Name: What Being a Detective is Really Like
Uploaded: 2025-12-02T18:30:48.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'What Being a Detective is Really Like' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-12-02. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'What Being a Detective is Really Like' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-12-02. Transcript available.

You get promoted to detective in 2005?
2007, 2007, yeah.
Okay, and what does it mean to become a detective?
What does that mean exactly?
So to become a detective, back then you had to take an exam.
So it's like a six-month to year-long process.
You have to study for several months,
and there's like six or seven textbooks you have to read.
So you take the exam, and then they do kind of like an oral interview,
depending on how you score on the test,
and then they kind of combine your years of training and experience,
your test score and your interview to say,
okay, these people have been high enough score to get made detectives.
And then you do like a month's worth of training back at the police academy.
Because being a detective versus a patrolman, it's very, very different.
First of all, you don't wear a uniform, which is my favorite part.
But it's just a completely different job.
Like you're now responsible.
A cop gets a call, they go to the call, they write a report,
and that's the end of it until they have to go to court.
If the report that the cop writes about, it gets assigned to a detective,
and now you own that.
Like, so you have to follow through, you have to follow up,
and go to court, or take out criminal charges, or whatever.
So it's a very different job.
Is there a lot of lobbying to become a detective?
Like whenever you're like, on the force,
or people like, I want to be detective,
and then do people,
is there any way to manipulate things,
so it betters your chances of becoming a detective?
No.
Or is it not like that?
Not like that.
So everyone, if anyone's a patrolman,
doesn't want to be a patrolman for long.
I was a patrolman for 13 years, which was a long time.
We had, usually they do the detectives exam every two or three years.
And for some reason, we had a seven-year break,
because I didn't take it.
I just had a child.
And I was like, I'll take the next one in a couple years.
And it was seven years.
So I was a patrolman for a long time.
So people want...
It was seven years to the next promotion?
Yeah, until the next exam.
So it was a long wait.
But people want it,
just because it's better than being a patrolman.
Some people love being a patrolman,
and will do that their entire life.
But most people either want to take an exam
and become a supervisor,
like a sergeant, a lieutenant,
and keep kind of going up the chain.
Or people are interested in being a detective.
So it's definitely desirable, you know?
Do you remember an early case as a detective
that really kind of stood out to you?
Yeah, I had a good arm robbery once.
You know, that sounds like an oxymoron.
Good arm robbery.
That's great.
I had a little good arm robbery.
It was on Halloween,
which is always one of the worst days of the year to work.
Fourth of July, Halloween sucks.
They were always crazy.
But we had an arm robbery of a cell phone store.
It was in the morning.
It was like 9.30 in the morning.
The store just opened up.
And these two dudes went in,
and there was some young girl,
early 20s, working there by herself.
It was in a shitty part of town.
And they literally tied her up
with like telephone cord
around her wrists and her ankles.
They stole, it was like 800 bucks
or $785, whatever it was.
But the feds ended up taking it
because it was a T-Mobile.
And they can kind of loop in the Commerce Act
like by saying it,
because commerce was halted with other states,
it becomes like a federal case.
But the guys ran off,
and the girl,
it was like something out of a movie.
It was all on video.
She literally hopped over to the phone,
all tied up with her ankles.
And they put a gun to her head and everything.
It was two firearms.
And she was terrified.
And she hopped over to the phone
and like knocked it off with her head
and was like calling for help.
At least she's in a phone store, though.
Like at least like...
But she was able to do that.
And then it came in quick.
So a couple of the guys from work,
everyone...
I worked with the best people
on earth in Dorchester.
They really were great, great cops.
And they just kind of flood the area right away.
And the description's going out.
And one of the officers,
it's actually one of my police academy classmates,
ends up seeing these two guys
walking down the street.
And a description of me giving out clothing,
they left like a trail of clothing down the street.
They tried to drop everything
and change their appearance.
It's hard to run and change at the same time.
Yeah, so they were just kind of, yeah,
walking down the street.
And really nice.
It's actually a little teeny.
There's a nice neighborhood
in this bad section of town.
So they kind of stuck out.
But then he sees the trail of clothing,
jackets and hats and shit left behind.
So he called it in.
These guys, one of them had on gloves,
but the other one had Band-Aids
and tape around his fingers
so he wouldn't leave any fingerprints.
And as the guys, everyone went up there,
the patrolman were talking to him.
He notices them only they're picking away
to try to get the Band-Aids
and tape off their hands.
And then another officer in the area was searching.
She's looking in trash cans
and she found the guns.
And then someone found the box, the money box.
So it was, that was a pretty good one.
It was an exciting one.
Yeah, it was just, it came together nicely.
Everyone worked, like did so well together.
Everyone was like, everyone was there at the right time
to do the right thing.
And then the feds took it
and they had serious criminal records,
and one of them had been doing armed robberies
all over the city.
It was like the same guy hit like five or six places.
So we were glad to get him.
They got, because it was federal,
they got like 20 something years each.
One of their brothers was a truck driver
and he, that's how they got the guns.
He was a cross country truck driver
and he would, he bought guns in Arizona
and then brought them back here.
So that's what made it federal?
Is that they were transporting guns across state lines?
I think they didn't end up prosecuting him
because he basically testified against his brother.
But what made it such a big,
what made the sentencing so severe?
Because they were,
the way the feds do it in federal court is,
they basically add up,
it's a point system
and depending on how many charges or cases,
how many times you've been found guilty,
then you're considered an armed career criminal
and you get extra time added on.
Oh, I got it.
But yeah, for 785 bucks,
they went to jail for like 20 something years each.
It was crazy.
It's idiots.
Yeah, pretty much.
And that poor girl was terrified.
I always felt bad for her.
Yeah.
Oh, that would be so scary, dude.
I don't know what I would do
if someone did something like that,
like pull it, like, you know.
She didn't even want to identify them.
We were trying to do like a,
we do a bring back or show up your bring
because we brought them to say,
have her identify them
and she was like hiding behind the blinds in the store.
We'd usually have them like go out on the sidewalk
and the person will like look through her car window,
but she was literally hiding.
She was absolutely terrified.
The poor thing, she's crying and everything.
How important are fingerprints?
Is that a real thing?
How important is that when you were a detective?
Well, that's a real thing
because everyone's are different.
Yeah.
So if you get found at a scene,
whether it's a break-in
or a robbery or something like that
and they find your fingerprints,
well, what other excuse do you have for being there?
So it's a pretty good,
especially now people like in court,
when cases go to court,
they don't want witness identification.
They want, because all the CSI shows,
they think we all have this bags of evidence to show
when it comes to court.
So juries want to see forensics.
They want fingerprints.
They want like cell phone records.
They want DNA left behind
because of the TV shows makes it look like
that's left at every scene.
But these guys covered their fingerprints.
They had masks on,
like they put bandanas around their face.
But the girl identified them from the clothes.
One of them didn't have a mask on.
So fingerprints are definitely very important.
And what's the process
of actually lifting fingerprints?
What is that?
And you hear the term lifting fingerprints.
So different surfaces use different tools.
Like this surface,
the grain of the wood would be no good.
You need like a smooth surface.
Like they train us on like granite,
like countertops.
Oh yeah, granite's nice.
Yeah, it's very smooth.
It's shiny.
So if someone leaves a fingerprint,
whether you have dry or oily hands,
you're leaving oil behind.
And you could take your powder
and you spin the little powder
on like a smooth surface
and literally the fingerprint pops.
And then you just take this kind of
clear square of like sticky tape
and then like press it down
and then lift it up
so it transfers onto,
the outline transfers onto.
There you go.
Can there be fingerprints in a place?
Like could you look at a counter
or something and see nothing
and there could actually be fingerprints there?
Yeah, you can kind of,
if you use a flashlight,
sometimes you can see it
if it's a clean surface.
If it's like a shithole house
or filled like bank robberies,
we don't do fingerprints
because so many people
go up to every teller.
Like even if a bank robber comes in
and puts his hands down,
there's 10,000 other fingerprints there
from the people that came before you.
So they don't,
we don't bother with something like that
because you have to be able to show
it's a suspect.
So they won't like put it into the system
to see who it even belongs to.
Could a surface be so dirty
that then the print itself
actually makes it clean in that?
You know what I'm saying?
Yes, on dirty windows,
we get those on a break-in
when they push up a window
and leave them behind
and you can literally see them
because you can see
sometimes they'll smear the dirt.
Sometimes it's so dirty though,
the dust won't adhere to it.
Got it.
What's a person
who picks up the fingerprints?
What do they call that person?
Well, we do it.
Detectives do it.
Oh, detectives do it.
They do it in Boston, yeah.
So in other places
like the crime scene tech
will come out
and other departments
but we do it ourselves.
Unless it's like a major incident
like a homicide,
then the homicide unit
will call the forensic unit
and those are civilians.
They're not police officers
but they have gone to school for that.
So if it's like a major,
like I said,
homicidism,
they'll call in the crime scene tech
to do it.
They don't want to mess with us.
And you ever have a day
where it's just busy
and you're like,
oh shit,
I got to get to my kid's birthday
or whatever
and I fucking just
will hope for the best
of this when you take off?
Yeah, it sucks.
Like you could be,
your shift ends at four o'clock
if you work days
and at 3.45,
a person's stabbed.
All right,
I won't be home till midnight.
Oh, you say,
oh, so you stay?
You stay.
Oh, yeah.
I was saying like
if you ever had a thing
where it's like,
I got to get out of here,
you know,
you can't do that.
You can't.
No, it's on you.
If it's your case,
if you're on call,
we call it catch day
in Boston,
but detectives
like certain squads
are in charge
of all those calls that day.
So, you know,
five things could come in.
We could get a shooting,
a stabbing,
an armed robbery
and, you know,
missing person
and they're all assigned to you.
But it's not that busy,
but it can be.
You might have a day
like you don't even go pee,
you don't even eat lunch.
I mean,
it's few and far between,
but it definitely happens.
Wow.
So you're just cruising like that.
Yeah.
How much,
you mentioned television
a little bit ago.
How much is television
and what people think
and expect,
how much has that affected
like the prosecution of cases?
Ruined it.
Absolutely destroyed it.
Yeah.
Really?
Because everyone has
such high expectations
if they watch,
you know,
CSI Miami
or whatever the hell it is
and see they solve
everything instantly
and they have
cooperative witnesses
or they have all
these piles of evidence
and like I said,
people in,
because of that,
people in regular juries
and regular court cases
expect,
oh,
they literally come back
with no saying,
why don't you have fingerprints?
Why don't you have DNA?
Like,
why don't you have that?
Well,
not every case has that.
Like I said,
a bank robbie comes in,
they don't touch the counter.
We have no DNA.
We have no fingerprints.
You have no semen either.
We have to go on
eyewitness identification
and videos now everywhere.
Video's huge.
Video's a huge help,
but it's definitely,
the shows have been a detriment
to prosecuting cases for sure.
So you think it's made,
that the shows have made it
harder to prosecute cases?
Absolutely,
because people have
higher expectations.
The juries do.
The juries do.
And they're like,
oh,
there's not enough here.
Yes.
They'll be like,
you don't have anything.
Where is everything?
It's like,
well,
we have a,
you know,
we've got the video
and we've got this and that.
I'm like,
no.
So it's tricky.
Yeah.
It's not been our friend.
It's fascinating.
It's,
yeah,
it's fascinating
because it kind of glorifies
the sport of being a detective,
but at the same time.
Ruined it.
That's a lot of things
happen like that.
Once things get glorified so much,
kind of they get ruined sometimes.
I think that's just almost
a general rule of things.
It feels like,
except for God,
probably.
You always,
you always hear like the shows,
the first 48,
right?
And my friend,
Chris D'Elia,
he's a comedian.
He's a,
he has this great joke.
He's like the first 48.
And I'm paraphrasing.
He's like the first 48.
It's like these detectives
have 48 hours to solve the crime,
but really they have as much time
as they want.
They do.
We do.
You know,
sometimes you're waiting on video.
Like it doesn't,
obviously if you don't have a suspect
like right away,
but if you work at it,
sometimes the evidence is out there.
You just have to find it.
It might not slap you in the face
10 minutes after the incident.
Right.
But do you really only have 48 hours?
No,
we have all the time you need,
except,
except it gets busy.
And if I have,
you know,
three cases that day
and it's like,
I got to work on it.
And then two days from now,
I get another big one that like a shooting
or a stabbing or whatever.
Now your,
your,
your attention is split.
So time is of the essence
because something else
is always going to happen.
It's going to happen.
Something's coming.
And whether you have a leisurely amount
of time to work on the case,
like,
cause then you're working overtime.
Then you're working a double
to try to stay and work on this case
because another one could come in tomorrow.
So it is this point to it.
Like the 40 ads are important,
but I think more so
because something else is coming.
So it's going to take the attention away.
And then you can only be
in so many places at once.
You know what I mean?
You can't,
you can't.
Yeah.
I never thought about that part of it.
How do you prioritize
what cases are most important?
I mean,
obviously like if someone gets shot
or stabbed,
like that's a violent crime
and you want that person
who it's more defendant based,
like the kind of person
that's going to do that,
you want them.
Off the streets.
Right.
Right.
Right.
And if,
you know,
compared to,
you know,
identity fraud,
well,
that's not an emergency.
That,
that can wait.
You know what I mean?
So those kind of like,
cause we get a ton of fraud,
check fraud and all that shit,
bank fraud,
it's a nightmare
because it's,
a lot of the times
it's not even taking place.
We have our victims in our city,
but suspects are all over the country
or all over the world.
Yeah.
So you can't prosecute them.
Yeah.
So it's,
it's hard to chase down.
So those are kind of,
to the victim,
it's not a lower priority.
They're the one that had
their money stolen or whatever,
but it's not the same
as being shot or stabbed or,
or having a criminal
that's out there.
Violent armed robbery
or something like that.
We got to find this guy now
because obviously
they're in heat for crime.
Yes,
exactly.
Wow.
So are there days
when you kind of get
to the end of your shift almost
and you look and you're like,
oh my God,
there's still that one missing person
I didn't reach out about
or there's still this one thing.
It's always a pile.
And now I have to go do that.
Yeah.
Oh.
You very rarely get to go home
at the end of your shift.
You're always staying.
Wow.

What Being a Detective is Really Like

You get promoted to detective in 2005?
2007, 2007, yeah.
Okay, and what does it mean to become a detective?
What does that mean exactly?
So to become a detective, back then you had to take an exam.
So it's like a six-month to year-long process.
You have to study for several months,
and there's like six or seven textbooks you have to read.
So you take the exam, and then they do kind of like an oral interview,
depending on how you score on the test,
and then they kind of combine your years of training and experience,
your test score and your interview to say,
okay, these people have been high enough score to get made detectives.
And then you do like a month's worth of training back at the police academy.
Because being a detective versus a patrolman, it's very, very different.
First of all, you don't wear a uniform, which is my favorite part.
But it's just a completely different job.
Like you're now responsible.
A cop gets a call, they go to the call, they write a report,
and that's the end of it until they have to go to court.
If the report that the cop writes about, it gets assigned to a detective,
and now you own that.
Like, so you have to follow through, you have to follow up,
and go to court, or take out criminal charges, or whatever.
So it's a very different job.
Is there a lot of lobbying to become a detective?
Like whenever you're like, on the force,
or people like, I want to be detective,
and then do people,
is there any way to manipulate things,
so it betters your chances of becoming a detective?
No.
Or is it not like that?
Not like that.
So everyone, if anyone's a patrolman,
doesn't want to be a patrolman for long.
I was a patrolman for 13 years, which was a long time.
We had, usually they do the detectives exam every two or three years.
And for some reason, we had a seven-year break,
because I didn't take it.
I just had a child.
And I was like, I'll take the next one in a couple years.
And it was seven years.
So I was a patrolman for a long time.
So people want...
It was seven years to the next promotion?
Yeah, until the next exam.
So it was a long wait.
But people want it,
just because it's better than being a patrolman.
Some people love being a patrolman,
and will do that their entire life.
But most people either want to take an exam
and become a supervisor,
like a sergeant, a lieutenant,
and keep kind of going up the chain.
Or people are interested in being a detective.
So it's definitely desirable, you know?
Do you remember an early case as a detective
that really kind of stood out to you?
Yeah, I had a good arm robbery once.
You know, that sounds like an oxymoron.
Good arm robbery.
That's great.
I had a little good arm robbery.
It was on Halloween,
which is always one of the worst days of the year to work.
Fourth of July, Halloween sucks.
They were always crazy.
But we had an arm robbery of a cell phone store.
It was in the morning.
It was like 9.30 in the morning.
The store just opened up.
And these two dudes went in,
and there was some young girl,
early 20s, working there by herself.
It was in a shitty part of town.
And they literally tied her up
with like telephone cord
around her wrists and her ankles.
They stole, it was like 800 bucks
or $785, whatever it was.
But the feds ended up taking it
because it was a T-Mobile.
And they can kind of loop in the Commerce Act
like by saying it,
because commerce was halted with other states,
it becomes like a federal case.
But the guys ran off,
and the girl,
it was like something out of a movie.
It was all on video.
She literally hopped over to the phone,
all tied up with her ankles.
And they put a gun to her head and everything.
It was two firearms.
And she was terrified.
And she hopped over to the phone
and like knocked it off with her head
and was like calling for help.
At least she's in a phone store, though.
Like at least like...
But she was able to do that.
And then it came in quick.
So a couple of the guys from work,
everyone...
I worked with the best people
on earth in Dorchester.
They really were great, great cops.
And they just kind of flood the area right away.
And the description's going out.
And one of the officers,
it's actually one of my police academy classmates,
ends up seeing these two guys
walking down the street.
And a description of me giving out clothing,
they left like a trail of clothing down the street.
They tried to drop everything
and change their appearance.
It's hard to run and change at the same time.
Yeah, so they were just kind of, yeah,
walking down the street.
And really nice.
It's actually a little teeny.
There's a nice neighborhood
in this bad section of town.
So they kind of stuck out.
But then he sees the trail of clothing,
jackets and hats and shit left behind.
So he called it in.
These guys, one of them had on gloves,
but the other one had Band-Aids
and tape around his fingers
so he wouldn't leave any fingerprints.
And as the guys, everyone went up there,
the patrolman were talking to him.
He notices them only they're picking away
to try to get the Band-Aids
and tape off their hands.
And then another officer in the area was searching.
She's looking in trash cans
and she found the guns.
And then someone found the box, the money box.
So it was, that was a pretty good one.
It was an exciting one.
Yeah, it was just, it came together nicely.
Everyone worked, like did so well together.
Everyone was like, everyone was there at the right time
to do the right thing.
And then the feds took it
and they had serious criminal records,
and one of them had been doing armed robberies
all over the city.
It was like the same guy hit like five or six places.
So we were glad to get him.
They got, because it was federal,
they got like 20 something years each.
One of their brothers was a truck driver
and he, that's how they got the guns.
He was a cross country truck driver
and he would, he bought guns in Arizona
and then brought them back here.
So that's what made it federal?
Is that they were transporting guns across state lines?
I think they didn't end up prosecuting him
because he basically testified against his brother.
But what made it such a big,
what made the sentencing so severe?
Because they were,
the way the feds do it in federal court is,
they basically add up,
it's a point system
and depending on how many charges or cases,
how many times you've been found guilty,
then you're considered an armed career criminal
and you get extra time added on.
Oh, I got it.
But yeah, for 785 bucks,
they went to jail for like 20 something years each.
It was crazy.
It's idiots.
Yeah, pretty much.
And that poor girl was terrified.
I always felt bad for her.
Yeah.
Oh, that would be so scary, dude.
I don't know what I would do
if someone did something like that,
like pull it, like, you know.
She didn't even want to identify them.
We were trying to do like a,
we do a bring back or show up your bring
because we brought them to say,
have her identify them
and she was like hiding behind the blinds in the store.
We'd usually have them like go out on the sidewalk
and the person will like look through her car window,
but she was literally hiding.
She was absolutely terrified.
The poor thing, she's crying and everything.
How important are fingerprints?
Is that a real thing?
How important is that when you were a detective?
Well, that's a real thing
because everyone's are different.
Yeah.
So if you get found at a scene,
whether it's a break-in
or a robbery or something like that
and they find your fingerprints,
well, what other excuse do you have for being there?
So it's a pretty good,
especially now people like in court,
when cases go to court,
they don't want witness identification.
They want, because all the CSI shows,
they think we all have this bags of evidence to show
when it comes to court.
So juries want to see forensics.
They want fingerprints.
They want like cell phone records.
They want DNA left behind
because of the TV shows makes it look like
that's left at every scene.
But these guys covered their fingerprints.
They had masks on,
like they put bandanas around their face.
But the girl identified them from the clothes.
One of them didn't have a mask on.
So fingerprints are definitely very important.
And what's the process
of actually lifting fingerprints?
What is that?
And you hear the term lifting fingerprints.
So different surfaces use different tools.
Like this surface,
the grain of the wood would be no good.
You need like a smooth surface.
Like they train us on like granite,
like countertops.
Oh yeah, granite's nice.
Yeah, it's very smooth.
It's shiny.
So if someone leaves a fingerprint,
whether you have dry or oily hands,
you're leaving oil behind.
And you could take your powder
and you spin the little powder
on like a smooth surface
and literally the fingerprint pops.
And then you just take this kind of
clear square of like sticky tape
and then like press it down
and then lift it up
so it transfers onto,
the outline transfers onto.
There you go.
Can there be fingerprints in a place?
Like could you look at a counter
or something and see nothing
and there could actually be fingerprints there?
Yeah, you can kind of,
if you use a flashlight,
sometimes you can see it
if it's a clean surface.
If it's like a shithole house
or filled like bank robberies,
we don't do fingerprints
because so many people
go up to every teller.
Like even if a bank robber comes in
and puts his hands down,
there's 10,000 other fingerprints there
from the people that came before you.
So they don't,
we don't bother with something like that
because you have to be able to show
it's a suspect.
So they won't like put it into the system
to see who it even belongs to.
Could a surface be so dirty
that then the print itself
actually makes it clean in that?
You know what I'm saying?
Yes, on dirty windows,
we get those on a break-in
when they push up a window
and leave them behind
and you can literally see them
because you can see
sometimes they'll smear the dirt.
Sometimes it's so dirty though,
the dust won't adhere to it.
Got it.
What's a person
who picks up the fingerprints?
What do they call that person?
Well, we do it.
Detectives do it.
Oh, detectives do it.
They do it in Boston, yeah.
So in other places
like the crime scene tech
will come out
and other departments
but we do it ourselves.
Unless it's like a major incident
like a homicide,
then the homicide unit
will call the forensic unit
and those are civilians.
They're not police officers
but they have gone to school for that.
So if it's like a major,
like I said,
homicidism,
they'll call in the crime scene tech
to do it.
They don't want to mess with us.
And you ever have a day
where it's just busy
and you're like,
oh shit,
I got to get to my kid's birthday
or whatever
and I fucking just
will hope for the best
of this when you take off?
Yeah, it sucks.
Like you could be,
your shift ends at four o'clock
if you work days
and at 3.45,
a person's stabbed.
All right,
I won't be home till midnight.
Oh, you say,
oh, so you stay?
You stay.
Oh, yeah.
I was saying like
if you ever had a thing
where it's like,
I got to get out of here,
you know,
you can't do that.
You can't.
No, it's on you.
If it's your case,
if you're on call,
we call it catch day
in Boston,
but detectives
like certain squads
are in charge
of all those calls that day.
So, you know,
five things could come in.
We could get a shooting,
a stabbing,
an armed robbery
and, you know,
missing person
and they're all assigned to you.
But it's not that busy,
but it can be.
You might have a day
like you don't even go pee,
you don't even eat lunch.
I mean,
it's few and far between,
but it definitely happens.
Wow.
So you're just cruising like that.
Yeah.
How much,
you mentioned television
a little bit ago.
How much is television
and what people think
and expect,
how much has that affected
like the prosecution of cases?
Ruined it.
Absolutely destroyed it.
Yeah.
Really?
Because everyone has
such high expectations
if they watch,
you know,
CSI Mia