Heroes Behind the Badge

Citizens Behind the Badge
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From the front lines to the final call, Heroes Behind the Badge brings you the untold stories of America's law enforcement community. Led by Craig Floyd, who spent 34 years working alongside police officers across the nation, alongside veteran facilitator Dennis Collins and law enforcement expert Bill Erfurth, this podcast cuts through misconceptions to reveal the true nature of modern policing. Our dynamic trio brings unique perspectives to each episode: Craig shares deep insights from his decades of experience and relationships within law enforcement, Dennis guides conversations with meticulous research and natural flow, and Bill adds engaging commentary that makes complex law enforcement topics accessible to all listeners. Each episode features in-depth conversations with law enforcement professionals, sharing their firsthand experiences, challenges, and triumphs. Drawing from extensive research and real-world experience, we explore the realities faced by the over 800,000 officers who serve and protect our communities every day. From dramatic accounts of crisis response to quiet moments of everyday heroism, our show illuminates the human stories behind the badge. We dive deep into the statistics, policies, and practices that shape modern law enforcement, offering listeners a comprehensive understanding of what it truly means to serve in law enforcement today. Whether you're a law enforcement professional, a concerned citizen, or someone seeking to understand the complexities of modern policing, Heroes Behind the Badge provides the context, insights, and authentic perspectives you won't find anywhere else. Join us weekly as we honor those who dedicate their lives to keeping our communities safe, one story at a time. Presented by Citizens Behind the Badge, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting and advocating for law enforcement professionals across the United States. Join over 126,000 Americans who have already signed our Declaration of Support for law enforcement at behindbadge.org.

  1. 6d ago

    Morgan Wright — What the JonBenét Ramsey Crime Scene Actually Says | Part 2

    Morgan Wright is the founder and CEO of the National Center for Open and Unsolved Cases, a nonprofit that works cold cases toward resolution rather than commentary. A former detective who went on to teach interview and interrogation, he now trains a team of volunteer case analysts in structured investigative method. This is the second half of his reconstruction of the JonBenét Ramsey homicide. Part 1 ended with the intruder hypothesis failing on the physical evidence. Part 2 asks the obvious next question: if nobody came in, what does the scene itself tell you? Wright starts with the forensic claims that have carried the case for years and takes them apart one at a time. The touch DNA recovered from JonBenét's clothing produced a partial profile at ten or eleven markers, where a positive CODIS match requires twenty and a partial requires thirteen. At eleven markers, as he puts it, you are no longer identifying a person. He then turns to the ransom note. It demanded $118,000, almost exactly John Ramsey's employment bonus. Ramsey stated he read it on the spiral staircase at around 5:45 in the morning without turning on a light. Wright ran the astronomy: the sun was still seventeen degrees below the horizon, a full moon delivers at most 0.3 lux outdoors, window glass removes seventy to ninety percent of that, and reading requires roughly fifty lux. The gap is three orders of magnitude. It is not a claim about what happened, only about what could not have. The reconstruction rests on two physical details. The blunt force trauma resembled the end of a flashlight, and the room where JonBenét was found required reaching a wooden clasp mounted high on the door. And in the autopsy, the urine had dried on top of her clothing rather than beneath her, with more found on the carpet outside the room. That points to a death face down in a hallway, and a body moved afterward. Wright also explains the legal wall the case runs into, and closes on the fourth category of knowledge — the things that are now permanently unknowable, because the scene was never controlled. Learn more at https://citizensbehindthebadge.org.

  2. Aug 11

    Morgan Wright — Reinvestigating JonBenét Ramsey From First Principles | Part 1

    Morgan Wright is the founder and CEO of the National Center for Open and Unsolved Cases, a nonprofit that takes on cold cases and works them toward resolution rather than commentary. He is a former detective who went on to teach interview and interrogation, and he now trains more than thirty volunteer case analysts in structured investigative methods. He returns to Heroes Behind the Badge for the case he has spent the longest on. Boulder, Colorado, December 26, 1996. A 911 call before six in the morning reporting a kidnapping and a ransom note. Six hours later a six-year-old girl is found dead in a basement room of her own house. Thirty years and a shelf of books later, the JonBenét Ramsey case remains open. Wright's approach is deliberately narrow: he refuses to argue about suspects until he has answered a prior question. Was there an intruder in that house, or was there not? Part 1 covers ground most listeners will not have heard. In 1999 a grand jury indicted both John and Patsy Ramsey on two counts each. District Attorney Alex Hunter declined to sign, and it took fourteen years and a series of Freedom of Information Act suits before the public learned the indictments existed. Wright walks through the morning itself, the ransom note found on the spiral staircase, and the decision he considers more consequential than any forensic test that followed: leaving the family inside an uncontrolled crime scene. He then tests the intruder hypothesis against NOAA weather records, Locard's exchange principle, the measured dimensions of the basement window well, and a cobweb that was never disturbed. What makes this different from most true crime is the discipline behind it. Wright works from a documented archive and is careful throughout to separate what is established from what is contested, and both from what can never be known. It is a working investigator's method applied in public. Part 2 takes up the ransom note that, by Wright's analysis, could not have been read in the light available that morning, the $118,000 figure that matched a bonus, and what the autopsy says about where JonBenét actually died. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Learn more at https://citizensbehindthebadge.org.

  3. Jul 30

    Bill Buford — He Owed It to the Men He Lost at Waco | Part 2

    In Part 2 of this two-part conversation, retired ATF agent Bill Buford takes listeners back inside the gun room during the February 28, 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas. He walks through the exact sequence of the firefight: the moment a rifle round came up through the floor and hit him, the two AK-47 rounds that followed, and the fellow agent bleeding out beside him from a severed femoral artery. He describes climbing off the roof of the compound with no memory of how he did it, and the ATF medic, Ken Chisholm, who covered him with his own body while starting an IV under continued gunfire. Buford also shares a story from his time as a Green Beret in Vietnam, a moment when an enemy soldier's rifle failed to fire at point-blank range, and the bullet he has kept ever since as a reminder of how close that day came to ending differently. The conversation turns to the origin of ATF's first Special Response Team, formed in the raid's aftermath, and closes with Buford's own explanation, in his words, of why he chose to go back to a job that had nearly killed him. This episode honors the four ATF agents killed in the line of duty at Waco: Robert J. Williams, Steven Willis, Todd W. McKeehan, and Conway C. LeBleu. Heroes Behind the Badge is a production of Citizens Behind the Badge, telling the real stories of the men and women who serve.

  4. Jul 28

    Bill Buford — Surviving the Waco Raid as an ATF Agent | Part 1

    Bill Buford spent nearly three decades in federal law enforcement, first as a Green Beret in Vietnam, then as a Special Agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. In 1993, he led the ATF Special Response Team out of Little Rock, Arkansas, and was one of a small group of agents who made it inside the compound at Mount Carmel during the raid on the Branch Davidians. On February 28, 1993, Buford's team lost the element of surprise before they ever reached the compound, but the order to go in came anyway. What followed was one of the deadliest days in ATF history: four agents killed, dozens wounded, and Buford himself shot four times before he was pulled off a roof and rushed to the hospital. Buford walks through what it was like inside the compound's gun room during the firefight, the moment a fellow agent gave his life to save him, and what he's carried with him in the more than 30 years since. He also addresses head-on the persistent theories about how the siege ended on April 19, sharing what independent arson investigators actually found. This conversation is a rare, unfiltered account from one of the few agents who was inside the building that day, someone who lived through both the raid and the decades of public criticism that followed it, and who chose to go back to the job anyway. In Part 2, Bill takes listeners back inside the gun room for the full, moment-by-moment account of the firefight, a near-death encounter half a world away in Vietnam, and the reason he says he owed it to the men he lost to keep serving. New episodes drop every other week. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Learn more at citizensbehindthebadge.org.

  5. Jul 16

    Jim Freeman — Inside the Unabomber's Cabin | Part 2

    Jim Freeman spent 32 years as an FBI Special Agent, rising to Special Agent in Charge of the Bureau's San Francisco field office. In the final two years of the 17-year hunt for the Unabomber, Freeman took direct control of the UNABOM Task Force. In Part 2, Freeman picks up moments after Ted Kaczynski's arrest outside his remote cabin near Lincoln, Montana. With no electricity and no safe way to enter overnight, investigators waited nearly a full day before executing the search warrant. When they finally got inside, portable generators and an x-ray machine revealed what was hidden there: a typewriter used to type Kaczynski's manifesto, carbon copies of the document itself, and — underneath the cot where he slept — a live, fully assembled bomb. Freeman recounts the physical evidence that made the case airtight, the journals in which Kaczynski described his own motives, and a chilling detail: Kaczynski had addressed one of his undelivered bombs to return to an FBI office, so that whoever opened it would be killed instead. Freeman also reflects candidly on what he sees as a more divided FBI today than the one he served in. This is the story of how physical evidence, not just investigative instinct, closed one of the most notorious domestic terrorism cases in American history — and a firsthand account of what it took, and who it took, to get there. This concludes Heroes Behind the Badge's two-part conversation with Jim Freeman on the Unabomber investigation. If you haven't already, go back and listen to Part 1 for the full story of the 17-year manhunt and Kaczynski's capture. New episodes drop every other Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Learn more at citizensbehindthebadge.org.

  6. Jul 14

    Jim Freeman - Leading the FBI's Hunt for the Unabomber | Part 1

    Jim Freeman spent 32 years as an FBI Special Agent, rising to Special Agent in Charge of the Bureau's San Francisco field office. In the final two years of the 17-year hunt for the Unabomber, Freeman took direct control of the UNABOM Task Force — reporting straight to FBI Director Louis Freeh and Attorney General Janet Reno. This episode centers on the case's most consequential turning point: the decision to publish Ted Kaczynski's 35,000-word manifesto in the New York Times and Washington Post. Freeman walks through the internal FBI debate over whether publishing would help catch a killer or simply give him what he wanted, and the moment Reno and Freeh personally authorized the risk. From there, Freeman recounts how Kaczynski's own brother, David, recognized the language in the manifesto — and how that tip led investigators to a remote cabin outside Lincoln, Montana. What followed was a 40-day covert operation, culminating in Kaczynski's arrest by agents who, until hours before, weren't convinced the reclusive hermit in the woods could really be the man they'd been hunting for nearly two decades. It's a story about a calculated gamble that worked — and about the ordinary caution, doubt, and bureaucracy that almost got in the way of catching one of the most notorious domestic terrorists in American history. Part 1 ends the moment Kaczynski is finally in custody. In Part 2, Freeman takes us inside the cabin itself — and the evidence that sealed the case. New episodes drop every other Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Learn more at citizensbehindthebadge.org.

  7. Jul 2

    Rick Harcrow — Inside Attica: The Stats, the Families, and the Hidden Cost | Part 2

    Rick Harcrow spent 37 years as a correctional officer at Attica Correctional Facility — home of the deadliest prison riot in American history. In Part 2, the conversation goes deeper: from the daily realities of working inside one of America's most dangerous institutions to the political decisions that shaped how officers and their families were treated for decades. Rick opens the episode with a story that sets the tone for everything that follows. Three days into a law library assignment, an inmate told him he planned to murder him when he got the chance. Rick turned around and said: "Nah, that's not gonna happen." That response — measured, unflinching, rooted in experience — defines how he approaches every subject in this conversation. The numbers are hard to hear. Around 300 inmate-on-inmate assaults per year at Attica — nearly one per day — were quietly suppressed by a department more concerned with appearances than accountability. The families of officers killed in the 1971 Attica riot were pressured into signing away their right to sue in exchange for six months of workman's comp. Two decades later, those same inmates received a $12 million settlement while widows were waiting for roof repairs. Rick helped organize the Attica Forgotten Victims group as a union leader and credits Governor George Pataki with ultimately doing right by those families. The conversation covers ground that rarely gets an honest treatment: the debate over reopening Alcatraz and what 40,000 released New York inmates actually means for crime, the Jeffrey Epstein suicide watch and the systemic failures that made a 14-minute window possible, the CO strike that put 10,000 officers on the picket line, and what unprocessed stress quietly does to the men and women who spend careers inside those walls. Rick closes with a warning a psychologist gave him as a rookie — one he credits with saving his life. This is Part 2 of a two-part conversation with Rick Harcrow. Part 1 covers his early years at Attica and the assault that nearly cost him everything in the law library. Both parts are available now.

  8. Jun 30

    Rick Harcrow - Inside the Attica Prison Riot: What Really Happened | Part 1

    Rick Harcrow spent 37 years as a correctional officer in the New York State prison system — 30 of them at Attica Correctional Facility. He wasn't there on September 9, 1971, when the riot began. But he worked with the men who were. He heard their stories, sat with their families, and spent three decades living in the shadow of the deadliest prison riot in American history. This is what he knows. The Attica Prison Riot lasted four days. When it ended, 43 people were dead — seven of them correctional officers. What's less understood is that 39 of those 43 died not during the riot itself, but during the state's retaking of the facility four days later. Approximately 1,500 rounds were fired into a 100-by-100-yard yard packed with hundreds of people, hostages included. A judge later ruled it excessive force. Rick walks through the conditions that made it inevitable: 2,200 inmates crammed into a prison built for 1,200, one roll of toilet paper a month, and a bureaucracy that refused to hear its own officers. He covers the warning signs — multiple supervisors went to the superintendent weeks before the riot and told him it was coming. He refused to act. On the morning of September 9th, a group of veteran officers called in sick. Everyone knew. The riot started because of a worn-down gate key that opened the wrong lock. When that lock popped, an officer said, "Oh damn, we're in trouble." He was right. Rick also describes what it means to work inside a facility where nearly half the population is serving time for murder or manslaughter — and how that shapes the daily reality of corrections work in ways most people never consider. He talks about CO William Quinn, used as a battering ram by rioting inmates and left to die. About Sergeant Edward Cunningham, who spoke directly to a film crew in the middle yard — warning the governor that people were going to be killed — and was killed days later. About what the four-day standoff looked like from the perspective of the men who worked those walls afterward. In Part 2, Rick Harcrow takes us further: the inmate who looked him in the eye and said he'd be dead before the day was out, the violence the department tried to bury, and what 10,000 corrections officers finally did to force the state to listen. New episodes drop every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

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About

From the front lines to the final call, Heroes Behind the Badge brings you the untold stories of America's law enforcement community. Led by Craig Floyd, who spent 34 years working alongside police officers across the nation, alongside veteran facilitator Dennis Collins and law enforcement expert Bill Erfurth, this podcast cuts through misconceptions to reveal the true nature of modern policing. Our dynamic trio brings unique perspectives to each episode: Craig shares deep insights from his decades of experience and relationships within law enforcement, Dennis guides conversations with meticulous research and natural flow, and Bill adds engaging commentary that makes complex law enforcement topics accessible to all listeners. Each episode features in-depth conversations with law enforcement professionals, sharing their firsthand experiences, challenges, and triumphs. Drawing from extensive research and real-world experience, we explore the realities faced by the over 800,000 officers who serve and protect our communities every day. From dramatic accounts of crisis response to quiet moments of everyday heroism, our show illuminates the human stories behind the badge. We dive deep into the statistics, policies, and practices that shape modern law enforcement, offering listeners a comprehensive understanding of what it truly means to serve in law enforcement today. Whether you're a law enforcement professional, a concerned citizen, or someone seeking to understand the complexities of modern policing, Heroes Behind the Badge provides the context, insights, and authentic perspectives you won't find anywhere else. Join us weekly as we honor those who dedicate their lives to keeping our communities safe, one story at a time. Presented by Citizens Behind the Badge, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting and advocating for law enforcement professionals across the United States. Join over 126,000 Americans who have already signed our Declaration of Support for law enforcement at behindbadge.org.

Information

  • Creator
    Citizens Behind the Badge
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    68
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2026 Citizens Behind the Badge
  • Show Website
    Heroes Behind the Badge

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