13 Arrests, a Badge, and a Microphone: The Story Behind All Mike'd Up

Thirteen arrests.

That's the number that used to define me — at least in the eyes of anyone who only knew part of the story. Thirteen times I was on the wrong side of the law. Thirteen times I could have become a statistic.

And then I became a cop.

If that sounds like a contradiction, you haven't heard the whole story yet. That's exactly why All Mike'd Up exists.

The Number That Follows You

When you grow up the way I grew up — in the Fulton Projects, removed from your home before your sixth birthday, bounced through an orphanage, foster care, a group home, and eventually the streets at 16 — the number of times you've been arrested isn't a moral judgment. It's a survival record.

I wasn't a criminal. I was a kid with no structure, no support, and no one who understood what was actually happening inside my head. I was making decisions in real time with no safety net and no roadmap.

Thirteen arrests. Each one a chapter. Each one a lesson I didn't know I was learning.

What the Streets Teach You

There's a kind of education you get on the streets that you can't get anywhere else. Not the kind you'd choose — but the kind that sticks.

You learn to read people fast. You learn who to trust and who to avoid. You learn that most people are doing the best they can with what they have, and that "what they have" varies enormously depending on where you started.

I carried a grey suitcase. Everything I owned fit inside it. I was 16 years old.

That suitcase taught me more about resilience than any classroom ever could. It also taught me about shame — the particular kind that comes from having less than everyone around you, from not having a place to go home to, from being the kid nobody came back for.

I carried that shame for a long time. Longer than I should have.

The Turn Nobody Saw Coming

By 21, I was a husband. By the time I was in my 30s, I was a police officer.

People who knew me from the streets couldn't believe it. People who knew me from the force couldn't believe where I'd come from. I existed in two worlds that weren't supposed to overlap, and somehow I was the bridge between them.

I think that's what made me good at the job.

I understood the people I was policing in a way that most of my colleagues didn't — not because I was better than them, but because I'd been there. I knew what it felt like to be on the other side of that badge. I knew what it felt like to be seen as a problem instead of a person.

That knowledge shaped every interaction I had on the job. It still shapes how I see the world.

The Career, the Cases, the Things That Stay

I'm not going to tell you that law enforcement is simple. It isn't. It's one of the most complicated, morally demanding jobs a person can do — and the weight of it accumulates over time in ways you don't always notice until you're carrying more than you can hold.

I saw things during my career that I'll never fully shake. I made decisions under pressure that I've replayed a thousand times. I worked alongside people who were doing their best in an impossible job, and I worked alongside people who weren't.

When I retired, I thought I'd feel lighter. Instead, I felt like I finally had time to look at everything I'd been carrying.

The Diagnosis at 62

I was 62 years old when I was diagnosed with ADHD.

Sixty-two.

I want you to sit with that number for a moment. Sixty-two years of not knowing. Sixty-two years of fighting harder than I needed to fight, struggling in ways I didn't understand, making decisions that seemed impulsive to everyone around me but felt completely logical from the inside.

ADHD doesn't look the same in everyone. In adults — especially adults who grew up in chaotic environments — it can look like poor decision-making, emotional volatility, an inability to follow through, a pattern of starting things and not finishing them.

It can look like 13 arrests.

When the doctor explained it to me, I didn't feel angry. I felt something closer to grief — for the kid who had been trying so hard without knowing why it was so hard. And then, underneath the grief, something that felt like relief.

Oh. That's what was happening.

Why This Story Needs to Be Told

There are a lot of people walking around right now who are carrying a version of my story. Maybe not the exact same details — maybe not the Fulton Projects, maybe not the orphanage, maybe not the badge. But the core of it: the feeling of being behind, of fighting harder than everyone else, of not understanding why.

A lot of those people will never get a diagnosis. A lot of them will never have someone sit down with them and say: you're not broken, you're wired differently, and here's what that means.

I can't fix that. But I can talk about it.

All Mike'd Up is my attempt to put the whole story on record — not the cleaned-up version, not the version that makes me look like a hero, but the real one. The messy, complicated, sometimes painful truth of a life that went in directions nobody predicted.

What the Podcast Will Cover

Every episode of All Mike'd Up will go somewhere real.

We'll talk about growing up in poverty in New York City — what it actually looks like, what it does to a kid, what it takes to survive it. We'll talk about the foster care system, the group homes, the gaps in support that leave kids like me to figure it out alone.

We'll talk about law enforcement from the inside — the good, the hard, and the things that don't make the news. We'll talk about what it means to police communities you came from, and what that does to a person over time.

And we'll talk about ADHD — about late diagnosis, about what it means to finally understand yourself at 62, about the strange mix of relief and loss that comes with that kind of clarity.