Inside The World Of Being Deep Undercover

00:04
Brent Hinson
Between the lines with Virtual Academy. We all have a story to tell. Hello, and welcome to another edition of between the Lines with Virtual Academy, where podcasts going beyond the badge to allow members of law enforcement, public safety and first response a place to tell their stories and also talk about the cases that have impacted their lives. I’m your co host, Brent Henson, and today our guest is going to take us into a world that based on the popularity of true crime books, TV shows, podcasts, movies, all that stuff many people are genuinely curious about. For people like me who love the genre, we have that luxury of watching and hearing the events unfold without actually having to endure the danger involved. Today, we’re going to hear the other side of that, a firsthand account of what it’s like going deep undercover to apprehend some of society’s most dangerous criminals.

01:00
Brent Hinson
We’re going to hear from him in just a moment. But first we bring in our host, a guy who doesn’t call them dangerous criminals. He prefers the term dirtbags. Mr. Michael Warren. How are you, sir?

01:11
Michael Warren
I’m doing great today. How are things in Tennessee?

01:13
Brent Hinson
Lovely, nice and bright.

01:15
Michael Warren
See, they’re exactly the opposite here. If there was a day for naps and I can’t do naps, the older I get because it messes up my sleep at night. This is a nap day, but for my boss, it’s after work hours. We’re doing this recording in the evening.

01:30
Brent Hinson
Yes. Just want to clarify that I’m looking forward to this topic today because it’s one that, like I said, I am genuinely interested in hearing about. He’s got a lot of material that he’s covered. He’s written a book, got a TV series. It’s going to be really interesting to hear his perspective.

01:48
Michael Warren
I think it’s one of those worlds where you think that you might have a good understanding of what it’s about, but then when you hear somebody who’s actually been in it, you realize that you were wrong, sometimes very wrong about what it’s like.

02:02
Brent Hinson
I can only imagine. I hate to use this analogy, but it’s like enjoying a hamburger but not seeing how that hamburger is made. You don’t have to go in and see how it’s and some people are good with that.

02:13
Michael Warren
Some people are good not knowing that, and that’s fine. But for those who want to take a deeper dive, I’m hoping that our guest today is going to be able to provide that for him. So why don’t you go ahead and tell us a little bit about him and let’s bring him on and see what he’s got to say.

02:27
Brent Hinson
All right. Our guest today has 25 years of law enforcement and leadership experience, during which time he has served as chief of police for the city of Simpsonville, South Carolina. And since last August, he has led the Lawrence, South Carolina Police Department as their chief of police. Earlier in his career, he worked as a narcotics investigator with the Greenville Police Department and Greenville County Sheriff’s Office and then a special agent for the US. Drug Enforcement Agency. In 2020, he released a four volume book series called A NARC’s Tale, which gives an inside glimpse of what it’s like working undercover for six years. And earlier this year, A E aired an hour long program called Undercover Caught on Tape based one of his undercover experiences. It’s our pleasure to welcome to between the lines chief Keith Groundsel. Thanks so much for taking the time for us, chief.

03:21
Keith Grounsell
Hey, thanks for having me, guys. It’s my honor to be here and speak to fellow law enforcement officers.

03:26
Brent Hinson
Just to be clear, I’m just a regular guy, so I don’t want to put myself out there as such.

03:33
Michael Warren
Listen, chief, I’m just going to say that the use of the word regular in this context is a stretch of the meaning of the word, so just throwing it out there.

03:41
Brent Hinson
Brent exactly.

03:43
Michael Warren
I’m going to start off kind of like we do with most of our guests here, because I enjoy hearing this. It’s interesting to me, especially today, how people make the decision that they want to be a law enforcement officer. I think that the people that are coming in the profession right now, it takes an incredible act of courage to make that decision because of everything that’s going on. But what was it with you that made you decide that, hey, that’s where I need to be?

04:10
Keith Grounsell
For me, it was my upbringing. My father was a United States Marine for 22 years. He was an enlisted man. He was the grunt. He was out in the field working his tail off. He worked three jobs. He had two jobs that he did on the side. Just I saw an extreme high level of work ethic, but he had an extreme level of pride when it came to serving his country. And that was one thing I knew early on in my life that I didn’t want to sit behind a desk. And I kind of ironically laugh about that now because I’m a chief of police twice now, and I sit behind a desk, but I didn’t want to sit behind a desk. I wanted to kind of have a career that I felt would be very exciting and not knowing day to day what was going to happen.

04:50
Keith Grounsell
And I was either going in the military or into law enforcement, and that was at an early age for me. I knew I wanted to help people, and I felt like I could help people at a low point in their lives, and that was more meaningful, and it kind of became my mission as a young person to try and stay out of trouble. I acknowledged that early on. I had to stay out of trouble in order to be a law enforcement officer. Going to school was a big thing for me. I heavily, was involved in sports, went to college on a soccer scholarship, and those things kept me out of trouble in order to allow me to have the opportunity to serve the public. And I went right into law enforcement. And honestly, it’s been a roller coaster, man. It’s been a wonderful ride. And I’ve seen so many different things from working city, county, state, federal, international, six years I’ve been there, done that.

05:41
Keith Grounsell
I just feel so blessed. And it’s not because I’m any better than the next guy. It’s because I put myself out there and took advantage of opportunities and made many sacrifices for myself and my family.

05:51
Michael Warren
Let’s talk about your dad for a second, if we know. One of the things that I think that a lot of people don’t fully comprehend and one of our members of the podcast, Aaron, grew up in a military family. It’s not just sacrifices on the part of the person that’s actually in the military. The family also has to sacrifice, too, because very rarely, unless I think you’re in the Air force, do you get to stay in one place for a long period of time? Was that your experience as well?

06:20
Keith Grounsell
Exactly. And I think all that moving around kind of built something inside of me, which later on helped me out in my career going undercover, because I had an ability to overcome and adapt and fit in really quickly with different crowds. I was born at Paris Island at the Buford Naval Hospital. My dad was stationed out know, every Marine knows where that’s at, and so moved from there quickly to Camp Pendleton in California. From there, my dad went overseas. I spent some time in Louisiana for a while there. Then he went to Virginia for a period of time just outside of DC quantico Fort Belvar area, which I know that’s army base, but after know, worked my way back and finally my dad retired in South Carolina, and that’s where we stayed from 6th grade on. And yeah, everything I saw in my father and in my mother, but in my father, specifically his work ethic, I realized it wasn’t going to be an easy life.

07:14
Keith Grounsell
It wasn’t going to be about money or anything like that. And I was willing to make those sacrifices. I feel I could be successful in anything I do. My dad instilled that confidence in me through demonstrations, not necessarily through his words or anything like that. And we made sacrifices. My dad was gone a lot myself. I spent six years deep undercover. I was gone all the time. Then I spent six years deployed on international police missions as well. I was gone all the time. My family has made the same sacrifices. And it’s kind of ironic now the circle goes around. My oldest son just got back from MEPs. He’s looking at potentially signing an option 40 contract to try out to become an army ranger.

07:59
Michael Warren
Yeah.

08:00
Keith Grounsell
So I’m super proud of him, and I’m going to support him no matter what he does. But it’s kind of ironic now he’s looking at public service. Also.

08:08
Brent Hinson
It’s so funny. I tell my son, I’m never going to ask you to do something that I won’t do myself. So at Christmas time, I say, you write thank you letters, and I make sure that he sees me write thank you letters. So I think it’s important as a leader that you model behavior so they can follow in your footsteps.

08:25
Keith Grounsell
Amen. And having life’s experiences, too, makes you a greater leader. It’s funny for me to transition from I never wanted to be a supervisor ever. I was the boots on the ground, ask forgiveness, push the envelope. I was a supervisor’s worst nightmare. But for me, that helped me to survive in the atmosphere of between good and evil. Teeter totter in that line when I worked deep undercover. But now I look back at it like, my God, I feel bad for my supervisors during that time period because I’m dealing with it as a chief of police. And I see that in my guys, and I try and step back sometimes and acknowledge, like, that’s maybe a sign of greatness just doesn’t come across that way initially.

09:05
Michael Warren
You know what, chief? I think you made a really good point there. When you talk about the kids having to move, because we moved quite a bit because he was an electrician, he learned it in the Air Force. Having to assimilate to a new school on a regular basis. My wife doesn’t understand it. She lived in the same house her entire growing up time, from the time she was born to the time she went to college. You learn very early on that you have to mold yourself to different groups and to different teams.

09:37
Keith Grounsell
Absolutely.

09:37
Michael Warren
And it’s hard on a kid, but there’s a lot of people, and part of me wishes that I’d have had a little bit more stability with that. But then I recognized the impact that it had on forming who I became when I became a police officer. I don’t think I would have been as good at it as I was if it hadn’t have been for that.

09:57
Keith Grounsell
Yeah, I contributed definitely my successes to that. Being forced to do that step out of your comfort zone. Also, playing team sports, knowing what it’s like to fail, knowing what it’s like to have to work really hard for something that you may never achieve. But being part of a bigger thing, such as a team and trying to learn from those experiences and get better through every single experience in life developed me into the person that I am today. And I thank God for my struggles. I grew up. I was diagnosed early on with a learning disability when I was in elementary school. For me, that was something that really challenged me, learning things and memorizing things. So what it did is it made me have to study twice as hard. At first I looked at it as like, why can’t I learn things or memorize things as quick as everybody else?

10:42
Keith Grounsell
And it would be much easier. But now I look back at it as a gift from God, where I have the work ethic that’s second to none in my personal opinion. And I always pride myself in that because I knew what it was like early on to struggle. But I also knew, okay, I got to work a little harder. That’s okay, I’m going to do that. And then I saw my dad doing it as well. So those are all things, three things that have contributed to my successes in life that would be perceived by anybody else as a struggle.

11:10
Michael Warren
You said you went to college on a soccer scholarship. That is its own unique set of challenges because you go from being a big dog to being just one of the other dogs.

11:20
Keith Grounsell
That’s a great point.

11:23
Michael Warren
And you don’t always get to choose your teammates, but you do have to work with your teammates. That team composition changes as people graduate out. So how did team sports because I’m a big proponent. My kids play team sports. I am a huge proponent of that is such a great way. And it doesn’t have to be sports. It can be clubs, it can be band. Anything that requires them to work with others in order to accomplish the mission I think is incredibly important for kids.

11:55
Keith Grounsell
So you hit the nail on the head. I mean, I literally was in my state my senior year. I led the entire state and goals scored. I was a number one player in the state. I was being recruited heavily by multiple colleges, over 30 universities, and I was being recruited by one I’m not going to name that’s one of the biggest soccer universities, Division One. And they went to the national championship that year, and they kind of cut their American recruits out. And at that point I realized that soccer is much bigger than the United States and we’re the small fry, although we’ve really grown a lot recently. But I realized I am just a small fish in a humongous pond. And I got there and there were 40 something guys on the roster, 23 of us dressed out. Vast majority were foreigners on my team.

12:45
Keith Grounsell
And the guys that started over me initially was 30 something years old, had played all over the world. And who am I? I’m just this local boy from South Carolina that did pretty well in my local area in my state. But I was nothing, and I got hurt pretty bad. I tore both my hamstrings in college, and that was my reality check. I went from being like a C student to a straight A student overnight because I had nothing to do. I couldn’t play anymore at the time. I went through rehab torn both again during preseason. The next season. It was just like, well, that’s the end. So I had a short lived college career. I don’t regret any of the injuries I went through. They built some character in me and taught me, like, you’re smarter than you realize. And that made me strive later on in life.

13:31
Keith Grounsell
I graduated with my bachelor’s degree in three and a half years. I graduated early. I went later on and got a master’s degree, got straight A’s on that. Those are things, I didn’t do them for anybody but myself because I knew I had a learning disability at a young age, and I needed to prove to myself, you’re better than that and you’re capable of doing anything if you put your mind to. It may have taken me a little longer, but I was able to do it, thank God.

13:53
Michael Warren
It’s funny. To me, the recruitment process for police departments is kind of like the recruitment process for college sports. They bring you in and they show you all the good things. They show you the facilities, they tell you how good you’re going to do. But once you sign the dotted line and now it’s time to actually go and do it. Now let me show you the work. Trying to get people to understand that things of value require hard work. Brian Willis, a good friend of mine, he likes talking about do hard things. The hard things are what truly make you. So you get out of college. How did you go to your first agency?

14:33
Keith Grounsell
So, right out of college, it’s very difficult to get into law enforcement if you don’t have a family member necessarily or anything like that’s there. And I was kind of a guy, had a reputation. I grew up, I’ve been in probably 70 plus fights, and I did a lot of wild things growing up. Thank God I never had any major law enforcement involvement or anything like that. But I wasn’t the golden child by any means on things. And I had my own struggles internally. So I put in and got hired by a local agency, the Molden Police Department, which is the area where I went to high school. It was kind of funny. I remember my first week on the job, the chief calls me in the office and he’s like, Keith, I had a complaint about you. And I’m thinking, oh, my gosh, I just got here.

15:20
Keith Grounsell
I’m going to get fired. He’s like, sit down. And this is the chief. It scared the heck out of me. Number one, getting called in his office. Number two, telling me to sit down. My first week, I hadn’t had any other interactions other than swearing me in. He said, I got a call about you today and somebody told me that you were a hothead and we shouldn’t have hired you. And I shook my head, put my head down, and I said, Sir, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m not going to lie to you. I’ve been in some fights in my life. I said, but I hadn’t hit anybody that didn’t want to fight me. But I never walked away from a fight either. And he looked at me and I’m like, oh, God, here it goes. And he shook his head back and forth and he said, Hell, son, if you ain’t been in a fight, I’d never hired you.

16:00
Keith Grounsell
And he gave me a hug. It was kind of an eye opening. He was an old school police chief, and he taught me a lot about dealing with people, acknowledging when somebody has a complaint against them and letting the officers know that, but you don’t have to crucify them for it. But me knowing that complaint came in made me want to work harder to disprove that. So what he did was a psychological thing that was a brilliant leadership quality, and he taught me a valuable lesson. And I’m telling the story today because I remember that. So to the point exactly everything he said, and it was just pretty neat. So I started there and did about three years working in community policing. I got hired under a community policing grant, and I was blessed at the time, in the 90s, community policing was big, and I got to go through all the community policing schools.

16:52
Keith Grounsell
So for me, what that did was it ingrained in me. The philosophy of community policing is a police style. It’s not one or two people in a department. It is a department wide thing, and it has to be ingrained in everybody in order to be successful.

17:07
Michael Warren
It’s a way of doing business rather than a position.

17:10
Keith Grounsell
Absolutely.

17:10
Michael Warren
Because I was hired under the same cops grants back when I first started, because we like paperwork and we like numbers. We try to create this thing where we have to justify, hey, what projects do you have going on? Well, it depends on what you mean by a project. If I talk to a community member and there’s a problem, I can go and solve it. I suppose that was a project. It didn’t feel like a project. At least one of the projects I did in school. It had to be good for someone like you, who had worked in teams, who had been in a whole bunch of different communities, getting introduced to the idea of this is how law enforcement has to interact with the community in order to be successful.

17:54
Keith Grounsell
Yeah, absolutely. It was a blessing for me, and I learned early on the old school mindset of going to a scene and being a peacemaker. A peacekeeper. Then I also learned the other aspect of it being a problem solver. And as a chief of police, now I look back and I have a high standard for my officers, and sometimes this is extremely high, but I do not like to hear an officer say, oh, that’s a civil problem, ma’am or sir, we can’t help you. The reality is a civil problem could quickly result in a criminal matter with a neighborly dispute or something like that if we don’t try and step in and be a mediator, if at all possible. And that’s why I prefer to work in a town that’s not too large. A town anywhere from 25,000 or less is sometimes a great example of where it’s fun to work, where you have the extra time to take on your calls for service with the individuals, where you can do the problem solving.

18:49
Keith Grounsell
But in some of the larger agencies I’ve worked for, we just didn’t have that time. And we are call to call. You got 400 plus deputies, and it’s just nonstop, but a 50 person or less department. Sometimes you can be a little bit more personable, and that’s what they say. Not in a small town. It’s that relationship that you have with individuals that they got your back and you got their back, and it’s an amazing feeling when you’re really making a difference in your community.

19:19
Michael Warren
You said something so incredibly insightful. How many times have we seen civil matters turn into murders? There have been neighbor troubles where, hey, they’re blowing grass on my lawn. And now it starts this argument. Now somebody grabs a gun and now we’ve got this murder. It’s one of the things I think we struggle with as a profession, though, because you can’t quantify crime prevention. How do we know we’re being successful when you don’t know what you’ve prevented? Because they don’t know what’s been prevented.

19:54
Keith Grounsell
Exactly. And I preach all the time with my officers. 95% of our work is just helping people. And what you may perceive as a small minuscule problem of somebody complaining about a speeder going by their house every day with a loud muffler may be small to you, but in their world, that is their biggest problem. And if you don’t address that problem, then you’re not doing your job as a police officer. And that’s 95% of the law abiding population. Now, the other 5%, when they have a complaint and it’s major drug cartels moved in next door, prostitution, all these other crimes, violent crimes and things like that is a major problem and that is a priority. But don’t forget about the 95% of the people that support us, and they just want us to address the little things for them. I always say this. It’s funny because people, when they don’t know what to do, they call the police.

20:53
Keith Grounsell
We’ve all had that call. When somebody’s in a drive through line and somebody screwed up their Big Mac or something, and they’re like yelling at the manager and the manager is not giving them their money back or something, what do they do? They dial 911. We’ve become a jack of all trades. And it’s gotten worse as society has evolved where mental health institutions have closed down, where there’s so many people on the streets with mental health issues, police are the first responders. We get there. We have to learn to assess stuff that doctors haven’t been able to solve in 30 or 40 years and have an instantaneous reaction that everybody will agree to when they watch your body camera footage later on. But it puts so much stress and so much pressure on the officers to be almost absolutely perfect. It’s unrealistic and the expectations are so high.

21:39
Keith Grounsell
It’s sad to see law enforcement evolving in that direction.

21:44
Michael Warren
I think if we reframe the way that we look at it, instead of looking at it as being something as them bothering us, how about we frame it as, hey, how honorable is it that when they had a problem, the first people they thought of to call was us? When my kids, when they call me with a problem, man, I’m just glad they included me in the solution.

22:07
Keith Grounsell
That’s so true.

22:08
Michael Warren
And so if we reframe that, we just had an episode with Ross Swopen and we talked about the whole idea of serving, of being a servant is so incredibly powerful if we frame things in that way. And I think that has to start early in people’s careers.

22:25
Brent Hinson
But you know what? It’s also like people call 911 when they need help for these matters, but at some point we need to start helping people figure out conflict resolution without having to call the police all the time. I think that’s part of the problem, don’t you think?

22:42
Keith Grounsell
Yeah, we started doing something well, we started a youth summer camp, and in our youth summer camp, we tried to mix up the group of children that were coming in. We didn’t want just children that were from all troubled homes. We wanted a mix so they can see the different dynamics of kids their same age. But we had a group, maybe four or five, that were the ones that were constantly in trouble in school prior to coming to the summer camp. And we really took an interest in them and did conflict resolution with them. When they were having their meltdowns, we’d pull them to the side. We wouldn’t let them get their way. We’d give them a punishment like, you get to sit out during this activity and you’re going to watch and you’re going to be supportive, and if you say no or you’re defiant with it, then we’re going to make you sit longer.

23:28
Keith Grounsell
And there were consequences to your actions. And then when we saw something positive, we rewarded that and that was a big deal. And a lot of them don’t have parents. They’re raised by a single parent or a grandparent. And that single parent works two jobs so that they’re doing the best they can. They’re just not there for them. I think as police doing more involvement in the schools, which we’re blessed in our agency to have a school resource officer in every single school in our jurisdiction, even elementary schools. I think it really makes a huge difference on how children perceive police officers and if those officers individually take pride in their work and do the problem solving and teach kids, not every time you come to a cop, somebody’s going to be in trouble. It can be friendly interactions. I think we’ll go a long ways.

24:11
Michael Warren
And Brent, I love what you said there because we’ve become a society that when it comes to conflict, it seems like the options are either fight or quit. If there’s a relationship between two people, something comes up that they disagree on, they either fight or they break up. And it doesn’t seem like there’s ever that ground where we say, listen, these things have value. And perhaps that’s part of the problem. We need to get to back where we value relationships. We value relationships with our neighbors, the people we work with, and maybe we’ll better off as a society.

24:45
Keith Grounsell
And those lessons as a young person going through that conflict resolution that trickles up towards you as an adult, when you get into a leadership role or something like that and you have conflict, do you run from the conflict or do you weather the storm? Do you help to become part of the solution or part of the problem? A diamond is made through pressure. When you grow a plant, you plant a seed, you cover it with dirt, constant dirt on it, water dirt. You’re going to run through dirt and pressure and leadership. What you do with that is up to you. And if you survive those, you’ll become the diamond, you’ll become the prospering plant or the growing plant. Simple. I know people are different than diamonds and plants, but that’s just a concept that I try and instill in my leadership here. Weather the storm, be a part of the solution.

25:33
Michael Warren
Don’t just be a complainer and we’ll move on here. But I think one of the things we have to reframe in society is that working for that resolution is not a sign of weakness.

25:45
Keith Grounsell
Absolutely.

25:46
Michael Warren
Fighting isn’t a sign of strength always. And compromising isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of maturity. And that’s what we should be striving for.

25:54
Keith Grounsell
Picking your battles is something I had to learn. I used to fight every battle thinking I’m a non procrastinated type of person. So I’m like issue address now. Yeah. And honestly, it’s backfired on me sometimes as a leader, and I’ve had to have some self realizations and do some apologizing and try and grow as a leader. With each failure comes growth, as long as you allow it or you’re just going to fail again and again.

26:22
Michael Warren
Absolutely. It sounds like that you had a good basis at the beginning of your career, but at some point you got into undercover work. How did that come.

26:32
Keith Grounsell
About. Yeah, it’s funny how it happened. It wasn’t planned. I went three years on patrol doing community policing, bike patrols, different things. And I went from malden city to Greenville city, which was about a 200 man department. Went from like a 40, 50 man department to a 200 man department. And I’m in orientation, and all of a sudden, two big dudes come to the door, knock on the door, interrupt the orientation. They got beards, and they’re like, hey, Keith Grounsel in the room. You need to step outside. And I’m like, oh, what’s this? What’s going on here? These don’t look like police right here. So they pull me outside and they don’t really say a whole lot to me. And they say, hey, we’re so and so with a vice narcotics unit, greenville city police department. Let’s go talk to captain Henderson. I say, yes sir.

27:15
Keith Grounsell
So we go into captain Henderson’s office, they say, from now on, you’re assigned to vice narcotics. You’re going to be working undercover. You can’t associate with any police officers. You have to come up with a backstory as to why you no longer work in law enforcement. And it was just like a shocker to me. I had a young face at the time, and they were looking for somebody to go undercover into the all night dance parties called raves. And I went into the ecstasy world. And to be honest with you, I knew absolutely nothing about ecstasy. I was a young face, and it was just kind of coincidental. I had led my department for a couple of years in drug arrest, but that was street level little stuff. I had never infiltrated street gangs or done anything like that. And man, I tell you, I made plenty of mistakes.

28:02
Keith Grounsell
I literally made plenty of mistakes.

28:04
Brent Hinson
Did it boil down to your look, or was there other factors involved in that as well?

28:08
Keith Grounsell
The fact that I had already done three years in narcotics in a neighboring city. I was a new face. I wasn’t coming in a green rookie cop that didn’t know anything. So I understood the fourth amendment. I wasn’t going to violate people’s rights and things like that. And I think my look helped a little bit. But if you see any of my pictures from my book, I can change my look constantly. And I think that was a psychological thing I did to make myself feel better, that nobody would recognize me. But yeah, I immediately bleached my hair, platinum blonde, got piercings on my ears, got all the baggy clothes, the glow sticks, the pacifiers for the clinchers with ecstasy, and started to live that life. Like I was doing that. I was going into work at like, 10:00 at night, coming home at eight in the morning.

28:53
Keith Grounsell
Somebody told my mom I was a stripper. There was all these different rumors that went around, and it was funny because I couldn’t tell anybody. And then you really realize who your real friends were. You got people say, I knew he was a dirty cop, or it’s just like, oh, I knew something was wrong with him. And the reality was I was working undercover and I was told not to tell anybody. And I took the role serious and I embraced it. And I studied videos like movies because actors study their roles extremely. I would go in chat rooms back in the day and talk to other drug addicts and stuff like that, and I just headfirst into the role. And it started out to be like a one to three month operation, and a year later and three operations later, and I was still there.

29:39
Michael Warren
To be clear for our listeners, most people, when they think about undercover, they think about growing out the beard, putting on Harley shirts. And that’s not the type of role that you had right there.

29:50
Keith Grounsell
No, man. I went into a different role with the platinum blonde hair. I had what they call the pinstripe beard, the doper beard. I used to call it the piercings, the baggy clothes. I was probably the guy that the bikers wanted to beat up when they saw him. That was the crowd that I was trying to fit in with. And then I went from these all night dance parties to overnight into a bisexual and homosexual nightclub atmosphere where drugs were so prevalent that it blew my mind. And that, to me, was a very uncomfortable environment. I’m a heterosexual male. I love women. It was very tough because it’s a very touchy feely environment. And I had to come up with a backstory to ensure that nobody was going to grab me or anything like that. So I told them I was bicurious. And I’d never been with somebody, and I don’t believe in public displays of affection, and they were respectful of that.

30:44
Keith Grounsell
And I was able to buy a tremendous amount of drugs in that crowd, and it opened my eyes to a whole nother realm of polydrug world.

30:53
Brent Hinson
I know that you’re apprehending criminals in this world, but immersing yourself amongst these people, did it give you a greater appreciation of why they went this route or what their worlds are like, or you understand what I’m saying?

31:10
Keith Grounsell
I 100% understand what you’re saying. That’s the psychological side of it. That was hard. I remember I infiltrated a group, a gang out of Florida called the Hot Boys, and I worked my way up with different guys in the organization. And the way I got in was I saw them about to get in a fight in the club one night. I also saw that the bouncers were about to break it up. I kind of got in behind them, was like, Yo, I got your back, man. And I act like I just wanted to fight. And they saw that and it was kind of OD, but they weren’t going to turn down another hand in a fight with a rival gang, and thank God it got broken up before it got started. But the reality was I was willing and able to fight. Well, one of the guys recognized me from many years ago when I was in middle school.

31:57
Keith Grounsell
He used to be some break dancer or something like that, and he recognized me. I thought I could dance back then too, so don’t laugh at me about that. But, yeah, so he recognized me in that aspect, and he vouched for me to these other guys. And long story short, that case went on for a long time, and they ended up trying to rob me and try and kidnap and kill me down the road on a big drug rip. But he vouched for me the whole time, and he got shunned by the gang later on and was on suicide watch in jail and things like that because he put his name out there, and I kind of destroyed that. And he has no family or anything like that. And he did have my back on a few things. He wasn’t part of the attempted kidnapping robbery stuff, but I had some sense of, like, in a heart of hearts, is this guy evil?

32:47
Keith Grounsell
No. Did he go down the wrong road? Yes. It’s a fine line between cop and criminal when you’re young and you kind of want to be into action. You can go outlaw or you can go cop and do it legally, you know what I’m saying? But follow the law. And I think the best cops were the ones who were raised without a silver spoon in their mouth and lived kind of a tough life.

33:10
Michael Warren
When you got into this work, what was perhaps the biggest misconception that you had about undercover work that you had going into it that was just blown out of the water? That’s like, hey, you know what? I thought it was going to be this way, but it’s not that way at all.

33:28
Keith Grounsell
Have you ever done anything in life that’s like super exciting, such as Skydiving or something for the first time? And what do you want to do when you’re done? You want to tell some people, like, man, it was badass. This is what I did. Well, it’s badass. Scary as hell. You don’t get a second take. You could die at any moment. It’s not like acting where you get take one, take two, take three, but you can’t tell anybody about it. So it was kind of like a super high that you couldn’t decompress and talk about it now that you’ve calmed down. And that was where I got into writing my stories down.

34:03
Brent Hinson
You had to have an outlet, so you found one.

34:05
Keith Grounsell
So I found my outlet. My outlet was writing my stories, and I started writing them originally before I had any children. They ended up getting married, and there’s a lot of sacrifices that your spouse has to make when you work undercover. I mean, for example, you would go out, and you’re bound to run into somebody. You have to have a plan. You never wear a wedding band. You don’t want people to know you’re married. You don’t want people to know about kids. If your wife and your child are out with you, that’s just a side chick. You know what I’m saying? And she has to know that when they approach and they look like they’re not the normal cops approaching, keep walking, keep moving on. I’ll get a ride home. Go, move. And then later on in life, you run into people that you put in prison.

34:52
Keith Grounsell
I’ve ran into quite a few of them, and 90% of them are friendly, and they shake your hand, and as long as you did it right and you did it fair, and they got busted, and most time, acknowledge you saved them. But sometimes I’ve had to tell my sons. One time in Walmart, I saw the dude, I said, Y’all go to the car. Here’s the keys. I said, If I don’t come out, call your mom. Here’s my phone. And I went and confronted the guy because I saw him staring at me and following me around. And long story short, he hugged me, gave me a bro hug type of thing, and he was like, man, without you, I’d be dead. He was a stick up boy for a gang, and we ended up taking him down. He actually was a guy who was going to kidnap and kill me, and he went to prison.

35:35
Brent Hinson
I saw where you said a quote and a news story where you’re talking about your book. You told your reporter, a reporter said this, that you wrote this book, this series of books, as a way of trying to explain to your children why you did the work that you did that took you out of the home for days, weeks, months at a time. I’m sure it was frustrating for them. It sounds like they’re old enough to maybe comprehend it a little bit more. Can you talk about the impact that it had on them? And do they have an appreciation of the sacrifice that you made for your community and the society as a whole?

36:11
Keith Grounsell
You always hope that they have that level of appreciation. My kids are 19, 1613. And then we had adopted a six year old. I want to say, yes, they have that appreciation. I do tell you this. I instilled in them how bad drugs are. Constant conversations. I mean, extreme conversations. My 19 year old son, my 16 year old son are at that prime age where most of their friends are out there smoking weed and doing different things. And I feel truly blessed that the decisions they’ve made to the point where they’ve gotten into fistfights with their budies so they don’t have to do something, you know what I’m saying? Or they just jump out the car somewhere and dad come pick me up in the middle of the night somewhere. I know I instilled something in them, but then I think they have that inside of them.

37:03
Keith Grounsell
Once that base is there, they have that intestinal fortitude where you’re willing to stand up against your peers who are peer pressuring you to do bad things. So I hope and pray that they’ve learned all this. I try and always be humble. I don’t think I’m better than anybody. I think I truly have been blessed, and I think I’ve lived ten lives. I feel that way. My kids really don’t know a lot of it. They were younger during that time. They know of some hits that have been on my life over the years and things like that. And I make them aware that there are bad people that may want to do bad things to them. And I hope and pray that never happens. But I always feel like I have to tell them these things. And my struggle now is hoping my kids don’t strive too hard to think that they have to get one up on me and do something extreme in their life, and it puts their lives in jeopardy.

37:59
Keith Grounsell
It’s just like my son wanting to go in the military, going to Special Operations. The thing for me is I’d be super proud of him no matter what he does. I just want him to find a passion and a love, and I hope he knows I love him no matter what. You don’t have to do this for me. And that’s always been a fear of mine, that you always want to try and be the next generation better, you know what I’m saying, than your parents generation. And I think they can in their own light, they have to find their way.

38:28
Brent Hinson
Well, I think there’s a difference between being like a touring rock musician and being away from your kids and the home and what you’re doing. You’re creating a positive impact to try to make everything better for your family and your kids.

38:43
Keith Grounsell
Yeah, originally, I mean, that’s how it started. And I’ll tell you my way of getting out. When I was a special agent with Drug Enforcement Administration, I was stationed in western Kansas. I worked all over that region in the Midwest and did a lot of high level cases, different cartels, all the way down to street level stuff. And it got to the point where, at the time my wife went through a postpartum with our second son, we had no support system. There were only a couple of agents, a bunch of task force agents. Nobody in the community knew that I was a special agent. I was undercover. That was what I concentrated in. That was my emphasis, my specialty, and there was nothing for her. And I felt, like, helpless to a degree where I didn’t have anybody. And I asked for a hardship move from the DEA, a voluntary move.

39:32
Keith Grounsell
Then I asked could I try out for the fast company like DEA Special Forces to go over to Afghanistan and things that they put a freeze on, that I had nothing. And that resulted. And actually, that was when I got out of working as a special agent with DEA. Got out, and I actually left. The day I got out, the moving truck came to my house. I moved my family back to South Carolina to have a support system around them. I flew out to Washington DC, went through a couple of weeks of training called the Crucible, and I deployed to you know, I was there two years. This is the only way I could afford to have two mortgages. I couldn’t leave one place where the house wasn’t selling. It was right near the housing crisis when things were really high. But in western Kansas, there weren’t a lot of businesses, and we covered 36 counties.

40:19
Keith Grounsell
And the drug cartels were just it was amazing the things that I saw there. But I made a decision, my family, and I don’t regret that decision, but that was kind of what got the ball rolling and got me towards supervision. I quickly became the national commander over a 5000 man SWAT team and riot team in Afghanistan. And I did that a couple of years. That was my very first taste of major level leadership. And the only reason I got that position is my drug experience. 95% of the world got their opium from Afghanistan to produce heroin, which supported Al Qaeda, funded all the terrorist network. So Poppy Eradication Program was one of my programs that I was also responsible for. It was just an amazing experience for me working overseas. But then again, my family sacrificed greatly because I was literally gone. You wouldn’t see me for six months.

41:12
Michael Warren
One of our recent guests, Phil Kearney, we talked, he was with DEA, and he and I had gone to college together. But he talks about his time, the amount of time that he had to spend in Afghanistan because he was part of the investigation into the drug lord there that was responsible for about 20% of the world’s heroin traffic. It’s one of those things. There has to be a shelf life for people in that type of work simply because if we hold on to them too long in those positions, then they pay a price with their family, and that price just isn’t worth it, no matter how good, no matter how big the cartel. Because that has lifelong implications for their wives or their husband, their kids.

41:56
Keith Grounsell
There has to be a shelf life, definitely. I mean, working undercover was extremely exciting, ups and downs. But my wife at the time and my children got no recognition for their sacrifices. And that’s where the books came into play as well. I pay a tribute to them throughout the book series, and I hope. I don’t even know if they’ve sat down and listened or read because I haven’t been audio to the full extent of the series, because it’s four books and they’re long and they’re all short stories. But my sister, for example, says she can’t read them, she can’t listen to them because I saw her interview where.

42:36
Brent Hinson
She said, I just can’t do it. And I can’t blame her for that, really.

42:40
Keith Grounsell
And I respect that. And there’s a lot that I’m divorced now. I went through a divorce. And I don’t say it was necessarily the undercover work as much as it was as a chief fighting corruption and all the turmoil politically that I had to go through before we indicted the mayor and convicted him in court, indicted the head of investigations for rape and murder, cover up and all these different things that I did as chief. And from my house being shot up, to my dog being killed, to threats in the mail that broke it, that was the straw. Like, I survived all the undercover work. I survived six years of deployments, two years Afghanistan, two years Haiti, two years Liberia, going to Jordan, India. I’ve survived all that. But the leadership, the politics and all that was honestly worse stress than anything, at least as an undercover cop, if somebody tried to do something and there was a gunfight or something like that, I feel content with my abilities to fight and shoot and all that kind of stuff.

43:43
Keith Grounsell
But when you’re being attacked politically for doing the right thing and standing against corruption and people who have no ability to defend their actions, they make up stuff to distract from what they’ve actually done, that was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my career.

44:02
Michael Warren
It cannot help but have an impact on your family. If it’s hard on you, it’s going to be hard on them. The people behind the people with the badge just don’t get their just recognition for their sacrifices and the strength that they bring to the people who are standing the front lines.

44:22
Keith Grounsell
Absolutely. And that’s the thing. So I’ve been divorced for some years now. I have a fiance now, and she doesn’t come from a family of law enforcement. She’s extremely supportive, but this is all a learning process for her. And she’s very in touch emotionally with everything. And she’s been a great buffer to talk to. I think my ex wife did a phenomenal job during that time period at not wanting to talk about things with me because I had to put on this face and this shield in order to not be distracted by my family life while I’m working undercover. Because at that time, I could never do it again. Now my mindset is different. At the time, I lived a little more carefree. I lived like I didn’t think I was going to live past the age of 30. I wasn’t scared of a damn thing.

45:12
Keith Grounsell
I didn’t think of the consequences as much till I started having kids and things like that. So now the human I am, the man I am today, could not do what I did because I would have a slight hesitation, which would probably have resulted in me being killed in a couple of scenarios. So I acknowledge that it’s for the younger generation, some of the deep undercover stuff, but I love to mentor and advise that group and empower them.

45:38
Brent Hinson
And you’ll pardon my ignorance here, but how do you transition your mindset from being undercover for so long to getting out of that world and going into where you’re not undercover? That’s got to be mentally tough, I would think.

45:53
Keith Grounsell
So undercover, you have to have a skill set. I used to teach when I taught at the federal undercover school. It was called relaxed intensity. And that sounds like contradictory. I tell people on the outside you always have to appear relaxed, but on the inside, you better be a fire, just ready to burst and attack or fight for your life. At any split second, that skill set has transferred over into leadership. On the outside, everything’s good to go, but inside, damn, you’re going through a lot. You’re under a lot of stress. I think that has helped to transfer to the top leadership. It doesn’t help if you’re going from undercover to uniform patrol, where you have to be in tactical and blade people and do different tactical things because you have to have a tactical mindset undercover, but you can’t present yourself as tactical because then you’re going to look like a cop.

46:46
Keith Grounsell
So that was a transition and I went from deep undercover to national commander in Afghanistan, so it wasn’t as hard for me. I would think it’d be much harder if I’d have went to uniform patrol and tried to transition there. But my skill set of acknowledging and seeing certain indicators of drug traffickers would have definitely helped me to make bust on the streets.

47:12
Michael Warren
Now, Chief, I’m going to give my co host here another kudo, brent and our friend Aaron. They run a podcast called Crossing the Streams, which is a musical podcast, because they’re both incredible musicians. But one of the things that he’s talked about before that I think that it does, is that one of these days, brent’s son is going to grow up and those podcasts are going to provide some insight into his dad that can only be achieved through listening, through music. And I think that’s incredibly powerful. And it sounds like that’s what you’ve tried to do with your books is to provide, hey, listen, when you decide to take the dive and find out more about your dad, that’s up to you. I’m not going to force it on you, but here is a window into me. It had to be a good release, but thinking about having that impact on your kids, potentially years or even decades from now had to be incredibly powerful too.

48:10
Keith Grounsell
Yeah. And I wrote the books. I was going through a divorce at the time of separation and a divorce as the books were being published, and I made it a point to not acknowledge that in my books. You know what I’m saying? It was about what happened when were married and the great things that you did to support me along that route. And I know those things took their toll on your life. So I write a whole section in the book about the mental effects and how it affects your family and things like that. And I believe that’s a part of undercover work not a lot of people talk about or acknowledge. I can say I’m mentally very tough. I feel like I am. I’m very disciplined in everything. But everybody has a breaking point, and everybody needs to have an outlet for their things.

48:57
Keith Grounsell
Me, my outlet became fitness. I couldn’t go to the gym or anything and work off my stress at the gym. I couldn’t do that. So I had to figure out something. So I built a gym in my garage. I worked out like crazy, but that was also developing me to fight for my life at the same time. Now, still to this day, I literally work out almost seven days a week on a consistent basis. I’m 48 years old. I’m not a super stud like fitness rip junkie or nothing, but it’s important to me to live an active, healthy lifestyle. And in my department, I pushed that on. We’re doing our first ever mandatory annual fitness test at the end of this month. In our department, it’s about being fit for duty. Obviously, we’re going to tweak it according to age and somebody’s blown their knees out or something like that after working 30 years.

49:47
Keith Grounsell
But the reality is, all I wanted to do was spark something inside and ignite something in somebody. That if you get to a scene and you take 510 seconds to turn around in your seat to get out of your car, and they dialed 911 expecting you to come save their life, but you can’t even barely get out of the car, that’s a problem. You are not fit for duty and do something about it, and we’re going to be here to help you do something about it. So our new police department, we just moved in a couple of weeks ago. We have a massive gym in it. We give free family YMCA memberships to our whole department, all city employees. Those are things where our city administrator is a former commanding officer in the army, and he understands that type of stuff. I’m in a great position now as the chief of police, where my support staff, my supervisor, the city administrator, and the mayor fully support everything that we’re trying to do.

50:40
Keith Grounsell
So it’s pretty amazing when you’re able to implement things like that and change.

50:44
Michael Warren
Lives I think that one thing I wish that we could get across to young officers is that you need an outlet. You found an outlet in your writing and in your physical fitness. You need an outlet. And the thing is, do you want to choose what the outlets are going to be so they can be used in a positive manner, or are the outlets going to be chosen for you? Because unfortunately, some people turn to alcohol and some even turn to drugs, addictive behavior like gambling. And I’m not against extreme sports, but there are some people who do it to the point of challenging death very early in people’s careers, explain to them, this job is stressful. It’s the front row seat to the greatest show on Earth. It’s, in my opinion, the best job in the world, but there are consequences for it. But we can mitigate those if we choose those outlets.

51:40
Keith Grounsell
Yeah. One of my biggest weaknesses as a leader is not having a work life balance. I’m constantly asking people to hold me accountable. I am a workaholic. I’m an extremist. I pick a goal, and it’s going to be the highest goal. And I drive, drive. And sometimes don’t enjoy the little short wins along the way as much because my expectations are so high. Getting my books published, I wasn’t happy. Getting a TV series, I’m not happy. You know what I’m saying? It’s not that I’m not happy. It’s that I want more. I want to achieve more. And it’s hard to work for a guy like that, and I acknowledge that. And I even had a meeting just this morning with my two top guys and went over some of those shortcomings. I feel like I have as a leader and what I want to do better to further empower you guys.

52:30
Keith Grounsell
You all proving yourselves to me, and I appreciate you all and just a little self reflection, and that goes a long ways. And I don’t think I did anything perfect in all those undercover deals that I did besides survive. And some of them, I made mistakes that cost a case or maybe get looked at differently, but I survived. And it’s those things. Don’t Monday morning quarterback or judge somebody after the fact from your couch why they were doing something in the heat of the moment, and they had to make a life and death decision, and they literally could have died. And you’re going to sit there and be like, well, if I was in their shoes, I would have done this. Come on. That’s a pet peeve of mine. And I know as an administrator, it happens, but I always try and step back before any final decision is made and put yourself in an officer’s shoes at that moment.

53:26
Michael Warren
Yeah. When you’ve got nothing at stake, it’s easy to break things down and be critical.

53:31
Keith Grounsell
Yes.

53:32
Michael Warren
And Chief, as we’re wrapping things up, here something you said. There really. Hit home to me. It’s really a fine line between being satisfied with the small victories and what some people refer to as complacency. I don’t think having those being satisfied with small wins makes us complacent. It’s when we stop trying to continue the small wins that we become complacent. But it’s a really fine line. It’s like a really fine line between being prepared and being paranoid. I got to be prepared for the bad guy, but I can’t be paranoid. There’s a bad guy. Everybody’s a bad guy. And I think that’s one of those things where true professionals and true leaders are constantly looking to ensure that they’re on the right side of the line.

54:18
Keith Grounsell
Absolutely. I think personal growth and development only comes through pressure and feedback that’s hard. And it comes from people that should feel empowered on your command staff, especially as a chief, should feel empowered enough to tell you and do it in private, praise in public, scold in private, or whatever. But it has to have a constructive element. Now, if you bring something, I’ll still listen and I’ll probably process it more later. But if you bring it in an aggressive manner where you don’t mean any good out of it other than to put somebody down, I’ll hear it, but I’m not going to like it or react as well as I should when you do that. But if you bring me something from and deep down in your heart you want to help me to become a better leader and understand the culture of what’s going on, the vibe of your department or a division or something like that, any leader that shuns that is a fool because that is insight that you’re not seeing.

55:20
Keith Grounsell
And if you don’t take the time afterwards to self assess and address some of those issues quickly, you will fail. And leaders constantly evolve. The highest level leadership means greater responsibility. You are the servant to your people, and if you forget that, then move on. You’re not in the right line of work.

55:39
Michael Warren
There is a relationship between the higher the level of authority, the higher the responsibility to your people. And if you can’t maintain a balance between those two, you’re probably not cut out for leadership at that level.

55:53
Keith Grounsell
I tell people I feel like as a narcotics investigator for all those years, I feel like narcs are a different breed of people because you got to be self motivated. You can be lazy and just sit there and do nothing, but you’re not going to make cases. It’s not like a burglary or a property crime. You get the report. As a narcotics investigator, you got to self initiate. You’re a self starter. You’re highly motivated. You got to be aggressive. You got to have street savvy. You got to be able to deal with people, to get them to confess informants, to be able to trust you, to allow you to infiltrate crowds and different things like that. So I love to hire prior narcotics investigators in high level positions. Most of the guys that were in my old narc units are judges, have been chiefs, have been top cops in huge organizations, and they’ve always been successful because they’re self motivated.

56:42
Keith Grounsell
There is a drug nexus in about everything we do in law enforcement. 95% of all crimes in some way, shape, or form has a drug nexus, whether it be alcohol, somebody drinking too much, committing domestic violence, somebody stealing to support their drug habit, it is linked to drugs. And if you always concentrate on going after the high level drug dealers, getting help for the drug users, and educating the younger people along the way, hitting it threefold, you will find great success. When I was chief in Simpsonville, we increased our drug arrest 287%. We completed 40 plus community based programs, and in two years, went from the number 28, safety City, to number one in the entire state of South Carolina. My goal here in this agency where I’m at now, in Lawrence, South Carolina, were 151st safest city when I started. We broke the top 40 in nine months.

57:34
Keith Grounsell
I’m praying that we continue to go in that direction, and my goal is still number one. But I know some things are out of your control. You could have a domestic violence murder suicide that is totally unrelated to your crime rate. That could occur, and it could double your numbers overnight in a certain category. So I’m always aware of that, but it doesn’t mean I’m not going to set my goals to number one and.

57:55
Brent Hinson
Try and achieve that and enjoy the fact that you’ve taken it from one place to where you’re at now.

58:01
Keith Grounsell
Absolutely. And it’s all about my people and empowering them and showing them the vision. It’s not about me. I have the vision, and they bring the ideas, and I allow them to do their ideas. One person can’t do it. It takes a community support level that’s out of this world where people trust you more, they bring you more information. They know you’re not going to burn them. They know also you’re going to attack the issue, because if you constantly complain about a drug house next door and nothing gets done, they’re going to quit complaining. They’re going to take it in their own hands eventually. But if you address it relatively quickly or let them know, hey, trust me, we’re on top of this. We’re developing a long term case on this. Just got to trust me and bear with me. Continue to send me tag numbers, continue to do this, but do not intervene.

58:47
Keith Grounsell
And then you follow through six months later and you take out the organization, you execute search warrants. Trust is developed even further, and they know you’re not going to burn them. Their name is not mentioned anywhere in those reports. That’s the key. Trust.

59:00
Michael Warren
It’s the difference between taking a report and making a case, shifting that emphasis for our frontline people. Anybody can take a report. It takes somebody who’s dedicated, motivated to make a case. And that’s what we need to serve our community the way that they need to be served.

59:19
Keith Grounsell
I agree wholeheartedly. It’s all about the community.

59:22
Michael Warren
Absolutely. So, Chief, where can people go to get information about your book series?

59:27
Keith Grounsell
The easiest way to go to my books is the books are called A NARC’s Tale. N-A-R-C apostrophe s tail T-A-L-E. They’re on Amazon. You can get them at Audible as well. You can buy them on Kindle. You can order them from pretty much any bookstore. They’re not necessarily going to have them in stock. But Amazon’s the easiest way to have them drop shipped in paperback. Or you can download the digital immediately, or you can download the audio immediately.

59:53
Brent Hinson
And you can go to the episode page of this here episode. And we have a direct link to all four where you’ll be able to find them just as easily.

01:00:00
Keith Grounsell
Awesome. I hope everybody checks out the books. But also undercover. Caught on Tape is a series. I have a couple of my stories from my book that are airing in the season coming up. It showcases undercovers from across the entire United States. It’s not just me. There are phenomenal undercovers that do great work that nobody knows about. They’re telling these stories as actual real videos, and then they’re explaining the after effects. Even with informants, they’re talking to suspects. They’re talking to after they’ve gotten out of prison. I mean, it’s pretty amazing how it affected their families, the mental effects. It’s coming out in January 15, I believe, at the new year’s. And again, that’s undercover called on tape, and it airs on an E. Yeah.

01:00:43
Brent Hinson
We’Ve got a promo for the trailer, I mean, for that show and the show notes as well. I watched that.

01:00:49
Michael Warren
This know, Brent, I learned something today. I learned that not all undercover work is portrayed properly on television because typically people look like they’re in a biker gang. But that doesn’t mean that the undercover work isn’t as equally as dangerous and equally as beneficial. So I’m looking forward, you know, I’m a reader, so I’m a book guy. So I’m going to be checking those out. Also going to be checking out the series. But Chief, thanks so much for being with us today and sharing your story. Our best wishes to your son as he pursues, I think, the best branch of the military, the army. Keep us up to date on that, though, because we’d like to hear about it. But thanks so much for being with us today.

01:01:33
Keith Grounsell
Thank you guys. I appreciate you having me here. Keep doing God’s work.

01:01:37
Brent Hinson
And listen, we encourage you to check out his book. It’s called a NARC’s tale. It is broken up into four different volumes. First volume is City police officer work. Second and third volumes, the County Vice and Narcotics investigating units. And then the fourth volume is the Federal Special Agent with the US. Drug Enforcement Administration. So you can kind of work your way through it. And we’ll have that link in the show notes section of our website at between the Lines with chief, it has been great talking to you today. Thanks so much for joining us.

01:02:09
Keith Grounsell
Thanks, Mike and Brent. Have a good one.