# Muslim Former FBI Agent Told the Facts About The U.S Cop Life! - Towards Eternity

- Language: en
- Published: 2026-08-26
- Canonical: https://blog.towardseternity.com/en/blog/muslim-former-fbi-agent-told-the-facts-about-the-us-cop-life-towards-eternity
- Source video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQnK8ORegcI
- Channel: Towards Eternity

This is the cleaned transcript of the source video. The speech is unaltered.

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There was a 911 hang up call from a completely abandoned house. We get to the scene. We get in, we're like, "Police! Police!" Nothing. "Police! Police!" We go upstairs, check the entire upstairs. Nothing. There's nobody. All of us, five of us meet downstairs and we talk. We're like, "Hey, everything is good. There's no problems here." As we're talking... All of a sudden we hear fast walking, running like sound upstairs. And a door opens and closes. What the heck? We must have forgotten something. So naturally, we drew our guns and we... "Police!" Announce, whatever. And we went upstairs and we looked and looked and looked. There's nobody. All the windows are closed. There's nobody.

As we're waiting there, the same thing. "What's going on?" At that point, like, we start to get spooked a little bit because we're like, "What's going on here?" And we check again. Like, we are at a point where we're going to, like, rip the floors off. Like, there's nothing. And we hear a very slow walk this time, and you can hear the creaks because it's a wooden house and a door open up and close. Imagine a completely empty place. My name is Erdal Kaya. I was born in Adana, Turkey. I'm about 37 years old right now. I went to Istanbul University and studied hotel management. And in 2005 I emigrated to the United States and currently live in Chicago area.

How did your journey start from Turkey to United States? Ever since I was a little boy, I've always been interested in Western culture, I don't know why. Perhaps TV shows and movies and all that, but I really, really enjoyed the Western culture. I was about 11 years old. I was helping out my mom one day and just out of the blue, I just told my mom that, "Hey, I'm just going to go over out west somewhere and live there someday." And my mom kind of looked at me and she was like, "What the hell is going on there?" Like, she was confused where that came from. In 2005, that finally happened. I moved to the United States. - How old were you? - I was 20. I was 20 years old.

When I was in the United States, I knew nothing. So my English was very, very broken. And there was that cultural shock. But I began working at hotels. I first worked at a Sheraton in Atlanta, Georgia, and I couldn't believe I even got that job. How did you become a police officer? My dad is a retired policeman here in Turkey. I wanted to be a police officer even more in the United States because of course I wanted to help people and have that feeling. But also, you know, TV shows and movies. They really show you how police are, like, the action all the time. That really captivated me, captured my interest even more.

I began applying to many police departments and after being rejected 3 or 4 times, I was finally able to get a job as a police officer and I worked as a police officer for about six years in that police department. About three of those years were where I trained other new police officers. We call that the field training officer position. How many people are able to pass the police tests? Being a police officer in the United States is pretty hard, but I would say on average, perhaps 5 to 10% make it. So very, very few people out of all applicants get the position. That's how it was with me.

Mine was, when I applied, 777 people applied, and only 11 of us got hired and got shipped out to the academy. So think about that. What was the toughest training you ever had? Every single morning, 5:00 in the morning, you'd have to wake up and get screamed at, and all the crazy military stuff. Go outside, either to the gym or outside to the track. Non-stop. No break. And on top of that, somebody is on top of you screaming and yelling at you non-stop. And you think that's over? No it's not. You go inside and you try to get ready within 10 minutes. They give you about 10 minutes to shower, shave, put your uniform on and line up outside. And you don't meet that deadline. It doesn't happen.

And they know that. And because you didn't meet that deadline, they punish you. They're like, "Oh, you're late, let's go back outside." - And they punish you even more. - What's the punishment? Punishment is very physical, high... Like nobody beat you, nobody touch you physically like that. But they punish you by doing a lot of physical activity. Another tough, very, very tough thing was psychological pressure. They scream and yell at you to your face. Like, their face is right here. That's their mouth right there. And they scream and scream and scream every single day. That was really, really tough. But after like 26 weeks, I remember, it was like week 20.

20 weeks I've been in there and I was getting yelled at For something I did wrong, Screaming and yelling. I was just not even hearing it anymore. To me, I was just paying attention to other things. Oh, what am I going to do this weekend? I'm going to get that coffee this time. So I wasn't even listening. It was just like that bad. But some people couldn't take it, so lots of people would just quit. Have you ever get to the point that, I'm off, to the limit, when you were getting training? Absolutely, every single day. Every single day, I'd be like, "I'm done. I just want to go home." I would tell myself. My partner was in the bottom bunk, and he quit, like, at week six.

He's like, "I can't do this anymore." And he was a prior military guy. He's like, "I can't do this anymore. It's too hard." It's like, you can't leave because you help each other. You know, he makes my bed, I make his bed. So he quit. And lots of people quit. And I wanted to quit every day, but I didn't. What I learned in that academy was, no matter how badly you think that, "That's it. I've got nothing left in the tank. I'm done. I can't do another push up, or I can't do this anymore." You're about at 50%. You still have 50% to go. What was the most extraordinary thing you have experienced?

Prior to explaining what just happened, there was a 911 hang up call from a completely abandoned house. Normally 911 hang up calls come in, people call 911 and they hang up. We can't just not go, we have to go, because you could be under duress, under stress. Somebody may have kidnapped you and you just called and you can just hang up. So for that reason, we have to go check to see if everything is okay. And this call came from a completely abandoned house. Prior to explaining what just happened, there was a 911 hang up call from a completely abandoned house. Normally 911 hang up calls come in, people call 911 and they hang up.

We can't just not go, we have to go, because you could be under duress, under stress. Somebody may have kidnapped you and you just called and you can just hang up. So for that reason, we have to go check to see if everything is okay. And this call came from a completely abandoned house. And it was me and like three other police officers, and a supervisor. We get to the scene. As a protocol, we check inside the house for anybody. We get in. We're like, "Police, police." Nothing. Nothing downstairs. We go upstairs, check the entire upstairs. Nothing. There's nobody. There's no furniture, nothing inside. It's completely an empty place. Somehow a 911 call came from that place.

Sometimes it happens. Phone lines, whatever, right? We go downstairs, all of us, five of us meet downstairs and we talk. We're like, "Hey, everything is good. There's no problems here." As we're talking... All of a sudden we hear some, like, fast walking, running like sound upstairs, Like, just like really, really fast. And a door opens and closes. What the heck? We must have forgotten something. Like, we thought we missed... Somebody was upstairs and we missed. So naturally, we drew our guns and we... "Police!" Announce, whatever. And we went upstairs and we looked and looked and looked. There's nobody. All the windows are closed. There's nobody. Very confusing.

There's no secret hidden doorways. There's no closets, there's no crawl spaces. Nothing. Everything is just empty. At that time we talked to my supervisor. We're like, "What the hell is going on here?" It was like, "Well, we don't know." And supervisor was like, "You know what? We're going to control this. We're going to check the area a lot more carefully." Supervisor sent one officer to the back of the house one officer to the front of the house, just in case maybe somebody jumped from, or somebody can jump from the window. And we, you know, check further and further. And there's nothing. As we're waiting there, the same thing.

Just footsteps, you hear footsteps, like clear footsteps walking and a door open up and close again. Like okay, what's going on? At that point, like, we start to get spooked a little bit because we're like, "What's going on here?" And we check again. Were you afraid? I wasn't afraid, it was just like, almost like funny, but spooky. Okay. Because we're like, there's five of us. We're like, "Okay, what is going on here like that?" So we're thinking about some more. Is that ghosts? What's going on? But nobody knows. We go upstairs, we check again. Again, there's nothing. Like, we're at a point where we're going to, like, rip the floors off. Like, there's nothing.

Imagine a completely empty place. Unless there's some hidden place that we couldn't see, there was nothing. We go downstairs again. We are talking like just like this. And we hear a very slow walk this time, just... And you can hear the creaks, because it's a wooden house, and door open up and close. Right at that time, of course, my initial thought is just like, "Okay, this is something crazy." The supervisor be like, "You know what? No. We're not gonna check this anymore. Let's go outside." So we walked outside and the supervisor announced over the radio, "Hey, radio, everything is clear. No problems here.

If there are any other calls come from this place, you don't have to send any police officers. It's clear." That's what the supervisor said. Was that clear? That there was nobody there? We checked it three times, and it was just like... That's when the supervisor got scared. He's like, "Okay, there are ghosts up there." Because it can't be a cat. It can't be an animal. There was no animals up there. The windows are closed. I don't know, to this day, I don't know. It's very extraordinary. It's a very interesting situation. There was no telephone? There was no telephone. There's nothing. Completely empty. There's nothing in there.

Like there's no crawl spaces, no closet, nothing we couldn't find. And even if somebody was hiding, why would that person constantly walk and close the door? I don't know, I don't know. What is the biggest difference between the police officers in movies and in the real life? The biggest difference? Those police officers in the movies are always in a gunfight, and they just move from one gunfight to another, to another. They get in their car and they go home. In real life, your gunfight is extremely rare. You know, it doesn't happen all the time. You have your donuts, you have your coffee. Exactly. We've got our donuts. We got our coffee. That part is real.

You really do drink your coffee and eat donuts. But the gunfights, they're very rare. And like 90% of what you do as a police officer is paperwork. You're filling out some document, you're doing something, some police report, something, but you're constantly filling out paperwork. In the movies, we never see any police officers filling out any documents. That was the biggest thing that I learned when I first became a police officer. We went to one scene and then my training officer said, "Okay, we got to document this." "We have to write a report." I'm like, "Oh, okay." And then we go to another scene, "Okay, we have to write a report." I'm like, "Oh my God.

I have to write reports for everything." Yes. Can you understand when someone is lying to you? When I talk to people, when I'm interviewing somebody, there are certain things that I look at, that I pay attention to, to see if there is any deception. If you're talking to somebody who is very inexperienced in the criminal world, it would be a lot easier. But somebody who's experienced, a seasoned criminal, it would be much harder. There are ways to detect deception, for sure, in human psychology, but nobody can detect deception 100%. It's just impossible. How can you understand the difference between a person taking out his gun or his wallet? You can't. That's a very good question, actually.

If my gun is back here. My wallet is back there. Right there. Both right here. And you are a police officer. I do this, you don't know what I'm going to get. You don't know if I'm going to get my wallet out. You don't know if I'm going to get my gun out. Everything is circumstantial. Totality of circumstances is extremely important. Why are you there? Who are you talking to? What are the circumstances? These are very important. Nothing is black and white. Everything is just gray. So if I'm fighting you or I'm aggressive with you and I do this. I'm sorry. A police officer's natural reaction will be like, that person is pulling out a weapon to use it against me.

But if you're there as like, "Hey, sir, you know, let me see your ID." "Okay." When a person does this, you reasonably think the person is getting his or her wallet out. In the first situation, do you have the right to shoot that person? It's totality of circumstances what matters here. If I'm there, you're fighting me. You just hurt somebody or whatever. Some violence is going on and then you're now resisting me, and I get there, you just do this. Yes. Police officer can reasonably shoot that person. Did you ever have a task where you needed to be disguised or dressed as someone else? Ah, yes. I did. A very high prostitution area in the city that I worked for.

I would dress like somebody from the neighborhood, grow some beard, grab a beer in my hand, put a hat on and drive a car like that. But all the while other police officers are watching me and I would try to pick up prostitutes. "Hey, how's it going? Are you working?" And they would get in the car, the female ladies. I'd talk to them and then as soon as we would agree on a price, then I would give the signal to all the units in the area. They would understand the signal and they would pull us over. Because I'm driving a regular car, it's just like I'm a civilian person. A marked car, police officer with lights would come pull us over.

And when they pulled us over, a police officer would come to my door. Hey, how's it going? Whatever. And while we're talking, they'd do their quick investigation. They'd get us out of the car, basically arrest both of us. But the other person doesn't know that I'm a cop. For the most part. There was a couple of them. They realized, like, as we would get pulled over, they would look at me, "Oh my God, you're a cop." And they would try to jump out of the car and I'd just hold on to them and stuff like that. But for the most part, we would both get arrested, technically, and they would go to the car, and then I'd get back in the car and just continue doing what I do. Yeah.

You have been in more than hundreds of operations. Have you ever lost a colleague? Yeah, yeah, I have, and... It says "Jamie Cox." This is in memory of Jamie that I carry this on my wrist all the time. A great guy, just what a great guy. One day, Jamie, he conducted a traffic stop at like, 1:30 in the morning, at night. And unfortunately, Jamie tried to arrest this person but unfortunately, this person resisted. And there was this fight. To be more detailed, the person did not have a driver's license, so it wasn't even anything crazy. Okay, it's not that the person was wanted for murder or anything like that. This person did not have a driver's license. It was a revoked license.

And because of that, Jamie wanted to take this person into custody, and it wasn't a big deal. You just go downtown, you sign some papers, and you leave. It's really not that big of a deal. It's not like you stay in jail for that. And Jamie tried to handcuff this person, get him out of the car. And this person refused and resisted. And there was that fight. Jamie was hanging on to the driver. Jamie was trying to take the driver into custody. Take the driver out of the car. The driver hits the gas and tries to leave while Jamie is trying to take him into custody. So Jamie is inside the suspect's vehicle. The suspect hits the gas and flees. All the while Jamie is still hanging on to the car.

So door is open. Jamie is hanging on to the door and the person. I don't know the details there, but the car just leaves the scene with Jamie. They go at a very high rate of speed. And Jamie again, I don't know the details here because whatever was said in that time, nobody knows, but I'm assuming Jamie was saying "Stop the car, stop the car." and "No." And this person continued to drive really fast and ultimately crashed. And Jamie lost his life right there. It's very, very sad situation. He was a great guy. When we worked together, we would have breakfast every single day together. We would text and talk to each other. A good, good person, like, I've...

One of the nicest people I've ever met in my life. Always, always just smiled, laughed. Good, positive energy. And not with us anymore. Did you have issues in the United States because you were Muslim? Not necessarily. Back when I used to work at a hotel, there was one guy that I worked with. He was a concierge at the hotel and he would constantly joke. "Do you guys ride camels? Do you guys ride donkeys?" That guy wasn't just joking, he just did not like me. I felt that, I truly felt that he did not like me because I was just a guy from Turkey who was Muslim. Truly believe that.

But for the most part, my friends, my other cop friends or whatever, they would just joke around with me, stuff like that, but that's because they actually liked me. Would you like to add anything? Sure. I'd like to say this to anybody who finds themselves in a situation where I was in. I was born and raised in Turkey and immigrated to the United States at a very young age, not really having anything in my life, and you know, achieved a few things up there, right? And what I say is this. Whatever you believe in, whatever you want to do in your life, set some goal, make that decision and take some steps towards it. Those steps can be very little, very small. Some big, doesn't matter.

Take those steps. Just believe in it. If you believe in something, you need to make that part of day to day life. You have to. That's what I did. I wanted to move to the United States, and that was part of my life. Every single day I'd wake up thinking about that. I'd go to sleep thinking about that. I wanted to be a police officer, go to sleep thinking about that. I'd wake up thinking about that. I look at life as like, you drive on a forest road, right? Completely on a dark, moonless night. You turn your headlights off. What happens? Everything is pitch black. But does that mean that road is not there? No, the road is still there. So that's how I look at life.

When you turn your car's headlights on, it shows about 100 meters out. It doesn't show your destination. It only shows about 100 meters out. That's how I look at life. You don't have to see the end. Just take some step towards your dreams or whatever your dreams are. You'll just see a little bit. Just start taking steps towards it. As you drive, you'll see another 100 meters. You'll see another 100 meters until you get to your destination. Just because it's dark doesn't mean the road is not there, it's there. Just have some faith. Believe in yourself. Just take some steps towards it. - Thank you. - Thank you. And it's definitely a pleasure to be here.

And I'm very honored to be among you guys. Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me.