(Correction: This story has been corrected from an earlier version. Lou CharLe$' last name was misspelled.)
Tegan Broadwater evidently has a tough time sitting still. A longtime Fort Worth police officer, Broadwater infiltrated a southeast Fort Worth gang as a deep undercover narcotics officer, his work leading to the arrests of more than 50 Crips gang members, a book he wrote called “Life in the Fish Bowl,” and a potential TV series. Broadwater subsequently retired and started what's today the successful Fort Worth security company Tactical Systems Network he owns and runs with his wife.
Broadwater is getting back to what he did to make a living earlier in his life: music. Tuesday, Broadwater released a three-minute video called “Blame,” addressing themes including teen anxiety, depression, loneliness, and addiction. The Fort Worth hip hopper Lou CharLe$ voices the music and lyrics Broadwater wrote. The video is in memory of a Southlake teen named Reed Bartosh, who died by suicide in 2018 after battling addiction.
Broadwater released the video on his web site teecad.com, named for his undercover monikor, and with two partners – Healing Springs Ranch, a nonprofit run by Rachel Graham, executive producer with Broadwater on the video; and the Fort Worth psychiatrist Dr. Brian Dixon. Broadwater is looking for others interested in distributing the video.
“We’re not charging anything,” he said. “We’re trying to get as much traction as we can and reach as many young people as possible.”
Broadwater is friends of the Bartosh family, and was asked by Bartosh’s mother to try and help her son after he started developing mental health issues while in high school.
“His mom was reaching out to me, to try to elicit some help and some ideas,” Broadwater said. “He was struggling with anxiety and addiction to opiates. I was able to set him up with a guitar player to help him hone his guitar skills. It was one of the few things I was able to do. It ended up being too late.”
Bartosh went through rehab nine times, and “every time he’d get out, he’d have a particular dealer who was soliciting him.”
The opening sequence of the video moves quickly through scenes of a guitarist, from young child to teen; to a grieving mother; and the teen soliciting drugs. CharLe$, a friend of Broadwater, sings the refrain “who’s to blame, who’s to blame, tell me where the truth is lain.” Bartosh appears in home videos during "Blame."
Broadwater strung together a crew. Andrew Newton, a freelance director of photography in North Texas, was videographer. Darian Hadley, a graduate of HOPE Farm, a leadership program for at-risk boys, is assistant director. “Blame” had an uncredited “secret director,” Broadwater says, who was in town and available.
The crew shot the video over one week in early October, at locations such as the O.B. Macaroni building on Fort Worth’s Near Southside, Blackland Distillery in The Foundry District; and HOPE Farm.
Actors included Broadwater’s 25-year-old son Ayden, who portrayed the teen. He and Bartosh were the “same age, same interests,” Broadwater says. “My son had severe anxiety and depression when he was a teenager. It only made sense. The last thing my son wanted to do was go act on canera.”
Broadwater had the post-production done in Los Angeles. The video cost about $7,500 to shoot and edit. “Everybody that worked was contributing a lot of their time for the cause,” Broadwater says. “Now we’re spending money trying to get ads in place and getting the (web) page built. The expenses continued to mount. We’re up at closer to $10,000.”
Graham is contributing as executive producer, and another, anonymous, donor contributed, Broadwater said.
Broadwater, who grew up in Katy west of Houston, moved to North Texas to study music at the University of North Texas, and then ended up in police work, wants to use the video as a platform to launch other projects.
“If we can show the impact was made, I think it’ll make a difference in future projects,” he said.