I walked into that assignment with a clean map.
Good guys here. Bad guys there. I was saving a neighborhood from violent gang members. The people I had the most in common with were the families behind locked doors, the kids dodging crossfire, the community trying to survive. The people I had the least in common with were the Crips I was there to take down.
Two years later, the map was wrecked.
Not because the mission was wrong. Not because they weren’t dangerous. They were. Fifty-one convictions came out of Operation Fishbowl. The charges were earned.
But somewhere between the first handshake and the last arrest, something shifted. I’d spent so much time with these guys that I’d started to see something I didn’t expect to see.
Myself.
Kada had two attempted murder arrests before he turned thirty.
He stood six feet, two hundred pounds, not a lick of fat, covered in tattoos, face like Mike Tyson. His street cred was earned the hard way. He sold dope out of a house where they hid product under a fake countertop by the stove. I’d just bought from him. We were sitting in the living room while Lil’ Saint was down the hall with some girl, clothes piling up on the floor.
And we were arguing about football.
“You can’t randomly pick teams to follow, man,” I told him. “Especially if they’re reigning champs. It’s against the unwritten rules of fandom.”
“Yeah, well, the Cowboys suck, though.”
“Well said. Fantastic argument…until they win. Then you’ll be a big fan, right? Or do you just like teams with cool uniforms?”
“Shit.”
“The ‘Cool Uniform Theory’ is only good if you picked the team before your tenth birthday. Otherwise, you gotta be a man and stick with your boys.”
“Shit man, you crazy dude, the Cowboys suck.”
I was cracking up. He was hammering back the best he could.
This is the same conversation I have with my buddies in real life. After our kids’ ballgames. At a restaurant. Ball-busting is what dudes do to show affection to one another.
The difference is I was having it with a murdering ex-con after a dope deal inside a locked gang house while guys got high and cheated on their wives down the hall.
Same conversation within a radically different context.
That’s the tear in the map.
Then there was Ced.
Ced worked at a carwash near the Bowl (the murder haven run by the Crips). I’d roll through, tip big, and he’d jump in front of everyone to detail my ride. He had a theft and robbery record, a crack addiction, and he connected buyers and sellers better than anyone.
I genuinely liked him.
We’d cruise the hood talking about TCU girls. He’d beg me for my ball cap, a brand-spankin’ new purple TCU hat my wife had just bought me for my birthday. I teased him about it for weeks. Eventually, I gave it to him.
That would take some explaining at home. But it was for the cause.
Except it wasn’t just for the cause. I liked the guy. And I used that connection to get to bigger targets like X-Man and Nasty, the kingpin-level names I’d been chasing for months.
Ced handed me the keys to the whole operation I’d eventually destroy.
And I genuinely liked him.
That’s not a clean story. That’s the mess of reality.
I’m not saying Kada and Ced were misunderstood poets. They weren’t. Kada shot at people. Ced fed an ecosystem of addiction and violence. The convictions were righteous. And I’d do the mission again tomorrow.
What I am saying is this: the map I walked in with was too simple. Not wrong. Incomplete.
These guys were dangerous. And human. Both things at once.
Albert Einstein wrote something that took me years to understand:
The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self.
The “self” isn’t just your body or your name. It’s the story you carry about who you are. Your identity. Your tribe. Your certainties. The mental map that tells you where you fit and where everyone else belongs.
That map is useful. You need it to operate. But it can also become a cage.
Jung called it shadow work: the parts of ourselves we refuse to see get projected onto others. The less conscious you are of your own blind spots, the more they run you. You think you’re making free choices. You’re actually running old programs.
Many veterans reading this have credibility most people will never earn. You’ve been downrange. You’ve made hard calls. You’ve experienced what most people only theorize about.
That credibility is a weapon. And it’s a responsibility.
The same mental armor that kept you alive can keep you blind. The strongest convictions cast the darkest shadows. The things you’re most sure about? That’s exactly where you need to check your six.
The brain wants the easy path. Binaries. Us and them. Good and evil.
The harder road is holding contradictions. Recognizing that someone can be dangerous and human. Wrong and worth understanding.
The guys who stay effective update the map when the terrain changes. The ones who get brittle either break, become mentally stagnant, or worse: become the thing they swore they’d fight.
We’re living in a time of extremism. Everyone’s certain. Everyone’s tribal. The loudest voices are the most confident, and often the least tested.
You’ve been tested. That means your words carry weight.
So here’s the discipline: notice when certainty arrives before curiosity does. That’s the signal. That’s where the blind spot lives.
Questioning isn’t betrayal. It’s maintenance. Checking your gear before you step off.
I walked into that gang house to take down bad guys.
I walked out knowing Kada likes football and argues like my buddies from back home.
I walked out knowing I genuinely liked Ced, and I used that to put people in prison.
I don’t regret the mission. I’d do it again.
But I left something in that neighborhood. Some piece of the clean map I carried in. And I think I’m better for losing it.
Liberation from the self doesn’t mean abandoning who you are.
It means holding your identity loosely enough to see clearly. Recognizing that the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, and who they are, can blind us to what’s actually in front of us.
Stay teachable. Stay curious. Stay dangerous… by staying open.
—
Tegan Broadwater spent 13 years with the Fort Worth Police Department, including two years assigned to the FBI working deep undercover inside a violent Crip organization. That operation, detailed in his book Life in the Fishbowl, resulted in 51 convictions. He has since founded Tactical Systems Network, an armed security & protection firm primarily staffed by veterans, is a creative writer and musician, and hosts The Tegan Broadwater Podcast. All book profits benefit children of incarcerated parents. Learn more at TeganBroadwater.com
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