AI Summary
5 min read"Most of my victims were not like objectively good people. Almost certainly, like very rarely does a true innocent victim get killed." That’s Jason Allison, a 20-year NYPD veteran, explaining the unglamorous reality of homicide work in the Bronx. On The Team House, Allison walks through his career from a broke kid in the 1980s Bronx to a detective who spent sixteen years investigating murders, shootings, and organized crews. He offers a ground-level view of how the NYPD actually operated during the city’s transformation from the crack wars to the Giuliani era and beyond.
From Club Kid to Cop
Allison grew up in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx in the 1980s, the only white kid on his block, living three generations to a one-bathroom walk-up. He didn’t drink or do drugs, which meant he was never cool enough to get into the city’s legendary 1990s nightclubs like Tunnel or Limelight. But being sober made him a good observer. He watched the scene — the intentional depravity, the Russian and Israeli mafia money flowing through ecstasy trafficking, the club owners running open-air drug markets — and stored it all away. That world later became the setting for his debut novel, The Killing Yards.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (01:55) **Introduction & Book Premise** - Jack Murphy introduces Jason Allison, author of *The Killing Yards*, a detective novel set in the 1990s club scene involving the Russian and Israeli mafia.
- 2 (06:20) **Growing Up in the Bronx in the 1980s** - Jason gives an unvarnished view of his childhood, painting a picture of a gritty, crime-ridden New York City.
- 3 (10:55) **The 1990s Shift: Giuliani, Broken Windows & Crime** - The conversation moves to the political and social changes that began to reshape the city, including the AIDS crisis and the election of Rudy Giuliani.
- 4 (14:00) **The 1990s Club Scene & Tunnel** - Jason details the mechanics of the exclusive club scene, from the bouncers' ratio control to the "street teams" that used flyers to promote events.
- 5 (28:30) **Joining the NYPD & Fort Apache** - Jason explains his motivation for becoming a cop was a "good job with benefits" and a pension, and describes his first assignment in the 41st Precinct, famously known as "Fort Apache."
- 6 (34:30) **The Reality of Policing: Summonses & Quotas** - Jason discusses the pressure to write summonses as a revenue generator and the unofficial "quotas" that incentivize cops to ticket working people rather than focus on criminals.
- 7 (43:07) **Becoming a Detective: Street Crime & Narcotics** - Jason recounts his path to detective, starting with the Bronx Anti-Crime unit in the aftermath of the Amadou Diallo shooting, which was seen as a "career killer."
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Show Notes
Get Jason's book "The Killing Yards" here:
https://a.co/d/09pXcZeT
or here:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/830859/the-killing-yards-by-jason-allison/
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https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/
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"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"
00:00 – Start
01:18 – Growing Up in the Bronx
06:07 – What 1980s New York City Was Really Like
09:02 – Crime, AIDS & Giuliani’s New York
14:31 – The 1990s NYC Club Scene
22:20 – Why Jason Became an NYPD Officer
24:39 – Starting Out as a Bronx Patrol Cop
28:21 – Street Racing, Prostitution & Hunts Point
31:08 – CompStat, Quotas & Policing by the Numbers
36:51 – Joining the NYPD’s Anti-Crime Unit
41:55 – Narcotics, OxyContin & Making Detective
49:14 – Becoming a Bronx Detective
53:34 – Working Homicides & the Victims True Crime Ignores
1:03:19 – Cooperato
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