i was injured at work trying to arrest someone. i popped a disk in my back. brian: at the time, what was your rank and where were you a policeman? mr. pegues: at the time i was a commanding officer of the 57th precinct in my rate was deputy inspector. brian: in the new york police department. mr. pegues: yes. let me to you the clip of president bush. talk about this moment because you talk about it in your book. >> this is crack cocaine. seized a few days ago by drug enforcement agents in a park just across the street from the white house. it could easily have been heroine or pcb. it is as innocent looking as candy but it is turning our cities into battle zones and it is murdering our children.

let there be no mistake -- this stuff is poison. brian: as you said your book almost right away, you sold that stuff. why? mr. pegues: i sold it because of the environment i grew up in. i grew up with gangsters and drug dealers and pimps. i was young, i grew up in welfare, i was in a family of 6, 5 girls and myself. my father left after the third grade. in my book i have a picture of me in the fifth grade and i'm sitting indian style of the front and i'm holding my feet because i had holes in the bottom of my shoes and i cardboard and it so that my socks wouldn't get wet. i had a rough upbringing. i have friends who were selling drugs so start selling drugs. so it marijuana, cocaine, crack cocaine came out and we started selling that. i was on the streets from the age of 13 to 18 years old, five

years. brian: what is the difference between cocaine and crack cocaine? mr. pegues: crack cocaine is rock form. like we saw in the bag. brian: what is mescaline? mr. pegues: a tiny pill that people take. they put it under their tongue. back then i don't even know if that stuff is still around but they did back then. brian: what is a lucy? mr. pegues: it was unlike what eric garner was killed for. he got killed for buying lucy, those little cigarettes. the origin of lucy was a lucy joint. instead of selling a nickel back right dime bag of weed, you have to roll them up yourself. we would roll them up for you and we would roll you a loose -- it was a loose joint marijuana joint laced with cocaine. it washat is a wooly?

a loose joint marijuana joint laced with cocaine. sprinkle a little bit of it in there. you get the high and the low. brian: smooth? mr. pegues: smooth was a very good friend of mine who i grew up with. he introduced me to the streets. the ironic thing about him was he did not have to. he had a two family home, mom worked for the telephone company, father worked for the post office. house, car, white picket fence. just because of the environment people up in, there were on the streets and he gravitated toward the streets and he brought me in on the whole drug game and i started hanging out with him. brian: why did you want to write the book? mr. pegues: i'm glad you asked that question. nobody really asked. you really reason i wrote it was for generations behind me. kids, grandkids, i wanted to know this life transformation i made.

then it morphed into this book i had to write and tell my story because i was put on the front page of the newspaper in new york city. they really took some shots of my personality, my demeanor, my character, they tried to vilify me. they called me a thug cop. i had to tell my story. the backdrop was that i wrote my own book and stopped walking across the stage, graduate. i was in the streets selling drugs, which the military unit , i went to the military, i graduated and became a cop and it was over. that was the end of the book until this newspaper hit. that i had to go to my entire police career just so i could lessen some of the stuff that was put out about me that was all lies. brian: here's the front page of the "new york post" that i think you're talking about.

it says "i dealt crack as a gangsta, nypd honcho reveals." when you saw that, what was your reaction, and how did it happen? mr. pegues: my reaction to that -- i was not happy. i did some crack when i was out in the street -- i don't know if i would consider myself a gangster. a gangster to me is like john gotti. i wasn't murdering people i was , a street hustler, i sold drugs, so i was a criminal. it was really bad for my family. my family had to endure that waking up in the morning. there's a picture of me with the president of united states and the book, maybe a future president, hillary clinton, michael bloomberg, ll cool j. i had such a fantastic life after those five years. then with me being on the cover it took all that away and it was not an easy time for my family. i knew i was never a thug cop.

the nypd has a federal probe going on now where there's going to be numerous executives locked up. those are thug cops. i never committed a crime is a cop. i was probably the cleanest cop for 21 years and the reason being i thought they were always looking at me because of my past, because of how i came to work dressed, because of my tattoos. i was so clean, i always thought it was a setup. brian: let's go through some brief outline of your life. you were born in what year in where? mr. pegues: 1968 in queens. brian: where did you go to school? mr. pegues: in jamaica, queens. ts 36. i left in the third grade. i got kicked out for pushing a girl behind the stairs. i got bussed out to junior high

school 158. i went to high school for an engineering program and invited some of my friends, some of my crack selling friends to play basketball. they had a riot at the school and beat everyone up out of the game, but i get kicked out of there. i ended up graduating from andrew jackson high school. 1987. brian: after high school and after 1987, where did you go? mr. pegues: the u.s. army. brian: how long? mr. pegues: three years and eight months. my enlistment was up, so george bush was the president at the time, he extended everybody's so i had to stay longer. brian: were you actually on duty the all-time? active duty in the national guard? mr. pegues: then i was in the national guard for 14 years for a total of 18 years of military

service. brian: that takes us up to what year? mr. pegues: march 1992. actually, march 1991 got out of the military. in january 1992 and went to the police academy. i became a policeman 1992. brian: how long did you serve as an active-duty new york policeman? we'll talk about what happened during your promotions. mr. pegues: 21 years. brian: i want to show some video of you on the street corner talking about where you used to sell drugs so people can get a sense of what it was like. >> this is my spot, right here. i spent countless hours here.

this is where the drug trade was. all day, everyday. there was nothing else to do but to sell drugs. it was cool, almost like a cool thing to do. the whole park was the supreme team. i had this area here, this area. supreme team, all the lieutenants had different colored caps on their crack cocaine. i might have the blue caps, so if you wanted blue you came over here. handball court there was another , worker, another worker on the basketball court. we had somebody down here by the baseball. there was crack over the park. brian: who was buying? mr. pegues: everybody was buying. when crack hit, it decimated that community. i was one of the people who was supplying that poison. but everybody was buying. you had friends, family members. i have family members on drugs. everybody. they came from all walks of life. people who do not have money.

people that was pretty affluent in the middle class neighborhoods for the most part. you had some people, nice houses, they were buying. you had white people coming to predominantly black communities. white people was driving in to buy. everybody was buying crack cocaine. brian: you talked about the vials. how much would each of those cost? mr. pegues: we had two files, a small and a big one, the jumbo. that will go for $10 or five dollars. five dollars for the little one, $10 for the big one or $20 for the big one. brian: how much should you make a day? mr. pegues: i worked two different places. i was a freelancer, that was not with the supreme team. but i was working on my own, what i would make $1000 a day. when i worked for the supreme team, they made upwards of $2000 a week.

-- $200,000 a week. brian: who was the supreme team? >> it was a drug crew ran by this guy named supreme. his nephew worked with him and he had a bunch of lieutenants, maybe five lieutenants. they had an iron fist organization. it was actually run like a fortune 500 company. i do not know if drug companies are doing this today. i would work shifts. tell :00 until 8:00, 8:00 until 4:00, and 4:00 until midnight. we got paid on fridays. it was a job. they wanted thing was, we worked the exact same hours as a police officer. these guys are smart. they emulated the police department schedule. they were so good that they started paying the police off. i talk about that in the book.

brian: did you ever get paid off as a policeman? mr. pegues: no. i could not be bought. i was definitely afraid. i thought it was a setup. nobody even ever offered me money. we stopped somebody with a bag of money and he said, i do not know whose money it is, as if to insinuate take it, i do not care. and i was like, no. i did the math, if he had $20,000 in there and i split with my partner, i can make $1 million if i keep the job for 20 years or this could be a setup. it just did not work. brian: where did you get the drugs on a day-to-day basis and where did you keep it when you are standing on the corners? mr. pegues: back then, a lot times we held drugs on us because the police were not as prevalent as they are today. the ironic thing is there is like 50,000 police officers. now there are 36,000.

they were not proactive, it was reactive. we just put it in a tire well, stick it in the tree. you keep some on you so you would not have to keep running to the stash. obviously you cannot carry 200. i would have a package of 300 vials . we just lay them down somewhere. brian: are there any team members that are still around that you know? mr. pegues: yes. brian: in this book, there are so many names. how many of those are the actual names of the people? mr. pegues: only two. brian: those two are? mr. pegues: supreme and prince. brian: was the other person in the video with you? mr. pegues: smooth. he went on to become a high-ranking official in law

enforcement also. people don't know. he changed his life. he went to catholic school. he went to catholic high school, and he went to a prestigious university. all while doing these things i was doing. he changed his life and become law enforcement supervisor. he just recently retired also. brian: here's the former mayor of new york city, rudolph giuliani. this is only about 25 seconds. >> the morale of the new york city department is so low. he blames it on me, he blames it on you. the reason the morale is so low is one reason and one reason alone -- david dinkins.

brian: you called him a clown. mr. pegues: i worked that detail, i will never forget. i was on the steps of city hall because it was going to be a big protest so they had to have police officers there. i will never forget that protest. these were all cops walking around with nooses, signs with the n-word. it was bad. i felt really bad to be a police officer. inwas probably the worst day my career. the things he was saying he was , riling up. it was basically a major racist protest, that was what it was. you can look back at the old footage. it is a bunch of drunk, white cops and a couple of white agitators such as giuliani egging them on.

saying nasty things about the mayor, kind of what is going on right now. a bunch of cops saying he is nasty. brian: david dinkins was black. and he was saying racist things? mr. pegues: the whole crowd. brian: what was the reason for him making a speech? mr. pegues: he wanted to become mayor. she had lost the election. david dinkins beat rudy giuliani. for the reelection, giuliani was going hard because he wanted to be the mayor. there were a few missteps by mayor dinkins. heights riots, the washington heights riots. it tipped the scale, and he won. brian: someone else to call the

-- you call the clown was a man called bernie. mr. pegues: former police commissioner. brian: why a clown? mr. pegues: here you have a guy who had a police career. his only claim to fame as a police officer was being a detective, which is on the same scale as a cop. cop, detective, sergeant, lieutenant, captain -- chief. he became the mayor of new york city and he made this detective down here and brought him and made him the police commissioner, the number one person in this paramilitary organization which is the biggest police department in the country. i mean, after having ray kelly as the police commissioner to bring hannah you know, he just , did four years of federal prison for corruption. that would not happen to a seasoned veteran. you go through the ranks, you know you cannot do this, you can do that.

leadership does not start down here, you have to work your way to the top. you cannot spring board there because he was your bodyguard. when giuliani was running for mayor, he was a volunteer bodyguard and he was made corrections commissioner and brought into the police department. he was the biggest joke in the department. it is well known he was not running the police. brian: what was your personal reaction when he went to prison? mr. pegues: i was like, basically, he was not prepared for the job. that was basically it, in my estimation. he was not prepared for the job. brian: since you publish this book, you made some people very unhappy. i want to run some video of the fellow that runs the police benevolent association. you have seen this before. explain it.

before we watch it, tell us what his job is? mr. pegues: he is the union president for 35,000 cops in the nypd. he is the union president. brian: right after this story came out -- by the way, before we do this, the thought of life thing, where did it come from? the tattoos. mr. pegues: i do not have my life on my neck. you can't write over writing. you have to laser my tattoo , then it would have a shadow. it just don't work. if you have cat and you try to write dog, it will not be legible. you cannot write over writing.

brian: where is it? mr. pegues: i have a tattoo of my wife's name on my neck. brian: you been married twice, which one is it? mr. pegues: my current one, brenda. brian: that is where the thug life thing came from? the police been and benevolent union, were you a member? mr. pegues: you go to sergeant , you change unions. brian: what was your highest rank? mr. pegues: deputy insepector. in a department of 36,000, a deputy inspector probably has 35,000 people under you. >> a month ago a retired deputy inspector was on a podcast announcing he once sold crack

in queens. >> he should not be collecting a pension. he was palling around with drug dealers. if he had information about drug dealers that killed a police officer, he never was a police officer. you should not be allowed to carry a retired id card in his pocket. that is a privilege. it is a privilege to serve, it is a privilege to say you did serve. he is not entitled to that privilege. they should look back, find out where he lied, pull his pension and never allow them to be a police officer. brian: what is your reaction? mr. pegues: that shows the major difference of a cop and an executive. even let's just say i lied to my application. he is so not informed that lying is what you called perjury and the statute of limitations is maybe five years.

if he was an executive you know that, but he is a cop just spewing venom. all he did was arrest people. brian: why is he mad at you? mr. pegues: he is standing next to eddie burns' brother and he is the deputy commissioner. he is upset because i know the killer of eddie burns. brian: when was he killed? mr. pegues: february 1988. until to the military brian: was the guy who killed 1987. him? mr. pegues: three guys were in jail for decades now. brian: the one man they were upset about, he is in prison. again, that's his brother. mr. pegues: you know what really gets me? there's no pushback.

he says i withheld vital information on the killing of a cop. do you think for one iota of a second that if i had any information leading to probably the most infamous murder in the history of the nypd -- if my name was on any sheet, any tag, any sticky, do you think i would've been able to be a police officer? no way the world. i can guarantee you that if i was implicated in any crime of murder. forget about the eddie burned murder any murder. , i never lied on the application. that was not one of the questions. if they were to ask you would've told them. i was scared, tried to get my life in order, i just got out of the military. i want to do my family right and i wanted to get this job because this would be a life-changing event for my entire family. first-generation police officer,

first one to get a high school diploma, first to go to college. first you i masters, to be a .rofessor i was ready to take life by the years into what is right and i was not going to say anything to jeopardize that. brian: what many circumstances of eddie burns being killed? mr. pegues: there was a murderer out there, a drug gang murdered a witness. one of the drug gangs that was friends with the supreme team. this guy ordered a hit on a police officer because he got locked up. this poor kid, eddie burns, was sitting in front of his house guarding a witness and three guys came up and murdered him. the other thing people about the uproar, i went to his memorial every year. i met his brother, his mother, his father, i met all of them, i did every year, i went there. but because i wanted to tell my life story, this transportation

transformation from selling drugs -- i did all this crazy stuff that i was never arrested and convicted of a crime so why should i not be able to tell my story? every month the nypd since a few -- sends a few hundred checks to prisons for pension checks for people in prison. they want to take my pension, but i never did anything. yearake $135,000 a tax-free. away.ant that taken mr. pegues: i have a lawsuit for slandering me and i'm positive it will be successful because i do not do anything. all i did was tell my story, like i'm doing sitting here.

i told my story, i'm trying to get a book deal. get as much excitement as i can. actually worked, we got the book deal. but i did not know i'll be on the front page next to derek jeter. brian: what year did you talk to the podcast? mr. pegues: 2014. july. brian: who is he? mr. pegues: a hip hop star. they all go on his show. i was able to leverage a meeting with him through my lawyer. they were all partners. he was fascinating. he was fascinated by my story . he wanted to bring me in. brian: how long did you talk to them? mr. pegues: about an hour.

that was the first time i publicly told my story. brian: after that the new york post put that on the front page. let's look at that headline again so people who may have tuned in late can see. there is the headline. thug cop. now i just want to run a little bit of the audio from the program. you'll have to tell me which one it is? just a brief excerpts of they can hear what started this. it is being published by simon & schuster. >> my friend grabbed me and said i needed to get these lossies loosies off. i think about eric garner, i he was murdered, i said

murdered, i'm a cop, he was murdered. that's what it was. at 13 i'm selling loosies. but they wasn't cigarettes, they were joints. brian: explain more of that, what you are talking about. mr. pegues: you asked me about loosies, they were marijuana cigarettes for the most part. brian: the accusation of murder, what is that story? in case people were not following it that closely. mr. pegues: the eric garner incident. he was a young man in staten island who try to sell untaxed cigarettes allegedly in front of a store out in staten island. the police responded to the location and pretty much were going to arrest him. he did not want to go at the time, it is on video. he had a little bit of pushback. was it enough for him to be murdered? i doubt it. was there enough to be arrested?

i strongly reject that as well. and he ended up being choked out and killed. the medical examiner, i was the first person to say this guy was murdered. you can check. i called it a murder because i knew the nypd put in a -- and he died by asphyxiation. this was a serious thing. this blue wall of silence is a serious thing. it is like i'm a brother's. keeper whatever you say, i will , go with you, don't worry. we will make the story up. we will make it fit. i never was a part of that. for me to come out and say that a cop murdered somebody, they did not take that too lightly. brian: you trigger another memory from reading your book. a guy named

o'rourke and greely. they are both irish? you have strong things to say about irish cops. mr. pegues: i have some strong things to say about irish cops when i was a cop. it was still the old guard. these guys were, i came in 1992. these guys were 17-18 years, they came in the late 70's. they were second, third generation. these guys were coming in, they had a lot of racist tendencies. they would not even speak to me. some of them would not even speak to me. i would walk in a room full of cops and say, how is everyone doing? they would look at me like i did not exist. i write one story about me sitting in the lunch room watching television eating my lunch in a tall irish guy comes in and turns the tv off right in front of it. i flip the table over and we were getting ready to have a big fight and everyone had to run it at break this up. it was so nasty. and disrespectful. brian: he had been a 20 years and you had been there how long?

mr. pegues: two. brian: he comes in, the but as you anything and turned the television off. mr. pegues: turns a writeup. it was not the first thing he did to me. they would use the n word loosely. i was in a predominantly white precinct. there were 300 cops and 28 blacks. we were spread across. my tour from 4:00-midnight, i could remember the names. there were four of us. it was tough. brian: how did you see racism? give us some other examples. mr. pegues: a lot of examples i could give you. most of it was, promotions, assignments, i talk about putting papers to go to this elite unit with my partner who

graduated the same day as i did. he's italian. i get the letter back saying you had two years on the job, you need three years to apply. we go to rollcall and they call him and said you have 20 minutes to go down to your interview. he was a really nice guy and he came to me and he had in his -- he had tears in his eyes. corey, i'm sorry. don't worry about it. do good on your interview. he ended up going to the elite unit. i was seeing things very early on. i had a few years on the job. nine millimeter handguns. we went from a 38. supposed to go by seniority. all the white guys under me with less time, they got theirs first. i had to wait in line to get mine. a lot of things. that made me stronger and wanted me to get promoted. one thing that could stop racism was being in charge.

when you are in charge, they do not have to like you, but it is a paramilitary organization. i tell you to move, you do it. i don't care what your feelings are. i knew if i was the boss, i can make change. brian: you mention your lawyer early. how much did he have to improve -- approve? mr. pegues: i have a whole staff of lawyers, that book has been heavily vetted. we had to go back and forth on names, places, take this out, take this out. so many draft of the book. heavily vetted. brian: how did you do the book? how did you put words on paper? mr. pegues: believe it or not, when i got injured in september, 2011 and had a major surgery, i knew i would never be a police officer again, as you have to be fit, even if you're are the boss. he have to be able to run and jump over a fence. if you get hurt, i would be a liability.

they would not let me work again except for exceptions. some people they do. i knew i was not one of those exceptions. i started writing my story in the hospital bed. brian: did you write this all yourself? mr. pegues: i wrote my own story. i walked into simon & schuster with a script like this, date books. i should add that picture in the book. i kept it journal every year. i kept a journal every year as a police officer. i did not write every day, sometimes every week or month. all the stories in the book, i wrote them already. when i walked into simon & schuster with my book agent, we sat down with harpercollins and everybody and they were looking, well, you wrote all of that and

you wrote your own manuscript? the book was written. brian: let me read something. we are jumping of it, but i want to get as much as we can. by the time they pulled the guy off of me, i was hot. i was seeing red. i was covered in cuts and scrapes, this guys blood all over me. we cuffed him, and i went to walking out to the bedroom car. at the top of the stairs, he stumbled and slipped out of my hand, i did not push him. i did not try to catch them either. i let him fall, and he went down the stairs handcuffed, headfirst boom, boom, boom, boom. , why did you tell the story? mr. pegues: i wanted to be transparent. the worst thing i ever did as a police officer. that is the worst thing. i could have killed a handcuffed prisoner by not securing him. that taught me right then at

that moment, almost like another incident, when they took the nightstick and stuck it up inside of him. whenever you are involved personally with a prisoner, it goes south where you are fighting, once it is over, somebody else should be the common figure that comes in and use it to the side and let them, i went from that day if i have a fight with somebody, i have to let someone else take the arrest. i was happy the guy did not die. you did not read the best part, he was hiv-positive. i had to be tested for a whole year. brian: you point to some of these things in the book, this goes back to your earlier life. how fly we were, what does that mean? mr. pegues: a lesson on slang. that means how good we look.

brian: what is good shooting? mr. pegues: i kind of hate that term. it is a police term. if the shooting looks like it is justified, they call it a good shooting. i hated that. any shooting where someone got hit with a bullet, not a good shooting. but in a police world, a cop would have a shooting with somebody, there's an and want ton, investigate the good shooting. brian: why did you tell us about your personal life? correct me if i'm wrong, you talk about having two women in your life pregnant at the same time. tina and teresa. you married teresa.

the children were born to each of those women around the same time. why do you tell us about that? mr. pegues: i wanted to be transparent and real. i put my life out there. some friends and not happy about that. but the only way i could come on c-span and to all the shows is to be real. and honest with people. that is one thing people understand. when you are honest with people, then they believe in you. brian: what was the story, this happened twice, when was the second time? how long were you married to teresa? mr. pegues: 8-9 years. just one child. natasha. brian: you call her tash. mr. pegues: tina had one child. corey is in queens. brian: how is he doing? mr. pegues: fine. i'm in touch with him. brian: which woman was most

upset when they found out? mr. pegues: you could flip a coin. i was living a double life. i had a girlfriend in queens cheating on the one of brooklyn. the one of brooklyn thought he she was my girlfriend. when they both found out, they were upset. brian: as you told us earlier, you have a tattoo. to do have another affair? mr. pegues: absolutely not. we would not be sitting here today. she would kill me. brian: she had children before? mr. pegues: yes. one. brian: how many children did you have together? mr. pegues: two. one big happy family. brian: where did you meet brendale, the other people in your family are cops? mr. pegues: i met her in third

grade. she is sitting to the left all the way in the corner with the bushy hair. brian: when did you get her -- get with her? mr. pegues: after my divorce with teresa. a few years after that. brian: what does she think of this book? mr. pegues: she likes the book. she's not happy with everything in the book. brian: when did she read it? mr. pegues: honestly, i don't think she has finished reading it. she is picking and choosing. it is very emotional. because of all the things, mostly with the whole new york post thing, very traumatic for her. she don't want to involve herself in it. she definitely read the early parts. brian: you are friends with ll cool j. and run dmc. mr. pegues: i'm friends with ll cool j and i was friends with

jam after j. we grew up in the same neighborhood. ironic thing, i talk about that in the book, crack and rap came up together. the rappers back then, they were not making big money. the drug dealers were driving the fancy cars. the pendulum swings today, all the crack dealers wanted to be rappers. ll cool j, i have a three or four second cameo on one of his albums. brian: you were a cop then? you were security for him, was that independent of being on the police? you were there and he put you in the middle of this. we have the clip. [laughter] mr. pegues: i haven't heard that clip since that day. brian: you have to listen very carefully. do you remember your lines?

mr. pegues: i think you fell off -- i thought you fell off kid. brian: this is from ll cool j rap song god bless. you can see the whole thing on youtube. you have to listen carefully, it comes in at the end. you can explain all this to us. i thought you fell off. ♪ brian: i thought you fell off. mr. pegues: he's bragging about what he got. i come in saying your people , saying you fell off, kid. brian: explain the world of rap and hip-hop, what is the difference? mr. pegues: it's all the same. rap is hip-hop, it is the way

you walk, talk, cars you drive, everything. brian: what is your ditty bop? mr. pegues: my walk. it's a ditty boot. after two back surgeries, it is not the same thing. brian: did it tick people off? mr. pegues: i had this walk. a confident step when you walk. a more pronounced than everybody else. brian: what is the bling thing? you say in your these people had so much money so they bought all this jewelry. mr. pegues: it is all dressed to impress, pretty much for the young guys. growing up, it was to impress the ladies and let the other guys know you are making more money than they are making.

i'm not blinged out. the bling is gone. we're older now. brian: let me show you a clip from the movie, you talk about in your book. tell us how close this is to the real world. >> i think my cousin also like the fact that you're in the tradition of joe kennedy. >> who? good. you have to rob to get rich in the reagan era. they are running a strange program. there are more disenfranchised. they act like it don't exist. meanwhile the rich get richer and the poor don't get a thing. times like these people want to get high. real high and real fast. this is going to do it. and make us rich. >> people going crazy over this? it looks like cracked off

pieces of soap. brian: how real is that? mr. pegues: a lot of hollywood to that. they say that that movie was largely based on the supreme team. i'm quite sure, i was a street hustler, i was not privy to the meetings he had with lieutenants. i am pretty sure it was like that. brian: was it an advantage to be a cop? mr. pegues: my advantage of being a cop, being a young black man growing up in the city, i understood what would go on in the city. police working fairly easy to me. if they had a in chinatown, it would have been harder for me to navigate. most of my precincts i worked in, queens, a great area, minority neighborhoods.

it was easy for me to fit in. as i was going higher through the ranks, i was able to impart my knowledge on officers that worked for me to tell them, listen, every time someone in the recall you son, they are not disrespecting you because you are older to them, that is how they refer to each other. i would just like drop jewels on them and impart knowledge. this is how it goes out here. in the suburbs, when they go to the park and projects, their part of the benches. they have no place to go. what will they do? a lot of police work is common sense. brian: nayshaun, call it the luckiest thing in my life.

the day the gun did not fire. explain that story? mr. pegues: that was probably december 12 or december 13, 1986. my son was born december 12. it was either that day i came home or the next day, i get off, come from booking and go on the block. my son was born. sean walks up to me and pulls a pistol out and says get off the block. you can't hustle anymore. i left. he had a gun and iran. i went home for two days and thought about what i was going to do. back then it was all about street credibility. i had to get my revenge. i decided i was going to kill him myself. with the gun i had. i had a nice little .25. i went down there two days later and i was so crazy back in. best then. i said i wanted to do this in front of everybody.

i'm going to go primetime at 6:00 when everyone is out there and i will kill him in front of everybody. for hitting me in the face with a gun. i walked down there and he walked up to me, didn't i tell you, i pulled a gun on put in his chest. i pulled the trigger three times and the gun did not go off. he pulls his gun out and start shooting at me and i run and a friend of mine turned the corner and pulled his gun out and started shooting at him and we ran into another house. my friend's mother would not let us come in the house. brian: what happened at the gun did not fire? mr. pegues: we were so young and crazy, i do not know anything about guns. it was a semi-automatic. i never racked the slide to put a bullet in the chamber. there was not a bullet in the chamber. brian: it is a just and that if safety to

assume that if that gun had fired you would not , be here today? mr. pegues: without a doubt. brian: did you ever shoot somebody? mr. pegues: some stories in the book, i can't give away everything. i had some brushes with guns, yeah. brian: i want to show you a clip of you in a barbershop. there is barbershop one and barbershop two. you're sitting getting a haircut and listen to the dialogue between you and the barber. [indiscernible] , he didare like, yo it.

the elephant in the room is, at care about jury duty, hold -- [indiscernible] they are not supposed to discriminate based on race. brian: fill in the blanks? mr. pegues: that is my youtube web series barbershop cop. i go to barbershops to talk about real issues affecting the community and getting real feedback. that is not scripted. that is live stuff out there. i just think of a topic. then we talk about it. it is not scripted.

it is good stuff so americans can see how young black men feel about cops and law enforcement in general. the point i was trying to make with that particular situation was that cops are getting paid, when i say this, i'm talking over $100,000 a year to make sure that they are not discriminating against people. i would tell my cops everyday check your attitude at the door. i may have a domestic violence issue at with your wife, but you will have to handle your job. you the look at everyone as an individual. cabinetry, police, drug dealer, police you are asking somebody that is 19-20 years old in most jurisdictions, six months of training who have never looked out of their mothers basement and give them a gun and tell

them to conquer the world. it's a tough job. i criticize police a lot. but when i criticize them talking about the bad place. that is a small percentage. overwhelming majority are just coming to work and doing their job, but you don't hear about them. you hear about the tamir rice, eric garner cases. every time you hear or see one of these cases, you look at the person's background, seven complaints, use of force, five substantiated, the guy was a mess. we don't find out about it until they kill somebody. we should be handling it. brian: where does your last name come from? mr. pegues: french origins. i traced my roots to north carolina. brian: you say in your book your dad was an alcoholic? mr. pegues: he was a functional

alcoholic. he went to work every day that , -- but, he was drunk every day. life: what year of your did he die? mr. pegues: he left in the third grade and he died my second year as a police officer. he came to the police graduation. it was one of the happiest days i had with my father. he told me he loved me that day. say that.ard him brian: what is the different feeling for you if a guy sitting here asking you questions is black versus a white guy? mr. pegues: it does not matter. i don't base the things on race unless it is quite obvious that there is a racial component. i'm comfortable in any setting. i have white friends, spanish friends, black friends. just when people show me racism pisses meces -- it oi

off. big time. there should be no room for that. i know what i made of and i stand on the back of the 3m's, m alcom, martin and megan. i would not be listed here without them. i feel strongly about that. brian: do you notice a difference in the question that white interviewer will ask you versus a black interviewer? mr. pegues: not necessarily. the combat jack show, no suit and tie, different environment. i got to interviews and if someone was to take a shot at me, they can try. it is hard to take a shot that -- at that book is everything is vetted and you can fact check everything. brian: what is the question you are asked all the time?

mr. pegues: how did i become a police officer selling crack cocaine? brian: you say in the book, but you never miss a day of school. you did not use drugs. mr. pegues: never did. my team around me smoke, that i did not read i do not smoke /my team around me smoke, but i did not smoke marijuana. rarely, we used to drink 40 ounces of beer. i rarely did that. i was so money hungry i just wanted to make some money, be able to take care of myself, did not want to waste my money. how my girlfriend. i do not mess with any of that. i never smoked a cigarette in my life. brian: still haven't? mr. pegues: still haven't. smoked a good cigar. had one last night. brian: what you want to do for the rest of your life? mr. pegues: i just want to go out and spread my message.

i believe i have a transformational story that can touch the lives of some of these kids and i want to start a nonprofit and open a computer center and have financial literacy classes for these kids. they are hurting out there. when they see me, they see somebody that looks like them. i can go to any community, get on the campuses and talk to these kids. a lot of kids are going through things. they think there is a dead-end. i'm here to tell them, you can make it. brian: is there a website people can go to? mr. pegues: yes. coreypegues.com i'm all over the internet. instagram, google my name. everything pops up. brian: we will show you the cover of the book so people can see the spelling of your name.

the title of the book is once a cop, the street, the law, two worlds, one man, corey pegues. thank you very much for joining us. mr. pegues: thank you for having me. i appreciate it. ♪ >> for free transfers or to give us your comments, visit us at q&a.org. programs are also available as c-span podcasts. if you enjoyed this week's interview, here are some other programs you might like.

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apple store or google play. watch live or on-demand at c-span.org. follow us at c-span on to your. cspan on twitter. bonhamzabeth discusses rights of protesters at the national convention. in cincinnati, chrissie thompson

previews the events. washington journal is next. ♪ host: good morning from cleveland on this monday, july 18, the first day of the republican national convention. the party plans on focusing on security today with the theme -- make america safe again. one day after three officers are killed in baton rouge, and following the deaths of five officers earlier this month in and the police shootings of alton sterling and philando castile. our question this morning -- how do we make america safe again? republicans, call (202) 748-8001 ,