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Audio digitally transcribed by Otter.ai

Introduction 0:01
Welcome to the #PirateBroadcast™, where we interview #interestingpeople doing #interestingthings. Where you can expand your connections, your community, #kindnessiscool and #smilesarefree.

Russ Johns 0:14
Let’s get this party started. Happy New Year, everyone we are happening, we are just happening here in the v. And I just wanted to welcome another pirate into the community. Welcome, Deron, how are you today?

Darren Burch 0:31
I am doing great. It's a brand new year, and thank you for having me on, I really appreciate the opportunity.

Russ Johns 0:37
It's my pleasure, it's my pleasure. And we were talking, we were rambling on with each other before this party, it's like, oh, we should probably go live with this thing.

Darren Burch 0:47
Because we had good stuff.

Russ Johns 0:50
You know, one of the things that strikes me as being an obvious conversation that we need to have with the community is, you know, coming into the new year, 2020 was such a an amazing, challenging, just a lot of changes for a lot of people. And I just wanted to recognize everyone in 2020, for all the great things that took place. And also all the challenges that people push through and made it to the other side. And I don't want to diminish anybody is still going through challenges. And 2021 You know, we're not through this thing yet. We're still going through it. And I just wanted to take a moment and recognize that everyone has an opportunity to...like the show yesterday, we were talking Darren and I were talking yesterday on yesterday's show about the message of kindness and just be a little patient with people have a little patience and have a little consideration and empathy. Because you don't know what people are going through right now. And I think I think Darren, you're a giver and supporter of the community, you're one of the helpers in the community. And thank you for serving as an officer and thank you for doing the things that you do. And being who you are in supporting everybody that you're involved with and engage with. So take us through a journey and talk about how you arrived here where you are today and, and some of your background so people understand who you are.

Darren Burch 2:29
Absolutely. And I totally agree with you for some people 2020 isn't over, there's people that are sick, there's, you know, we've all been touched and hurt by this. But that same adversity that you're talking about that we went through also connects us in a very strange way if we look at that silver lining, so I do want to do a shout out to all of us. We're all in this together. We all have you know, we're all in this together. And to your point about the guest yesterday in your beautiful show where you talk about #smilesarefree. It is about kindness. My career started oh my gosh, really. I'm in high school. I was at a huge kegger party. I was one of those I don't want to say a bad boy but you know I was drinking alcohol we had four buddies were you know listen to music at the desert party and you know, life couldn't be better you know in the 70s late 70s and saw horrific tragic event you know unfold where as on the drive back and we were smart we had designated driver Thank God. But apparently one vehicle didn't in behind us. They pass they crash. So one vehicle accident to a pole. I had this overwhelming need to get out of my car, my vehicle I was in the back seat of a pacer of all things AMC Pacer, so, I'm really dating it with that reference. And I'm literally jumping out the window before the vehicle stops. I just had this this uncontrollable urge to just rush, if you will, into the fire. And so I ran over there and sadly fell over the body of one young lady that was ejected through the windshield. Horrible, like something out of a horrible, horrible horror movie and ended up with pulling out two of the occupants. And sadly, we couldn't get the other one out. And there's something that's stuck with me. But it also showed me that police work is something I could do and something that I think was kind of meant for in terms of this overwhelming obsession really to save lives because I lost one that night, I couldn't get to her. I ended up getting married young, gain the military becoming a single father got out of the military. So now I am this young 20 year old buck with a son. And I want to find a career path and the jail, there's a brand new jail called Madison Street jail, brand new opened up. And it was, you know, anyone with a high school diploma, get it get in, I think they needed bodies, you know, right. And so I never thought about myself as being a police officer or protector of the community, that sort of thing. I just always loved helping them, which is, you know, I think it's so important for to be a police officer, if this is the type of career you want, especially now as we see there's a lot of ugliness in the world. And there's a lot of finger pointing and a lot of anger to and some justifiable. And so, I found myself at a crossroads where, you know, I'm gonna put in for this job, and I could not have made a better decision, absolutely fed my heart, my soul. I've saved a lot of lives. It just was wonderful career path from patrol to bike squad to detectives, working burglary, sex crimes, child crimes and homicide. And at the end cap of my career, I was the silent witness. And here locally in Arizona or Maricopa County, specifically, the Silent Witness program is a Crimestoppers program that allows the community to have a voice albeit anonymous, but it's a loud voice. And it solves a lot of crimes, a lot of crimes. And that was we were so successful. My squad and I that we increased our arrests by 50%. But it's very unusual, and very unusual model in the sense that the more arrests you make, the more money you pay out and rewards. So we're kind of, you know, killing the bank of the sandwich on profit. They're scrambling trying to bring funds up, because it's all a nonprofit. Like I said, I had this gig on rock'n'roll morning show called Katie kp. And the whole purpose of the signup with the sergeant, or the director is to not be the face, but be really the voice of the program and talk about the crimes and solicit these tips and give the victims and their families a face and a voice for justice. And that connects, that resonates with everybody. Because all the good people and there's so many good people to the point of your broadcast, you know, there's so overwhelming a majority of the citizens are good people that care. And this rock morning show was just one of many outlets locally and nationally. You know, it was on CNN and Fox and so forth, also sometimes with the big cases. And the show was great. But they wanted me to do that stupid suspect story. And this was in 2008-2009. I didn't really trust the internet. I didn't really trust what, you know, are these real stories? Who's who's writing this? You know, it's not coming out of a newspaper? I don't know.

Russ Johns 8:09
Where's the story coming from?

Darren Burch 8:10
Thank you. And so and at that time, I didn't know enough about the internet to vet these stories. So I asked them if I could just tell my own stupid stories, more dumb, Darren dilemmas, stupid suspects. And it just got huge in terms of their followers liking the show. And I was coming out of the studio one time and I hate to use the word fan came running up to me said, Oh my gosh, you're blah, blah, blah. And you should write a book. These stories are hilarious, and they are depraved. They're demented. They're dark, they're sometimes delightful. And so I thought, wow, you know, if I could learn to write with something other than crayon, maybe I could do this. And so I was fortunate when I was doing the show, I would do an outline of the different things I would do cuz I understood radio at that point, where you know, it's very fast, you know, am FM old school broadcast rail, it's all about time. So there would be the first line would be a statement than joke statement, joke statement joke sort of thing. So I had an outline,

Russ Johns 9:19
then you had cut to a commercial.

Darren Burch 9:25
And so with all that having been said, I did, I wrote the book. And it became cathartic because at first I was intending was a kind of coffee table book where you would just read one faster after another. It wasn't about me, it was about these crazy things I've seen. And I wrote about what I had just mentioned to you in the very beginning of the of my speech, my ramblings about the car fire, and I gave it to someone to kind of review it A reporter actually. And she said, Oh my God, that's actually the first chapter. And then I'll say the book became almost a memoir of my life in terms of the dark cloud that followed me. And not to give things away. But we all have tragedies, and I had a horrific tragedy. And so, at the end of the book, The first book, I, I tried to write a little bit about that, because it did mirror a huge event that occurred in the valley when we had the baseline killer and the serial shooter some Sam demon, Dale Hausner. When that huge horrific serial murder spree by three horrible monsters in tandem, and coinciding as well, my tragedy unfolded on the witness stand. And so I, it was difficult to write it really was, but I did the best I could, you know, like I said, I take a lot of deprecating pokes at myself in terms of you know, the hardest part was a process to turn the crayon markings into, you know, print that process. So it was a, it was really a wonderful experience in terms of writing something that was both cathartic. And was, was a fundraiser was successful, we got Silent Witness, close to $10,000. From the book to date. So I felt really good about that. And it was humbling to see how successful it was. And that's all based on, you know, the pirate concept, you know, off the grid, social media, just people talking about it. It wasn't a technical bestseller on Amazon, but was at one number on top 1% for many, many months, so it was a best seller, if that makes sense. It was best.

Russ Johns 11:58
Yeah, absolutely. I want to go back there. And because because it's interesting, you know, the response that you developed during that car wreck, you know, years and years ago, and I became a firefighter, and an EMT. And it was not necessarily from the same kind of circumstance. It was more around the idea that I can help people. So what do you think it was that took you down the path of a police officer versus a firefighter? or community service?

Darren Burch 12:37
A real succinct answer, I wasn't smart enough to realize that a firefighter is the best job in the world. It's that simple. Yeah. You know, you'll have to be in the job as a cop for a couple of weeks and realize, why didn't I go over there? What was I thinking?

Russ Johns 13:00
But I just, I just think about that. And you know, everything that we do is a decision, everything that we, you know, we contribute to our outcome by making these little tiny choices every single day. And I know that you've probably seen stories and things where things just got out of hand, they got out of control. And the next thing, you know, tragedy ensues. And, don't necessarily want to give the book away or anything that you're doing there. I just want to highlight the fact that they're on the opposite end of the spectrum. There's a lot of good people that are out there helping and supporting in working toward a better outcome.

Darren Burch 13:47
Not only do I agree with it wholeheartedly, but I really appreciate you bringing focus to that. And by the way, thank you for your career in your service to your community. As a firefighter. I have fun with that. And cops and firefighters always kind of mess with each other. I know. But it's absolutely love fest. It's absolutely love fest because firefighters are running into the fire just like we're running into the the gunfire. Yeah, to your point regarding to do this job, whether it be a firefighter or police officer, any first responder and what's, again, kind of go back to whole COVID in 2012 it really woke up a lot of people to the heroic nature of our medical service and the nurses and doctors and what they do, and, you know, everybody, you know, the people that are stocking our grocery shelves, you know, it really did Really? Yeah, so there's a silver lining to the horrific pneus of 2020 and hopefully will always be in hindsight 2020. But, yeah, it did wake us up to the really good people that it's all about community. And to your point about there's so many good ones meaning trueblue loving the community as part of the community police officers that are going to work putting on their uniforms and and just, you know, seeing such horrific tragedies, and then a certain loud few and very few, actually, but it's just because it's placed in the media so perfectly. And it's newsworthy, I'm not throwing down the media for for, you know, showing it, it's newsworthy. We all saw George Floyd murder, we all saw it play out. And we had a collective, one singular voice of the horrific deaths of that event. And suppose police officer as I watched it, and the cold callous nature of it, and way, he was just kind of looking at the camera, or in this case, a cell phone. I couldn't help but think and again, my bias of being a cop for so long. I it looked like he was dispensing some kind of street justice. It was disgusting. But that is one rotten apple of almost a million, a million, you know, men and women who risk their lives every single day. And I have 30 years of experience seeing the best of the best. And there's only been a few occasions and there have they have happened where I had to pull someone away a fellow officer and say, What are you doing, you know, calm down, because the adrenaline gets to you. But that was George Floyd. I won't say it officer's name. I won't ever say his name, just like I hate, say names of the serial shooters and things like that. We don't want to give any, any way. weight to it. Thank you. Absolutely set, well said. But when we saw that we had a similar voice. And instead of using that, for good reform, because police work is about constant reform, it's always reforming because we're reflective of the laws of the community when the laws change, like marijuana, and those laws change the police change with it, you have to and you have to adapt to the community you're serving. So when 911 occurred, we saw that tactical aspect of police work or selling, we became very, you know, vigilant minded in terms of terrorism, because it can happen with any kind of infrastructure, and it kind of soft targets, you can see that so we had to up our game, tactically sad part is that we lost a little bit of community policing concept with that duality between, you know, being tactically minded, almost militarized.

Russ Johns 17:44
I love what Angie says. Right? Almost nobody takes videos of heroic officers. There's some out there, though.

Darren Burch 17:53
Thank you, Angie,

Russ Johns 17:54
Thank you so much, Angie, and, you know, I just have to pause and say that every industry every, across the board, there are people that are doing great things, amazing things every single day. And, you know, in all fairness, because I've been in the news, I've been in advertising I've been in in the industry for so many years that there are, you know, tragedy and, you know, train wrecks get, it's newsworthy, and it usually gets eyeballs, and you know, nobody speeds past the wreck, they always slow down for it. You know, and there's a reason that it's, it's attention getting, and I just want to make sure that we recognize here, that even though a person or an individual does some things bad or went down a path that wasn't acceptable, it doesn't mean that everyone around them is also guilty. So I just you know, it's just I just want to recognize the the people that are working hard to do good to support the community and make a difference out there.

Darren Burch 19:09
No, thank you. Well said and again, thank you, Angie for that comment, and you're so spot on. Unfortunately, like you said, you know, the the screaming, the yelling, you know, that causes attention in the media and they're doing their job and I'm not saying anything bad against media. I had such wonderful contacts with the with the news, journalists, having been the Silent Witness director here in the valley. You know, very few, again, it goes back to the old you know, one rotten apple and in the apple cart in terms of, you know, journalism, police work all of it quite frankly. Now, I look at my career as literally a blessing in terms of being able to serve my community and honor truly an honor to be served and having been in the military. I just love it. And now having retired, I found myself wanting to write this book and still trying to help now the blue line and try to build bridges between commuting and cops because it's definitely sorely needed sadly. That's why podcasts like this are beautiful.

Russ Johns 20:21
I was just gonna say cuz I think you're doing some other things around that subject and being able to get out there and you know, share the message and actually encourage people to you know, see a difference perspective is is always i think it's it's well needed it's just you know deserved in the people that are out there serving and showing up every day and doing the things that are necessary to keep us all safer. You know, they need the recognition and someone like yourself that's been involved engaged at the frontline and and doing and serving others is really an honor to see and watch unfold. So keep doing great work.

Darren Burch 21:00
Oh, no, thank you. I appreciate that. It's funny because when you talk about you know, the podcast, I would love for every officer be able to have that voice and police officers don't when you're on the department and you're working, you no longer have a voice where you can talk about things and that gets a lot officers in trouble because when they finally do get on social media now they're venting, nothing good comes from venting guilt. All the officers listening to me, please get off of social media, bad things are gonna happen to you. Wait till you retire and then talk about it. And that end when when the book came out again, I didn't expect it to explode and become as popular as it was. It's just amazing how it's just kind of gained a lot of traction and I ended up in a meeting with Dave Pratt and people that are you know, Arizona's know who I'm talking about. He's the mayor he's a morning mayor he was legend you know, he's howard stern type character for those listening in some other states. He's just huge. And he created he evolved from old school radio and musician and entertainer extraordinary Hall of Famer to owning a studio and creating a studio for these type of broadcasts like yours. Yours is a very professional podcast, by the way. Wonderful host, wonderful atmosphere that you've created and provided to your listeners. And your watchers. You got video. This is beautiful. I mean, other than I have a face for radio, but other than that, it's a good you know, outlet. But yeah, so he got myself a officer by name of Jason Schecter Lee who was in a horrific car fire. And he's known not just in the valley, but across the nation world as a as a motivational speaker, and he put us together. And it's such a beautiful marriage because we're the odd couple, we are totally different. So many facets, you know, from I love football, he loves baseball, you know, just you know, I'm a dog guy. He's a cat guy, you know, whatever it may be, we're just totally different. But we both had that same love of community, we've had the same True Blue heart. And he put us on Dave Pratt put us together on a show called badge boys. And we just had our 100th show, which is nothing compared to what you've done. You have like 300 shows. We're still in our infancy but...

Russ Johns 23:18
Congratulations cuz you know, doing a podcast and continuing to do it and find an audience and build a community takes effort.

Darren Burch 23:27
We love it. Absolutely. Every WEDNESDAY we come into studios, Star worldwide networks. to plug Starwidenetworks.com for Dave Pratt. He gave us this outlet and allowed us to have some wonderful shows. We've had people on that were on the north tower when 911 hit. We had Mary Jo West who was a Hall of Fame journalists in her own right when the gunman came into a new station and held them up to to say his rambling home live TV in Phoenix, to the one of the guards from the horrific Louis prison, which was the longest hostage situation in our nation's history. We had him on he's never spoken. And so to have these people and give them a voice again, that voice is so important. But people that really resonate with not just challenges and just not adversities but, you know, tragedy beyond scope. And so when I wrote the book, I just wanted to really talk about the funny stuff. It's definitely funny, but there's some heartfelt it kind of goes through emotions. But the last chapter, I had a hard time talking about the quite frankly, the death of my son. And one criticism I got on the book is what happened, you know, like kind of gloss over it and talk about a event that unfolded with the Serial shooter and baseline killer that when those investigation I was involved to some degree, everybody, every cop was involved in those investigations you could you know and for those you know living outside Arizona may not know what I'm talking about. It was a serial rapist murder, and then two idiots and I say I don't like saying the names but I do because it unfortunately people don't want to talk about but those two murders were shooting up the countryside, didn't matter what it was walking or crawling or, or, you know, tromping around it was horses, dogs and people and they just killed so many people shooting what they caught recreational killing. Yeah, so at the end of that combination of an arrest, I am going to trial. And it had to be on the worst day that could go to trial. And it was very difficult. And again, talking about the silver lining when I was done testifying and walking out I just could not get out of town fast enough. It was a sad anniversary for me. And as I'm getting out a chump, it is right behind me and I recognize the voice. It's one of those iconic voices in Phoenix. Again, another Hall of Fame journalists by name of Mike watkiss. And and he's been on hardcopy. In fact, he's on Dumb and Dumber if you watch the movie Dumb and Dumber, you'll see might walk it socket as hardcopy about the blind boy in the parakeet. So this guy who I absolutely have mired, you know, I would have been a journalist if I knew how to read right? As he's running after me, and he's wanted to, like, congratulate me because it was a life saving thing I had gone through saving this person's life that was shot. And I had my mom who was sick with cancer. And it was it was one of those proud moments to getting shake this guy's hand it you know, my mom was, you know, I'm a fan but you know, she had like eight by 10 pictures of him or her home. So this was a huge fan. And so yeah, it's funny how these tragedies occur, you know, mirroring the whole 2020 you got to look at the silver lining of these things. But yeah, yeah, it's been a wonderful adventure. But that to make a long story short, it popped inside of me this need to write a second book and kind of talk about adversity specifically the death of my son and then go into other tragedies but again, as horrible as that sounds, these books are 90% funny they're depraved stupid acts by criminals who find themselves caught because of their stupidity, so they're fun books, twisted but true.

Russ Johns 27:46
Yeah. And Angie, left a link for everyone in the for the badge boys podcast.

Darren Burch 27:54
I love Angie.

Russ Johns 27:55
Yes,

Darren Burch 27:55
We're best friends already.

Russ Johns 27:56
Best friends already. Love her. She's good. I just want to recognize a couple of people. You know, Angie says Good morning pirates. Tracie, who is my producer. She's good morning pirates. Happy New Year. And so then Julio is here. And Mike Baker's here from Florida in with life coaching spirits of guidance achievement. Thank you, Mike. Glad to be here. Happy New Years pirates. Let them make it a year to remember. Mary Ellen's here. Good morning. How are you doing? And then it's, oh, Hal is here. Happy New Year. Thank you so much for being here. Wendy says thank you for your service, a pirate and a cop who knew?

Darren Burch 28:46
We can come together?

Russ Johns 28:48
Yeah. Welcome to the most positive force in the universe. Thank you so much, Wendy. Appreciate it. And then there's so many. And then Angie left a link for the podcast. So you can catch that in the messages on Facebook as well. So I just really, I want to...So there's probably a couple of books that you're going to be producing or in the future. Is there? Is there a path that you're on, you got to plan or is it just, it shows up one day and you got to take it, take it to the next level?

Darren Burch 29:26
You know, I never in a million years thought I would write a book, let alone one that would be successful. And I wrote the second one and immediately the second one, even before it came out, I was getting calls from TV producers. So one which I really respected was the Joe Kenda homicide Hunter. And they wanted to take one of the chapters, which was that one case in Book Two is called that one case is a horrific crime is a home invasion of an elderly couple. When I talked about these books being fast and fun reads, they are for the most part, but in each of the books, there's that one case that one story that just really is horrific. And it was, like I said, a home invasion of an LA couple involves rape and murder. And, a two year, manhunt for the for the monster. And they wanted it. And so we did a show on it. They did a reenactment and it's on Discovery or ID channel under Joe Kenda's American detectives. So it's again that the books kind of go to books and to your question regarding is there more books. You know, every cop has a book in them, I had this black cloud that followed me for 30 years. I'm a crap magnet, there's no word for that. But I'm crap magnet. I know you're a #PirateBroadcast™. I probably can say every word in the book, but I want to keep it clean. Um, and so yeah, there's more books. And I just, you know, I just enjoy the podcast, enjoy the book tours course. COVID. Stop that. And I love connecting and talk with people. And when you're writing, that's what you're doing. And I'm not a writer, you know, I'm an author, but no writer. It takes a village, you know, to raise a child, it takes a village and team of elders helped me write a book. So the books are really well edited. They're really good books. I'm taking me out of the equation because of really good people around me. Yeah. So yeah, I, I don't know, I really hope I don't write a third book. But the way you know, I'll say you can we're saying....

Russ Johns 31:31
More podcasting. You know, you can....

Darren Burch 31:32
I thank you. I love the podcasting. God it's such a fun adventure. Just, you know, 100 episodses, we had Dave Pratt, and again, to have this dumb cop, who, you know, can interview bad guys, but I don't envy you celebrities. Now, for last two years, I've been interviewing celebrities, these great folks, and that are true heroes, true heroes, and have someone like Dave Pratt, who has given so much to the community in terms of, you know, not just bad boys, but he's always given to the community and firefighters and, and law enforcement and our military. So yeah, it's a great adventure.

Introduction 32:10
Well, Angie, connected with your BFF now, so she

Darren Burch 32:14
absolutely Angie, I'm a fan of yours big time.

Russ Johns 32:19
Well, you know, Angie has done some work in relationship to, you know, people that have been wrongly convicted, which is another for her. So she's familiar with the system as a whole. And as you know, that's the other piece of the puzzle that, you know, there's probably cases that don't get solved. There's, you know, challenges that, you know, you have to go through and life happens to us. And that's really what I think podcasting is really, really good at is telling those stories, explaining those circumstances, and allowing people to understand that there's a human side of every story.

Darren Burch 33:05
Thank you so much. And Angie, thank you for what you do in terms of justice, that's every cop talked about, we need justice. And that goes both ways, you know, exculpatory as well, as incriminating. And, to that point, our next show on badboys, we have a young man who turned his life around in prison. And, you know, there's two things that come out of prison. It's either gonna be somebody who's been rehabilitated, or someone that's going to be, you know, recidivism, you know, the two R's. And so, and there is injustice, if there is out there, and we have to always keep our eyes open. To talk about Mike Watkins. He wrote a book as well. wonderful book, wonderful book. Um, it's but So anyways, you Google him. And he talks about, we have to keep our eyes open, or the monsters will come out. And so people like Angie, who, you know, correct the wrongs because it happens. And I we should God, I wish it didn't happen, because it just puts a black eye on on the judicial system as a whole, not just the police, but the lawyers, the judges, the you know, the jury system and everything. And sadly, it happens. So we need, you know, these advocates, we need these watchdogs to keep the bad people from getting away with things. Absolutely.

Russ Johns 34:26
Well, I look forward to sharing the badge boys in the podcast and things you're doing and you're always welcome to come back on the pirate broadcast and give us updates and news and things that are taking place in your life. And and, you know, we have a huge community here and we have an opportunity to make a difference in everything we're doing. Darren so thank you so much for joining us on the #PirateBroadcast™ today and any big plans for New Years or any major items that you want to share and and put out with intent today?

Darren Burch 35:05
Yeah, again, as a thank you for spreading the word about badge boys that we're we're excited. The again Book Two is just coming out. It's new so when you look at how many reviews as as like, you know 10 or something it just just came out. And then with Joe Kenda's new series called American detectives, that's kind of exciting. It's all been, you know, season two on that. Yeah, a lot of neat things. And I was just talking about how, you know, how horrible 20 was and we talked about this a little bit before the show Russ about there's always the silver linings I felt guilty about how many good things has happened to me. So, um, thank you for the opportunity to be here and and thank you for what you do giving a voice to your pirate nation.

Russ Johns 35:52
Yeah, no worries, no worries, appreciate you. And as always, everyone you know, it's something that we can do always, you know, here in the #PirateBroadcast™. We're here, because #kindnessiscool and #smilesarefree. So Darren, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for being a pirate. Continue to share this message, like, comment, go to the YouTube channel, subscribe, all the social things that help us stay in, stay in in the minds of the people out there that are supporting the community. So Darren, as always, #enjoytheday. We'll see you soon.

Exit 36:36
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