The Jordan Harbinger Show
1160: Tegan Broadwater | How a White Cop Infiltrated the Crips Part One
Tue, 27 May 2025
Undercover work is psychological warfare in designer jeans. Ex-cop Tegan Broadwater explains how authenticity beats acting when lives are on the line. [1/2]Jordan's must reads (including books from this episode): AcceleratEdFull show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1160What We Discuss with Tegan Broadwater:Drug enforcement is akin to treading water. Police work prevents drug problems from worsening rather than eliminating them, putting officers at extreme risk just to maintain the status quo.Undercover cops never use drugs. Officers use clever tactics like fake courthouse visits to build street credibility without compromising their cases or health through actual drug use.Gang operations are surprisingly business-like. Crips run complex enterprises with rental properties, specialized roles, and supply chains, though internal conflicts limit their effectiveness.Trust is the currency of illegal business. When drug dealers invite outsiders to their houses, it represents a major security breach and indicates significant trust in their criminal relationships.Authenticity beats acting under pressure. An undercover agent needs to stay true to their core personality rather than adopting elaborate personas that fall apart under high-stress situations that might out them in the field. Stay tuned for part two of this episode later this week for more tactical insights!And much more...And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here — even one sentence helps! Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course!Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom!Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger!This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors:The Cybersecurity Tapes: thecybersecuritytapes.comFactor: 50% off first box: factormeals.com/factorpodcast, code FACTORPODCASTProgressive: Free online quote: progressive.comAudible: Visit audible.com/jhs or text JHS to 500-500Boll & Branch: 15% off first set of sheets: bollandbranch.com, code JORDANLand Rover Defender: landroverusa.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: Who is Tegan Broadwater and what was his undercover work like?
That's a good question. I don't know if they were motivated by anything other than at that point they trusted me. So it was laziness. Convenient, so straight up convenient.
That's what I was wondering. Is it a concerted decision, like, I'm going to have my closest contacts over? You see The Godfather, they invite all the guys to the daughter's wedding, and it's like, look, we're social, we're friends, you're close enough to my family, it's my daughter's wedding, it's a whole thing, you're invited.
It seems like gangster version of that is, look, sit in my kitchen while my wife makes us some eggs and we'll do the deal there. Now you're in the inner circle. But it sounds like what you're saying is the guy was like... I don't want to drive all the way downtown. Just, it's fine. Come to my house.
Yeah, and that's a presumption on my part. They still played the movie role. I'd walk in, they'd close the burglar bar cage and lock it and shut the door, and then he'd sit back on his couch with a couple 45s pointed out, like it's some kind of, okay, we'll start rolling on this. But I just attribute it to that.
It still was a leap of faith, though, on their part, because it said in practice, even with people that were fellow gang members, they didn't do as much of that work. I would say I was the only non-gang member that I knew of that was actually in somebody's house wheeling and dealing at that point.
Yeah. Tell me how the Crips do business, because it actually sounds quite a bit like a real business where they open up a test market, they run their guys in there, and then suddenly they go, oh, this is a serious moneymaker. We got to get an experienced branch manager to go run these few blocks. It sounds kind of like that.
It sort of is. Yeah. It's sophisticated enough to where you think that they have an appreciable talent to actually run a business, but at the same time, They're street thugs. So there's these are 25 to 29 year olds trying to do a thing, but they're still street thugs. So in terms of their common sense is a little bit limited because their goals are to support the gangs.
They're still so selfish that they're infighting amongst different sets within the same gang and things like that. If they were really that prolific at running a business, then you wouldn't have different sets within the crip organization. You'd have crips as a whole. They could conquer quite a bit, but they're so fragmented. You just take on one aspect of it and take those down.
You have a bunch of people there. Then you take other ones down and you can actually get sometimes other sets of crips to help you infiltrate different sets for the sake of territorial command or whatever.
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Chapter 2: How do undercover cops build trust without using drugs?
Yeah.
So they either step on it or make it pure, however they're going to break it down. But my objective at that point was to move past them because you're dealing with crack. By the time somebody's bought it, they've already sent it to a house to cook. They've broken it into a hundred pieces and now you're giving it to me. I'm not interested in that.
So by not being interested, first of all, culturally, it made sense because I don't really have a game where people are looking for hard is what they call it at the time. Hard as crack or hard as cocaine? Hard as crack. And the powder was the cocaine powder. And then my objective, again, was you need to introduce me to the guy you get it from, ultimately. I see.
Because if you're getting it after it's been cooked, this guy's an underling from the cook who's an underling from the guy who gets the cocaine. You're skipping, whatever, three levels. by refusing to deal with crack, which is gross anyways. But like you said, culturally, it's sort of, you're not a druggie, you're not a user because you don't want crack, you want cocaine.
It's, oh, so he's gonna cook it or he uses cocaine or his people that he sells to use cocaine so they have more money because crack is just cheaper cocaine basically at that point, right?
Yeah, well, it all breaks down into you turn $100 into a million dollars pretty quick when you break it down into all those pieces. Like you would anything else, you sell a car part by part. It's a lot of work. But once you sell it part by part, it's worth a lot more than just buying the car in the first place. So it's the same concept. But my objective, again, it was difficult in a drug case.
It would be something that I could try to just work straight up that chain. But the problem was for me that even when I had somebody that was helping me get what I needed, I still had to figure out a way around that to go to somebody else because this wasn't a drug case. It was a gang case.
So I'm thinking, okay, I've got all these gang members that are all connected and affiliated and they're doing this business. This guy's kind of doing me righteous. He's getting powder, but I still need to move on to somebody. So I'm trying to find excuses to say, man, I can't trust you anymore and move on to somebody else who he's affiliated with.
and still not have somebody get totally pissed off because I'm trying to create a case where I'm locking in a bunch of gang members, not necessarily just, oh, I finally got the dope I want and we can close the door now.
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