FemaleFirst talks to the real Tubbs and Crockett

07 November 2006

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David - I started law enforcement in 1973 and by the latter part of 1975, early 1976 I was transferred into the narcotics section. A couple of months after, Vince joined. I made sure he came with me, because when we were in uniform patrol together we worked as partners. We were a team and made a lot of arrests. We were predominantly known for a lot of the drugs arrests that we made whilst we were in uniform. Our sergeant wanted us in the narcotics squad because we were good and he took us. And Vince went in the same direction. But he started law enforcement training in 73 and then started in 1974.

David, I believe you appeared in the original Miami Vice series with Don Johnson. Can you tell us more about that?

David – I made it on the show three times, but I was always an extra. It was 37 dollars and 50 cents for the day. I waited there all day long just to be shot in the back as a group. One time I got an audition for a role to play a policeman. When I went in for the role, they asked to me to come through, and Mr Mann had a group set up in the room. He asked me to get in the room, arrest the guy and walk out. So I went into the room, arrested the guy and then walked out. The next actor – he was a bartender, he came in, arrested the guy and walked out. He got the job and I got the boot! Did you get to meet the original show’s stars like Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas then? You mentioned Michael Mann a moment ago…..

David - Sheena Easton bumped into me and Don Johnson stood next to me and nodded. It was pretty neat. Philip Michael Thomas was a very cool individual. The rest of the group – Michael Talbott, who played Detective Stan Switek – I got a picture with him and myself. Later on, about twenty years later I was commanding officer for another department and Michael came in to do something and he saw me and gave me a big hug and I got a picture with him now. But he remembered me; well he associated me from that time earlier. They were always busy and had a lot of people working around them but he seemed to recall me from the set.

Did you appear in any other TV shows or films at all?

David – Well I body guarded Gianni Versace and six months after he dropped me from the bodyguard detailing he was killed. I’ve bodyguarded Sly Stallone, the Estafans, Jennifer Lopez and Tommy Hilfiger.

Did you both provide expert information for the film or TV series? Michael Mann has talked about working with real cops from the Miami Vice Squad for research and Colin Farrell has also divulged he spent some time with genuine undercover police officers to prepare for his role…...

David - Well, we were the real guys. What they did was – we did the real work. Our stories. The guys that worked in administration and worked for the Chief’s officers got to be the advisors and they took our stories and told our stories. We never were consulted. Even if they had consulted us we would have told them some really cool stuff. But they did a fantastic job. The TV series was remarkable in showing a lot of Miami. The flashy clothes were really different from what we really wore. We have pictures of the style we wore back then. There were a lot of polyesters – it was just a different look. Today’s style in the current movie, is the current styles – what’s happening now.

If I can go a little further with that, being a chief of police now, I recognise that in the current movie a lot of the equipment and the technology that they use is what’s active now, compared to when we had it in the 70s, when we had nothing. We had no communication. The recording devices when you wore them undercover did not work. The cell phones were the size of a brief case when you were lucky enough to get one.

Vincent – A lot of it was face-to-face work.

What do you think of Colin Farrell's and Jamie Foxx’s portrayal as Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs in the film? Do they depict the relationship between two detectives who are partners well?

David - I think they were excellent. They have a good interaction between them. Partners interact like that, very well. They know. Vince and I to this day have very similar ideas, we know how each other think and we play off one other at any time. In the movie they do the same thing, and that’s real.

The one thing that I did say that was critical - is that they don’t take more, or give an ideal perspective of what their personal lives are more like. Because when you are intense, working under cover and you have a family, your family is concerned for your well being even though they've got to know your partner. Like my family was ok with me being with Vince, knowing that he was there to protect me and vice versa. They didn’t bring that out enough (in the movie). There was a little bit with Jamie Foxx and Naomie Harris – they had that little affair, that little relationship they had. But we had families that depended upon us to come home. That interaction with the family is something that should be portrayed. You could have a big argument and you’ve got to go to a major drug deal. You have to try and sever yourself from that major issue to get back into character for the drug undercover operation.

Can you tell us more about the skills and strategies needed for the job of being a detective in the Squad – you do obviously have to survive on your wits don’t you?

Vincent – We were selected by the supervisors of our department because not only had we a good rapport between us, but also we were innovative and quick thinking. You have to be able to adapt quickly to a change. Sometimes you couldn’t choreograph or plan everything. Sometimes things just cropped up. It wasn’t scripted.

David – No it wasn’t scripted.

Vincent – You had to adapt and really go with the flow. That’s where the real skill came in. You would find yourself in an awkward situation, something that wasn’t planned, and you had to react to it in a way that protected your cover and your case. It’s a skill that you developed over time. You got training in this area but….

David – You had to be there to get in to it. You had to be in the middle of it to start knowing how to work it. We had eight weeks worth of official training where we went to classes and schools and learnt from other senior agents about how to do things. We also met with an actual drug guy – an informer – that took us on the road for one week and we hung out with him and acted like we were heroin addicts. That week taught us more than the eights weeks of official training.

Vincent – You have to learn to blend in with the surroundings, you don’t want to stand out.

David – You also had a rapport with informants. You bonded but you also differentiated between the fact that we were cops and they were bad guys. Essentially an informant is just someone that is working both sides. You recognise that and understand that, and whilst there is a degree of trust, there is never a total trust because that is put in your partner.

Vincent - You never trusted the informer, you trusted one another. And we were always out to figure out what the informer was up to because his or her greed was what was their motivation whilst our professionalism and getting the job done was ours.

Obviously you’ve been in life threatening situations during shoot outs and whilst undercover…

David – Sure. We’ve been shot, punched, stabbed, broken, blown out of a window.

Vincent – I got hit by a baseball bat.

David – You get kicked in the teeth and the groin many times (Laughs).

They say it takes a special kind of person to work undercover – many cops grew up at the crossroads of good and evil and you’re always assuming different identities. What’s your opinion about that?

David – You have to have the ability to go in and be creative. Even being an actor – better than professional actor. Being an actor, at the end of a shoot you go back to doing other things. In undercover work – your life and your partners life depends on your acting. You have to be extremely convincing and so good with your gift of gab in communicating with these bad guys.

Vincent – Sometimes the role that you’re playing becomes the reality. I thought that the film depicted that a lot. It was obvious for me that Colin Farrell’s character definitely crossed over. He was as close to being an actual drug dealer as his character Sonny Crockett was supposed to in the film.

David – I can identify with Colin Farrell working undercover. I was the front guy who used to bring Vince in as the moneyman. So I spent a lot more time working on that character- where I actually started to lose my identity and forget it. I forgot to remember who I was and I mean when you’re undercover playing a drug dealer or a doper you take on that persona. I would go too undercover. If it weren’t for Vince – Vince would bring me back to reality and back to base regularly. And vice versa. Vince would be the money Italian guy and sometimes he would start to get so lost that you would have to…We had checks and balances with each other. We only depended upon each other to make sure that we were in reality. When you’re portraying it you start living who you are.

We had intense gunfights a few times just like the movie. There was one specific incident when we didn’t know who was shooting at us and we was shooting back at them. They were across a canal bank. To this day we don’t know if we hit anybody. But they didn’t hit us and that was what was most important. They were shooting at us out of bushes and we didn’t know who was shooting at whom. But there was a lot of shooting.

Did you ever have your cover totally blown?

Vincent – Oh yeah definitely. When I was talking about getting injured – I had a guy make me a deal for some cocaine. I had about $17,0000 and he grabbed a baseball bat and gave me a good whack with it. It almost knocked me out. David realised that I was in serious trouble and knocked down a couple of doors trying to get to me. He saved my butt!

David – I had one incident where I doing a muli kilo deal of cocaine. Vince was unavailable at the time, he was out on vacation and I had to get someone else as a partner. He made a complete mess and he blew my cover. The guys were going to kill me. I was going to buy the drugs and they were going to kill me. I got a sense that something was wrong, so I backed out of the deal.

With the technology now, it is scary because the law enforcers are battling with the bad guys to stay ahead of them with it aren’t they?

Vincent - The technology today is excellent. On both sides it is superb. They have the ability to use more equipment – the best that money can buy. Remember they don’t have to get authorisation by the Chief of Police for expenditure to buy a device or buy a bigger boat to put on the water, or to plant a bug on a car. They don’t need search warrants. They just go and do it, whereas we had policies and procedures. We took . every now and then to get the job done but we had hell to pay for in the end because we could compromise a case if we didn’t follow policies and procedures. Drug dealers don’t.

Do you have any major regrets to do with the job?

David – I got old (Laughs). The only regret that I have is that there were times that I trusted the wrong people. I’m always thankful. I thank the good Lord with every breath that I take to have Vince as my friend and my partner, because he was always there for me. Even when there was conflict issues Vince was there. When I had major cases and there was no one to trust and the case was going the wrong way, Vince was the one that would get involved and help me pull back.

Do you ever watch other films and TV shows besides Miami Vice, that are about cops and criticise them? Do you tend to often look out for their flaws?

David – I like the sensationalism and the excitement. It reminds me a lot of the fun we had. But sometimes, there’s not a sense of reality, as I said earlier, of real life - of family interaction and what it does to you. There have been books that have been written by other undercover detectives that talk about that. They talk about the separation and the anxiety of separation when you leave your family for the day and go and do you undercover work and then come back to your family. You have to change characters.

What are your plans for the future?

David – Well, I’m a Chief of Police and Vince is an attorney. I’m still in law enforcement and I still have a knack for falling into this. Just a week ago I was going to work and I saw a car that was disabled and I ended up arresting a couple of people for some drugs in the car with them and a gun. I still have a knack for it - but of course I made my men come and do the paperwork because I’d forgotten how to do it! (Laughs)

Miami Vice is available to rent or own on DVD in the UK from November 27th 2006.

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