MS – 13
David Paul served with the Suffolk County Police Department for 20 years. Since that time, he has written true crime books, helped with Russian Organized Crime investigations, and has become an expert in the infiltration of Long Island by the MS-13 gang from El Salvador. This podcast tells the story of the MS-13 gang, how they got from El Salvador to Long Island, and about the crimes they have committed.
David Paul, police officer, Russian organized crime expert, screenwriter and MS-13 expert
David’s most popular book is Unearthing a Serial Killer and can be found by clicking on the title. In this book, David tells the horrifying story of Alex J. Mengel’s violent and brutal crime spree in the suburbs of New York City. He became the ‘Most Wanted’ man in North America in 1985. Thirty years later, other acts of evil committed by Mengel, were uncovered and that is what led David Paul to write Unearthing a Serial Killer.
Transcript of the MS -13 story
I am trying something new and I had the audio podcast transcribed and below you will find the unedited transcript of the entire show. let me know how you like hits effort. I have to pay a transcribing service and I cannot decide if it is worth the cost to have this done.
Steven Colbert: You are listening to gang land wire hosted by former Kansas city police intelligence unit, detective Gary Jenkins.
Gary Jenkins : Welcome while you are camera’s out there. I’m here on the cell phone, actually not the zoom this time. So there won’t be a video with my friend, David Paul, who is a retired Suffolk county police officer from [00:00:30] up in New York. He lives in upstate New York. Now he’s retired. He’s written a book on a serial killer, but more importantly for you. Guys’ information. He’s worked a lot on Ms. 13 and you know, we do organized crime primarily on this show. We’ve strayed out into serial killers a little bit, but we lack organized crime and learning about that. He knows about Russian organized crime even speaks Russian pretty fluently. It looks to me like, so now I couldn’t judge that because you can say anything to me in a Russian accent. [00:01:00] And then I just assume you were speaking Russian David. Welcome. Hi
David Paul: Gary. Hey, thanks for having me on. I appreciate
Gary Jenkins: It. All right. Cool. And I saw you on LinkedIn. I think for, at first, I am always just noodling around trying to find somebody, a guest for the show. That sounds interesting to me and I love getting other ex-coppers out there that are doing this kind of media stuff or writing books, doing documentary films. Like I am, I’ve done a couple of three books and then four documentary films all together as these guys know. [00:01:30] And so I love talking to you guys. So let’s talk a little bit about your and my police experience. Now. I was in the organized crime unit and that’s for most of my career. I did a little bit of everything. What did you do back there in separate county?
David Paul: I’ll tell you what I was in the car of my whole career. I just didn’t have enough political juice to make the phone ring. Yeah. And you know, we had a saying great job, terrible career, but it, I had a lot of fun, especially [00:02:00] my first, you know, 10, 11 years. So I worked actually in Brentwood, Bayshore, which is in Suffolk county, long island. And it’s probably the biggest hub of Ms. 13 guys in New York state, to be honest with you. So I was in patrol for, uh, another whole 21 years. My last 13 or 14, I did the midnights, which I knew would know, not a lot of good decisions, man, after midnight.
Gary Jenkins: Oh [00:02:30] man, I tell you what the worst call is at about four 30 or so in the morning disturbance or domestic disturbance or just disturbance because at four 30 in the morning, people have been drinking all night long and they are nuts. Nothing good comes up. Disturbance called after about 4, 4 30 in the morning, the earlier ones, you got to get why you go here and you go there and sit there by their own separate way, boy, by four or four or five o’clock in the morning. Oh my God.
David Paul: Yeah. Yeah, no, that was Sunday mornings.
David Paul: [00:03:00] You just run it all night. 20 calls all the cool shots. But yeah, I mean, whether they believe it or not, Suffolk county is the 11th largest department in the country because I mean, it actually pretty much entails the five towns of five big towns of Suffolk county, long island. They have your east Hampton, south Hampton, they do their thing. But you know, we’re bigger than Boston or bigger than Houston. I think manpower and [00:03:30] personnel altogether was 3000. And of course we never came close to that. That’s why we want, we’re not shutting cars here and there. And unfortunately that happened on the midnight. Somehow we come the old sheriff in town, but I had a great time. It was a great job. And the guys and girls 99.5% of doing the right thing out there. Yeah,
Gary Jenkins: Yeah. That was my experience too. I, majority of us I’ll do the right thing. And the people that do the wrong thing many times, some of them are just spontaneous. You just it’s hot. [00:04:00] You can’t take it anymore. I did a few bad things and I don’t mean Steve thing, but, but I got to register liquid because I just couldn’t take it anymore. And so I feel for these guys that are getting in so much trouble for those displays of temper, it’s tough.
David Paul: Yes. It’s really, really disgusting. What’s happened over the last, you know, whatever it is, eight, two months, and look, let’s face it defeat violence. You need greater violence. That’s just a matter of fact.
Gary Jenkins: Yeah. I mean, well, we don’t need to go down that path. It’s it’s tough. And [00:04:30] I don’t know, I couldn’t, I wouldn’t do it today. I know that I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t go back today. I mean, it was cool being out of patrol now is out of control off a lot of my career. So you spent all your career in patrol and you know what it is. It’s just one uncontrolled situation after another and you’re supposed to bring some control to this uncontrolled situation. It’s tough. It’s tough.
David Paul: Yeah, no, it’s exactly what it is. And it’s different than being a detective because obviously like a guys like you, and you’re a detective, you take that case home with you. [00:05:00] And pretty much my day is over when it’s over. But you know, I was a guy that the detective squad would always dial up and ask them and say, Hey, come to this guy.
Gary Jenkins: Yeah. I know you. I had to have one guy and tried to have at least one gung ho guy that would work with me and did a little bit extra because you could be invaluable to detective you can’t be out there everywhere. And you’re out close to what he’s looking at. And they get a guy that like do something. Cause everybody, a lot of them would just be mad at you because [00:05:30] you’re a detective and their patrol car. But I was one of those guys when I was in patrol, I was a guy they’d call to when I went into detective unit way, I found guys out and you get a reputation among other detectives. I’ll call this guy. He’s working Doug. What’s over there. Call him, he’ll do something for you. He won’t just like blow you off.
David Paul: Yeah, no, I mean, I can remember one situation where we had been offered a few days and we, my partner come into the precinct and probably had like 15 minutes before we really it roll out. And uh, one of the detectives he’s like, Hey, can [00:06:00] I do with ya? I’m like, yeah, what’s going on? He says, last night we had a cab driver shot in the face three times with a 45 caliber. And he actually, he did survive. He needed like 200 statements in his face. And as you know, a lot of times in police work, they usually charge what they think they can find the guy guilty at. So they don’t upcharge. But instead of reassort, they do charge attempted in this case. And then the other thing about working in the midnights was we were the only guys out there. So we were able to talk to people.
David Paul: [00:06:30] And I always kind of tried to talk to people civilly. I mean, if you were going to give me a hard time with that, I’ll give you one time. But we roll up on this canine a bike. And I thought he was maybe 15 or 16 winds up being like 23. It was just kind of small. And I said, Hey man, what’s up? And he says, oh good. You know, I work down in the industrial factory on pioneer drive. It’s like, yeah. You know, just get back to home. I live with two blocks away and I just looked at him and I say, Hey, we shut the cab driver the other night. And he says, Jamal, [00:07:00] everybody knows that Backwoods he used. And then I figured, let me test him a little bit. I said, oh yeah. So it was, he carried that 22, right? He goes 22. What are you talking about? Carrie’s in 45. Matter of fact, he went up to me at the crack house last week.
David Paul: So I said, look, man, can you come in? And I said, could you come in to the precinct? Because obviously it’s like three o’clock in the morning. Can you come in tomorrow? He’s like, yeah, I hate that. I [00:07:30] hate that, man. I’ll come in. So sure enough, he comes in, he’s got the guys, you know, pedigree. And the funny part about it was they wanted to Rob the cab driver because he was from New York city the very next day. So he wanted to have cash in his commissary account. So we wound up locking him up, upstate bringing them back to Suffolk county for the attempted murder. Yeah. So, but I know you were talking about before about the organized crime angle of it. The kind of the reason I got involved a little bit with the district attorney’s office was that state farm insurance [00:08:00] had met the district attorney at an awards ceremony.
David Paul: And he says, you know,
