bathtub, shoot me there and then cut me up with a chainsaw and dump me in the garbage disposable. So yeah, I was in a pretty bad psychological way there and as a last desperate measure what I did was I said “Well, I’m sorry to break up this party, but we’ve got 4 minutes left. You’re partially right – I’m not a drug dealer but I am a police officer. And the place is surrounded by the SWAT team all handpicked by me and they’re coming in in exactly 3 and a half minutes. And no one leaves here alive.”

Jason Hartman: And were they really there?

Ted Sumner: No. No, no.

Jason Hartman: You just said that. You just had to pull that off and they believed you I guess, right?

Ted Sumner: Well, the guy with the gun to my head poked it in to my head really roughly a few more times and says “He’s lying! Let me shoot him!” And I turned to him and I said “You think I’m lying? Go ahead and fire a shot into the floor and see how quick you get everybody killed in this place!” And the old man shook his head. He didn’t want him doing it. So my bluff was working, but what I realized is they didn’t know what to do. They didn’t know how to get out of it. I had to give them a way to get out of it.

Jason Hartman: Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. They figure they’ve got you as a hostage, so that’s better off than not having one.

Ted Sumner: That’s not a good place to be with the SWAT team. They’re pretty good. So, I told him. I said “Look, Richard, you haven’t committed any crimes”, although he’s sold to me twice before. I said “You haven’t committed any crimes. Let me walk out of here, I’ll walk slow, you guys get rid of the drugs you got in the place, and maybe you guys will live to see the morning.” And they thought about it for a second and I could tell they were terrified. And Richard said “Go and walk slow”. Well, I walked out and I hit the starter on my motorcycle and the battery was dead. So I jumped up on it and hit the kick start a few times and it wouldn’t start, so this is how much adrenaline was coursing through my body, I took off down the street pushing it and jumped up on it and popped the clutch. It didn’t start, so I pushed it again and popped the clutch and it finally started. So then I contacted my lieutenant. They had the San Mateo County sheriff’s department SWAT team hit the place and they sanitized it pretty well.

Jason Hartman: Yeah, so the guys were pretty much gone.

Ted Sumner: But he had forgotten that he had sold to me twice before, so he went to prison anyway.

Jason Hartman: Yeah, wow. So, I mean he must be out by now, though, right?

Ted Sumner: No, he’s dead by now. He was in his 70s then.

Jason Hartman: Oh my gosh.

Ted Sumner: So he’s been doing this for 40 years.

Jason Hartman: Woah, wow, amazing. So that was your scariest moment then, huh?

Ted Sumner: One of them. Geez, I had one where I was working a guy – his name was Mexican Bob and he had two sons, one 19 and one 21. In this part of the country there’s these Adobe houses that were built back in the 1800s and they used to be on little farms and now they’re like 2 acre lots in this one area. And while I was there making the purchase, I saw some long haired people moving and I recognized them. They were officers from the County Task Force, Narcotic Task Force.

Well, San Jose, we never use undercover officers to affect arrest. It’s too dangerous. If somebody shoots you, they say hey, he looked like a doper, I thought he was here to rip me off. Well, their attitude was that undercovers could get in closer which is I think reckless. But anyway, Old Man Richard saw him, thought it was indeed a rip off. They got their guns out and started blasting. They handed me a .38 and said help out. I couldn’t shoot the cops, I knew who they were. I ducked down under the water and a .357 round crashed through the Adobe right under my nose, so I jump behind the sofa and then they broke in. And finally I realized I’ve gotta stop this and I yell “They’re the cops! They’re cops!” And I said “Quit shooting, they’re gonna kill us!” And Old Man Richard said we’re not stopping until Jesus, his son, has gotten rid of all the dope. And so they fired a few more rounds and then the cops broke in and they saw me and they were like “What are you doing here?” almost like “Hey buddy, how’s it going?” which immediately made Richard and his boys suspicious, so they decided they were gonna rectify that situation by beating the hell out of me and broke my nose and gave y kidneys a working over and that didn’t matter. Richard didn’t buy it – the operation was compromised.

Jason Hartman: Yeah, unbelievable. What is your take on law enforcement in this country nowadays and just sort of what’s going on nowadays? There’ s a lot of talk and I have no idea if this is your area or not but there’s a lot of talk about fear of oppression from government, from different entities inside law enforcement and so forth, and even having the military on our own soil here possibly operating against civilians. Do you have any thoughts about all this stuff, just a more generally more macro view about what’s going on with law enforcement and so forth?

Ted Sumner: Well, we have a tradition in this country of local law enforcement. And the reason that it was always kept that way and the reason that we’ve always shied away from a national police is that local law enforcement’s much more accountable when you get a large national organization that’s very hard to pin down where the policy is emanating from whereas with a local police department, it’s much easier to infuse that the type of culture that the citizens in that area want, whereas when the military starts taking a law enforcement role, you’ve got a real dangerous situation. That was one of the things that the founding fathers were very, very careful to prevent.

But they’re hiring good people, they’re hiring procedures. Now they’re doing extensive psychological testing. They’re hiring good people. They just have to have good people in charge.

Jason Hartman: And tell us about your involvement with the martial arts world and what you’re doing there. First of all, maybe what are some of the benefits of martial arts?

Ted Sumner: Well, my feeling is martial arts make a bad man good and a good man better, but one of the things about martial arts is when you are doing these movements where you are getting exercise, you are developing coordination, strength, speed, power, you’re also practicing movements that can be moved for self-defense. They have a secondary value. So it makes the whole process of exercising much more interesting. If you’re living weights, that’s all it’s for, lifting weights. If you’re playing badminton there’s not too many skills that you’re developing there. So it’s I would say a complete physical fitness process. But the things that we teach, not only in self-defense but we teach them falling, rolling. More of my students have protected themselves by knowing how to fall. They never had to defend themselves from an assault.

Let me put it this way. We train the body, the mind and the spirit. Well, what exactly does that mean? Well, the body, that’s pretty obvious. The mind, there’s a tremendous discipline there. It takes a lot of work, a lot of concentration to remember these things, to practice them correctly. There’s a lot of material. And we also train the spirit. Well, what is that? We’re not talking about your immortal soul. What we’re talking about is what we in the martial arts call the warrior spirit. And that’s that thing inside you that makes you keep going in a tough situation when your body has said you can’t do it and your mind says forget it, I’m finished. And it’s different in every person but in martial arts you learn how to ignite and how to stoke it and how to control it. And it can be anger, it can be fear of failure, it can be the desire to win. Whatever it is, each person finds it himself. Then they’re able to take that power and infuse it into other things, into their work, to help them through other problems in life.

Life’s tough. There’s a lot of stress and a lot of difficulty you have to deal with. So those are mainly the things that we deal with there in the martial arts.

Jason Hartman: Can martial arts be used as a way to turn bad people around? The criminal element? Or is it just gonna make them better criminals because they know how to fight?

Ted Sumner: It can go either way.

Jason Hartman: Not really. Okay, that’s an honest answer.

Ted Sumner: This was a question I asked. I had a guy who was in a motorcycle gang show up at the school one day. And I asked my instructor what do I do? He says teach him. Give him a hard lesson. And I did. And he never came back. So those type of people, they’re going to work the skills that are gonna help them in the short term. They’re not gonna stay for the long term because it does require discipline.

Jason Hartman: Sure, sure. Hey, one last question for you. Were you married when you were in deep cover?

Ted Sumner: Yes.

Jason Hartman: How did that work? Did your wife even know what you were doing?

Ted Sumner: Oh yes.

Jason Hartman: Did you have to live 24/7 away from your family?

Ted Sumner: Sometimes. Sometimes I’d be gone for days. It was very difficult, yeah. I’m not even sure she’s recovered from it, yeah, but she forced me shortly after that.

Jason Hartman: Did they know what you were doing?

Ted Sumner: Well, she knew that I was working undercover narcotics. She didn’t know exactly what was happening. If you read the book, you’ll find that there were a lot of things I didn’t report, dangerous situations. Unless it was pertinent to the case and the prosecution of that case, I left it out because all it did was it made the command staff question the advisability of the project and I was deeply into it.

Jason Hartman: Very interesting. Very interesting stuff. Well, Ted Sumner, tell people where they can get the book and learn more.

Ted Sumner: Well, they can get the book at www.DeepCoverCop.com. If you order it on PayPal, there’s shipping instructions. If you want me to sign it or dedicate it to somebody if you’re giving it as a gift, please indicate that there or email me at [email protected] and I’ll do the same thing. If you buy the Kindle version that’s on Amazon, I can’t sign that.

Jason Hartman: You can’t autograph the electronic copy. That’s one downfall with those, you can’t sign them. But good stuff. Well, hey Ted, thank you so much for sharing this with us today. Again, the website is DeepDoverCop.com and really fascinating stuff.

Ted Sumner: Thank you, sir.

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Narrator: Thank you for joining us today for the Holistic Survival Show. Protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Be sure to listen to our Creating Wealth Show, which focuses on exploiting the financial and wealth creation opportunities in today’s economy. Learn more at www.JasonHartman.com or search “Jason Hartman” on iTunes. This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company, offering very general guidelines and information. Opinions of guests are their own, and none of the content should be considered individual advice. If you require personalized advice, please consult an appropriate professional. Information deemed reliable, but not guaranteed. (Image: Flickr | 0Lymp1c)

Transcribed by Ralph

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