QUITTING, TOURIST DEATHS, AND DRUG POSSESSION FOR SALE - 032

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This week on the Writer's Detective Bureau, quitting, tourist deaths, and drug possession for sale. I'm Adam Richardson and this is the Writer's Detective Bureau. This is episode number 32 of the Writer's Detective Bureau, the podcast dedicated to helping authors and screenwriters write professional quality, crime-related fiction. I want to thank Gold Shield patron Deborah Dunbar, from deborahdunbar.com and Coffee Club patrons: Joan Raymond, Guy Alton, Natasha Bajema, Natalie Barelli, Joe Trent, Siobhan Pope, Leah Cutter, Ryan Kinmil, Richard Phillips, Robin Lyons, Gene Desrochers, Craig Kingsman, Kate Wagner, Marco Carocari, Victoria Kazarian, and Rebecca Jackson. Your support keeps this podcast going, so please support all of these amazing authors by visiting their author websites and reading their books. You can find links to their websites in the show notes at writersdetective.com/32. If you have your own author business, you should be getting patrons yourself, so consider joining Patreon. It's free for you, and it allows your readers to support you financially through monthly micro-payments, so give your fans a chance to show their support by creating your own Patreon account right now. To learn more. Visit writersdetective.com/patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N.

I want to talk to you about quitting. Contrary to every sporting goods advertisement and pep talk you've ever heard, quitting is an option. A few episodes ago I talked about how I went back to school full-time while working as a detective, and then when I graduated, I had a whole lot of free time, or at least it seemed that way after such a crushing schedule. Back then I decided to pursue something that I thought would be fun to kind of fill that time. I somehow found myself going down this internet rabbit hole, where I found a course called "Adventures In Voice Acting," and it was taught by Tony Oliver. Tony was the voice of Rick Hunter in the 1980s anime series, Robotech, which I have to admit, I definitely watched as a kid. This class was held at a real-life working voiceover studio in Burbank, California.

We, this class of outsiders interested in this world of animation voiceover, got a chance to record ourselves reading dialogue that was translated from Japanese into English, and it was ... We were doing this while trying to match the action, the tone, and the timing of the Japanese anime video, the cartoon playing on the screen in front of us, and everyone in this class, I should mention, was brand new to this. It was an absolute blast. It was just the kind of like little kid kind of fun I was looking for, after finishing at the university, and it was ... I guess it was like a field trip to the center of the anime universe, or at least that's how it felt, and I really wanted to play. I wanted to voice a cartoon character, or a video game character, something fun that had nothing to do with my day job.

I did get a chance to do a few little gigs here and there, but I really did want to give this a shot. I kind of combined the two, this voiceover thing and my work. I was working an undercover assignment at the time, so I took this new interest of mine, and signed up to attend a voiceover convention using my undercover name, and I joined several hundred other wannabe and established voiceover artists at this convention. I learned a ton, and it also helped to cement my online undercover persona a little bit by instantly having a hundred and something real Facebook friends a week after the convention, so there was an added bonus there. But at this convention, I actually met one of the top voiceover coaches in the country, and shortly thereafter I became one of her students. She is a no nonsense coach, and she is not there to coddle you or stroke your ego.

She was all about transforming her students into working professional voiceover talent, that routinely booked high paying national advertisement spots, and her name is Nancy Wolfson. In my opinion, she is the absolute best in the business, and to this day I'll hear advertisements that I know were done by one of Nancy's students, just by the way that they read the ad copy, because they're just perfect. Nancy has an incredibly smart design to her curriculum and she doesn't want you messing up the foundational building blocks of these lessons by taking outside courses while you're in her program. But, of course, a new friend that I met at that voiceover conference invited me to a cartoon voiceover class at another voiceover studio. I was the only newbie in the room, and this class, was taught by the Emmy Award winner, Charlie Adler. If you watched any cartoons in the 1980s, you definitely heard Charlie Adler's voice, and helping run this class was the late Carol Anne Suzy.

She was a little firecracker of a woman that you would likely know as the voice of Mrs. Wolowitz, the unseen mother of Howard Wolowitz, on The Big Bang Theory. She and Charlie covered some key pointers in this class, and then got us in the recording booth. One by one, we, the students got our turn to read scripts as different cartoon characters in front of the rest of the class, and it was immediately clear that I was the only amateur in this class. Charlie was a consummate professional giving me constructive criticism, balanced with an encouraging word, but I knew it. I sucked. I have to be honest, I really didn't care about looking like an idiot in front of a class full of actors that I'd never see again, but I did feel bad about embarrassing this new friend that brought me along to this class, but it also made me realize just how much work I had to do to be at that professional level.

It seemed insurmountable. I called Nancy Wolfson. I told her what happened, and I quit. Unlike most coaches that treat students as meal tickets, and will do anything to keep you hanging on, Nancy agreed that it was the right decision and she wished me the best. I came to realize that despite Nancy's no coddling coaching style, she actually created a safe place to learn the craft of voice acting. I didn't heed her advice, and I unknowingly stepped out of that safe place to see just how much work I really had ahead of me, if I really wanted to become a professional, and I came to this realization that I didn't want it bad enough. While my voice certainly isn't horrible, it also isn't God's gift to the microphone, and I would have a lot more work to put in than someone starting with a naturally great sounding voice, or proper pronunciation of words that I just don't have yet, to be at that really professional level.

I'd never taken an acting class, so I definitely had that ahead of me, and to be honest, my heart wasn't in it anymore, and that's why I quit. Sometimes when the thing you are trying to accomplish feels like you're constantly swimming upstream, that may be a sign that this isn't the way, or the thing you should be trying to accomplish, but the experience itself may prove to be key in succeeding at something else in the future. You'll know when something is flowing the way it should, and when everything you try is like scaling a cliff face after another cliff face. I just knew this wasn't the path for me, so I quit, but I took that knowledge, that experience with me. By quitting this path, I was on the lookout for the right path, which came in the form of a conversation with a screenwriter friend I had while wine tasting.

He asked me a question about police work because it related to a script he was working on, which led me a few days later to launching my blog at writersdetective.com in 2015, and everything flowed. Then last year I had the idea to turn the Writer's Detective blog into a podcast, which is an idea I would not have even considered, much less have in my mind, had I not had the experience of chasing that voiceover whim to its end point. This podcast is the melting pot of my experiences as a detective, my interests in storytelling, my love of reading, my whimsical pursuit of voiceover, and even my experience teaching. As creators, we are always second guessing ourselves, and we're never sure if we should be quitting. The best way to answer that is to find the thing that makes you happy on many levels, and it's okay to quit the things that don't.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that even when you quit, you gain experience and wisdom. Experience that you'll benefit from in the future. Whether that's in the form of a new skill you can use, or wisdom in the form of a lesson learned, and a hazard to avoid repeating again in the future. It's up to you to decide whether quitting something also means failure. Life is short. We never get time back. So focus your efforts on what is most important to you. When something's important, you will make time for it, even if it's only a little bit every day. Those little bits are what will get you ahead, so just be honest with yourself, and don't waste the time and effort you have on a path that isn't right for you. Time is luck, so look for happiness or fulfillment in whatever path you choose. If you do quit, and later on you find that not pursuing that path becomes your biggest regret, go back and pick up right where you left off.

This week's question comes from Rick Wysocki, which you can find at frederickwysocki.com. The link will be in the show notes at writersdetective.com/32, and Rick writes, "Adam. Just listened to podcasts 30. As always. Excellent information." Thanks, Rick. "Quick question for you. If a prominent tourist dies in L.A. or San Francisco, I assume the local detectives have the case. If it appears it's not a random killing, do they work with a tourist's hometown police to find out about his family, love life, business problems, rap sheet, et cetera? Or do they get permission to travel to his hometown to conduct interviews? Or because it's interstate, does the FBI get involved? Thank you for your help."

Great questions, Rick, so yes, you assume correctly that the local detectives would keep the case. I'm not sure what you meant by prominent tourist, but, yeah, for the most part it would still remain with, say, San Francisco PD or LAPD, even if it is not a random killing. So, the initial reaching out to that hometown police department would likely come in the form of making a death notification to the next of kin, but if they're working a homicide, the police might actually decide to ... The local police, let's say, it's San Francisco Police Department, for sake of argument. The San Francisco PD would possibly get the permission from their bosses to go to that person's hometown, to make that death notification in person, while at the same time launching interviews and interrogations for anybody ... Maybe not at the point of interrogations at this point, but certainly start the interview process. There would be a significant value to being there when you, as the homicide detective, are the one to deliver the news that a loved one has passed away, because you're able to gauge that initial reaction.

It might be valuable for the San Francisco detectives to do that in place of just farming that dirty work out to the local police department to do. They could potentially reach out to the FBI. That might be the case if the local agency, rather than it being San Francisco, let's say, it's a really small agency. If we're keeping it in California, it could be an agency up in the real northern California, up by the Oregon border where you may have an agency that has fewer than twenty people. They may not have the funding, the personnel, or the resources to travel to that other location, so they could either turn the case over to another local agency that's large enough to handle that, or rely upon either the local detectives in that town, or get the FBI involved to go out and do that interview for them.

If they got the FBI involved, they would do so by reaching out to their local FBI office, and then that FBI office would ask an agent in the closest FBI office to where that hometown is to conduct that interview. Realistically, the best way to run this case would be for the local, the San Francisco detectives, to go out to that hometown to conduct that interview. Getting permission that would simply be permission from the case agents, the detectives that have the case, get permission from their boss or bosses, their chain of command, to make that travel. Cause it has more to do with the expenses incurred, not so much a legal issue because, if you're working in a case, you have to kind of go where those leads take you. I myself on cases have traveled all around the country, whether that's to interview witnesses, or attempt to locate suspects, or even go travel to the studios of America's Most Wanted.

Yeah, being on a homicide case definitely can lead to travel all over the country, so it would not be farfetched for that to happen. Whether or not the local detectives notified the hometown detectives, so the San Francisco detectives, whether they tell the hometown detectives that they're coming into town to work the case, standard protocol would be to notify the local police department, especially because you are essentially operating without any kind of home base. You don't want to be bringing people to a motel room to do an interview, so it is pretty common to essentially use the interview room at the local police department to conduct those interviews, and kind of get help from the local agency. Most police departments are very willing to help as best they can.

Then of course, if they suspect that it's not a random killing, they will also be looking into anybody else from that hometown, trying to find any kind of knowledge of anybody else that was also, especially if it's from a small town, you know, finding out information that may lead to a potential suspect, not just information about the victim. Thank you again for the question, Rick. You can find Rick's work at frederickwysocki.com, and again, the link will be in the show notes that writersdetective.com/32.

This week's next question came from the Facebook group asked by Simone Leigh, and you can find her at simone-leigh.com. That's L-E-I-G-H. Simone asked, "If a suspect is found in possession of drugs, say cocaine, what sort of amount would be considered personal use, and what would have her labeled as a likely pusher?" Obviously a significant amount of drugs, cocaine, more than a personal use, more than what you could use in one sitting, might be enough to be considered possession for sale, but it would also ... It would really be the totality of the circumstances. It would be the evidence that was found in addition to just the drugs, so the money that the person had on them, or if there were additional sales-related pieces of evidence. One of the key things that really ties it all together, which we haven't talked about on the podcast, is an officer or a detective's training and experience.

I can arrest a guy for having one small bindle of cocaine. Let's say, it's a gram, which is a gram ... The easiest way to visualize what a gram of a powdered drug looks like is a sugar packet or a Sweet N Low packet. Often, it's in like a tiny one inch by one inch Ziploc baggie. That is personal use, and let's say I'm arresting a guy, and that's the only drugs he has on him. If I can show that the guy also had a big wad of cash, that based on my training and experience, I can say is consistent with the sales of multiple baggies of a gram of cocaine, that may really help my case, or especially if I find his little notebook with a list of names and numbers next to it.

I can attest based on my training and experience that I know that to be a pay and owe sheet, which a normal business would refer to as a transaction ledger. It's a record of sales, of what people owe him because he's on credit with his dealer, his other dealers that are below him. Or his digital scale, which I can, say based on my training and experience is a tool that most drug dealers use for weighing out. They're separating their bulk inventory and turning it into individual bindles for sale, so using those things, the money, and the notebook, and ... You don't necessarily need all of them, but as long as your training and experience explains why these things that aren't necessarily ... It's not a crime to have a scale, it's not a crime to have a notebook with numbers in it and names.

But if you can tie all of that together in the totality of the circumstances and you use your training and experience, you can obtain probable cause to arrest the guy for possession for sales of drugs, which can be increasingly important in states like California, where I am, where we've nearly legalized personal drug possession, but the sale or the transportation for sale of drugs is still a felony. The real lesson here is that training and experience of a detective, or training and experience of an officer, can have a huge role in getting to that probable cause level that we've talked about before. When I was a brand new narc, I remember a senior narc pulling me aside and showing me an empty box of sandwich baggies, like the cardboard box, and then he showed me one that had been thrown away, pulled out of a trashcan.

It was essentially an empty sandwich baggie, but the corner had been torn off, and so I'm looking at a sandwich bag that looks like somebody took a bite out of the bottom corner and he said, "I'm giving you training. You are getting experience because I'm going to teach you that drug dealers will take their, let's say it's cocaine, put it into a sandwich baggie, and then do like a little overhand knot and then pull the rest of the Baggie away." That piece that was torn off is now essentially a bindle of what is almost an ounce of cocaine somewhere, which we found of course elsewhere in the house, but ... It's about a golf ball size, if you're trying to envision what, or maybe a ping pong ball size of powder, but if you were to take a ping pong ball and sticking in the bottom corner of a sandwich baggie, tie a knot and rip off the rest of the baggie, that is common packaging for bulk, like an ounce worth of drugs.

I learned that specifically at a search warrant by a senior, a veteran narcotics officer, or narcotics detective teaching me, this is something to look out for. Now, years go by, I'm working multiple cases, I'm now passing that knowledge down to new detectives as well, and I'm using it in my search warrants. I'm using it in my arrest warrants, where if I pull over a car and I find these torn, the remains of sandwich baggies where it's like, well, you had a box of 50 sandwich baggies and all 50 are missing the corners. That's a pretty good indicator, based on my training and experience, that this guy might be a drug dealer, even if I don't have any drugs in the car. Obviously it would help to have drugs in the car or something else that points to that. But that training and experience can be the difference between, this is just a weird bunch of thrown away sandwich bags, versus this is evidence that this guy's actually possessing drugs for sale.

Thanks for listening to Episode 32 of the Writer's Detective Bureau, and if you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you hit that subscribe button that way you don't miss an episode. If you belong to a writer's group, would you do me the huge favor of sharing this podcast? I'd love to help more writers if I possibly could. And just a reminder, this podcast runs on questions, so please send your questions in. You can do so at writersdetective.com/podcast.

Thank you so much for listening. Have a great week.
Write well.