Alex Payne: From Uzbekistan to American Law Enforcement. IAs and Early Retirement
- Paul Pantani
- 6 days ago
- 12 min read
LAPD to Santa Monica PD, then Business Owner Cube World
In episode 226 of the Transition Drill Podcast, Alex Payne’s life unfolded across borders, systems, and identities long before he ever put on a police uniform. Born in Uzbekistan under a collapsing Soviet regime, his earliest years were shaped by instability, violence, and survival. Childhood involved repeated medical crises, fractured parentage, and long stretches of missing memory tied to trauma. His mother’s decision to flee an abusive environment and build a path to the United States set a multiyear migration plan in motion, which ended with him arriving in California when he was 16. What followed was not a straight line. A family legacy in medicine initially pointed him toward becoming a doctor. That plan unraveled after his initial exposure to real-world medical patients. A single college class redirected his focus toward criminology: gangs, and their mechanics of harm inside communities. That shift carried him into law enforcement, where his career included policing with LAPD, a high-profile in-custody death investigation, internal affairs scrutiny, and eventual disillusionment with institutional protection. Lateraling to Santa Monica Police Department brought professional stability, personal growth, and clarity. Ultimately, the pull toward autonomy and business led him to retire early and build a commercial asset company while reshaping his identity beyond the badge.
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Uzbekistan, Coma, and the Journey to America
Alex Payne was born in Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic still operating under a communist system at the time of his birth. The country was part of a rigid political structure marked by limited opportunity, state control, and social instability that lingered even as the Soviet Union collapsed. That collapse happened when he was around two years old, placing his earliest childhood inside a nation shifting abruptly from one system to another. The environment he entered life in was unsettled, economically strained, and shaped by uncertainty rather than predictability.
His family background carried deep roots in medicine. Multiple relatives worked in the medical field, including doctors and nurses. His mother worked as a medical laboratory technician, and his grandfather was a surgeon who was widely respected within the community. Medicine was not just an occupation within the family; it was a source of identity and credibility. That foundation existed alongside a significant family fracture. He was adopted, his uncle became his legal father, while his biological father rejected him outright. He refers to himself as a “bastard child,” a label that reflected both family structure and emotional reality rather than legal terminology.
Early childhood was marked by repeated medical emergencies. There were multiple incidents where survival was uncertain, including several comas when he was young. These episodes formed part of a pattern he described as being “supposed to be dead” at multiple points in life. The physical trauma of those years coincided with psychological disruption. He has limited memory of early childhood and believes those memories were subconsciously erased. The absence of memory wasn’t framed as forgetfulness but as a protective response to prolonged instability and harm.
His biological father played a central role in that harm. Alcoholism, physical abuse, and repeated incarceration defined that relationship. Violence was not isolated or abstract. It existed inside the home and contributed directly to his mother’s decision to flee. She eventually ran from that environment, leaving Uzbekistan for the United States during the 1990s. The move was driven by safety and the hope of building a different life. Once in the U.S., she took menial jobs, worked for years, and eventually saved enough money to hire an attorney. The goal was singular, to bring her son and daughter to America.
While that plan moved slowly, Alex remained behind. He continued growing up in Uzbekistan through his early teens before relocating briefly to Moscow, Russia. That move placed him with other family members while his mother worked to complete the immigration process; she returned for a short time in 2000. The plan to reunite stretched roughly from 2000 to 2005. During those years, he lived with the expectation of leaving, becoming known as the kid who was “supposed to go to America.” That identity followed him through school and daily life, reinforcing a sense of limbo rather than belonging.
He arrived in the United States at sixteen years old. The moment carried the weight of years of anticipation and was experienced as a dream fulfilled rather than a simple relocation. His family initially settled in Glendale, California, later moving to neighboring Burbank. The transition into American life came with immediate disruption. Although he had already completed high school in Russia, the U.S. school structure placed him back into high school as a sophomore because of his age. That decision reset his academic progress and extended a phase of life he was ready to leave behind.
Rather than disengage, he pushed forward aggressively. During his senior year, he enrolled in college courses, accelerating his path out of high school. The objective was efficiency rather than experience. School became a task to complete, not a social destination. The focus stayed on forward movement, independence, and catching up to where he believed he should already be.
By the time he graduated, he had already internalized a pattern that would repeat throughout his life. Survival first, progress second, reflection later. The instability of early years, medical crises, fractured family ties, and delayed migration shaped how he approached education, work, and authority. America represented opportunity, but it also marked the beginning of another recalibration. The past didn’t disappear upon arrival. It traveled with him, quietly influencing the choices that came next.
College: from Doctor to Criminology, then Law Enforcement
Adulthood began with a plan that felt almost inherited. A family deeply rooted in medicine created a natural expectation that he would follow the same path. Becoming a doctor wasn’t framed as ambition as much as continuity. It aligned with family history, cultural respect, and years spent around medical professionals. That direction guided his early education and shaped the decisions he made once he entered higher education.
He started at community college before transferring to the University of California, Irvine. His academic focus stayed firmly within the sciences. He completed a biology degree and added a minor in psychology, reinforcing the assumption that medical school would come next. The coursework was demanding but familiar. The subject matter made sense. The structure was clear. At that point, nothing about his path appeared uncertain from the outside.
The first fracture came abruptly. Preparation for medical school exposed a mismatch that wasn’t about intelligence or discipline. It was environmental. He hated being around sick people, and long-term illness. The work itself felt misaligned. The realization didn’t arrive dramatically. It settled in slowly during early study phases, creating tension between expectation and instinct. Medicine stopped feeling like the future.
He looked into alternate options. He considered becoming a physician assistant and explored the requirements tied to that route, including graduate-level entrance exams. Physical therapy also entered the picture, partly because it avoided some of the testing barriers associated with medical school. These weren’t impulsive pivots. They were attempts to stay adjacent to medicine without committing to an environment he no longer wanted to inhabit. None of them resolved the underlying problem.
The decisive shift came from a general education class taken at UC Irvine. The subject was gangs. The instructor was a retired Anaheim Police Department officer with direct experience working undercover. The material wasn’t abstract. It was grounded in real communities, lived consequences, and patterns of behavior. The class redirected his attention away from biology and toward deviance, power, and control. One class turned into several. Prison gangs followed. International gangs followed after that. The focus narrowed while the interest intensified.
What developed wasn’t curiosity in law enforcement mechanics. It was fixation on why people commit crimes and how communities absorb the damage. That distinction mattered. Criminal justice, centered on statutes and procedures, held less appeal than criminology, which examined root causes and social breakdown. That difference guided his next academic move.
Graduate school became the new objective. He applied and was accepted into a master’s program focused on criminology and law. The emphasis stayed on understanding deviance rather than enforcing rules. His academic work placed him directly into Anaheim neighborhoods during thesis research. Exposure to residents living under constant threat from gang activity reframed crime statistics into lived reality. Fear wasn’t theoretical. It was embedded in daily routines. People adjusted their behavior to survive.
That exposure clarified motive. The desire to help wasn’t framed as heroism or enforcement. It came from proximity. Seeing how gangs controlled neighborhoods, limited movement, and normalized violence created a pull toward intervention. Law enforcement emerged not as a fallback career but as a mechanism for disruption. It represented proximity to harm and the possibility of intervention.
The decision to leave the medical path created personal stress. Family expectations didn’t disappear simply because interests changed. Walking away from medicine meant breaking with tradition and abandoning a respected trajectory. The conflict wasn’t academic. It was relational. Still, the direction had shifted permanently.
This phase of life established several patterns that would carry forward. Exposure mattered more than theory. Purpose outweighed prestige. Structure mattered, but alignment mattered more. Education wasn’t treated as an identity. It was treated as a tool. Once that tool no longer served the outcome he wanted, it was set aside.
By the time he finished graduate school, the destination had changed completely. The original plan was gone. In its place stood a clearer understanding of risk, community harm, and personal tolerance for chaos. Law enforcement wasn’t chosen for status or security. It was chosen because it placed him closest to the problems he wanted to confront.
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LAPD, an In-Custody Death, and the Internal Affairs Process
The transition from graduate school into policing was not immediate or smooth. Early applications went out to roughly five departments and were rejected. Immaturity played a role. Speeding tickets, physical fights, and marijuana use were part of his background at the time. Those factors stalled entry but also extended the runway. By the time he was hired at twenty-seven, he carried more life experience than many new officers. Nearly a decade of prior work included corporate and customer-service environments, shaping how he interacted with the public and authority.
Eventually, the path led to the Los Angeles Police Department. His assignment began at Newton Division, an area known for dense population, gang activity, and constant calls for service. Newton was also among the first divisions to deploy body-worn cameras. That timing mattered. Cameras became a layer of protection, documentation, and accountability. Multiple encounters later reinforced the belief that recorded reality carried more weight than interpretation.
A defining moment arrived through an in-custody death that reshaped his relationship with the organization. The incident began with a call involving a known felon and gang member who was extremely high on drugs, armed with tools including a shovel, and behaving violently. Less-lethal options were attempted first. Approximately twenty-five beanbag rounds were deployed without effect. The subject’s resistance continued.
The encounter escalated into a physical takedown. Fighting someone under extreme levels of intoxication introduced a level of strength and unpredictability that training only partially prepares officers for. After the subject was restrained and handcuffed, multiple officers worked to control his body. The subject continued pushing upward with force even while restrained. The positioning followed training protocols. The subject was not face-down and was kept in a recovery position.
While continuing to try and restrain him, the subject turned and spit blood directly into Alex’s face and eye. The physical reaction was captured on video. Audible profanity followed and he shoved to the subject’s shoulder away from him. Shortly after, the subject’s heart failed. Toxicology later showed methamphetamine levels approximately three times the lethal dosage.
What followed extended far beyond the street. The incident became the first LAPD critical incident video released publicly under a new departmental policy. Scrutiny intensified immediately. Criminal review cleared the involved officers quickly. The district attorney declined to file charges, determining no criminal wrongdoing. Internal Affairs initially reached the same conclusion. Policy compliance was affirmed.
That clearance did not end the process. Command-level direction reversed course. With the video online and national attention focused on the department, pressure mounted to demonstrate accountability. The incident was sent back down the chain with the instruction that discipline was necessary so the outcome would appear balanced. The objective shifted from factual determination to optics.
The result was administrative discipline applied to Alex, several officers, and a sergeant. The findings focused on technical or peripheral issues rather than core misconduct. The discipline did not align with the earlier conclusions of policy compliance. The message was clear. Institutional protection was conditional.
Parallel to the new administrative findings, the deceased’s family filed a civil lawsuit naming Alex and the other officers. The legal exposure extended the stress timeline well beyond the incident itself. Professional uncertainty bled into personal life. Trust eroded incrementally rather than collapsing all at once.
Fear entered the equation in an unexpected form. The danger no longer centered on nighttime patrols or high-risk calls. It shifted inward. At some point, being alone at three in the morning in South Central felt less threatening than navigating departmental response after critical incidents. That realization marked a psychological breaking point.
The experience altered how authority, loyalty, and risk were understood. Policies could be followed precisely and still fail to protect. Clearance could be granted and still reversed. Documentation could exist and still be subordinated to narrative management. The badge remained, but certainty disappeared.
This chapter didn’t end his law-enforcement career. It reframed it. The cost of service became clearer. Institutional backing was no longer assumed. From that point forward, every professional decision would be filtered through the question of who absorbs risk when outcomes turn political.
Lateralling to Santa Monica PD, Rebuilding Trust, and Becoming His Own Boss
The decision to leave LAPD wasn’t impulsive. It formed gradually, driven by a growing realization that fear had shifted inward. At some point, the department itself became more intimidating than working alone on the street in the early morning hours. That inversion mattered. It signaled a breakdown in trust that couldn’t be repaired with time or reassignment. The concern wasn’t limited to one incident. It expanded into a broader belief that hiring standards had been lowered too far, creating future problems that would eventually surface. For him, staying meant accepting institutional risk without institutional backing.
In 2020, a large lateral movement swept through the LAPD. Roughly six hundred officers lateraled successfully. Many more attempted to leave and were denied elsewhere. He became part of that wave. The first attempt pointed him toward the Glendale Police Department. The background process there was exhaustive and adversarial. The interview stretched roughly seven hours and focused heavily on character attacks rather than clarification. The experience felt less like an evaluation and more like an interrogation. The explanation came later. Glendale had recently terminated an LAPD lateral, and the chief issued a directive blocking LAPD laterals for a year. The outcome had been predetermined.
The next opportunity came through the Santa Monica Police Department. Skepticism existed from the start. Multiple Internal Affairs investigations at LAPD, combined with an active civil lawsuit, raised concerns. The difference came from advocacy. A background investigator reviewed the whole history and vouched directly to the chief, putting personal credibility on the line for Alex. However, the background investigator's message was blunt. Don’t "fuck this up," I put my neck out for you.
The chief’s interview lasted less than fifteen minutes. It wasn’t prolonged or adversarial. The department welcomed him. Santa Monica became a reset. The work environment stabilized. Relationships formed. Professional confidence returned. Those years became the most fulfilling period of his policing career. The department provided space to do the job without constant institutional anxiety. During that time, he also met his wife. The balance between work and personal life shifted in a way that hadn’t existed before.
While his career stabilized, a separate pull strengthened. The desire to build something independently had always existed. Business ownership represented autonomy, accountability, and control over outcomes. That interest wasn’t abstract. It became practical through an unexpected path. He needed a custom table for his podcast, Purpose Over Pleasure. That need led to an introduction, through his wife’s friend, to Kevin Maxwell, founder of Cube World USA. The table was built. The relationship followed.
Impressed by the operation, he asked Kevin to lunch and requested mentorship. The ask was direct. Teach me business. The partnership that developed became foundational. While working at Santa Monica PD, he began building a company on the side. The schedule helped. Officers worked three twelve-hour shifts, leaving four days off. That time became productive. The last year and a half before retirement was spent developing operations, logistics, and client relationships.
The business evolved into a commercial asset operation. The company designs, furnishes, and liquidates commercial office spaces and buildings. Work includes outfitting empty floors with cubicles, tables, conference rooms, televisions, and whiteboards, as well as clearing out buildings entirely. It expanded quickly. He partnered with Brandon, a multi-company entrepreneur who handled the visionary and technical side, while Alex focused on operations. Their roles were defined and complementary.
The company grew into what he describes as the largest commercial asset liquidators in the western region, possibly nationwide. Clients include large corporations such as U.S. Bank, Wells Fargo, and Universal. Expansion followed with the acquisition of a second company focused on logistics, including warehouses and trailers for shipping. A media company was also established alongside the podcast.
Despite professional satisfaction in Santa Monica, the pull toward autonomy remained stronger than the badge. He chose to retire early. Leadership carried over into business. His approach centered on customer service and accountability. Employees were told he would absorb blame in front of clients but expected performance behind the scenes. That philosophy came from experience. He wanted to offer the institutional backing he once needed and didn’t feel.
The transition wasn’t an escape from policing. It was a reallocation of responsibility. Control moved inward. Risk became calculated. Identity expanded beyond uniform and rank. The work changed, but the underlying focus stayed the same. Build systems that work. Protect people inside them. Accept responsibility when they don’t.
Closing Thoughts
Alex Payne’s story offers a grounded example of how transition rarely happens cleanly or on schedule. His path moved through instability, expectation, and institutional disillusionment before settling into clarity built on autonomy and ownership. The shift away from policing wasn’t driven by failure or burnout, but by a sober assessment of risk, trust, and long-term alignment. Experiences inside law enforcement, particularly those involving accountability without protection, shaped how he evaluated leadership, responsibility, and control.
For veterans and first responders, his trajectory underscores the value of preparing for life beyond a single identity. Skills transfer, discipline remains, but the structure changes. Building something independently requires the same operational mindset, patience, and tolerance for pressure that service careers demand. The difference is ownership. Transition becomes less about loss and more about recalibration, using experience to construct environments where accountability, purpose, and stability are aligned rather than at odds.
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