February 23, 2023 • 53 mins
Danelle heads to El Paso, Texas to get the lowdown on the rail cops – the private police with federal powers who report only to the railroads. In a border town, rail cops are the most powerful entities, but is that such a good thing? One dynamic duo shows Danelle how they tried to clean up the tracks, and how wild the rails still are, with Old West train raids, smugglers, and hobos all overlapping in this ultimate crossroads. Ruby calls with big news.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
I've been in the job for about maybe three months,
and I'm checking the drinks for open doors. Then I
see these three guys there and they're getting their stuff
for need to jump out. I go around and I'm
waiting for him. So when they jump out, they jump
out right by where the rescueation is. As soon as
I told him to come over here, they all pull
(00:29):
out their knives, all pissed off, and then I just
tell them to stay right there, and then I just
pulled my weapon. I speaking with Joe de Arte about
working as a real broad security guard, where stand ups
were part of his daily life, but it wasn't his
job to fight armed hobos, so Joe called for backup.
I knew the guys were at the cirky, which is
(00:49):
half a mile away. I have my radio and I'm
talking into it. I got these guys. They have knives.
There's three of them, and I'm right by where you
guys are at, and they're not listening to me. The guys,
Joe called, we're rail cops. It's their job to protect
the trains in the cargo, which means dealing with people
who aren't supposed to be in the yard. But without backup.
(01:12):
The hoboes weren't scared of Joe. They outnumbered him three
to one, and I tell him, bro, put those doll
I'm going to shoot you there like, yeah, shoot us.
Just a security guard ran a cop and I'm calling
it again. Finally one of the rail cops answered, no, Joe,
just let him go. I go, oh, they put a
knife on me, man, but the cops just laughed him off.
(01:33):
Joe realized he was on his own. I see the
dust cloud do he does the other turn? And I
couldn't tell at first if it was one of our
needs border patrol? Does she need damn camaro? I'm like,
who the hell is this guy? Was that his backup?
(01:57):
If it was, Joe'd be surprised, And five months he'd
been working for the Union Pacific Railroad Police, they hadn't
come to his rescue once. Who were the rail cops?
I was shocked when I learned about how this private
security force, with full local, state, and federal police powers,
reports only to the railroads, and Joe's part of the
(02:19):
country is the perfect place to see what rail cops
are all about. So worried al Paso, where the edge
of the country meets the edge of the train yard,
with tracks running along the border with Mexico al Paso
as a crossroads for everyone. And in the middle of
all of this are the rail cops. I imagine Ruby
and her friends crossing through rail Passo as they headed
east from Los Angeles to New Orleans on the Sunset route.
(02:42):
What happens to hoboes who get off in this wild territory?
Were they more at risk on land controlled by the
rail cops. Maybe it was more dangerous there. After all,
hobos had written songs about how rough it was when
you got to Texas. So in the train yards of
a border town, is anyone really in charge? And then
I'm warning in this the city of the rails, like
(03:03):
a warrants, ain't Texas, saying I swear that I ain't
going back a road. And I'm all a boy on
that track like a warrants in Texas with the old
dead band. When I'm telling me from you stood the
(03:24):
mail them out again? I said, where will you go
with the ball of my roof? Where will you go?
Real old ward? Hide you? And where will you go
with a light shine like beside you? You nut your
(03:48):
mail blow and the whiskey is Brew and as I
heard about the rail cops, I wanted to know more
about the people who police the City of the Rails.
It sounds so unbelievable to say that the nation's railroads
have their own police who can pretty much do whatever
(04:10):
they want. Imagine another industry with this kind of muscle,
like say, Facebook, Google or Big Pharma have their own
legal militia who could arrest you. That's what you have
with the rail cops. It's real, real, real easy, especially,
which is how he ended up in Texas, with Joe
taking me around to places he used to patrol. Right
(04:32):
over there, that's called the Roundhouse. How Passo is the
western edge of Texas on the border of New Mexico.
It's a scrubby, old west desert town and a basin
between tall, dark mountains. This town is a hot bit
of activity, making it the best place to see how
rail cops fit into the City of the Rails. Oh,
there's another place I will take it to. Union Pacific
(04:53):
hired Joe to do the job that rail cops don't
want to do. Get to know the Hoboes. Joe spent
five years on the job, but before Union Pacific contracted
him Joe was just a bouncer. I had no security experience,
no railroad experience. I just had experience throwing guys out
of a barge and venues. Joe didn't have much experience,
(05:15):
and after some training on rail safety, the rail coops
sort of punked Joe down in the train yard with
his phone and a notepad and left him to figure
it out for himself. And there was a lot to learn.
The rail cops main job is to protect the trains
and to nab cargo thieves, but it gets more complicated
in El Paso. The area has always been in international
crossroads and for more than a century a freight hub.
(05:38):
Trains go north and south to and from factories on
the Mexican side of the border, and they had east
from California with goods from China. That means it every week,
four hundred and thirty eight trains come through El Paso
on five hundred and thirty five miles of track that
connect the city's six rail yards, and four million pedestrians
cross over the bridges that span the Rio Grand And
(05:58):
with so much movement, Joe had to make sense of
it all and get a feel for all the different
types of people the trains brought into the yard. There
were the hoboes that were just regular travelers. So those
guys were real cool, like they mostly want to beat
to themselves. And then there were there were the gangs,
and then there were the drug londs. Those guys were
(06:21):
in the shadows. They did everything at night, and they
were they were hidden everywhere. They scared everybody. That's some
one thing about El Passo that you can score anything
real easy. Oh, if you're a hobole, it's easy for
you for to score some eyes, some cold, some marijuana easy.
Nobody's gonna you know. You ask those guys. The trains
(06:42):
make opportunities for everyone at the border, making El Passo
a huge hot spot for train robbers. So in the
day to day, hobos are low on a railcops priority list.
That's why they brought in Joe. Joe's main priority was
the interview the travelers they found in the yard, get
their names, take pictures in personal details to add to
Pacific's trespasser database. Leave the bigger stuff to the rail cops.
(07:04):
Joe got to know the hoboes in the yard so
well he knew who to ask for traveling advice. One
time I caught this three piece band trying to get
to Denver. They had that big old base, So I'm like,
what are you trying to do with you? I can
see that base from everywhere. So finally I'm like, let
(07:25):
me talk to a conductor. I go, which train is
going to Denver? Man? Because this guy's gonna end up
dead in the desert. Man, they didn't even have enough water.
And then he goes, you know what, you better off
talking to the hobos because they'll get him on the
right train. The hobos. You're the schedules really quick. So
Joe found an older writer who knew just what to do. Yeah, bro,
(07:46):
I'm going to go that way and tell him to
go with me. But they're gonna eat six yellons of
water and they're gonna need no food for two days
or whatever. But it was a three. I had caught
him that day four times. What about they kept getting
on the wrong train and you kept finding them the
same day. Joe had a lot to keep track of
lost musicians, hobos, smugglers, cargo thieves. The list goes on.
(08:09):
People stuck through the yard for all sorts of reasons.
So the rivers right there there's some tunnels that run
right across, and the rescue mission was located right there,
so what would happen? A lot of residents from Mexico
will come in to eat at the rescue mission because
they offered three meals. The rescue mistion of El Pasa
was right by the train yard. Every serious tramp has
(08:31):
gotten a free meal at its corner of hope, where
they also can get closed in a shower. And these
services are useful to locals from Warez too. With all
these people moving through the yard, Joe never knew what
to expect when he showed up for work. All of
a sudden, during another like another feeling. Sometimes it was fear,
(08:51):
sometimes it was happiness. Sometimes it was even sadness. Sometimes
you feel sorry for these guys. You'd be like, man,
you know something bad had happened for these guys to
be here. But it was always different. It's never the same,
the same old crap. No. But despite all the things
Joe faced in the yard, he wasn't getting much respect
(09:14):
from the rail coops. They wouldn't even respond to his
calls for backup. Joe was eager to show he was
capable of more so he was excited when the rail
coops called him in to give him a very important job.
They're in the office and they go, Joe, we got
a job for you. Got a special shipment. We need
you to find it. You need you to look at
(09:35):
all the yards, especially the one by the bridge. Joe
was honored. Tracking cargo was important and he took it seriously.
So they give me a paper and goes, Okay, this
is a special shipment of sailboat fuel. Okay, yes, sir,
very special. Man. I said that this explosive. I think
it is. Man, so be careful and you don't smoke. Oh,
(09:55):
I don't smoke. Man, got the perfect guy for it.
Joe went from yard to yard searching for this shipment.
He even got a Border Patrol agent to help him. Look,
we're looking at everything. We can't find it. And I
was out there all day and I'm like, God, please
help me find this. Help me find this shipment. I
would look so good if I find it. And then
(10:16):
it dawned on Joe Selbows don't need fuel. It's air.
It's a shipment over sunk of pitches. I'm like, man,
these guys were just screwing with you. They were like
ha ha, We're gonna get the security guard. Joe was
working hard, walking the tracks and checking the trains. Well,
(10:37):
these guys not only ignored him, but wasted his time
and just hung out at the circle k and Joe's
story squeared with what Hobos told me. Rail cops could
do whatever they wanted, beat you up, strand you in
the desert, you name it. So what was up with that?
What makes these guys able to do whatever they want?
It all ties back to the unique status of the
(10:59):
rail cops. Their power is written into law and has
been that way for more than a hundred years. When
the Civil War ended in eighteen sixty five, the United
States was subsidizing the rails willy nilly, laying track in
all directions as a way of boosting the economy. The
railroads were carving up the landscape, infuriating the indigenous people
as they destroyed their land and killed off the buffalo.
(11:21):
When tribes attacked railroad construction crews, Washington sent the US
Army to protect the workers building the Transcontinental Railroad, But
when the Transcontinental was completed in eighteen sixty nine, the
Army went home. There was no force to protect the railroads.
From thieves inside the cars or raiders from without. So
the government allowed the states and the territories to charter
(11:42):
the railroad Police as a private security force with full
police powers nationwide along one hundred and forty thousand miles
of track, supervised only by the railroads. Now you might
think permission to operate outside the law sounds like an exaggeration.
How could that be possible. It's one of those crazy
legacy railroad things established in the nineteenth century when at
(12:04):
the time the West was mostly territories with very few states.
The government sanctioned rail cops were left up to the
railroads to manage, and even after one by one Arizona
and Nevada and the rest were brought into the United States,
no one remembered to make the railroad police. Just like
other security guards, railroad police are not subject to government oversight.
(12:26):
And what does that mean. It means railroads don't have
to answer public record requests, So we don't know how
many people the rail cops arrest, under what circumstances, and
what kind of altercations take place in the yard. I
guess if you're thinking about this in the gentlest way possible,
and I'm not you could say, why should this be
a cause for alarm. The rail cops have a job
(12:47):
to do and mostly it's confined to the yard, and
when something big happens, they always interact with the local
cops to jail the bad guys. Well, cops with no
rules is never a good idea. Just look how it
played out for Joe. In a job where he could
get knives pulled on him, he likely wouldn't get back
up from his team. This had a major impact on Joe.
(13:12):
As Joe walked his bead, he interviewed writers and other trespassers,
took notes and photographs, and filed them in the rail
cops database. These reports were something everyone was supposed to
be filing, but not everyone did. Everybody was doing the
work except the Wildward police. I don't know why. Every
morning I would hand out they'll field inspection reports to
allow them because if not that we're going to get
(13:35):
written up for that. And it was like, Joe, can
I have five I needed? He's seven today and this
and that. So you're saying you would stop trespassers and
you would write them up, and that the other railroad
police would come to you and go could I have
some of your reports and I could file them as
my own. Exactly. Joe began to realize those rail cops
weren't worthy of his respect. As the months went on,
(13:58):
he started to believe it might be than them just
being lazy with plenty of time on their hands to
pull pranks. They were all supposed to be protecting cargo,
but sometimes the guys would tell Joe not to patrol
one of the train yards on a specific day. Sometimes
tell me to stay away from certain trains that were
coming in. We got those strains and worry about them.
And I'm not a copp or nothing like that, but
(14:21):
I'm not done either. You know, why would you help
me stay away from them? We'll have my guys stay
away from that. I'd be suspicious too. When Joe was hired,
it was to replace guards who'd been robbing the trains
in the rail yard to run under the bulls noses.
I wanted to find out if there was any proof
of Joe's suspicions, so I scoured court filings and legal
databases looking for rail cops convicted in smuggling cases, but
(14:44):
could find none. Were the rail cops squeaky clean or
was it no one reporting. So in the day, those
three hoboes pulled niyes on Joe. He knew his backup
wasn't coming. The bulls told Joe to let the hobo
as go, but they'd already drained their weapons and so
had Joe. And then Joe saw that cloud of dust
(15:07):
and the car racing toward him. What the hell was that?
She didn't look like backup cops didn't drive that kind
of car. All of a sudden comes this Camaro. It's red,
it's it's a beautiful car, man, beautiful, beautiful car. He
gets off and I'm like, what the hell he's wearing
(15:29):
this weird shirt. Uh, what's that movie? Uh? Ocean's a
Living where his shirt back. Joe had never seen this
guy before, but right away he took charge of the situation.
It blew my mind. He talked to him real stern,
in their lingual whatever, and then you they're usable, and
I was like a bull so the first time I
(15:50):
heard that he talked in their language, and he basically
told him to throw their knives and walk away, and
he was gonna let him go, and you know, to
respect me. They kind of looked at him and they
were watching them like, WHOA, something's up. They got this
guy here. Now, I'm like, oh wow, man. And then
he goes and picks up the knives and put them
in a bag, and he comes and shakes my hand
(16:11):
and he's like, I'm Larry Dias and I'm with organized crime.
And this Miami Vice Entrance hadn't made it clear enough
things were about to change in Joe's life. Joe's told
Larry he was frustrated by how few arrest they're were
in the yard, and as a security guard he couldn't
do anything about it. I go, these guys are running
(16:33):
our trains and nobody does nothing to him. And they
just talked the ship to us and this and that
and nothing happens. Man. And he goes, where's your backup?
And I go got the circle k looking the Moody magazines.
And he goes that things are going to change from
now on. And then he told me one thing, Joe,
(16:56):
don't trust none of these guys, not one of them.
You mean, none of the trespassers, none of the people,
none of the officers, the guy in the Camaro Union
Pacific Special Agent Larry Diaz was right. Things were about
to change for Joe and for the El Paso rail Coops.
(17:19):
This was the beginning of a dynamic duo. Larry meets
Joe as Batman meets Robin Sherlock and Watson, partners in
crime fighting with complimentary skills. Yes, it was a mess,
pure chaos at the border, but together Larry and Joe,
they were going to take it on. We're together. Everything
(17:56):
was about to change for Joe and Larry. With Larry around,
Jordan have to worry about backup, and the two had
bigger plans. They were taking on cargo theft. Larry had
been transferred from LA by Union Pacific to crack down
on the thefts in and around the El Paso yard,
and when he met Joe, Larry was just starting to
understand how complex the problem was in West Texas. In
(18:18):
some ways, it was like LA but being so close
to the border meant everything was much more complicated. Soon,
Larry would teach Joe how to handle showdowns with hoboes
and the two of them would focus on tapping into
the hobo network. Joe and Larry brought different skills to this,
which was reflected in the way they look. Larry's medium
height with his salt and pepper, black hair pulled into
(18:38):
a ponytail, and a mustache and goatee framing his face.
He's muscular and energetic, someone whose intense eyes you can
feel even when he's wearing his aviator sunglasses. Joe is larger,
chunky in frame, but with a sweetness about him you
can hear in his voice. These guys seemed like good cops,
not like the bulls Hoboes described who had nicknames like
(18:59):
Satan and Hitler. Those were the ones who scared me
when I thought about Ruby in the yard. How did
rail coops treat young women travelers they found on the trains?
And what could they tell me about Ruby? That was
one of the first questions I asked when I met
Larry Diaz, Like if you would see somebody about my
daughter's age, I mean, would you treat a young girl differently?
(19:20):
When I saw females, I gave them a lot of attention,
not just because they're females, but because they're vulnerable. But
you know what, these chicks were as tough as nails.
They knew the game, they knew that they had the attitude,
and they were not afraid. Ruby was tougher now those
ones on the rails had made their mark. Larry told
me how female writers depended on that strength while writing.
(19:43):
I never met a female train writer that was like
timid or scared, unless it was like some of you
just jumped on the train and was running away from
home and doing they had no clue, And I ran
into those, and of course those got my full attention.
What if she wasn't with a trained family. There were
a lot of scary men on the rails who traveled
in packs and picked up young women who needed protection.
(20:07):
If she fell in with those characters, would that change
her prospects? I consider that group thinking, Okay, so how
is she an asset for us? She could go bang
for us, or maybe she would go steal some liquor.
So if your daughter had the ability to be a
part of this team, even if he was just a
funny girl, these guys are living this rough life by choice,
(20:30):
that's her value. I mean, it could be anything. Larry
knew this how my experience was at Hob's. Mostly didn't
want to talk to me, and they'd be even less
likely to talk to a cop. But the alliances people
made in the train yard were always up for negotiation,
and Larry was in a position to strike a bargain
if he thought he could get some useful information. Hobs
(20:51):
could be good informants. Most of them don't rob trains,
they don't have much use for a big screen TV
in a box car, but they are likely to have
seen the people who swarm the yard broke up in
a container and made off with the laptops. Guess what,
these guys know the railroad, and they know the railroad schedule,
and they know the routes and everything about the trains
better than even the railroad coption. If the people who
(21:13):
rode the train had that much intel, Larry would try
to turn them into informants. And that's where Joe came in.
Larry took Joe under his wing, showing him how the
trespasser information he was already gathering could be a big
help to Larry. Joe's familiarity with hobos, the photos and
bios he'd blogged on his phone could be where Larry
started his investigations. So Larry set him to work turning
(21:35):
hoboes into informants. Joe did a phenomenal job, point actually
and finding sources for me. I go. This is what
I want from the guys. Asking these questions, do you
know about railroad crime? Oh my god, you're do you
write trains? What have you seen? And where do you
ride at? What do you see? These questions were a
(21:55):
way to start testing out how much a hobo knew.
Larry also taught Joe how to take advantage of watching
hoboes who had outstanding warrants for their arrest. But this
wasn't as easy as walking up to a hobo asking
them a couple of questions. Ahobo didn't want it to
get around that he was working with the cops, so
they would only agree if they could do their business
in secret. Joe had a whole strategy for this approach.
(22:17):
Give me something to work with, and you tell me
you know what these guys are doing this. This guy's
nobody's gonna know you're telling me this, and we're going
to use you as a source. And I'm gonna make
sure my guys don't mess with you. You're always going
to have water, you know, and I'm always going to
give you a right to the rescue mission. After meeting Larry,
Joe had an eye out for the kind of traveler
who could be a good source, but that was only
(22:37):
part of what made Joe effective. Joe's genuine manner an
open hearted approach, was in part thanks to his boss
t J. Munson. He took care of me like he
gave me a chance in my life to be something
I always wanted to be, a cop. TJ's magical man.
He's John Wayne Man, and I'll pass how I got
to meet TJ. He's retired now and extremely proud of
(23:01):
the decades he spent as a rail cop. It was
part of his family's tradition. His dad had been a
bull and TJ grew up in a small rail red
town in Nevada. He watched his dad interact with travelers,
and sometimes TJ worked alongside them in the garden. The
old boy went over to my dad and I followed along,
you know, and he said, sir, he said, anyway I
(23:22):
could talk you out of getting a little grub. And
my dad said, well, I'll tell you what he said.
You worked for me today, help us out. He said,
I'll give you some money and I'll give you some grub.
TJ heard their stories and got to know the people
his dad called old boys, and TJ instructed his force
(23:44):
to see old boys as people, to treat them with kindness.
You know one thing I told my guys when I
hired them. If you ask an old boy what's your
occupation and he tells you doctor, write doctor down because
she's probab probably a doctor. He's had a bad time somewhere.
(24:05):
His wife was leftyan, he's gotten into the bottle. Something
has happened to where he just took off. You know,
I needs ride in the realm. So TJ wanted his
guys on the forest to grant the hobo's human dignity.
And it was the same decency and humored TJ brought
to his work at the border. He was amused by
(24:27):
the chaos, and with four decades on the job, he
had a lot of funny stories. Patton daughter guy one time,
and I'm scared to death of snakes, and every pocket
I touched moved. I joke, back, man, what do you
got in that pocket? Parakeet? He had a bunch of birds.
(24:49):
He had birds in all his pockets. They were pair
of keets. Yeah, I mean, you don't go figure, I mean,
when the hell does that? But somebody that rides your train,
I get I don't know that compassion Joe learned from TJ.
Came in handy at the border. He interacted with so
(25:12):
many different kinds of people and still approached every traveler
with understanding. He could appreciate how difficult life had been
for some of them. These guys had been through so
much stuff, you know. That's why t J would always
tell me, the ali need is a little love, Joe,
Just like the song, all you need is love, And
that was very important about what I did. Man. Mostly,
(25:33):
Joe approached people softly, with curiosity and compassion. At first,
he recalled the time when a distraught man he found
in the yard became one of Larry's best informants. When
Joe found him, the hobo was racked with guilt about
the mess he'd made of his life. It's because I've
been doing some bad stuff, bro, You're never gonna understand.
May come back. Go you're liking Donalds? He goes, Yeah,
(25:53):
did McDonald's a long time bro? So I took him
to McDonald's right there, and over lunch, Joe found out
his guest knew a lot. Joe called Larry. This guy,
he says he knows about smuggling and all that he goes,
just keep him there, probably gonna stay here, man. He's
loving every drink and this and that. And Joe kept
the guy there till Larry showed up, and in the
(26:14):
end he gave them valuable information about drug smuggling in
the area. He's one of them, told me about coming
across with loads of dope, and he had done it himself.
They put the narcotics in a backpack about three rail
cars away in front of them usually or behind them,
and then they ride with the load to Chicago or whatever,
(26:35):
you know, passo through Larry and Joe. My eyes were
open to just how many different criminals use the rails
to do their business. I didn't expect Maryby to be
riding alongside potential narcotics traffickers. I asked Joe if young
women were ever informants, but Joe said the one time
he caught young women in the yard, but they were
expecting shocked him. I pulled him off the train and
(26:57):
then I just told him to stand by my vehicle
and I was getting all their stuff. And then she's like, so,
what are you gonna fuckers right now? Or what are
you gonna take us somewhere? I go fuck you right now,
what are you talking about? I go, no, I'm gonna
take you the rescue mission. She gets you could get
a shower and eat something, and then she goes, well,
because where are you used to getting abused and hit
(27:17):
and raped? And I go, well, what are you doing
here in the first place? And then she's like you
probably would understand had Ruby ever faced this, I wondered
how common it was. My guest was not very Although
young women travelers had told me stories about angry cops
taking their packs as evidence or patting them down in
(27:38):
a sexual manner, I'd never heard a story like the
one Joe told. Still, considering how much leeway cops had,
it wasn't outside the realm of possibility. What I found
out about the rails is there's different levels of eableness.
Right if you want to play with the devil, you're
gonna find them down the rail yard. And that's where
(28:01):
he catched her prey. So this was the Batman Robin
balance in action. Joe was the quieter guy, the one
on the scene who patrolled the tracks. Meanwhile, Larry worked
the streets. And because Larry had more power than other cops,
(28:21):
his mission to fight cargo. Theft had no bounds, which
was a good thing for Larry for many reasons. For one,
Larry is the aggressive type, wiley and confrontational, someone who
stood out among the other cops and enjoyed that when
he showed up in El Paso, he didn't mind provoking people,
like with his taste in music. When Larry was a teenager,
he discovered Jimmy Hendrix. Jimmy showed him another world was possible,
(28:44):
more than what he saw in his neighborhood. And I
prayed to Jimmy Hendrix every morning. Larry brought his superfandom
with him to the Union Pacific Rail coup offices, where
he built a little shrine to Hendrix. A lot of
other cops didn't like that, and in this mancho crowd,
a confrontation was inevitable. And every time Larry describes a
confrontation with authority, it feels like we're in a scene
(29:05):
from a lethal weapon movie. I remember the captain tell
you take that shit off the wall. You said, motherfucker,
that's God. Don't you fuck with my God? And they
were everybody everybody's got guns, didn't shit, And you're like
fucking screaming at him a god motherfucker and ars like,
what the fuck is going on here? Larry brought this
(29:27):
same determination with him on the beach. So while Joe
moved through the yard trying to find hoboes it could
tell him something about cargo theft, Larry moved outside it.
He worked the streets, even the local swap meets, to
get intel on cargo thieves. They had this space called
La Tita Edo. It was a sanctioned swap meet in
downtown El Paso. And I would look at the space,
so this is a fucking gold mine. And so went
(29:49):
in there and I would see these boxes and cases
of stuff stacked up, nikes and blenders and VCRs. Why
are the why of these poor people have this ship?
It would take like four or five boxes or whatever
recept that they had just stolen off the train the
night before. And then you could say, hey, dude, I'm
gonna open a store over here on our pastle Dude,
how many of these can you get? I'll buy this
(30:09):
one right here. How many can you get? Bro? Oh,
I got fucking three hundred of those, okay, ar we're
losing three hundred. You see how this rich bubble I
do Larry, but only because you explained it to me.
Cargo Fest was a seemingly unsolvable puzzle with a million
pieces of it scattered all over the border. It took
a special kind of mind to put those pieces together,
and Larry he came to this as his birthright. Larry
(30:32):
was raised in a working class neighborhood in Whittier, California,
twenty miles southeast of Los Angeles. His parents immigrated from
Mexico before Larry was born in Hollywood, and both worked
several jobs to support the family. Before he finished elementary school,
he joined a gang and it wasn't long before he
and the whole gang got in trouble with the law.
(30:52):
So in sixth grade, I got arrested with nineteen of
us got arrested. We had broken into my own school.
This gang vandalized his elementary school and did some real damage.
And this arrest was a turning point for Larry. Sitting
on a bench in the sheriff station, Larry got a
good look at the detectives and admired their style. I
(31:13):
remember them very clearly, like cussing. They had their guns exposed,
they had like t shirts on their guns out their
badge and their handcuffs tucked around their belt, and I
just liked the way that look. In addition to that,
they were like pushing each other, saying hey, fuck you,
and they're like, you know, they were like friends, the
(31:35):
same stuff that we did in the street. And I said, hmm,
this is like, this is like a gang right here,
and look at they've got guns. So Larry left the
gang and enrolled in the Sheriff's Academy, and shortly after
he graduated, he was recruited by Union Pacific to become
a rail cup Larry was intrigued as a kid. Trains
(31:57):
had run right behind his house, and he and his
gang sometimes broke into them to steal cases of beer.
He was still fascinated by trains, and this job offered
even more money, so Larry applied to the railroad police,
and in that uniquely Larry way, he decided not to
hide his gang pass. When he was interviewed by the railroad,
he bragged about it and guess what, I know how
(32:18):
to hop those trains. They're going what I know how
to pull the air and make the trains stop. They're
like what And somehow you think this is a good thing?
To be chainas fucking qualified, bro. I'm better qualified anybody
you know. Larry got hired and when he started he
didn't know the full story of the railcops. On his
(32:39):
first day, his training officer explained, absolute impunity came with
the job. He goes everything you learned in the sheriff academy,
forget it. This is a whole different role. That's all garbage.
This is different. This is the railroad police. I mean
that they don't have to follow a certain rule exactly.
They make their own. This is how we operate here.
We're bulls. We have the power, fed and stay. We
(33:01):
do what we want. We're in control. FBI. They can't
stop apart give him a ticket for going through a
red light. We can't. We give tickets too. LAPD can't
go to the US Attorney's office and file the case.
We can't. We're Feds too. We got both and there's
no public scrutiny, thank you none. You are a lawless
(33:26):
police force. We had some guidelines, but they're not mandatory.
They were mandatory, But did we follow him? Who's going
to keep our feet to the fire on that. After
seeing how Joe got treated by his co workers, their
lack of effort should be no surprise. I mean, why
do too much if no one's really watching? The guys
(33:48):
like Joe and Larry, they were different. Larry believes he
was one of the first Hispanic men hired as a
Union Pacific rail coop back in the nineteen eighties, and
the rail cop bosses told him straight out that he
was a diversity higher and they'd be happy to see
him quit. This put a chip on Larry's shoulder. He
would show them he'd work harder and smarter than anyone
(34:09):
else more arrest, stop more cargo theft using these broad
police powers in a world where there were a few boundaries.
Larry saw the possibilities he could become a legend, and
he did. He Pacific recognized his skills could help handle
the growing cargo theft problem in ol Passau. Assembling the
pieces of this puzzle brought him to the slopes of
(34:30):
Mount Christo Ray And that's where you see how all
of this happened. And I know these mounds like the
back of my hand because we used to walk up
here all the time and set up sir balances on
the US side. After gathering information about robbers Larry knew
how the thieves thought. He could see their trucks parked
on the other side of the border. A sure sign
of raid was on the horizon. This is obviously Mexico.
(34:52):
We're like, what fifty feet from the border, so this
was a real hard area to contain. The spot Larry's
showing me is one of the most dangerous and desperate
neighborhoods in this section of the border. The Book of
the Lobo. The Wolf's mouth is at the base of
the mountains where the trains have to slow down before
they ascend. It's literally a stone's throw from the tracks,
(35:13):
making it the perfect place for thieves to snap up cargo.
From his informants, Larry knew when there was a valuable
of train coming into the yard, one with flat screen
TVs or Nike shoes, and if his fellow rail cups
were too busy at the circle k, Larry had a plan.
So we were talking about source development and the FBI
was telling you how I had more informants than dated.
(35:34):
Big government agencies don't get involved unless the thefts are
large enough, and some are at the Book of the Lobo.
So Larry developed allies and other agencies. Larry told me
about the setup for one of his big raids. You
see the highest point of the first hill in front
of us right here, So we used to set up
in that saddle. Everybody was involved, the Phoebees, the customs,
(35:56):
the railroad police, border Patrol, sun and park last apartment.
We used to set up over there at night ten
o'clock till you know, six am, while it was dark.
We had blackhawks and night vision and everything. Once the
guys were in place, Larry would command the operation from
up in the saddle. That's from Border Patrol, I mean,
and digged themselves a hole maybe two days before low
(36:18):
crawl all the way across through the bushes, dressed like
a damn bush themselves. They went in there with their
little shovels and get in the dirt and cover themselves up.
And they lived there for twelve hours, yeah, eating, shitting
their pants, peat in their pants, just so they wouldn't
be found out and you know discovered. From the saddle,
the force had a great view of the trains route
(36:40):
through the Wolf's Mouth. As a train approaches, everyone is
in position up next. How the rate unfolds with the
(37:08):
train tracks running right by the border. The book of
the Lobo was the perfect place for thieves to strike,
judging from there. So what's in that train? Everything? Everything
you can possibly think of, from makeup to I mean everything, shoes, clothing, food,
I mean anything you can think of there, and all
(37:30):
those goods were vulnerable in this stretch of desert. After
driving in fast from the west. Trains slowed down right
by the border as they approach El Paso to climb
Mount Christo Ray. So the railroad police out here would
have a hell of a time because of trains, as
I was saying, would go up the hill a mile
and a half long train. But these trains are now
two and three miles long, offering a lot of cargo
(37:52):
theft opportunities. So no matter how many street gang and
cargo theft informants Show and Larry had, the trains were vulnerable.
And from up in the saddle, Larry could see the
whole thing play out. The train would only be going
twenty miles an hour or whatever. And believe it or not, yes,
these guys can jump on a train while I was
moving at twenty twenty five miles an hour without any problem.
(38:14):
Hopping a train moving at twenty miles an hour is
no joke. But these experienced thieves had no problem. They
just knew how to time it. They would jump on
it and grab onto a ladder, and they did it
sometimes with twenty thirty forty fifty pound backpacks on their
back full of dope. Once that first group hopped on
a train, the next step was to make it stop.
They would pull out the pins to make the train
(38:36):
lose it's air. The train would stop and these guys
would come across five fifteen, twenty thirty, maybe even forty
would come and start looting the training. And then it
was an all or nothing, free for all that These
cracked open containers as easily as they had hopped the train,
and they would come with bowl cutters. Some of them
just had pipes that fit around the high security seals,
(38:59):
and they would just work it back and forth until
they broke off and they opened up the container and
they'd have like six or seven, ten fifteen guys there
and they would just start unloading it incredibly. Sometimes the
robbery was even simpler than that. I mean, why bother
stopping the train at all. They would burglarize the train
as it moved. Also, they said, you know what, I
need to go to Alpasso. I'm going to burglarize the
(39:21):
train as it's moving and get some stuff and then
go sell it downtown. And it's a win win for them.
They get a free ride, they get their product, and
they sell it they make their money, etc. Etc. So,
as the train nears the book of the Lobo cargo
thieves emerge from the Mexican side of the border and
the whole operation commences. The black Hawks swooped down, light
scanned the tracks, Swarms of officers pop out of the bushes,
(39:42):
and dozens of cargo thieves are hauled off to jail.
But despite all this, despite all the fancy equipment and
the government budgets, Larry and his team weren't able to
make much of a dent in things. You know what,
we weren't very successful. They just this is their neighborhood,
this is their territory. They were in full control. The
thieves knew the area and were experienced at avoiding detection.
(40:05):
And these train robberies were a sophisticated operation. We didn't
have what it took to catch them. Yeah, we caught
a bunch of them a lot of times, but we
didn't catch them as much as I think we should have.
They were just quicker than us. They're desperate, I mean,
they wanted to eat, they wanted to get high, they
were motivated. How could Joe and Larry ever wrap their
(40:28):
arms around all this chaos. They could turn informants, pull
in Phoebees, bring in the Blackhawks. At the end of
the day, they were outnumbered. But even if Larry didn't
make a big dent in the cargo, theft and Opasso,
bringing in those government agencies was significant. Here was a
rail coup leading a multi agency government raid. History left
(40:51):
rail cops with overarching powers, and for Larry that meant
a chance to climb from La Sheriff's department training to
commanding the FBI. Thanks in part to the railroads and
from his perch in the saddle, Larry was the king
of the hill, able to use all of his colorful
background on the job, and he'd certainly shown those guys
who called him a diversity hire. Running this raid, Larry
(41:14):
felt powerful and like he was making an impact. At least,
he felt so good. Nothing could bring him down, even
the fact that the residence of the Book of the
Lobo were not Jimmie Hendricks fans. I learned Mexican music
because I sat up there so long. I would have
words and I would listen to words, and I'd be
up there tapping my toe, rocking out, listen to music
(41:34):
that they were playing down here, because it was the same,
you know, thirty songs, you know, day after day, and
they was loud, and they would all gather. It'd be like,
you know, twenty thirty forty of them out here dancing, laughing.
You can hear girls giggling and you gun fire, and
this just crazy. Larry's teammates would look up using their
night vision goggles and wonder what Larry was doing up there.
(41:56):
They would be on this mace up here and they
would see me over there and they good, to you,
what are you doing. I'm dancing, dog. He's not answering
because he's dancing right now. He's rocking out. And I
would they go away. They're gonna see you, man, No
fuck are. They ain't got night vision. I can't even
see the guy sitting two feet away from me. I'll
they gonna see me. Lay back down, shut up. This
(42:16):
is my operation. I'm gonna dance if I want to
Larry was dancing because even though he didn't stop cargo theft,
through this raid, he could get a piece that brought
him closer to solving this puzzle. By capturing thieves and
interrogating them, Larry might get information not just about cargo theft,
(42:36):
but about drug smuggling. The smugglers find every which way
they can to small little narcotics in the US, because
I knew about Tucson, I knew about Phoenix, I knew
about la I knew about you know, east and west
of here, one hundred miles several hundred miles. And then
they ride with the load to like they'll end up
going in the end to Chicago or whatever. And it
(42:58):
happens too on the way going south. We're always looking
for money in rail cars going back south into Mexico.
This smuggling network reaches everywhere the railroads do. But when
you talk about illegal immigration and drug smuggling, somehow the
trains rarely come up. In fact, what I asked Larry
to characterize the extent of the problem, he didn't mince words.
(43:19):
I will tell you every train's got it. Every single
train that comes across has got some contraband not just narcotics,
but like even merchandise that has not been cleared by
customs and they're sneaking it across because customs would delay
it or it costs too much to bring it across. Absolutely,
no doubt, every single train. This might sound like a
(43:42):
bold claim at first, but it happens in plain sight
on the Mexican side of the border. Alexei, who I
spoke with in episode three, told me about riding a
train through the state of Chihuahua, where Warez is. He
decided to hop a train home to Texas. After finding
his way to the tracks, Alexei was surprised to discovery
that in Mexico, train hopping is not a crime. It
(44:03):
takes place out in the open at whatever time at night.
The ground crews like Chowawa Chiwawa, just yelling it out.
And then all these people that I didn't see that
we're in the bushes all loaded up on the train
at once. I mean they were all up on top
(44:23):
of grainers. I mean it was probably like thirty something
people on this train. So I get on the train
and I remember being either a full moon or real
close to the full moon. With his new companions on
the train, Alexei moved through one of the most beautiful
landscapes he'd ever seen Chihuaha was Copper Canyon. I was
riding the train through Copper Canyon, which is just spectacularly gorgeous,
(44:48):
and I remember the moon reflecting on ponds and lakes
and just so so gorgeous. Lulled by the beauty, Alexey
was surprised when the train became in the slow and
then stop. You saw a dust cloud in the distance,
and then you got a close up view of the
drug trade from the Mexican side of the border, and
(45:09):
that dust pile gets closer and closer and closer and closer,
and this train went right before it stops, people busted
the locks on the top of the grainers and then
took out bales, hay bale size of weed, just bales
and bales and bales and weed. And then that dust
(45:31):
clue that I saw in the background was a truck
that was Ronnie doing this. Weed wasn't crossing the border
in the train, but the train was bringing it closer,
so smaller amounts could be smuggled across using other methods
of transport like vans or backpacks. And then they just
dumped all this weed on the side of the side
(45:52):
of the train, and then probably about say like ten
people or something like that all got off and loaded
up that truck burned off. Alexei witnessed a smuggling operation
pulled off without a hitch, in and out easy. He
was just a normal routine thing. The engineer must have
been in it. Yeah, like everybody was on it. Speaking
(46:18):
with Alexei, it's hard not to sympathize with Larry. He
had Joe, he had government resources, but in the end
he was another cop fighting against a challenge that has
thousands of people on the other side. No matter how
hard Larry worked, the problem of cargo fest was going
on before he got there, and still goes on now
that he's gone. But at the end of the day,
and never has been and never will be the railroad's
(46:41):
top priority. When the Border Patrol confiscated drugs smuggle on
Unie Pacific trains, it issued heavy fines to try to
encourage the railroad to get better control of its business.
But you and Pacific maintained that it couldn't control was
placed on its trains in Mexico. After all, it has
no jurisdiction in a foreign country. Surely the government could
(47:03):
understand that. How could Union Pacific forget that it owns
twenty four percent of Pharaoh Max, the same railroad that
brings Union Pacific cargo over the border to El Paso.
That was another dimension to my understanding of the rails.
Sure I knew about the risks of the train and
the hoboes, but smugglers and thieves that was something else.
(47:23):
Yet again, this world remains hidden in plain sight. Trains
spread their way through all sorts of terrible neighborhoods and
crime infested industrial sites, and no one thinks of them
as the connectors of one crime scene to another. And
there was Ruby making her way through it all. I
was exhausted when I got back from El Paso. There
was something about learning how the rail coops operated that
(47:45):
made me think maybe I'd had my fill of the darkness,
Like when Joe described young women in the train yard
bargaining for their safety. Maybe I didn't need to know that.
Yet there is that maternal obligation to worry and to
convince yourself that worrying is a form of love. If
I wasn't doing this mad investigation, running around the country,
talking to hundreds of people. Was I giving up hope?
(48:09):
Was I abandoning Ruby? So it was in my state
of frustrated energy that Ruby called. I was still unpacking
my stuff in my room at the barn, but the
first thing I had put together was my desk, my
reporting station for collecting info about what was going on
with Ruby, so my cell phone rang. I sat down
(48:29):
and pulled out my Ruby notebook to jot down the
number she was calling from. But the second she started talking,
I realized I wouldn't need my notebook. Ruby told me
she was coming home. She would take her time, but
she was on her way back when she left. Part
of her goal she'd had a goal was to see
(48:50):
the United States. On her way home, she would circumnavigate
the nation, starting in New York with a visit to
her brother, then up to Vermont and across the top
of the country. She had no idea how long it
would take, but I didn't care. There was an end date,
date uncertain, but there was an end. So just as
I was about to surrender, this brought me back. There
(49:14):
was a problem with all that I had learned. Instead
of some soothing image of Ruby in the box car,
gazing at fields of grain, I could actually imagine the
steps it took to hop a train, the dangers in
the box car, and the scary people in and near
the yard. Maybe my time in the City of the
Rails was coming to an end with Ruby's return, But
there was just one more story I wanted to get
(49:34):
before I left. It was a story about the people
who run the City of the Rails. It was about
the workers in the train yard. The power of the
railroad works in the favor of the rail coops, but
often that power doesn't serve the rest of its employees. Well,
when I'd been in Colton, I went to a retirement
party where I met Carrie Westcott. The guests were all
congratulating themselves for having made it all the way to
(49:56):
retirement because so few do. And then of them said
it was a shame that they did to Nikki, and
another one said it should be illegal, but it's just
the way of the railroad. So who was Nikki? Nikki
is just one of those people that you just always
want to do more for Gosh, she's just such a
good person, you know, and just has such a good energy.
(50:17):
They didn't like Nikki. Nikki carries herself in a way
that they don't like the alpha of male, black or female,
and everybody knows once Union Pacific puts their claws and
they're not going to stop until they can tamrinate you.
Like I used to say on Norfolk Southern, I said,
we hate them, and the reason we hate them is
(50:40):
because they hate us. Nobody treats other human beings in
the way that we are being treated unless they actually
hate us. Next we'll look into the relationship between those
who drive the trains and those who own them and
how it got to be this way. That's next episode
(51:00):
on City of the Rails se Montica seven, Motica Douster fourteen,
(51:23):
as well be drinking gasol. Look what You've done. City
of the Rails is written and hosted by me then
El Morton and developed in partnership between Flip Turn Studios
and iHeart Podcasts. Thank you to everyone who's been calling us.
(51:43):
I'm hearing from housewives, artists, current hoboes, and retired ones.
It's great when a story can touch so many different people.
We love to hear it, so please keep calling. The
number is seven oh seven six five three three three nine.
I want to help us out. You can do it
very quickly by leaving us a rating or a review
wherever you're listening to this. It will help more people
(52:05):
find the show, and it means a lot to us.
Want to follow along, find us on Instagram at flip
turn pods. Our team is executive producer and showrunner Julian
Weller and executive producer Mark Healey from Flip Turn, Senior
producer and editing master Abu Zafar, and producers Shina Ozaki
and Zoe Dnkla. Shout out to the Lady Squad. It's
(52:26):
just Zoe and Mean now that Emily and Sheina have
gone on to other shows, but we have new recruits,
Tricia Mukerjee and Jackie Huntington. Thanks for stepping in production
support from Marcy to Pina. Original music every episode by
Aaron Kaufman. I was so honored that Aaron wrote music
for this show. Those intriguing themes that I'm describing a
dark part of the train yard are the light ironic
(52:48):
ones when something unexpectedly funny is going down. That's all Aaron.
Thank you, Aaron for your deft touch and your occasional
editorial advice. You're a truth teller who doesn't blink in
addition to being a very talented composer. Our theme music
for this episode is Warrenson, Texas, performed by Barefoot Surrender,
Our logos by Lucy quing Tinia and uses a photograph
(53:10):
by Mike Brodie. Thank you to the Nation Institute for
Investigative Journalism and the George Polk Foundation for their generous
grants and support of my reporting on the rail cops.
I got these grants and more than ten years ago,
which shows just how hard it is to report this story.
And I'm not done yet. Any rail cops who want
to give me a call, You've got my number and
(53:33):
at iHeart. Thanks to Nikki Etour at Bethan Macaluso. We'll
be back next week in Colton, because I cannot get
enough of Colton on City of the Rails
I've been in the job for about maybe three months,
and I'm checking the drinks for open doors. Then I
see these three guys there and they're getting their stuff
for need to jump out. I go around and I'm
waiting for him. So when they jump out, they jump
out right by where the rescueation is. As soon as
I told him to come over here, they all pull
(00:29):
out their knives, all pissed off, and then I just
tell them to stay right there, and then I just
pulled my weapon. I speaking with Joe de Arte about
working as a real broad security guard, where stand ups
were part of his daily life, but it wasn't his
job to fight armed hobos, so Joe called for backup.
I knew the guys were at the cirky, which is
(00:49):
half a mile away. I have my radio and I'm
talking into it. I got these guys. They have knives.
There's three of them, and I'm right by where you
guys are at, and they're not listening to me. The guys,
Joe called, we're rail cops. It's their job to protect
the trains in the cargo, which means dealing with people
who aren't supposed to be in the yard. But without backup.
(01:12):
The hoboes weren't scared of Joe. They outnumbered him three
to one, and I tell him, bro, put those doll
I'm going to shoot you there like, yeah, shoot us.
Just a security guard ran a cop and I'm calling
it again. Finally one of the rail cops answered, no, Joe,
just let him go. I go, oh, they put a
knife on me, man, but the cops just laughed him off.
(01:33):
Joe realized he was on his own. I see the
dust cloud do he does the other turn? And I
couldn't tell at first if it was one of our
needs border patrol? Does she need damn camaro? I'm like,
who the hell is this guy? Was that his backup?
(01:57):
If it was, Joe'd be surprised, And five months he'd
been working for the Union Pacific Railroad Police, they hadn't
come to his rescue once. Who were the rail cops?
I was shocked when I learned about how this private
security force, with full local, state, and federal police powers,
reports only to the railroads, and Joe's part of the
(02:19):
country is the perfect place to see what rail cops
are all about. So worried al Paso, where the edge
of the country meets the edge of the train yard,
with tracks running along the border with Mexico al Paso
as a crossroads for everyone. And in the middle of
all of this are the rail cops. I imagine Ruby
and her friends crossing through rail Passo as they headed
east from Los Angeles to New Orleans on the Sunset route.
(02:42):
What happens to hoboes who get off in this wild territory?
Were they more at risk on land controlled by the
rail cops. Maybe it was more dangerous there. After all,
hobos had written songs about how rough it was when
you got to Texas. So in the train yards of
a border town, is anyone really in charge? And then
I'm warning in this the city of the rails, like
(03:03):
a warrants, ain't Texas, saying I swear that I ain't
going back a road. And I'm all a boy on
that track like a warrants in Texas with the old
dead band. When I'm telling me from you stood the
(03:24):
mail them out again? I said, where will you go
with the ball of my roof? Where will you go?
Real old ward? Hide you? And where will you go
with a light shine like beside you? You nut your
(03:48):
mail blow and the whiskey is Brew and as I
heard about the rail cops, I wanted to know more
about the people who police the City of the Rails.
It sounds so unbelievable to say that the nation's railroads
have their own police who can pretty much do whatever
(04:10):
they want. Imagine another industry with this kind of muscle,
like say, Facebook, Google or Big Pharma have their own
legal militia who could arrest you. That's what you have
with the rail cops. It's real, real, real easy, especially,
which is how he ended up in Texas, with Joe
taking me around to places he used to patrol. Right
(04:32):
over there, that's called the Roundhouse. How Passo is the
western edge of Texas on the border of New Mexico.
It's a scrubby, old west desert town and a basin
between tall, dark mountains. This town is a hot bit
of activity, making it the best place to see how
rail cops fit into the City of the Rails. Oh,
there's another place I will take it to. Union Pacific
(04:53):
hired Joe to do the job that rail cops don't
want to do. Get to know the Hoboes. Joe spent
five years on the job, but before Union Pacific contracted
him Joe was just a bouncer. I had no security experience,
no railroad experience. I just had experience throwing guys out
of a barge and venues. Joe didn't have much experience,
(05:15):
and after some training on rail safety, the rail coops
sort of punked Joe down in the train yard with
his phone and a notepad and left him to figure
it out for himself. And there was a lot to learn.
The rail cops main job is to protect the trains
and to nab cargo thieves, but it gets more complicated
in El Paso. The area has always been in international
crossroads and for more than a century a freight hub.
(05:38):
Trains go north and south to and from factories on
the Mexican side of the border, and they had east
from California with goods from China. That means it every week,
four hundred and thirty eight trains come through El Paso
on five hundred and thirty five miles of track that
connect the city's six rail yards, and four million pedestrians
cross over the bridges that span the Rio Grand And
(05:58):
with so much movement, Joe had to make sense of
it all and get a feel for all the different
types of people the trains brought into the yard. There
were the hoboes that were just regular travelers. So those
guys were real cool, like they mostly want to beat
to themselves. And then there were there were the gangs,
and then there were the drug londs. Those guys were
(06:21):
in the shadows. They did everything at night, and they
were they were hidden everywhere. They scared everybody. That's some
one thing about El Passo that you can score anything
real easy. Oh, if you're a hobole, it's easy for
you for to score some eyes, some cold, some marijuana easy.
Nobody's gonna you know. You ask those guys. The trains
(06:42):
make opportunities for everyone at the border, making El Passo
a huge hot spot for train robbers. So in the
day to day, hobos are low on a railcops priority list.
That's why they brought in Joe. Joe's main priority was
the interview the travelers they found in the yard, get
their names, take pictures in personal details to add to
Pacific's trespasser database. Leave the bigger stuff to the rail cops.
(07:04):
Joe got to know the hoboes in the yard so
well he knew who to ask for traveling advice. One
time I caught this three piece band trying to get
to Denver. They had that big old base, So I'm like,
what are you trying to do with you? I can
see that base from everywhere. So finally I'm like, let
(07:25):
me talk to a conductor. I go, which train is
going to Denver? Man? Because this guy's gonna end up
dead in the desert. Man, they didn't even have enough water.
And then he goes, you know what, you better off
talking to the hobos because they'll get him on the
right train. The hobos. You're the schedules really quick. So
Joe found an older writer who knew just what to do. Yeah, bro,
(07:46):
I'm going to go that way and tell him to
go with me. But they're gonna eat six yellons of
water and they're gonna need no food for two days
or whatever. But it was a three. I had caught
him that day four times. What about they kept getting
on the wrong train and you kept finding them the
same day. Joe had a lot to keep track of
lost musicians, hobos, smugglers, cargo thieves. The list goes on.
(08:09):
People stuck through the yard for all sorts of reasons.
So the rivers right there there's some tunnels that run
right across, and the rescue mission was located right there,
so what would happen? A lot of residents from Mexico
will come in to eat at the rescue mission because
they offered three meals. The rescue mistion of El Pasa
was right by the train yard. Every serious tramp has
(08:31):
gotten a free meal at its corner of hope, where
they also can get closed in a shower. And these
services are useful to locals from Warez too. With all
these people moving through the yard, Joe never knew what
to expect when he showed up for work. All of
a sudden, during another like another feeling. Sometimes it was fear,
(08:51):
sometimes it was happiness. Sometimes it was even sadness. Sometimes
you feel sorry for these guys. You'd be like, man,
you know something bad had happened for these guys to
be here. But it was always different. It's never the same,
the same old crap. No. But despite all the things
Joe faced in the yard, he wasn't getting much respect
(09:14):
from the rail coops. They wouldn't even respond to his
calls for backup. Joe was eager to show he was
capable of more so he was excited when the rail
coops called him in to give him a very important job.
They're in the office and they go, Joe, we got
a job for you. Got a special shipment. We need
you to find it. You need you to look at
(09:35):
all the yards, especially the one by the bridge. Joe
was honored. Tracking cargo was important and he took it seriously.
So they give me a paper and goes, Okay, this
is a special shipment of sailboat fuel. Okay, yes, sir,
very special. Man. I said that this explosive. I think
it is. Man, so be careful and you don't smoke. Oh,
(09:55):
I don't smoke. Man, got the perfect guy for it.
Joe went from yard to yard searching for this shipment.
He even got a Border Patrol agent to help him. Look,
we're looking at everything. We can't find it. And I
was out there all day and I'm like, God, please
help me find this. Help me find this shipment. I
would look so good if I find it. And then
(10:16):
it dawned on Joe Selbows don't need fuel. It's air.
It's a shipment over sunk of pitches. I'm like, man,
these guys were just screwing with you. They were like
ha ha, We're gonna get the security guard. Joe was
working hard, walking the tracks and checking the trains. Well,
(10:37):
these guys not only ignored him, but wasted his time
and just hung out at the circle k and Joe's
story squeared with what Hobos told me. Rail cops could
do whatever they wanted, beat you up, strand you in
the desert, you name it. So what was up with that?
What makes these guys able to do whatever they want?
It all ties back to the unique status of the
(10:59):
rail cops. Their power is written into law and has
been that way for more than a hundred years. When
the Civil War ended in eighteen sixty five, the United
States was subsidizing the rails willy nilly, laying track in
all directions as a way of boosting the economy. The
railroads were carving up the landscape, infuriating the indigenous people
as they destroyed their land and killed off the buffalo.
(11:21):
When tribes attacked railroad construction crews, Washington sent the US
Army to protect the workers building the Transcontinental Railroad, But
when the Transcontinental was completed in eighteen sixty nine, the
Army went home. There was no force to protect the railroads.
From thieves inside the cars or raiders from without. So
the government allowed the states and the territories to charter
(11:42):
the railroad Police as a private security force with full
police powers nationwide along one hundred and forty thousand miles
of track, supervised only by the railroads. Now you might
think permission to operate outside the law sounds like an exaggeration.
How could that be possible. It's one of those crazy
legacy railroad things established in the nineteenth century when at
(12:04):
the time the West was mostly territories with very few states.
The government sanctioned rail cops were left up to the
railroads to manage, and even after one by one Arizona
and Nevada and the rest were brought into the United States,
no one remembered to make the railroad police. Just like
other security guards, railroad police are not subject to government oversight.
(12:26):
And what does that mean. It means railroads don't have
to answer public record requests, So we don't know how
many people the rail cops arrest, under what circumstances, and
what kind of altercations take place in the yard. I
guess if you're thinking about this in the gentlest way possible,
and I'm not you could say, why should this be
a cause for alarm. The rail cops have a job
(12:47):
to do and mostly it's confined to the yard, and
when something big happens, they always interact with the local
cops to jail the bad guys. Well, cops with no
rules is never a good idea. Just look how it
played out for Joe. In a job where he could
get knives pulled on him, he likely wouldn't get back
up from his team. This had a major impact on Joe.
(13:12):
As Joe walked his bead, he interviewed writers and other trespassers,
took notes and photographs, and filed them in the rail
cops database. These reports were something everyone was supposed to
be filing, but not everyone did. Everybody was doing the
work except the Wildward police. I don't know why. Every
morning I would hand out they'll field inspection reports to
allow them because if not that we're going to get
(13:35):
written up for that. And it was like, Joe, can
I have five I needed? He's seven today and this
and that. So you're saying you would stop trespassers and
you would write them up, and that the other railroad
police would come to you and go could I have
some of your reports and I could file them as
my own. Exactly. Joe began to realize those rail cops
weren't worthy of his respect. As the months went on,
(13:58):
he started to believe it might be than them just
being lazy with plenty of time on their hands to
pull pranks. They were all supposed to be protecting cargo,
but sometimes the guys would tell Joe not to patrol
one of the train yards on a specific day. Sometimes
tell me to stay away from certain trains that were
coming in. We got those strains and worry about them.
And I'm not a copp or nothing like that, but
(14:21):
I'm not done either. You know, why would you help
me stay away from them? We'll have my guys stay
away from that. I'd be suspicious too. When Joe was hired,
it was to replace guards who'd been robbing the trains
in the rail yard to run under the bulls noses.
I wanted to find out if there was any proof
of Joe's suspicions, so I scoured court filings and legal
databases looking for rail cops convicted in smuggling cases, but
(14:44):
could find none. Were the rail cops squeaky clean or
was it no one reporting. So in the day, those
three hoboes pulled niyes on Joe. He knew his backup
wasn't coming. The bulls told Joe to let the hobo
as go, but they'd already drained their weapons and so
had Joe. And then Joe saw that cloud of dust
(15:07):
and the car racing toward him. What the hell was that?
She didn't look like backup cops didn't drive that kind
of car. All of a sudden comes this Camaro. It's red,
it's it's a beautiful car, man, beautiful, beautiful car. He
gets off and I'm like, what the hell he's wearing
(15:29):
this weird shirt. Uh, what's that movie? Uh? Ocean's a
Living where his shirt back. Joe had never seen this
guy before, but right away he took charge of the situation.
It blew my mind. He talked to him real stern,
in their lingual whatever, and then you they're usable, and
I was like a bull so the first time I
(15:50):
heard that he talked in their language, and he basically
told him to throw their knives and walk away, and
he was gonna let him go, and you know, to
respect me. They kind of looked at him and they
were watching them like, WHOA, something's up. They got this
guy here. Now, I'm like, oh wow, man. And then
he goes and picks up the knives and put them
in a bag, and he comes and shakes my hand
(16:11):
and he's like, I'm Larry Dias and I'm with organized crime.
And this Miami Vice Entrance hadn't made it clear enough
things were about to change in Joe's life. Joe's told
Larry he was frustrated by how few arrest they're were
in the yard, and as a security guard he couldn't
do anything about it. I go, these guys are running
(16:33):
our trains and nobody does nothing to him. And they
just talked the ship to us and this and that
and nothing happens. Man. And he goes, where's your backup?
And I go got the circle k looking the Moody magazines.
And he goes that things are going to change from
now on. And then he told me one thing, Joe,
(16:56):
don't trust none of these guys, not one of them.
You mean, none of the trespassers, none of the people,
none of the officers, the guy in the Camaro Union
Pacific Special Agent Larry Diaz was right. Things were about
to change for Joe and for the El Paso rail Coops.
(17:19):
This was the beginning of a dynamic duo. Larry meets
Joe as Batman meets Robin Sherlock and Watson, partners in
crime fighting with complimentary skills. Yes, it was a mess,
pure chaos at the border, but together Larry and Joe,
they were going to take it on. We're together. Everything
(17:56):
was about to change for Joe and Larry. With Larry around,
Jordan have to worry about backup, and the two had
bigger plans. They were taking on cargo theft. Larry had
been transferred from LA by Union Pacific to crack down
on the thefts in and around the El Paso yard,
and when he met Joe, Larry was just starting to
understand how complex the problem was in West Texas. In
(18:18):
some ways, it was like LA but being so close
to the border meant everything was much more complicated. Soon,
Larry would teach Joe how to handle showdowns with hoboes
and the two of them would focus on tapping into
the hobo network. Joe and Larry brought different skills to this,
which was reflected in the way they look. Larry's medium
height with his salt and pepper, black hair pulled into
(18:38):
a ponytail, and a mustache and goatee framing his face.
He's muscular and energetic, someone whose intense eyes you can
feel even when he's wearing his aviator sunglasses. Joe is larger,
chunky in frame, but with a sweetness about him you
can hear in his voice. These guys seemed like good cops,
not like the bulls Hoboes described who had nicknames like
(18:59):
Satan and Hitler. Those were the ones who scared me
when I thought about Ruby in the yard. How did
rail coops treat young women travelers they found on the trains?
And what could they tell me about Ruby? That was
one of the first questions I asked when I met
Larry Diaz, Like if you would see somebody about my
daughter's age, I mean, would you treat a young girl differently?
(19:20):
When I saw females, I gave them a lot of attention,
not just because they're females, but because they're vulnerable. But
you know what, these chicks were as tough as nails.
They knew the game, they knew that they had the attitude,
and they were not afraid. Ruby was tougher now those
ones on the rails had made their mark. Larry told
me how female writers depended on that strength while writing.
(19:43):
I never met a female train writer that was like
timid or scared, unless it was like some of you
just jumped on the train and was running away from
home and doing they had no clue, And I ran
into those, and of course those got my full attention.
What if she wasn't with a trained family. There were
a lot of scary men on the rails who traveled
in packs and picked up young women who needed protection.
(20:07):
If she fell in with those characters, would that change
her prospects? I consider that group thinking, Okay, so how
is she an asset for us? She could go bang
for us, or maybe she would go steal some liquor.
So if your daughter had the ability to be a
part of this team, even if he was just a
funny girl, these guys are living this rough life by choice,
(20:30):
that's her value. I mean, it could be anything. Larry
knew this how my experience was at Hob's. Mostly didn't
want to talk to me, and they'd be even less
likely to talk to a cop. But the alliances people
made in the train yard were always up for negotiation,
and Larry was in a position to strike a bargain
if he thought he could get some useful information. Hobs
(20:51):
could be good informants. Most of them don't rob trains,
they don't have much use for a big screen TV
in a box car, but they are likely to have
seen the people who swarm the yard broke up in
a container and made off with the laptops. Guess what,
these guys know the railroad, and they know the railroad schedule,
and they know the routes and everything about the trains
better than even the railroad coption. If the people who
(21:13):
rode the train had that much intel, Larry would try
to turn them into informants. And that's where Joe came in.
Larry took Joe under his wing, showing him how the
trespasser information he was already gathering could be a big
help to Larry. Joe's familiarity with hobos, the photos and
bios he'd blogged on his phone could be where Larry
started his investigations. So Larry set him to work turning
(21:35):
hoboes into informants. Joe did a phenomenal job, point actually
and finding sources for me. I go. This is what
I want from the guys. Asking these questions, do you
know about railroad crime? Oh my god, you're do you
write trains? What have you seen? And where do you
ride at? What do you see? These questions were a
(21:55):
way to start testing out how much a hobo knew.
Larry also taught Joe how to take advantage of watching
hoboes who had outstanding warrants for their arrest. But this
wasn't as easy as walking up to a hobo asking
them a couple of questions. Ahobo didn't want it to
get around that he was working with the cops, so
they would only agree if they could do their business
in secret. Joe had a whole strategy for this approach.
(22:17):
Give me something to work with, and you tell me
you know what these guys are doing this. This guy's
nobody's gonna know you're telling me this, and we're going
to use you as a source. And I'm gonna make
sure my guys don't mess with you. You're always going
to have water, you know, and I'm always going to
give you a right to the rescue mission. After meeting Larry,
Joe had an eye out for the kind of traveler
who could be a good source, but that was only
(22:37):
part of what made Joe effective. Joe's genuine manner an
open hearted approach, was in part thanks to his boss
t J. Munson. He took care of me like he
gave me a chance in my life to be something
I always wanted to be, a cop. TJ's magical man.
He's John Wayne Man, and I'll pass how I got
to meet TJ. He's retired now and extremely proud of
(23:01):
the decades he spent as a rail cop. It was
part of his family's tradition. His dad had been a
bull and TJ grew up in a small rail red
town in Nevada. He watched his dad interact with travelers,
and sometimes TJ worked alongside them in the garden. The
old boy went over to my dad and I followed along,
you know, and he said, sir, he said, anyway I
(23:22):
could talk you out of getting a little grub. And
my dad said, well, I'll tell you what he said.
You worked for me today, help us out. He said,
I'll give you some money and I'll give you some grub.
TJ heard their stories and got to know the people
his dad called old boys, and TJ instructed his force
(23:44):
to see old boys as people, to treat them with kindness.
You know one thing I told my guys when I
hired them. If you ask an old boy what's your
occupation and he tells you doctor, write doctor down because
she's probab probably a doctor. He's had a bad time somewhere.
(24:05):
His wife was leftyan, he's gotten into the bottle. Something
has happened to where he just took off. You know,
I needs ride in the realm. So TJ wanted his
guys on the forest to grant the hobo's human dignity.
And it was the same decency and humored TJ brought
to his work at the border. He was amused by
(24:27):
the chaos, and with four decades on the job, he
had a lot of funny stories. Patton daughter guy one time,
and I'm scared to death of snakes, and every pocket
I touched moved. I joke, back, man, what do you
got in that pocket? Parakeet? He had a bunch of birds.
(24:49):
He had birds in all his pockets. They were pair
of keets. Yeah, I mean, you don't go figure, I mean,
when the hell does that? But somebody that rides your train,
I get I don't know that compassion Joe learned from TJ.
Came in handy at the border. He interacted with so
(25:12):
many different kinds of people and still approached every traveler
with understanding. He could appreciate how difficult life had been
for some of them. These guys had been through so
much stuff, you know. That's why t J would always
tell me, the ali need is a little love, Joe,
Just like the song, all you need is love, And
that was very important about what I did. Man. Mostly,
(25:33):
Joe approached people softly, with curiosity and compassion. At first,
he recalled the time when a distraught man he found
in the yard became one of Larry's best informants. When
Joe found him, the hobo was racked with guilt about
the mess he'd made of his life. It's because I've
been doing some bad stuff, bro, You're never gonna understand.
May come back. Go you're liking Donalds? He goes, Yeah,
(25:53):
did McDonald's a long time bro? So I took him
to McDonald's right there, and over lunch, Joe found out
his guest knew a lot. Joe called Larry. This guy,
he says he knows about smuggling and all that he goes,
just keep him there, probably gonna stay here, man. He's
loving every drink and this and that. And Joe kept
the guy there till Larry showed up, and in the
(26:14):
end he gave them valuable information about drug smuggling in
the area. He's one of them, told me about coming
across with loads of dope, and he had done it himself.
They put the narcotics in a backpack about three rail
cars away in front of them usually or behind them,
and then they ride with the load to Chicago or whatever,
(26:35):
you know, passo through Larry and Joe. My eyes were
open to just how many different criminals use the rails
to do their business. I didn't expect Maryby to be
riding alongside potential narcotics traffickers. I asked Joe if young
women were ever informants, but Joe said the one time
he caught young women in the yard, but they were
expecting shocked him. I pulled him off the train and
(26:57):
then I just told him to stand by my vehicle
and I was getting all their stuff. And then she's like, so,
what are you gonna fuckers right now? Or what are
you gonna take us somewhere? I go fuck you right now,
what are you talking about? I go, no, I'm gonna
take you the rescue mission. She gets you could get
a shower and eat something, and then she goes, well,
because where are you used to getting abused and hit
(27:17):
and raped? And I go, well, what are you doing
here in the first place? And then she's like you
probably would understand had Ruby ever faced this, I wondered
how common it was. My guest was not very Although
young women travelers had told me stories about angry cops
taking their packs as evidence or patting them down in
(27:38):
a sexual manner, I'd never heard a story like the
one Joe told. Still, considering how much leeway cops had,
it wasn't outside the realm of possibility. What I found
out about the rails is there's different levels of eableness.
Right if you want to play with the devil, you're
gonna find them down the rail yard. And that's where
(28:01):
he catched her prey. So this was the Batman Robin
balance in action. Joe was the quieter guy, the one
on the scene who patrolled the tracks. Meanwhile, Larry worked
the streets. And because Larry had more power than other cops,
(28:21):
his mission to fight cargo. Theft had no bounds, which
was a good thing for Larry for many reasons. For one,
Larry is the aggressive type, wiley and confrontational, someone who
stood out among the other cops and enjoyed that when
he showed up in El Paso, he didn't mind provoking people,
like with his taste in music. When Larry was a teenager,
he discovered Jimmy Hendrix. Jimmy showed him another world was possible,
(28:44):
more than what he saw in his neighborhood. And I
prayed to Jimmy Hendrix every morning. Larry brought his superfandom
with him to the Union Pacific Rail coup offices, where
he built a little shrine to Hendrix. A lot of
other cops didn't like that, and in this mancho crowd,
a confrontation was inevitable. And every time Larry describes a
confrontation with authority, it feels like we're in a scene
(29:05):
from a lethal weapon movie. I remember the captain tell
you take that shit off the wall. You said, motherfucker,
that's God. Don't you fuck with my God? And they
were everybody everybody's got guns, didn't shit, And you're like
fucking screaming at him a god motherfucker and ars like,
what the fuck is going on here? Larry brought this
(29:27):
same determination with him on the beach. So while Joe
moved through the yard trying to find hoboes it could
tell him something about cargo theft, Larry moved outside it.
He worked the streets, even the local swap meets, to
get intel on cargo thieves. They had this space called
La Tita Edo. It was a sanctioned swap meet in
downtown El Paso. And I would look at the space,
so this is a fucking gold mine. And so went
(29:49):
in there and I would see these boxes and cases
of stuff stacked up, nikes and blenders and VCRs. Why
are the why of these poor people have this ship?
It would take like four or five boxes or whatever
recept that they had just stolen off the train the
night before. And then you could say, hey, dude, I'm
gonna open a store over here on our pastle Dude,
how many of these can you get? I'll buy this
(30:09):
one right here. How many can you get? Bro? Oh,
I got fucking three hundred of those, okay, ar we're
losing three hundred. You see how this rich bubble I
do Larry, but only because you explained it to me.
Cargo Fest was a seemingly unsolvable puzzle with a million
pieces of it scattered all over the border. It took
a special kind of mind to put those pieces together,
and Larry he came to this as his birthright. Larry
(30:32):
was raised in a working class neighborhood in Whittier, California,
twenty miles southeast of Los Angeles. His parents immigrated from
Mexico before Larry was born in Hollywood, and both worked
several jobs to support the family. Before he finished elementary school,
he joined a gang and it wasn't long before he
and the whole gang got in trouble with the law.
(30:52):
So in sixth grade, I got arrested with nineteen of
us got arrested. We had broken into my own school.
This gang vandalized his elementary school and did some real damage.
And this arrest was a turning point for Larry. Sitting
on a bench in the sheriff station, Larry got a
good look at the detectives and admired their style. I
(31:13):
remember them very clearly, like cussing. They had their guns exposed,
they had like t shirts on their guns out their
badge and their handcuffs tucked around their belt, and I
just liked the way that look. In addition to that,
they were like pushing each other, saying hey, fuck you,
and they're like, you know, they were like friends, the
(31:35):
same stuff that we did in the street. And I said, hmm,
this is like, this is like a gang right here,
and look at they've got guns. So Larry left the
gang and enrolled in the Sheriff's Academy, and shortly after
he graduated, he was recruited by Union Pacific to become
a rail cup Larry was intrigued as a kid. Trains
(31:57):
had run right behind his house, and he and his
gang sometimes broke into them to steal cases of beer.
He was still fascinated by trains, and this job offered
even more money, so Larry applied to the railroad police,
and in that uniquely Larry way, he decided not to
hide his gang pass. When he was interviewed by the railroad,
he bragged about it and guess what, I know how
(32:18):
to hop those trains. They're going what I know how
to pull the air and make the trains stop. They're
like what And somehow you think this is a good thing?
To be chainas fucking qualified, bro. I'm better qualified anybody
you know. Larry got hired and when he started he
didn't know the full story of the railcops. On his
(32:39):
first day, his training officer explained, absolute impunity came with
the job. He goes everything you learned in the sheriff academy,
forget it. This is a whole different role. That's all garbage.
This is different. This is the railroad police. I mean
that they don't have to follow a certain rule exactly.
They make their own. This is how we operate here.
We're bulls. We have the power, fed and stay. We
(33:01):
do what we want. We're in control. FBI. They can't
stop apart give him a ticket for going through a
red light. We can't. We give tickets too. LAPD can't
go to the US Attorney's office and file the case.
We can't. We're Feds too. We got both and there's
no public scrutiny, thank you none. You are a lawless
(33:26):
police force. We had some guidelines, but they're not mandatory.
They were mandatory, But did we follow him? Who's going
to keep our feet to the fire on that. After
seeing how Joe got treated by his co workers, their
lack of effort should be no surprise. I mean, why
do too much if no one's really watching? The guys
(33:48):
like Joe and Larry, they were different. Larry believes he
was one of the first Hispanic men hired as a
Union Pacific rail coop back in the nineteen eighties, and
the rail cop bosses told him straight out that he
was a diversity higher and they'd be happy to see
him quit. This put a chip on Larry's shoulder. He
would show them he'd work harder and smarter than anyone
(34:09):
else more arrest, stop more cargo theft using these broad
police powers in a world where there were a few boundaries.
Larry saw the possibilities he could become a legend, and
he did. He Pacific recognized his skills could help handle
the growing cargo theft problem in ol Passau. Assembling the
pieces of this puzzle brought him to the slopes of
(34:30):
Mount Christo Ray And that's where you see how all
of this happened. And I know these mounds like the
back of my hand because we used to walk up
here all the time and set up sir balances on
the US side. After gathering information about robbers Larry knew
how the thieves thought. He could see their trucks parked
on the other side of the border. A sure sign
of raid was on the horizon. This is obviously Mexico.
(34:52):
We're like, what fifty feet from the border, so this
was a real hard area to contain. The spot Larry's
showing me is one of the most dangerous and desperate
neighborhoods in this section of the border. The Book of
the Lobo. The Wolf's mouth is at the base of
the mountains where the trains have to slow down before
they ascend. It's literally a stone's throw from the tracks,
(35:13):
making it the perfect place for thieves to snap up cargo.
From his informants, Larry knew when there was a valuable
of train coming into the yard, one with flat screen
TVs or Nike shoes, and if his fellow rail cups
were too busy at the circle k, Larry had a plan.
So we were talking about source development and the FBI
was telling you how I had more informants than dated.
(35:34):
Big government agencies don't get involved unless the thefts are
large enough, and some are at the Book of the Lobo.
So Larry developed allies and other agencies. Larry told me
about the setup for one of his big raids. You
see the highest point of the first hill in front
of us right here, So we used to set up
in that saddle. Everybody was involved, the Phoebees, the customs,
(35:56):
the railroad police, border Patrol, sun and park last apartment.
We used to set up over there at night ten
o'clock till you know, six am, while it was dark.
We had blackhawks and night vision and everything. Once the
guys were in place, Larry would command the operation from
up in the saddle. That's from Border Patrol, I mean,
and digged themselves a hole maybe two days before low
(36:18):
crawl all the way across through the bushes, dressed like
a damn bush themselves. They went in there with their
little shovels and get in the dirt and cover themselves up.
And they lived there for twelve hours, yeah, eating, shitting
their pants, peat in their pants, just so they wouldn't
be found out and you know discovered. From the saddle,
the force had a great view of the trains route
(36:40):
through the Wolf's Mouth. As a train approaches, everyone is
in position up next. How the rate unfolds with the
(37:08):
train tracks running right by the border. The book of
the Lobo was the perfect place for thieves to strike,
judging from there. So what's in that train? Everything? Everything
you can possibly think of, from makeup to I mean everything, shoes, clothing, food,
I mean anything you can think of there, and all
(37:30):
those goods were vulnerable in this stretch of desert. After
driving in fast from the west. Trains slowed down right
by the border as they approach El Paso to climb
Mount Christo Ray. So the railroad police out here would
have a hell of a time because of trains, as
I was saying, would go up the hill a mile
and a half long train. But these trains are now
two and three miles long, offering a lot of cargo
(37:52):
theft opportunities. So no matter how many street gang and
cargo theft informants Show and Larry had, the trains were vulnerable.
And from up in the saddle, Larry could see the
whole thing play out. The train would only be going
twenty miles an hour or whatever. And believe it or not, yes,
these guys can jump on a train while I was
moving at twenty twenty five miles an hour without any problem.
(38:14):
Hopping a train moving at twenty miles an hour is
no joke. But these experienced thieves had no problem. They
just knew how to time it. They would jump on
it and grab onto a ladder, and they did it
sometimes with twenty thirty forty fifty pound backpacks on their
back full of dope. Once that first group hopped on
a train, the next step was to make it stop.
They would pull out the pins to make the train
(38:36):
lose it's air. The train would stop and these guys
would come across five fifteen, twenty thirty, maybe even forty
would come and start looting the training. And then it
was an all or nothing, free for all that These
cracked open containers as easily as they had hopped the train,
and they would come with bowl cutters. Some of them
just had pipes that fit around the high security seals,
(38:59):
and they would just work it back and forth until
they broke off and they opened up the container and
they'd have like six or seven, ten fifteen guys there
and they would just start unloading it incredibly. Sometimes the
robbery was even simpler than that. I mean, why bother
stopping the train at all. They would burglarize the train
as it moved. Also, they said, you know what, I
need to go to Alpasso. I'm going to burglarize the
(39:21):
train as it's moving and get some stuff and then
go sell it downtown. And it's a win win for them.
They get a free ride, they get their product, and
they sell it they make their money, etc. Etc. So,
as the train nears the book of the Lobo cargo
thieves emerge from the Mexican side of the border and
the whole operation commences. The black Hawks swooped down, light
scanned the tracks, Swarms of officers pop out of the bushes,
(39:42):
and dozens of cargo thieves are hauled off to jail.
But despite all this, despite all the fancy equipment and
the government budgets, Larry and his team weren't able to
make much of a dent in things. You know what,
we weren't very successful. They just this is their neighborhood,
this is their territory. They were in full control. The
thieves knew the area and were experienced at avoiding detection.
(40:05):
And these train robberies were a sophisticated operation. We didn't
have what it took to catch them. Yeah, we caught
a bunch of them a lot of times, but we
didn't catch them as much as I think we should have.
They were just quicker than us. They're desperate, I mean,
they wanted to eat, they wanted to get high, they
were motivated. How could Joe and Larry ever wrap their
(40:28):
arms around all this chaos. They could turn informants, pull
in Phoebees, bring in the Blackhawks. At the end of
the day, they were outnumbered. But even if Larry didn't
make a big dent in the cargo, theft and Opasso,
bringing in those government agencies was significant. Here was a
rail coup leading a multi agency government raid. History left
(40:51):
rail cops with overarching powers, and for Larry that meant
a chance to climb from La Sheriff's department training to
commanding the FBI. Thanks in part to the railroads and
from his perch in the saddle, Larry was the king
of the hill, able to use all of his colorful
background on the job, and he'd certainly shown those guys
who called him a diversity hire. Running this raid, Larry
(41:14):
felt powerful and like he was making an impact. At least,
he felt so good. Nothing could bring him down, even
the fact that the residence of the Book of the
Lobo were not Jimmie Hendricks fans. I learned Mexican music
because I sat up there so long. I would have
words and I would listen to words, and I'd be
up there tapping my toe, rocking out, listen to music
(41:34):
that they were playing down here, because it was the same,
you know, thirty songs, you know, day after day, and
they was loud, and they would all gather. It'd be like,
you know, twenty thirty forty of them out here dancing, laughing.
You can hear girls giggling and you gun fire, and
this just crazy. Larry's teammates would look up using their
night vision goggles and wonder what Larry was doing up there.
(41:56):
They would be on this mace up here and they
would see me over there and they good, to you,
what are you doing. I'm dancing, dog. He's not answering
because he's dancing right now. He's rocking out. And I
would they go away. They're gonna see you, man, No
fuck are. They ain't got night vision. I can't even
see the guy sitting two feet away from me. I'll
they gonna see me. Lay back down, shut up. This
(42:16):
is my operation. I'm gonna dance if I want to
Larry was dancing because even though he didn't stop cargo theft,
through this raid, he could get a piece that brought
him closer to solving this puzzle. By capturing thieves and
interrogating them, Larry might get information not just about cargo theft,
(42:36):
but about drug smuggling. The smugglers find every which way
they can to small little narcotics in the US, because
I knew about Tucson, I knew about Phoenix, I knew
about la I knew about you know, east and west
of here, one hundred miles several hundred miles. And then
they ride with the load to like they'll end up
going in the end to Chicago or whatever. And it
(42:58):
happens too on the way going south. We're always looking
for money in rail cars going back south into Mexico.
This smuggling network reaches everywhere the railroads do. But when
you talk about illegal immigration and drug smuggling, somehow the
trains rarely come up. In fact, what I asked Larry
to characterize the extent of the problem, he didn't mince words.
(43:19):
I will tell you every train's got it. Every single
train that comes across has got some contraband not just narcotics,
but like even merchandise that has not been cleared by
customs and they're sneaking it across because customs would delay
it or it costs too much to bring it across. Absolutely,
no doubt, every single train. This might sound like a
(43:42):
bold claim at first, but it happens in plain sight
on the Mexican side of the border. Alexei, who I
spoke with in episode three, told me about riding a
train through the state of Chihuahua, where Warez is. He
decided to hop a train home to Texas. After finding
his way to the tracks, Alexei was surprised to discovery
that in Mexico, train hopping is not a crime. It
(44:03):
takes place out in the open at whatever time at night.
The ground crews like Chowawa Chiwawa, just yelling it out.
And then all these people that I didn't see that
we're in the bushes all loaded up on the train
at once. I mean they were all up on top
(44:23):
of grainers. I mean it was probably like thirty something
people on this train. So I get on the train
and I remember being either a full moon or real
close to the full moon. With his new companions on
the train, Alexei moved through one of the most beautiful
landscapes he'd ever seen Chihuaha was Copper Canyon. I was
riding the train through Copper Canyon, which is just spectacularly gorgeous,
(44:48):
and I remember the moon reflecting on ponds and lakes
and just so so gorgeous. Lulled by the beauty, Alexey
was surprised when the train became in the slow and
then stop. You saw a dust cloud in the distance,
and then you got a close up view of the
drug trade from the Mexican side of the border, and
(45:09):
that dust pile gets closer and closer and closer and closer,
and this train went right before it stops, people busted
the locks on the top of the grainers and then
took out bales, hay bale size of weed, just bales
and bales and bales and weed. And then that dust
(45:31):
clue that I saw in the background was a truck
that was Ronnie doing this. Weed wasn't crossing the border
in the train, but the train was bringing it closer,
so smaller amounts could be smuggled across using other methods
of transport like vans or backpacks. And then they just
dumped all this weed on the side of the side
(45:52):
of the train, and then probably about say like ten
people or something like that all got off and loaded
up that truck burned off. Alexei witnessed a smuggling operation
pulled off without a hitch, in and out easy. He
was just a normal routine thing. The engineer must have
been in it. Yeah, like everybody was on it. Speaking
(46:18):
with Alexei, it's hard not to sympathize with Larry. He
had Joe, he had government resources, but in the end
he was another cop fighting against a challenge that has
thousands of people on the other side. No matter how
hard Larry worked, the problem of cargo fest was going
on before he got there, and still goes on now
that he's gone. But at the end of the day,
and never has been and never will be the railroad's
(46:41):
top priority. When the Border Patrol confiscated drugs smuggle on
Unie Pacific trains, it issued heavy fines to try to
encourage the railroad to get better control of its business.
But you and Pacific maintained that it couldn't control was
placed on its trains in Mexico. After all, it has
no jurisdiction in a foreign country. Surely the government could
(47:03):
understand that. How could Union Pacific forget that it owns
twenty four percent of Pharaoh Max, the same railroad that
brings Union Pacific cargo over the border to El Paso.
That was another dimension to my understanding of the rails.
Sure I knew about the risks of the train and
the hoboes, but smugglers and thieves that was something else.
(47:23):
Yet again, this world remains hidden in plain sight. Trains
spread their way through all sorts of terrible neighborhoods and
crime infested industrial sites, and no one thinks of them
as the connectors of one crime scene to another. And
there was Ruby making her way through it all. I
was exhausted when I got back from El Paso. There
was something about learning how the rail coops operated that
(47:45):
made me think maybe I'd had my fill of the darkness,
Like when Joe described young women in the train yard
bargaining for their safety. Maybe I didn't need to know that.
Yet there is that maternal obligation to worry and to
convince yourself that worrying is a form of love. If
I wasn't doing this mad investigation, running around the country,
talking to hundreds of people. Was I giving up hope?
(48:09):
Was I abandoning Ruby? So it was in my state
of frustrated energy that Ruby called. I was still unpacking
my stuff in my room at the barn, but the
first thing I had put together was my desk, my
reporting station for collecting info about what was going on
with Ruby, so my cell phone rang. I sat down
(48:29):
and pulled out my Ruby notebook to jot down the
number she was calling from. But the second she started talking,
I realized I wouldn't need my notebook. Ruby told me
she was coming home. She would take her time, but
she was on her way back when she left. Part
of her goal she'd had a goal was to see
(48:50):
the United States. On her way home, she would circumnavigate
the nation, starting in New York with a visit to
her brother, then up to Vermont and across the top
of the country. She had no idea how long it
would take, but I didn't care. There was an end date,
date uncertain, but there was an end. So just as
I was about to surrender, this brought me back. There
(49:14):
was a problem with all that I had learned. Instead
of some soothing image of Ruby in the box car,
gazing at fields of grain, I could actually imagine the
steps it took to hop a train, the dangers in
the box car, and the scary people in and near
the yard. Maybe my time in the City of the
Rails was coming to an end with Ruby's return, But
there was just one more story I wanted to get
(49:34):
before I left. It was a story about the people
who run the City of the Rails. It was about
the workers in the train yard. The power of the
railroad works in the favor of the rail coops, but
often that power doesn't serve the rest of its employees. Well,
when I'd been in Colton, I went to a retirement
party where I met Carrie Westcott. The guests were all
congratulating themselves for having made it all the way to
(49:56):
retirement because so few do. And then of them said
it was a shame that they did to Nikki, and
another one said it should be illegal, but it's just
the way of the railroad. So who was Nikki? Nikki
is just one of those people that you just always
want to do more for Gosh, she's just such a
good person, you know, and just has such a good energy.
(50:17):
They didn't like Nikki. Nikki carries herself in a way
that they don't like the alpha of male, black or female,
and everybody knows once Union Pacific puts their claws and
they're not going to stop until they can tamrinate you.
Like I used to say on Norfolk Southern, I said,
we hate them, and the reason we hate them is
(50:40):
because they hate us. Nobody treats other human beings in
the way that we are being treated unless they actually
hate us. Next we'll look into the relationship between those
who drive the trains and those who own them and
how it got to be this way. That's next episode
(51:00):
on City of the Rails se Montica seven, Motica Douster fourteen,
(51:23):
as well be drinking gasol. Look what You've done. City
of the Rails is written and hosted by me then
El Morton and developed in partnership between Flip Turn Studios
and iHeart Podcasts. Thank you to everyone who's been calling us.
(51:43):
I'm hearing from housewives, artists, current hoboes, and retired ones.
It's great when a story can touch so many different people.
We love to hear it, so please keep calling. The
number is seven oh seven six five three three three nine.
I want to help us out. You can do it
very quickly by leaving us a rating or a review
wherever you're listening to this. It will help more people
(52:05):
find the show, and it means a lot to us.
Want to follow along, find us on Instagram at flip
turn pods. Our team is executive producer and showrunner Julian
Weller and executive producer Mark Healey from Flip Turn, Senior
producer and editing master Abu Zafar, and producers Shina Ozaki
and Zoe Dnkla. Shout out to the Lady Squad. It's
(52:26):
just Zoe and Mean now that Emily and Sheina have
gone on to other shows, but we have new recruits,
Tricia Mukerjee and Jackie Huntington. Thanks for stepping in production
support from Marcy to Pina. Original music every episode by
Aaron Kaufman. I was so honored that Aaron wrote music
for this show. Those intriguing themes that I'm describing a
dark part of the train yard are the light ironic
(52:48):
ones when something unexpectedly funny is going down. That's all Aaron.
Thank you, Aaron for your deft touch and your occasional
editorial advice. You're a truth teller who doesn't blink in
addition to being a very talented composer. Our theme music
for this episode is Warrenson, Texas, performed by Barefoot Surrender,
Our logos by Lucy quing Tinia and uses a photograph
(53:10):
by Mike Brodie. Thank you to the Nation Institute for
Investigative Journalism and the George Polk Foundation for their generous
grants and support of my reporting on the rail cops.
I got these grants and more than ten years ago,
which shows just how hard it is to report this story.
And I'm not done yet. Any rail cops who want
to give me a call, You've got my number and
(53:33):
at iHeart. Thanks to Nikki Etour at Bethan Macaluso. We'll
be back next week in Colton, because I cannot get
enough of Colton on City of the Rails
Host
Danelle Morton
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