How Police Unions Made Cops Even Deadlier

hip hop artist Propaganda. Jason, How you doing man? So man even dried mangoes and listening to old DJ Scratch and I hope that like I hope, I'm sorry, guys, I'm back man, I'm here again. Thanks God all the variants. Yeah, you're the first guests we've had for three straight weeks or for two straight weeks. I think, man, I like I'm getting in my hitting like Billy Wayne like like like I mean you're hitting, you're hitting Propaganda zone. I

like that, man, my own zone like zone. Yeah, like those like those like those cow zone things that they used to make a pizza I think it was pizza Hut the zone Yeah yeah, yeah, those were good. Yeah, Yo, can I quick joke about quick joke, not quick Joe, quick story about cow zones. Absolutely, and we can move on there. So my homeboy Jose with Solomon. He's probably one of the most gorgeous men I've ever met. And uh he's a carmel six ft six like soul singer, poet.

It's ridiculous. It's not fair. You know, you never meet the guy where it's like, it's just not fair. You shouldn't be No one should be this beautiful. So that's a Joe, right. Um, Joe lives in Atlanta. He was ordering this pizza or he went to the spot, you know, during the quarantine, wanted a cow zone. And you know, first of all, it's it's Atlanta, you know this, let's be real, it's chocolate. Say these black people, right, and

the whole shop with black people. And he tries to get a cow zone and he could tell, based on the way that the lady was looking at him that she didn't know what the cow zone was, right, So so he but she still was like pressed a few buttons on the screen and then you could see her look back at the home. He's like, hey, hey, what's right,

and they kind of whispered back and forth. You could tell somebody must to google the cow zone, and then he finally gets it, and then stupid him didn't open the box till he got home, and he opened the box and it was just a pizza folded in half. I mean that is essentially that's the body part. I was like, that is a cow zone. But that he was like, you just folded a small pizza and half. What else do you want? I mean, really, you know

what isn't like a cow zone? Prop the American policing, Yes, the evolution of American policing in the nineteen hundreds is not very much like a folded pizza. Uh, thanks, unfortunate, Thank the Lord above. What if that's how we handled law enforcement. What if when you had two feuding gangs, the government just sent cow zones over and we're like, hey, guys, yo, if you zones some cow zones, a little bit of barbecue,

a couple of you know what I'm saying. It's like, everybody, just sit down, let's just have some cow zones, some high links. I think a good of the problems of law enforcement, Like, instead of tear gassing a bunch of protesters, what if the state provided cow zones, I'd bewitted. Yeah, and it's cheaper too. I bet we'd save money on tear gas and such because you can buy you can feed a lot of people cow zones cal zones for the price of hundreds of tear gas canisters. Let me

tell you something. And you know, it's less to clean up, you know what I mean, It's easier on the environment, create more jobs, creates more jobs. Look, we just pods over. Thanks very much, guys. You know, look forward to our new behind the cow Zone series. Behind this idea of ours goes horribly wrong in a year. Yeah, the cow zone shot a kid. No one had ever seen anything like it, Helton with a cow zone from a cow zone,

and we'd have to deal. Okay. So yeah, last week we dug into the really the very racist roots of US policing, the KKK, Jim Crow lynching and the death penalty, and in doing so, we kind of took a break from the broader history of how police have evolved in this country and focused on like the enabling of white supremacy in the suppression of black people as an integral

part of the justice system. And today we're going to kind of peel back out again to discuss how the broader system of police evolved in the US over the last century to bring us to where we are now, which is, you know, police stopping random people for no reason, doing horrific violence to them, uh, and then being shielded from consequences by police unions. So that's what we're going to explain today. Okay, who yeah, there it is. This

will be fun. We're gonna talk a lot about police unions and a lot about a stop and frisk and broken windows. Okay, yeah, so those two stopping frisk gets to like my life. Yeah yeah. So to get to that point, we have to, you know, zoom back a bit to the start of the twentieth century. By the time this nation started entering you know what most people would call the modern era, most police departments were de facto the enforcement arm of organized crime, in the words

of one scholar, So cops existed. We talked about this in the episode two. Cops existed as muscle for for criminal for like gang leaders and stuff. Police departments engaged in constant election fraud because their jobs were generally tied to the position of local political bosses who are also gangsters. And during this period. This is like Tammany Hall and Ship. And during this period police drew salaries, but there was no such thing as overtime, and their salaries were generally shipped,

so instead they took a lot of bribes. Dr. Gary Potter, who's a historian of law enforcement, insists that it's actually wrong to call the police in this period corrupt. He writes, quote, they were in fact primary instruments for the creation of corruption in the first place. So like the police aren't corrupt, the police create corruption in this period, which is an

interesting but I think really important distinction to make. Actually took a second, like yeah, dang, yeah, I need to lean back from that one for a little bit like that. That is profound. Yeah, yeah, Garry Potter doesn't mince fucking words at all. Yeah. So, in the early nineteen hundreds, police departments in major major cities, particularly in the Eastern Seaboard, but also Chicago, because Chicago is a Midwestern city, but we all kind of lump it in with the East Coast.

We all do it, even Chicago does sometimes when they're lazy, like deal with the Chicago. You should have moved further east if you wanted to, not was like, do you have do you get snowed in from a tunja? You're on the East coast, bro, Yeah, yeah, thank you so uh yeah, police apartments in major cities in the Eastern Seaboard in the early nineteen hundred, uh did a bit more than just provide muscle for gangsters and crack the

heads of labor organizers. UM. They also got into the business because no one else was going to do it, of what we'd call social welfare. UM. It was kind of their job to take care of the homeless and the critically ill. And they weren't good at this. But police in Boston, New York and other cities sheltered homeless people in precincts, They emptied public toilets, and they kept

track of the infected during epidemics. Now, since again these men were at the time hired gangsters, they were not renowned for taking to these tasks with a great deal of empathy. But nobody else really gave a ship. They didn't give a sh it either, but they were kind of the people you gave the bad jobs to. Again, not a lot of respect for law enforcement in this period, so they're like, we need somebody to like pull the homeless people off the streets. They don't freeze to death.

Half the cops do it. Yeah, So it was prohibition that finally tipped law enforcement over the edge, uh like, over the edge of of of creators of corruption to um so outwardly criminal that the state had to like

that the federal government had to do something about. The sheer scale of corruption unleashed by prohibition, and like the error of speakeasies and gangsters turned police departments into, you know, whatever they had been before, a complete mockery of law and order, and federal authorities pushed reform and investigatory commissions that had to look into a variety of different scandals. Dr Potter lays out just a few examples of police

crime that inspired the creation of commissions. Quote number one, the formation of a prostitution syndicate by Los Angeles Mayor Arthur Harper, police Chief Edward Kerns and a local organized crime figure, combined with subsequent instructions to the police to

harass the syndicates competitors in the prostitution industry. Number two the assassination of organized crime figure Arthur Rothstein by police Lieutenant Charles Becker, head of the NYPD's vice Squad and number three a dispute between the Mayor and District Attorney of Philadelphia, each of whom controlled rival gambling syndicates, and each of whom used loyal factions of police to harass

the other. So, like, these are just a couple of examples of the sort of behavior police departments are engaging in at the time where they're they're they're just they're even like more criminal than a lot of the criminal syndicates. Um. Yeah, yeah. And another stigative commission that was said up during this period was the Linux Committee, which was formed to look

into the charges of police extortion in New York. It found that promotion within the NYPD in the early nineteen hundreds was based entirely on direct bribes paid by officers to the Department of Promotion to sergeant cost six a promotion to captain it cost fifteen thousand dollars. All of these scampers and many Yeah. Yeah, he would just pay

to get promoted in the police. Yeah. It's just it's just so crazy that, like, I mean, as much as you want to believe that like, throughout the course of time we have gotten somehow, in some way better at being the species we are. It's just I just the more you know of history, the more you're like, no, we've kind of been a plateaued. We've kind of just

always been like this, you know. And that's the part that just like no. But because because I'm thinking about like, I'm still hanging on the word on the on the phrase of like it created the collection, because I'm going, well, I mean, you don't pay them a lot, You're I am incynivized. You're like, like, you're just hoping these people would somehow not have the same corrupted soul as the

rest of the people. But they just people, and they're gonna find the path of least resistance, the quickest way to get a buck, and the best way to like push other people down for their own success. I don't know why you think putting a badge on a chest gonna make them any different. So when you hear this stuff like this, I'm just like, God, dog, it was it?

Were we ever have we ever done good things? Well? Yeah, yeah, you know, there's there's a I forget who the name of the individual who it was, but there I believe it was a Holocaust survivor and he wrote something to the He had a quote that was something along lines of and like any given period of time, like ten percent of people are genuinely good, ten percent of people are total monsters, and about could kind of go either way depending on where it's seeing how it seems the

wind is blowing, um and like if the wind is you know, blowing in the way that like if if everyone in charge is literally running a criminal syndicate of like prostitution and and like and probably a lot of forced prostitution and like gambling and like murder for higher and all this stuff, if that's everybody, then yeah, that's what you get involved with. Like then like okay, we'll all find some way to make money within the system.

It's the ocean. It's still so you just kind of like do it because that's I mean, you gotta swim, Yeah, you gotta swim. Yeah. So uh. The current Committee of nineteen investigated in YPD collusion and gambling in prostitution. The Seabury Committee in nineteen thirty one also looked into the NYPD, this time into the broader system of bosses and bribery for political positions. That was the core of why New

York law enforcement sucked. Each of these commissions made changes, but right up unto the nineteen fifties, there were still regular inquiries into police involvement with gambling, prostitution, and organized crime. And I cannot exaggerate how many of these committees were focused on the NYPD. Like, one way to look at the twentieth century is the federal government fighting tooth and nail to stop New York Police from being just a

criminal enterprise. Like that took decades of battling. Yeah, not metaphorically, not as a way to understand what's happening. No, seriously, they're just no, they're pimps with badges. Yeah, that's just what they actually are. And while I was googling around, I wanted to kind of come up with another example or two, like a direct one of the NYPD, you know,

being pimps or whatnot in the early nineteen hundreds. And it was actually hard because there were so many cases of them in the twenty first century doing the exact same thing. For example, I was googling around on this, I came across the two thousand eighteen story about a retired NYPD detective who ran a two million dollar broadle ring using active copses muscle and his inside knowledge of how department undercovers did prostitution stings in order to avoid

getting busted. He knew that like undercovers weren't allowed to show their genitals to prostitutes, so he would make all of the johns strip naked and like let themselves get fondled before starting the transaction. Um, because that helped him avoid getting busted by the NYPD. UM. Yeah, there were seven active duty officers who worked for his prostitution ring. Um. One of them was actually willing to work for free in exchange for discounts with his favorite prostitutes. So again,

two eighteen is when that gets busted. Regular scumbag. It's awesome, regular dudes just being normal scumbags. Yeah, it's like someone decided, like, okay, let's take ten percent of the normal scumbag population and make them immune to being punished if they shoot someone. Yes, uh so yeah, Well, the federal government was fighting to make the NYPD a modestly less criminal enterprise. A major revolution had started to overtake law enforcement nationwide, and it

started on the West Coast. Luminaries in you know that part of the country began to wonder if perhaps police officers ought not be trained professionals instead of drunken gangsters. And the the first real apostle of this gospel was a dude named August Volmer. He was the very first police chief of Berkeley, California, and he served from nineteen o nine to nineteen thirty one. Um. And this, this guy is about the best cop you're gonna find in

US history. Um. From yeah, from every he did have, Like his early history, he was in part of like the U. S occupation of the Philippines, but he was like a like a gun boat he worked on like a gunboat. Like I'm sure he like he was part of, you know, the US crimes in the Philippines, but he wasn't. It's not like a case with John Burge, Like I have no evidence that he was like running secret prisons and torturing people. Like he was just a soldier who fought in a bad war. Um. And then he became

the police chief in Berkeley. And when he took the job, Berkeley police were just as corrupt as New York police. August only had a sixth grade education, but he knew enough to immediately ban the receipt of gifts and bribes for his officers, Like that was the first thing he did. Was like, obviously you can't take bribes that anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah again sixth grade education said oh yeah, well, we gotta stop doing this that. Huh what if what if

we weren't just gangsters? Yeah, I tried to do the job, guys. Yeah, what if we treated it like a job? Yeah? And he was He's really it's baffling the number of first this guy is responsible for in law enforcement. He was the first police chief to put cops on bicycles in nineteen ten. He was the first police chief to put cops on motorcycles in nineteen eleven. His officers received the

very first radios and their squad cars. Vulmer's apartment created the first centralized police record system, and he was the first chief in the United States to push his officers to use blood, fiber and soil analysis to solve crimes. He was one of the first chiefs to use fingerprinting of Valmer was also the first chief to require college degrees of his officers. He was one of the first police chiefs to hire black cops, although not the first, but he was the very first police chief to hire

female officers in nineteen nineteen. August was also the first police chief in the US to explicitly banned the use of the third degree, and he was a lifetime opponent of capital punishment. Um. He was notorious and fairly unique among law men in this period for believing that communists had a right to organize and state their views without being beaten into bloody pols. This guy, yeah, he's the best cop we're going to talk about. Like, I am impressed, bro.

Like you you see him riding by in his little like big big front wheel, little chilly, silly police car, silly bike, you know what I'm saying, Like the old school, old timey victorian bike. But he's a cop. And that guy you salute, like, hey, what's up, officer? You know, yeah, he was trying, yeah, at least trying. Yeah. And now he was also one of the very first, like people anywhere to teach class as in criminal justice, essentially like

helping to invent that field of higher education. Like, he was one of the first people to be like, we should probably have college classes that help people do do this thing. That's the job. Um. And one of his students was a dude named O. W. Wilson, and O. W. Wilson went on to become the police chief of Fullerton. He was also the police chief of Jesus somewhere in the Midwest. I forget where where else he was the

police chief, and he was in California, California. Um And he was also the superintendent of the Chicago p D at one point, so he was a very influential like running police departments, Guy um And he wrote a book called Police Administration in nineteen forty three, and this was sort of a reaction to how most cops in big cities were drunken gangsters. Um And it basically O. W. Wilson, you know, who is the protege of Valmer is like,

we need to professionalize police departments nationwide. Um and Wilson wanted police departments to be centralized and reformed along military style lines. This helped departments to keep a closer eye in their officers and stop them from, you know, just selling bootleg liquor or whatever. So you can see the logic and what Wilson was trying to do, right, it makes it makes sense, It makes sense, but it didn't work.

Um Or it didn't work well, yeah, For one thing, his drive towards centralization created powerful, unaccountable, authoritarian police bureaucracies that were both unaccountable to the public and to the officers that worked there. Racist and sexist hiring practices were never reformed, and so these dictatorial police bureaucrats were basically

just white dudes. Um. Samuel Walker, a professor of criminal justice in Nebraska, notes that quote a half century of professionalization had created police departments that were vast bureaucracies, inward looking and isolated from the public and defensive in the face of any criticism, which does not sound familiar at all. Um. Yeah, I can't win with these guys, like yeah, every time you wanted like I want to be like, oh yeah,

what's good? Oh well, there it is. It never quite works out right, like they always seem to keep sucking, even when you deal with what you think are the the the problems, which maybe hints that the problem is at the root of what we have police for, um, as opposed to them neeting bicycles, which when not that Yeah, yeah, my, my my, I remember one of my my elementary school teacher used to say, hey, if every place you touch

on your body, hurts. Your finger is probably broken. So that's why I just think about I'm just like, maybe your fingers broken, guys, maybe the finger is broken. Yeah, good, good, good way to describe that. Never forgot that, Ms Deirfield. So um, what's worse is that Wilson, like his mentor mentor volmer Um, both of whom I think had good intentions, had seized upon the idea that police should focus on

crime prevention rather than just investigation. Now this was not a new idea, and again you can see the logic and trying to prevent crime, but the way that it worked out in the real world is that these new professional, centralized police departments suddenly started devoting a lot more time to sending cops out on patrol to stop and search people at random. Most of these people are members of the dangerous classes, which at that point were mostly racial

minorities in the United States. You know, the Irish weren't really being oppressed no more. But bring that back. Yeah, as we've discussed, police had always worked to corral and control the movement and freedom of non white people. Wilson's reforms helped to dress that up as crime prevention. So now the cops aren't out there to keep you know, black people in line. They're there to patrol for criminal behavior, which in which they do the same thing. But it's

harder to complain about if you're a white liberal. We's got some better codes, yeah, exactly, better codes. Yeah, And I don't think that was Wilson's intent, but that's what happened. Um. Now, actual police officers weren't much happier than the general public with these reforms. Their resentment at their unaccountable, distant, and all powerful bosses helped to inspire a growing movement to

unionize police departments. Now, police in many cities had long sought the benefits of unionization, but since a huge part of their literal job was busting unions and murdering union organizers, this was a tough needle to thread. It's a little a little con lifted here. Yeah, are we are we killing these people for the same thing we think is a good idea for Oh yeah, well fuck it. Yeah.

So cops in some cities started to form fraternal associations in order to try to gain some of the same benefits of unions while also not feeling like complete hypocrites. For the unions. Yeah, this did not work out well forever. These fraternal organizations just didn't associations just didn't do what unions do. The first department to seek straight up unionization

was the Cleveland police in eighteen ninety seven. Uh, they petitioned the American Federation of Labor, whose president Samuel Gompers turned them down, stating it is not within the province of the trade union movement to especially organized policemen, nor more than to organize militiamen, as both policemen and militiamen are often controlled by forces in imical to the labor movement. So like, it's not our job, like you kill us. We're not going to let you join us to make

more money to kill us. Yeah yeah, yeah, you want me to hell, you be better at stopping us. Yeah, no, no, sir. Yeah. It's kind of like buying oil from countries you're at war with and I'm sorry, yeah, or like partnering with Nazis over single payer healthcare and ignoring the fact that they're also in favor of Nazi ship because like what if we worked and no, don't work together with you, No want to kill you. Yeah, you don't want to

do that don't work with them. Ever, even if they're right about one thing, like cops are right workers should unionize, but that's like still still yeah, still problems. Yes, So cops continued to seek the benefits of union membership even whilst violently suppressing unions. In nineteen nineteen, Boston's police asked the a f L for a charter, angry at, among other things, the fact that they had to pay for

their own uniforms. The commissioner told them that they couldn't unionize in the a f L was an exactly a big fan either um. But when they unionized anyway, nineteen union organizers were fired and the police went on strike. This is the first police strike with nearly officers off the job. The people of Boston took the opportunity to loot the ever loving ship out of their city. And I would suggest we look at this less as a sign of human nature and more of a sign of

Bostonian nature. Uh yeah, that sound like I was gonna say, this sounds really Boston. That sounds real Boston. Yeah, we'll talk about another time when this happened later and there wasn't mass looting. So I'm going to write this up to Boston. Um. Now, this all prompted Governor Calvin Coolidge to declare that no public safety workers could strike anywhere, anytime, and his hard stance on this as part of what

helped him become president. Later. Wait, he's saying, nope, what was he What was his position then when he said the public safety workers should never be able to stri was he? No? I'm saying what was the office he hilled? Oh, he was the governor. He was the government. Point. So wait, so he was saying, y'ah not allowed to strike, and I'm like, yeah, okay, that's stupid because that's the definition of striking is like so even the property, that's like

the amounts of pace of acclamation. I'm like, oh, you've fen a set free to slaves in the states that are rebelling, Like you what ha. So I'm just sorry. Just him making the proclamation just like sounded so stupid. I'm like, that's striking means we're not listening to you. Yeah. Yeah. But there's also the question of whether or not the government can stop a strike. Like if a bunch of J. C. Penny's workers or whatever unionized and they go on strike,

there's the federal government can't do anything about that. But it's why like when um, when the fucking uh air traffic controllers were like, no, we we will criminally punish these people because their jobs are like, we can't have a society without their jobs, so we can't let them strike. That's the idea. I'm not defending that, but that's the justification. So it's not as it's not as preposterous as I

first thought. Okay, it is not like there's an I don't necessarily agree with it, but there's an argument to be made that like, okay, well but if all of the e m t s go on strike, um, people will die. But also like I, I don't necessarily not saying that I don't think he should be able to strike. I'm saying it's different than just like miners going on striker way, That's what I'm saying. It's like, at least I don't necessarily cold, don't it. But at least it's

not it's not a ridiculous statement. It is a it is a thing that we should have debated as a nation. Um, yeah, because it is different. So yeah, Coolidge's stance was more or less the last word on police unions and police striking in particular until the nineteen fifties and the professionalization

of police departments. These years were the heyday for unions elsewhere in the country, and cops watched jealously as the now aging workers they'd spent years tear gassing reap to the benefits of collective bargating fraternal orders proved incapable of gaining officers the wages and benefits that they thought they deserved. So in the early nineteen sixties, police started engaging in slow downs, starting in New York by nineteen and this is where they wouldn't strike, but they wouldn't do most

of the things cops are supposed to do. So they would you know, they were saying, like if the people are getting murdered, will step in there. But like, we're not going to stop petty crime now. Yeah, we'll talk about that in a little bit, Sophie, because this happens

real recently. Um. By nineteen sixty four, they had, you know, piste off the people in charge, the people with money, UM by not enforcing like minor bullshit enough that the mayor and the police commissioner were willing to go to the table in exchange for giving up any right to strike, the Patrolman's Benevolent Association was made a union. It was given the ability to act as a collective bargaining agent

for the city police. Upon becoming a full union, the p b A moved immediately to what would become its true purpose, protecting cops from any kind of accountability for their own actions. In nineteen sixty six, the new mayor of New York sat down with the Congress for Racial Equality, who had some serious complaints about police misconduct towards black New Yorkers. The mayor agreed to add four civilian members to the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which had previously consisted

of three cops. The p b A fought this viciously, holding a five thousand member picket line in opposition to the idea of giving civilians any say and how their police functioned. I'm going to quote next from an article in The New Yorker. The p b A then organized a public referendum aimed at eliminating the board. It put up posters showing a young white woman exiting a subway and heading onto a dark, deserted street. The Civilian Review Board must be stopped the poster read her life, your

life may depend upon it. Here we go. A police officer must not hesitate. If he does, the security and safety of your family maybe jeopardize. You. See what they're arguing there is Yeah, yeah, if if you let civilians watch what we do, we might not kill the dangerous non white people threatening white women fast. Like that's what that's that's what they're saying. Yeah, there's the weapon, there's the weapon, there's there's the goat, there's the tool. Kid,

but are but we have to protect our women. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah like that. I enjoyed that. You know what else I enjoy Robert, You know what I won't TechEd white No, No, okay, um ship that was a bad way to lead this. You know what supports police accountability um and things that we can have safe subways without unaccountable heavily armed maniacs. Product. So yeah, they all all of we're back. It's good to know as a side, No, it's good to know

that these like abysmal transitions are actually natural. Like it's not it's not a stick. You're not like trying to be you know aloof yeah, you're really you're really doing this? Yeah, I I decided long ago never to learn how to do fully half of my job. Um, it's the it's to maintain authenticity, right, yeah, that's eactly it. It's to maintain authenticity. That's how I justify not learning how to do large portions of my job. Yeah, it's called it's

called brand it's brand protection. I get it, exactly. It's just like if you find like icola in your meat. It's like, listen, it's organic. Okay, we don't use pesticides. Yeah you might, you might get bac is um, but

organic baculum. It's organic. Yea, yeah, yeah, exactly exactly. So Yeah, when we last left off, the New York City Police in nineteen sixty six had put up some real racy posters um arguing about why they shouldn't let civilians tell them not to murder people, and as the vote on whether or not to establish this review board approached, the PBA's president, John cassisse Um declared, I'm sick and tired of giving into minority groups with their whims and gripes

and shouting oh man, yeah real physically, yeah, I physically responded to that. Yeah. Yeah, y'all always complaining, Yeah that you don't like us shooting you. You want some saying whether or not we shoot you with the bullets you help buy? Yes? Can I just do my job? That's literally all we're asking is just that you do your job? Yeah please? Yeah? Please? Um so around the country cops elsewhere.

So how good a job the NYPD had done it winning better pay for themselves and sticking a thumb in the eye of those pesky minorities who felt like someone should stop them from Yeah. Uh. Police unionization spread throughout the continents, and over the years, police unions bargained for a hell of a lot more than just increased wages. Starting in New York but spreading quickly over the nation, many police union contracts began requiring departments to a race

officer disciplinary records after a set period of time. And this kind of gets to the chief problem of police unions. They act in the interest of officers, and obviously unions are supposed to act into the interests of workers, but a lot of times, because of the kind of people who become police officers, uh, the interests of the officers means acting against the interests of general society. So, if for example, a minor or a grocery store employee or uh,

any other kind of worker really gets more money. That might be against the interests of the people who own stock in the company, you know, of the capital holding class of like like of of the people who you know, the the executives at the top, who have to take pay cuts. You can argue that's against their interest, um,

but they don't. If a if somebody who works like they're not able to like the fucking A union representing grocery store employees doesn't make it impossible for you to tell which grocery store employees are stabbing people, because grocery store employees don't do that, and when they do, they tend to go to prison and stop working at the

nobody nobody. The unions don't rush into be like no, no, no, you have to keep employing this man all he did with stab three people, Like yeah, I'm like that the union doesn't protect you from being from sucking at your job, right, I mean it does a little bit, Like that's a that's a fair argument that like unions keep people sometimes like teachers who are bad at teaching stay on. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, fair fair enough. But like the point going back to

your analogy. I'm like, you can't just lick the apples and then be like, yo, my union protects me because I got a right to lick the apples. And I'm like, no, you, I don't know why. That's not your function, like you know, I think, And just going back to the police, I'm like, you know what, dude, you have a hard job. You should be paid. Well, you're right, you should be paid. Well, you have a hard job. But what is not your job is being another gang in our neighborhoods and terrorizing

people to color. That's not your job. You should not be protected for doing that. That's what unions protect them for. Instead of just being like, oh, well, we're workers too, and we should be able to advocate for higher pay. They're like, and also if we beat someone, we should be able to hide that from the public. Um, that's what happens almost immediately with you don't get to you don't. That's not one of your perks. Okay, yeah, yeah, that's

the biggest perk. So yeah. A two thousand seventeen Reuters special report on police union contracts and eighty two U S cities found that most departments are now required to a race officer disciplinary records after a set period of time. Sometimes officers records are purged every six months. Eighteen cities

expunge suspensions in three years or less. Reuters found that nearly half a police union contracts guaranteed officers accused of bad behavior the right to see their entire investigative file, including witness statements made against them. What their what I wonder what their defense for that is, because we know exactly what you're doing. But what what's their argument for that? You know, you know, you shouldn't uh, you shouldn't know.

It's not fair for anyone to be charged with a crime without you know, getting to see the claims made by their accusers unless those people are charging the police, are being charged by the police of a crime, and then there's actually all sorts of ways we have to hide that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, dissonance is cognitive yeah, so um yeah. Few developments in US policing have had quite

the impact that unionization has had. Dr Rob Gilzoh, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Victoria, took to Twitter at the end of this May when the uprising started to give a summary of some of his still unpublished research on the impact of police bargaining rights on the killing of civilians, and he noted, quote, what

are we finding so far? The introduction of access to collective bargaining drives a modest declient in policy, employment and increase in compensation, with no meaningful impacts on total crime, violent crime, property crime, or officers killed in the line of duty. What does change? We find a substantial increase in police killings of civilians over the medium to long run, So there is we will continue. There's a lot more evidence than just that that that the unionization specifically leads

to more police killings of civilians. Now, Guilso goes on to note that the overwhelming majority of these added deaths are non white people. Okay, yep, I mean yeah. Quote, if access to a union simply shifted the marginal decision for officers to shoot in risky situations, you would expect to see increases in killings of both whites and non whites.

But that is not what we're finding at all. Rather, and with the caveat that this is still very early work, it looks like collective bargaining rights are being used to protect the ability of officers to discriminate and the disproportionate use of force against the non white population. Again, a big part of this issue is that white supremacy is

baked into the very soul of you as policing. So even though police unions didn't come into the picture until a hundred years after slavery ended, a lot of the cops, most of the cops working in the police at that time, were racist as hell, and so police unions immediately turned to the task of enshrining and detecting racial violence from law and enforcement, and that has remained a part of them ever since. Other research is consistently borne out similar conclusions.

Two eighteen University of Oxford study if the hundred largest American cities found that protections and police contracts were directly and positively correlated with police violence against citizens. Two thou nineteen University of Chicago study found that when collective bargaining rights were given to Florida sheriff's deputies, it led to a forty statewide increase in violent misconduct by deputies. Got forty.

When Okay, it's the stuff that you that you can into it, into it and know, and then when you see the actual numbers it's still like you still throw up in your mouth a little, you know, Okay, it's like you like that's why I keep trying to say.

It's like, yeah, I mean I know that, But now that I'm looking at it on paper or listening to someone go no, here, here, it is No, You're right, got dog, It's still just so infuriating and exhausting that despite all these receipts that you're you're showing, we still have to explain to people that there's a problem. Yeah.

If if a new type of if a new type of hybrid engine came out and we found out a year in that it led to at increase in vehicle explosions during like vendor benders, not only would that product be pulled from the market, people would probably go to jail because they would get prosecuted. Whoever would problem four out of ten people gond when we drive this thing? Yeah, we would at least try at least try yeah. Yeah.

So much of the violets caused by police unions could be blamed on the fact that they make it as hard as possible to fire dangerously unhinged and violet officers. And I'm gonna go it again from The New Yorker here. Other studies revealed that many existing mechanisms for disciplining police

are toothless. W b Eazy, a Chicago radio station, found that between two thousand seven and two thousand fifteen, Chicago's independent Police Review Authority investigated four hundred shootings by police and deemed the officers justified in all but two incidents. Since two thousand twelve, when Minneapolis replaced at civilian Review Board with an Office of the Police Misconduct Review, the public has filed more than misconduct complaints, yet only twelve

resulted in a police officer being punished. The most severe penalty a forty hours suspension. When the Saint Paul Pioneer Press reviewed appeals involving terminations, suspension, yes, misunder Yeah. When the St. Paul Pioneer Press reviewed appeals involving terminations from two thousand fourteen to two thousand nineteen, it discovered that arbitrators ruled in favor of the discharged police and correction officers and ordered them reinstated forty six percent of the time.

Non law enforcement workers were reinstated at a similar rate. And again that's the point that like normal unions do work this way as well, but they're not representing people who have the right to shoot people. Yes, for those demanding more accountability, A large obstacle is that disciplinary actions are often overturned if an arbitrator finds that the penalty in the department meeted out is tougher than it wasn't a similar previous case, no matter if the penalty in

the previous case was far too lenient. Dude, So where's the like the trope like, because I'm thinking I'm thinking the movie trope of like Pulaski badge and gun, like the chief is like, give me your bedge and gun, you're on leave right and then but the guys such one tough cop, but he still investigates the crime. I'm like, it don't sound like I don't know where y'all got that from, because it sound to me like you know, I'm said, I'm rambling, but I'm trying to just like

where did so where did that come from? Then where's the like? Yeah, yeah, you know, if this is actually what we're getting into, Because it turns out that it is accurate that a lot of the times, UH police chief hate and try to fire their worst than most dangerous officers and police unions make that impossible. That's actually

right now, Yeah, I'm I'm leaning into it, okay. Yeah, And again this is like, like I'm sure that there are fucking people in unions who work at tire factories or whatever who are bad at their jobs get fired and the union gives them their job back, and like that probably is a pain in the ask for some of the people they work around, but again they don't Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, guy ain't gonna shoot me. You ain't gonna put his

knee on my neck. Yeah, Which is to say that, like there aren't some problems with other unions, but like it's really a problem with the police. Um. Yeah. So the Washington Post put together a great article about this in two thousand seventeen, noting them in the last eleven years, one thousand, eight hundred and eighty one officers had been fired from the nation's largest police departments, and four hundred and fifty one of those officers had successfully appealed and

gotten their jobs back. There's four hundred and fifty one included an officer who in nineteen year old in his patrol car, an officer who challenged a handcuffed man to a fist fight for his freedom, and of course a cop who shot an unarmed man to death. Yeah, what we gotta we gotta get this guy back on the street. Got to give him another chance to win that fist fight. Yeah.

I'm like, there's the like tragically disgusting, and then there's the preposterous, like you just you challenged the guy like he got on handcuffs, handcuffed man to a fight to box him, Like yeah, you nerd, Like, yeah, you weren't so deadly, you know what I'm saying. I wish I could just be like you're a nerd man. Yeah, And like part of me is like I would kind of like to get into a fist fight with a cop in that situation, but I know that if you start losing,

you're going to shoot me. You can't. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's no winning that fight. Yes. Um. One of my favorite stories in this this really really wonderful Washington Post article is the two thou twelve tale of Boston East

officer Baltazar Tate de Rosa. In two thousand three, de Rosa's cousin was ambushed by a masked gunman and murdered and what was probably a gang related crime and two thousand five, de Rosa cauld and sick for his overnight shift, he went out to a nightclub, the Copa Grand Oasis instead with a dude named Carlos Topina, who was his cousin and the brother of his cousin who got murdered. While at the club, both men encountered Jose Lopez, a gang member who was a suspect in the murder of

De Rosa's cousin. Carlos round up murdering Jose Lopez using his off duty cop cousin as a getaway driver. So de Rosa, who took the night off claiming to be sick and went and got wasted a nightclub with his cousin. When his cousin murders, a guy acts as the getaway driver, and obviously, when this is found out, he gets placed on administrative leave and he's charged with being an accessory

to murder. Um. He was acquitted of that crime, but he was fired from the department when the investigation revealed that he had actually been arrested with his cousin at that club before due to a drunken disorderly conduct um. So again they find out like okay, maybe this guy didn't know he was being the getaway driver in a murder that his cousins committed, but he knew that he was repeatedly getting drunk at the club while he should have been working, and like we should fire him for

that he lied about to us. Um So do Rosa appealed the firing and two thousand twelve he was reinstated with fifty dollars in lost pay in overtime. He is currently a Boston Bike Patrol officer. That boy got the money back. Yeah, of course they always get the money back. Oh my, that oh dog got at least money back.

That one's a fun one because at least like the guy that they murdered sounded like a piece of ship too whatever, because it's just like look man, this again you just gang banging, and like that is the most that that story that's funny because it's the most like spot on any inner city USA anywhere story, Right, That's like that's me. Like, if let's just say I'm working stiff. You know, I still taught high school. I'm just gonna go chill with one of my cousins because that's my cousin.

We're all from South Central l a. Right, my cousin gets in his static with somebody else. What am I gonna not help him as my cousin, you know what I'm saying. So like, Okay, yeah, maybe I lose my job, you know, but like I just like, you know, I mean, that was my cousin. Man, Like I'm gonna you know what I'm saying, Like I'm gonna help. I'm gonna help

scrap with my cousin, you know. Um. And then I was supposed to think of you any different because you got a badge, right, No, you just like the rest of us. You're gonna do ratchet ship because you ratchet

like all of us. Yeah, point exactly, Yeah, exactly. In two thousand and seven, fort Worth police officer y sus Jesse Banda Jr. Stalked his ex girlfriend to a party, saw her with another man, and used a police like called into police dispatch to check on the plates of the man she was with, fraudulently claiming that he had

like stopped the guy or whatever. So he found the address of the dude that his ex girlfriend was going out with, and several days later he showed up at the man's house at night and shot the are up with his twelve gage. The department couldn't prove he'd committed the crime, but they were able to show that he lied about why he had called in the man's license plate like a night or two before his car got

shot up. Yeah, so the police chief did the give me your badge and gun thing, and he put Banda on unpaid suspension um And while he was suspended and under investigation, he was ordered not to represent himself as a police officer. So like you're handing in your badge and gun, we're going to investigate you. You are not getting paid and if you tell anyone you're a police officer to try to get you know, the benefits police officers get, Like you're breaking the fucking law right now.

So Banda went out and represented himself as a police officer of Coorseiately, he and some friends were pulled over by another Fort Worth cople They were drunk in a limousine. Said cop had watched the people in the back of the limo, including Banda, pass beer up to the driver. So again, real hard to get in trouble for drinking at a limousine. This fucking dude finds a way. We passed into the river. What are you doing man? Yeah? Yeah, yeah.

So when he asked Banda to step out of the car, band to hand it over his police credentials and pretended to be an officer in good standing. Despite all this, the union had Banda's back and they fought for him. He was reinstated and awarded a year of back pay. So again the police chief is like, I don't what this fucking guy in my department, and the unions like you are going to take him back and you're gonna pay him for the time when he was getting drunken limousines.

Officer Banda had been back on the force for one month before he was fired again for again misrepresenting himself during a traffic stop. He is currently he was reinstated by the union. He is currently a detective and thanks to his union, the people of Fort Worth have to brave the streets of their town knowing a guy who uses department resources to hunt down the boyfriends of his ex partners is out there with the power to arrest whoever and apparent immunity to the consequences of any illegal

actions he takes. So that's good. Congrats Fort Worth. His great good job for two year old. Yeah, yeah, oh thing thing, Yeah that is not the note. That's embarrassing that that thing. I don't But we're going to go to products. Now we're back, and we started talking about Carney a soda fries, which I am normally very happy with my decision to live in the Pacific Northwest, but whenever somebody says Carney Asada, I longed for southern California. Yeah,

so I could go for some Carney fries. But we're gonna we have to talk about police unions instead. So, um yeah, so let's let's talk about uh Kwan McDonald. Um so yeah. In two thousand and fourteen, seventeen year old Kwan McDonald was murdered by Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke. The media fewer around this launched an investigation which revealed that officer Van Dyke had previously been the

subject of repeated complaints. The report noted that a code of silence about misconduct was baked into labor agreements between police unions in the city, and that this ensured that nothing had been done about officer Van Dyke before he killed a child. Van Dyke was eventually convicted of second degree murder in sixteen accounts of aggravated battery with a firearm.

Sixteen is the number of times he shot him. Um Van Dyke was found not guilty of any official misconduct, though it was guilty of murder, but not guilty of improperly behaving as a police officer. Yeah. Yeah, yes, where did murder somebody and we're gonna go to prison for it. But you also didn't break the rules of your job. Yeah, but job's fine. Yeah, wow, Yeah, what do we do

with that one? Yeah. Ironically, given their role in murdering the ship out of unions for close to a hundred years, police might be the most successful example of unionization in the US history, not in terms of like benefits to society or benefit to the profession of policing, but at least in terms of the sheer amount of power that

they wield. The Jesus Labor historian Joseph McCartin notes they have more cloud than other public sector unions like the teachers and sanitation workers, because they have often been able to command the political support of Republicans. That's given them a huge advantage. Police unions are one fortunate area where we have a single human being who embodies all of

the evil that these institutions represent and do. And when I talk about a single human being who embodies the evil of police unions, there's no one else I could be talking about but Lieutenant Bob Kroll, head of the Minneapolis Police Union. Yeah, president of the Minneapolis Police Union. Bob has of course appealed the firing of Derek Chavin and the other three cops who murdered George Floyd, saying that they were fired without due process um and this

is something of a pattern for him. And two thousand fifteen, when to white MPD officers shot twenty four year old Jamark Clark in the head while he was handcuffed on the ground, Krol went on TV to talk about Clark's violent criminal past and declare BLM a terrorist organization. Krol has a real thing for declaring people he disagrees with of being terrorists. He did the same thing to US Representative Keith Ellison, a black Muslim congressman who pushed for

criminal justice reform. That fun detail came out in a lawsuit filed by the current IMPD police chief. According to Mother Jones, the lawsuit accused Kroll of wearing a motorcycle jacket with a white power patch sewed into the fabric, and said he had a history of discriminatory attitudes and conduct. He has told reporters who was part of the City Heat motorcycle Club, some of whose members have been described by the Anti Defamation League is displaying white supremacist symbols.

Bob Crow joined the MPD back in nineteen eighty nine, and in his years on the force there were twenty or more internal affairs complaints made against him. We don't know how yeah, minimum. We actually don't know how many it was because of all the ship I've been explaining. They purge records, but at least twenty, Yeah, Jo, can you have twenty on record? Yeah? Imagine I'm gonna like imagine I'm reading what I'm going to tell you next, and imagine that like he worked as a baker or like,

like as a computer programmer. Everybody replaced cop with donut maker. Yeah. Sanitation worker, sanitation worker. In nineteen ninety four, he was suspended for using excessive force in In nineteen nine five, he was accused of beating, choking, and kicking a biracial fifteen year old while shouting racial slurs. Yeah, Bob Roll. In two thousand four, when Kroll was off duty, someone leaving a bar bumped his backpack against Kroll's car. Bob and another off duty officer got out and beat the

piss out of this guy. When his friends came to help, they beat the ship out of his friends too. Bob was suspended for twenty days for this. It's it's cartoonish like, like this is cartoon own level. Yes, the Minneapolis the Minneapolis police knew all of this when they elected Bob Crowl to be their union president by a two to one margin. Bob one because the citizens of Minneapolis had just elected a reform minded police chief. She told The New York Times. I believe Bob Crowle was elected out

of fear. We're the only ones that support Your community doesn't support you. Your police chief is trying to get you fired. You see what I'm building to here. Police unions allow the cops to deliberately short circuit the democratic process. This is part of why bringing in better police chiefs and voting in reform minded mayors almost never actually does a damn thing when it comes to the police. Yeah, because the unions are still there and they stonewall anything

from happening. When Kim Garner was elected d A of St. Louis in two thousand sixteen, she promised to fight police violence on behalf of her citizens. One of the way she proposed to do this was by establishing an independent oversight board to investigate abuses by police, like the PBA in New York more than a half century. Early year, the police union in St. Louis set right to work

killing this oversight board. They went to lawmakers one by one, and whatever they said stopped the matter from even coming to a vote. According to the New York Times quote. Around the same time, a lawyer for the union waged a legal fight to live it the ability of the prosecutor's office to investigate police misconduct. The following year, a leader of the union said Miss Gardner should be removed by force or by choice. Wow, that's cool, can you chack?

Can you just It's like, I just it's it's comic book level power. Like and I just imagine, like you know, in in every comic book when the when the bad guy goes, like I feel the power, Like I feel like that's just death must be what it's like to where you're like, after a while, just you just know you can it away with it, and anybody that comes in to try to stop you, you got the power to remove. Like it just got dog like. It must be intoxicating, it must it's got to be a drug.

Like it's got to be a drug. Yeah, yeah, it is, it is. It is. They're high on fucking power. And if you've ever I mean I don't know, have you have you never? Have you never pistol whipped a guy? Oh my god, Oh my god, pistol whipping a dude. It's like it's like it's like that first slice of cherry pie on a birthday. Yeah, that's how it. Yeah, no wonder they want to protect it. I get it. I get it. You're like, this is super fun now, Yeah, it's terrible. I've been in enough like fist fights to

know I don't like them. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. And I've been in enough to be like, I don't like him because of the pain, but I also don't like him because you just walk away. Like even if it's just like that dude's a freaking scumbag and he deserved it, you're still like, oh, you know, I'll feel good about it. Yeah, you still walk away like man, all feel good about it? Yeah? Anyway, Yeah, and I was I was joking about pistols, of course. But I do wonder. I do wonder if we can succeed in

police abolition. What if we just made it legal for everyone to own grenade launchers and tear gas gardades and rubber bullets, and then the crowd of protesters could confront the police on it even like, would they enjoy being riot cops? Yeah? If they were having getting flash banged back? I can. I can tell you I've seen some protesters throw like mortars, like fireworks back at police who are

shooting grenades of them, and they don't seem to like it. No, Yeah, it's crazy, huh, one would think, right, yeah, so um yeah, if if the way that police unions respond when elected officials try to restrict the powers and rights of the police sounds kind of like how the mob works, You're

not the only person to think that way. Back in Minneapolis, city councilman Steve Fletcher noted that once he started pushing to freeze the MPD from hiring new officers, the police stopped responding as quickly to nine one one calls made by his constituents. He called it a little bit like a protection racket. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what it is, Steve, exactly what it is. We're looking. And he used to have a song called nine one one is a joke and it's and and and like people think they were

They're like, what is what are they talking about? No, you don't understand that they don't have to come when we call. Ye, you could decide like this, I'm just not gonna go over there. Yeah, And it's it's funny because of the protests in Portland and stuff, like, I know a lot of people who have been the victims of crimes in Portland. I've been the victims of crimes, thankfully not here, but in other cities. And like it always takes a hell of a long time for the

police to respond. Um. But when the protests here wound up in the neighborhood of the mayor's mansion is and so like they were surrounded by mansions and people started shining lasers and windows and like sitting off smoke bombs. The police were fucking right there there, so fucking quick man, you guys. Response times today, Wow, you guys, are you guys are really on the ball when this neighborhood, this specific neighborhood gets sucked with Yeah yeah. So um. We'll

talk a little bit more about police unions later. For now, there's another major subject. We've got a pivot to broken windows policing. Yeah, but this is you've heard of broken windows, right, bro? This is the one that like when this is the stuff you're getting into that like our like dads and big brothers and cousins would sit us down and say, hey, this is how it works. You need to protect yourself.

They was explaining this stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um. In two thousand twelve, a teenager named Alvin Cruz was stopped

by police and searched. This was not unusual for Cruise, that had happened to him numerous times before, and the officers searching him this was in New York, by the way, and the officers searching him never explained why they were doing it, but this time because he was just fucking tired of being hassled so many him by the police, Alvin secretly recorded the encounter, and he caught on tape the officer's response when he asked him why he was

being stopped, the cop told him for being a fucking mutt. You know that. Another officer twisted his arm behind his back after this and shouted, dude, I'm gonna break your fucking arm and then I'm gonna punch you in the fucking face. This tape went real viral, and it was cited in the ruling of a federal judge later that year um when the judge ruled that the NYPDS stopping

frisk policy was unconstitutional and racially discriminatory. Stopping frisk is not a policy unique to New York, but as we've learned, the NYPD tend to be trailblazers. This tactic involves basically stopping random people, virtually all of whom were black or Hispanic, and searching them for contraband with little to no cause. Stopping frisk was justified by the best minds available to nineteen eighties law enforcement, James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling.

Do you know what't even about either of these guys? Uh, not personally, except for they're the reason why I can't walk home with a friend. Yes, kid, you're gonna learn some not surprising stuff about them, but yeah, In nineteen eighty two, Wilson and Kelling published an article in the Atlantic that became the foundation of what we now know as broken windows policing, probably the most single most influential article in the history of law enforcement. Their chief argument

was boiled down in this sentence. If a window in the building is broken and left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. Yeah. So, in order to keep crime down and keep neighborhoods nice, they argued, all violations of public order have to be sternly punished and prosecuted. Searching random black and Latino kids and occasionally beating the ship out of them is just the price we pay for making sure those kids don't have spray

paint on them or whatever. You know, aren't going to sell a little bit of weed or something like. Because any small criminal violation will inevitably lead to the total destruction of the neighborhood. So we have to police this little ship as harshly as possible. Now. Wilson and Kelling's new theory of policing was presented as scientific, backed up by the latest data, but that was a complete sham.

There was only a single piece of hard evidence behind their theory, and they didn't interpret it the way that the actual researchers who did the study um interpreted it. And that single piece of evidence was a nineteen sixty nine study by every psych student's favorite problematic researcher, Philip Zimbardo. Yeah, love me some Zimbardo. He was like, there's a lot of real good criticisms of Philip Zimbardo, but his work

is never boring. Like I want to do some weird I'm gonna make a prison and staff it with teenagers. This guy, there's a few people that making into your history books that you're just like, how why are we studying him? I would love to drink with Philip Zimbardo. Like, as someone who is critical of virtually all of his research,

he sounds fun. Yeah, yeah, still sounds Yeah. So this particular nineteen sixty nine study by Zimbardo had been inspired by the nineteen sixty eight riots and uprisings, obviously, like Zimbardo had just like watched the entire country convulsed by something that was in a lot of ways even more like even more serious than what we're seeing right now. Um, And he was like, I should probably do some science about that. Ship. Um. So he was frustrated, particularly that

conservatives blamed vandalism on individual criminality. So vandal considers were blaming like vandalism during protest on the criminal nature of individual protesters, and he thought this was wrong. He thought that vandalism had more to do with crowd mentality than individual characteristics. So in order to test his hypothesis, he and his team parked got two Oldsmobiles and they parked one in the South Bronx and the other in Palo Alto, California.

They surveilled both cars and they watched happened to them. Now. Zimbardo, because he was a little bit racist, expected the Oldsmobile and the Bronx would be swiftly vandalized and torn apart. And he was right, but he was surprised that the first vandals were a white, well dressed family and not black teenagers. Um. Yeah, still, which is not go ahead. Yeah, I was going to say, because like and I'm saying it's completely anecdotally. It's because when you black and brown,

you already know they're gonna blame me anyway. So I can't Now, I'm not going to touch that. You know what's gonna happen, like they come over and kill us, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, so yeah. He was surprised by this, but he felt that his central hypothesis was supported um the lack of community cohesion. This is his conclusion. The lack of community cohesion and the Bronx produced a sense of anonymity which gave people permission

to commit acts of vandalism. He wrote, conditions that create social inequality and put some people outside of the conventional rewards structure of the society, make them in different to its sanctions, laws and implicit norms. Mm hmm, yeah, yeah, sentence, That is quite a sentence. So like, yeah, that happens to the old mobile and Harlem um or not Harlem in the bronx Um and the old mobile he parked

in Palo Alto suffered a a somewhat different fate. According to the Washington Post quote, after a week long unremarkable steak out, Zimbardo's drove the car to the Stanford campus, where his research team aimed to prime vandalism by taking a sledgehammer to its windows. Upon discovering that this was stimulating and pleasurable, Zimbardo and his graduate students got carried away. As Zimbardo described it, one student jumped on the roof and began stomping it. In two we're pulling out the

door from its hinges. Another hammered away at the hood and motor, while the last one broke called the glass he could find the passers. The passers by the study had intended to observe, had turned into spectators and only joined in after the car was already wrecked. Zimbardo's conclusions were the stuff of liberal criminology. Anyone, even Stanford researchers, could be lured into vandalism, and this is particularly true

in places like the Bronx with heightened social inequalities. For Zimbardo, what happened in the Bronx and at Stanford suggested that crowd mentality, social inequalities, and community anonymity could prompt good citizens to act destructively. This was no radical critique. It was an indictment of law and order politics that viewed

vandalism as a senseless, unpardonable act. In a line that could have been lifted directly out of the countless riot reports published in the late nineteen sixties, Zimbardo asserted vandalism is rebellion with a cause, m which so yeah, yeah, yeah, I I can't. I can't speak to the accuracy of Zimbardo's conclusions about the Bronx, particularly like his his attitudes about community there. Also, it was not a place he understood very well. Um, and he was clearly a manned

with some biases. Uh. But I can't argue with his conclusions about Palo Alto because in part of what I saw in riot night in Portland, which was the night after the Third Precinct in Minneapolis burned. Um, I know that, like you know, people rioted in Portland. They fucked up the Justice Center and like lit it on fire and they destroyed like they damaged a lot of the luxury shopping district and looted it and it was blamed on

like antifo white anarchist kids. But like I was there, it was a pretty fucking broad cross section of the population. Who was You can tell. I've seen enough people break windows. You can tell when someone knows how to break a window, and when someone is breaking a window for the first time, A lot of first time window a lot of a lot of experienced window breakers in that crowd. Don't get me wrong, a lot of first time window breakers. He

just got taken in by the moment. Yeah, yeah, that's good. Yeah, so yeah. I I think that that's probably accurate that, like most vandalism that happens in times like these, is not the result of people who are as a lot

of folks, I could portray them inherently criminal. Um, not that I even comfortable like judging people on that basis, but I think most of that kind of vandalism is just like, oh, fuck it, I can get away with this now, yeah I want to like yeah, yeah, I'm angry and like I feel like this is an option.

Now let's do it. Yeah now, um so yeah. The Oldsmobile study was actually not very influential initially, and it's sort of languished in the annals of academic history for a decade and a half until Wilson and Kelling, the guys who wrote that Atlantic article in the Broken Windows theory, until they came across it. So they didn't listen to anything Zimbardo had actually said about crowd mentality and community

and anonymity. They kind of ignored all of the actual conclusions in the study um and took from it only the fact that quote, one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing. So both of these guys cite the Zimbardo theory as the entire academic basis of their theory on crime. H the Zimbardo study, but they actually interpreted it in a way that ran come completely at odds to the

person conducting the studies own conclusions. And I'm gonna quote from the Washington Post again. Their misleading recap of Zimbardo's study not only conflated the Stanford and Palo Alto experiments, but so distorted the order of events that it routed readers away from Zimbardo's conclusions. In their version, the car and Palo Alto sat untouched for more than a week, then Zimbardo smashed part of it with a sledgehammer. Soon

passers by were joining in. Where they conveniently neglected to mention was that the researchers themselves had laid waste to the car. By admitting this crucial detail, Wilson and Kelly manipulated Zimbardo's experiment to draw a straight line between one broken window and a thousand broken windows. This enabled them to claim that all it took was a broken window to transform staid Palo Alto into the Bronx where no one cared. The problem is it wasn't a broken window

that enticed onlookers to join the fray. It was the spectacle of faculty and students destroying an oldsmobile in the middle of Stanford's campus. Like yes, no one did it. Yeah, they're like, oh, that professor's sucking up, Like yeah, it seems like it's cool. Now let's do Yeah. Like people if they if someone's like, hey, it's actually there's a car people are sucking up and it's okay, it's perfectly legal. Do you want to funk up a car a little bit?

Most people are gonna be like yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's so intuitive. And if I just see like a smashed window on a car, that's not gonna make me go I'm gonna smash that dude's window too. I'm gonna be like, oh, that fool's backpack I've stolen, Like I'm gonna think, you know what I'm saying, poor guy, Like, it's not gonna go. Oh, nobody cares on this street. Speaking as someone who spends a lot of time in

the Bay Area. I never go to San Francisco and don't see at least one car with a smashed out window. And I never see all of the windows around that car smashed. In fact, it's usually in a nice neighborhood. Still, it's just the thing they do in Sanford they fun up car windows and stealership inside cars. Don't do stuff in your car. In San Francisco, they don't break everything. Yeah, that was my lesson was like, hey, dude, don't leave your backpack in the car. The story, don't leave your

backpack in the car. It is a meme in San Francisco. Never leave anything any And by the way, when I had my car broken into in San Francisco, I was parked directly in front of the Mission Police precincts. Like, we went into report it and the officer said, what do you want us to do about it? Right? Okay, tost cot copper. Everyone wasn't while they're nail, they'll nail it. Like it was one I remember now saying like my uh my freaking speakers and amp got stolen out of

my car. And it's kind of the same thing. That cop was like, what what you want me to do man. Yeah, I'm like, touche. I mean, you know what I want you to do is when I talk about police abolition, not be like, who are you going to call if someone robs you? Because here we are, because it's not

and you just told me you're not going to do that. Dang. Yeah. Um. So I first read that article about like the how the broken windows police and guys had like fucked up Zimbardo's study years before I came across like the basics of or years after I'd come across the basics of broken windows policing theory during I I took criminal justice for a while in college. I wanted to be in law enforcement at one point um, and reading that kind of like dissection of this foundational theory and modern law

enforcement was pretty shocking and impactful to me. But I didn't know half the real story until I read Alex Fatalities The End of Policing this year. Fatality points out that the core of broken windows theory is the idea that people have latent destructive traits that are unleashed without constant pressure from authority to conform and behave. Fatality writes, quote, the emergence of this theory in nineteen eight two is tied to a larger arc of urban neo conservative thinking

going back to the nineteen sixties. Wilson's former mentor and collaborator, Edward Banfield, a close associate of neoliberal economist Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago, parented many of the ideas that came to make up the new conservative consensus on cities. Banfield's big work was the nineteen seventy book The Unheavenly City, which is basically an extended argument that poor people and

this is me now not vitality. The Unheavenly City is an extended argument that poor people can't be helped and so welfare programs are a waste of money. Here's a quote from Banfield's book, and this is again like the mentor of of Wilson, the guy who is one of the main architects, one of the two architects of the

broken Windows theory. So here's what it writes. Although he has more leisure than almost anyone, the indifference apathy, if one prefers of the lower class person, is such that he seldom makes even the simplest repairs to the place that he lives. In he is not troubled by dirt or dilapidation, and he does not mind the inadequacy of public facilities such as schools, parks, hospitals, and libraries. Indeed, where such things exist, he may destroy them by carelessness

or even by vandalism. Oh my gosh, right now, yeah, it makes you realize. Yeah, it's just what justlike what do you know about being poor? Go in any poor person's house. They have fixed more of their own ship

than you know how to. But like, yes, there's that I've always put like the like broken window, uh, stopping frisk and then like kind of the like gang in junctions and street sweepers, like I've always kind of like in my head without any actual research, like lumped them all together under the like the theory that you just presented, which is that like, ultimately we don't care about our neighborhoods unless we have authoritative powers that keep us in line.

Like I've kind of lumped it under that thought and that that's that's what law enforcement thinks about us, you know what I'm saying, Like that, it's still the broken window thing. So when I the gang in junctions, will I don't know if if we're if we're even gonna cover that. But like I've always kind of seen them because they were all around. It was all that eighties and nineties like policing that that that turned me into the like policing don't work, you know activists that I am.

Now it's like under that sort of thinking. I know, if they aught together, but it's but him the statement you just said, the idea of again saying that like ultimately your animals unless we keep you in line. Yes, it's just all makes sense. Now that's clearly how you think of us. Yes, yes, and it will become clearer where all of yeah, yeah, so uh. Banfield basically thought that cities ought to be abandoned because they were just

inherently criminal places. Um and his protege Wilson, took a different tax, arguing that cities had been great once and could be halted in their decline and made great again because if only the cause of that decline were properly recognized. Wilson identified liberal politicians and of course, the moral failings of black communities, as the chief clause of urban decline.

Vitality writes that Wilson quote argued that liberals had unwittingly unleashed urban chaos by undermining the formal social control mechanisms that made city living possible. By supporting the more radical demands of the later urban expressions of the civil rights movement that it's so weakened the police, teachers, and other government forces of behavioral regulation that chaos came to rain. Wilson, following Banfield, believed strongly that there were profound limits on

what the government could do to help the poor. Financial investment in them would be squandered, new services would go unused or be destroyed. They would continue in their slothful and destructive ways. Since the root of the problem was either an essentially moral or cultural failure or a lack of external controls to regulate inherently destructive human urges, the solution had to take the form of punitive social control

mechanisms to restore order and neighborhood stability. Wilson's views were informed by a borderline racism that emerged as a mix

of biological and cultural explanations for the inferiority of poor blacks. Wilson, yeah, yeah, yeah, thoughts like just like the religious right, and like yeah, you know, you know, I'm I'm I grew up with church boy, you know what I'm saying, Like I still got a lot of stuff still serves me well, but like I'm just thinking about out like just that, like that like why Western evangelical, Like well, like okay, the breakdown of the family. It's like there's no dad's in

the homes and that's the problem. And like in the black community, your fathers are missing, so y'all have no direction and just hearing all that stuff, you know from these people that are supposed to be taking care of you, So like how just how? And then when you get get of age and you realize not, I think y'all just racist, like when it kind of like clicks, just the like crisis of like faith that you have at that moment where you're just like I don't, I can't.

I'm actually not welcome here. I thought I was welcome here. I'm not welcome here anyway, going yeah, yeah, So back to Wilson a little bit, because this is the next

part is important. No no no, no, no no. Um. Wilson co authored the book Crime and Human Nature with Richard Hernstein, which argued that there were important biological determinants of criminality while race was not one of the core determinants, language about i Q and body type opened the door to a kind of sociobiology that led Hernstein to co author the openly racist The Bell Curve with Charles Murray, who

was also a close associate of Wilson. So The Bell Curve, if you're not aware, is a thoroughly to credit discredited book about i Q and race that has earned a place of honor in every racist bookshelf. And so Wilson is friends with both of the authors of that, and works on a book with one of the authors of that. This is the guy who co inventced broken windows theory of policing. Like, that's that's where he's swimming in. That's

his fucking sea. Yeah, And it's so like hearing it all together, it's so clear, you know, it's so obvious, you know, coupled with my own just experience, and just like, oh my god, it all its hearing it all together, it's just like, yes, yes, that's so, I'm not crazy. You really do think this about us, got it? Yep? Yeah, So the broken windows theory gave ideological cover to people who want to empower were the US police to interfere more directly in the daily lives of more, particularly non

white people. Prevention of crime had been the goal since the days of Volmer, but what that mint had changed Now Poverty and social disorganization were seen as the results of crime, not the causes, and thus the best way to reform society was to repeatedly punish people from minor criminal behavior. Vitality goes on broken windows policing? Is it root?

A deeply conservative attempt to shift the burden of responsibility for declining living conditions onto the poor themselves, and to argue that the solution to all social ills is increasingly aggressive, invasive and restrictive forms of policing that involved more arrests, more harassment, and ultimately more violence. Wow, so the solution of poverty ain't jobs, No, it's punishment. Yeah, you've gotta stop him from breaking breaking windows in their neighborhood by

arresting them for weed or whatever. Yeah. Yo. The nuance that like like like sna match that out the sky. The nuance of saying I'm gonna try to say it like you like like the quote said, which he was like like the cause that the cause of crime was not the poverty, the cause of poverty was the crime.

And that's the part where I'm just like, there's your mistake there, it is, right, Um, if if if you've ever heard the term like like a crime of survival, then like you understand what we're talking about here where it's just like you're you have that completely backwards, you know what I'm saying. If if you if you think that the the cause of the poverty is the crime, rather than saying the cause of the crime is the poverty. Yeah,

that is like that fundamental switch. Everything will start making sense now when you when you understand that, like the laws are the crime, the laws probably unjust already. So this act of survival shouldn't be a crime in the first place because it's an active survival, right. But when you understand it as just an act of survival, right, then the idea of punishing a person for trying to

survive seems preposterous because it yes, yeah so um. One example of the violence caused by broken windows policing would be the famous and the tragic death of Eric Garner. If you've forgotten, um, I know you haven't, but at home Garner was busted for selling cigarettes illegally, he was choked to death by officers, and his famous cry I can't breathe has probably become the most powerful slogan of the Black Lives Matter movement. Um just kind of sums

everything up. Uh. You might be surprised to learn that Garner's arrested not come as the result of like an individual officer just sort of like rolling around the neighborhood and spotting a guy breaking the law and choosing to do something. It was actually ordered by the top brass because the local business owners had complained about Gardners illegal

cigarette sales harming their own businesses. So kind of back to episode two here where we're talking about like the police are formed to protect Yeah, yeah, and it's good for you to point out like what the crime was. It's yes, if you don't know this, it's a lucy. It's when you just sell an individual cigarette, which is like apparently a capital crime. Yes, yeah, and it is a perfectly normal thing in a lot of the world

everywhere in the world. Like you you got ten dollars for a pack of cigarettes, so you're just trying to bum one of them. You're gonna walk around be like bum a cigarette or I'll sell you one for a dollar like that. This is a listen and listen to me. Guys, that's a crime. Yeah, you to say how ridiculous that sounds like you gotta fucking bosnia. You order a coffee, you'll get a cigarette with your coffee. But like, yeah, you do that here, you're you're breaking the law. Yeah, Uh,

make cigarettes mandatory. I think is the right, the right way to solve this problem. It's it's easy, right, So the NYPD dispatched a sizeable force to bust Garner, a plane closes unit and two sergeants with uniformed backup, and the best case scenario from sending cops after him was that he would be stopped temporarily from selling Lucy's. Eric had a long history of getting busted for petty crimes

and going to jail. No sentence had dissuaded him from continuing to do this, um, so there was no chance of anything happening. But temporarily having this guy in jail instead of selling loose cigarettes, that was the best case scenario. Yea, or just like go to another block, like all right, this guy don't like me in front of his store, I'm just gonna go down the street, not really hard nobodies. Yeah,

there was no garrets man. There was no way for any meaningful public good to be gained by this interaction. And again the pot the worst case scenario which happened is that Garner died, which is what happened. Now. The NYPD instituted more use of force training for its patrol officers after Garner's death, so that the next guy the state sent armed men after for the crime of selling loose cigarettes would be less likely to get murdered. Um,

but that didn't really doesn't really solve anything. As Alex Vitali notes, quote, such training ignores two important factors in Garner's death. The first is the officer's casual disregard for his well being, ignoring his cries of I can't breathe and they're seemingly indifferent reaction to his near lifelessness while awaiting an ambulance. This is a problem of values and seems to go to the heart of the claim that

for too many police, black lives don't matter. The second is broken windows style policing, which targets low level in fractions for intensive, invasive and aggressive enforcement. Now, the death of Garner caused a flurry of national condemnation of the NYPD and a conflict between the department and Mayor build a Blasio. As you'll recall, the NYPD can't strike over this sort of thing, but they were angry that the mayor hadn't enthusiastically backed them when some of their own

had committed murder. So they launched a slowdown, which is basically a diet version of a strike. Is what we talked about a little bit earlier. For seven weeks, the New York Police only went out in pairs, only left their squad cars if they felt it was absolutely necessary, and they avoided all proactive policing measures. This means that for the first time in decades, the NYPD stopped fucking

with people who committed petty crimes and misdemeanors. The slowdown ended eventually, but researchers wanted to learn what impact it might have actually had on crime in the city. Their study, published in the Nature Journal Human Behavior, was based on Foyed CompStat reports from two thousand and thirteen to two thousand and sixteen. These reports include weekly activity for each

NYPD precinct for all the rests and criminal activity. The study found that, not surprisingly, the rate of criminal summons is and stopping frisks and arrests had declined massively during the slowdown. This is what you'd expect because cops weren't doing that sort of work. But the researchers also found that civilian complaints of major crimes fell between three and

six percent during the same period. Civilians reported forty three fewer felony assaults, forty fewer burglaries, and forty fewer acts of grand larceny. The drop in violent crime actually continued for several months after the slowdown, leading to an estimated twenty one hundred fewer major crime plants. The study authors noted, quote in their efforts to increase civilian compliance, certain policing

tactics may inadvertently contribute to serious criminal activity. The implications for understanding policing and a democratic society should not be understated. The researchers directly addressed broken windows policing and the stop in first style public order policing tactics introduced as a

result of that theory. Quote. Our results imply not only that these tactics fail at their stated objective of reducing major legal violations, but also that the initial deployment of proactive policing can inspire additional crimes that later provide justification for further increasing police stops, summons is and so forth. So so, so what you're saying is them not doing

what they were doing actually helped. Yeah, if you had a DA who came in and said violent crime and like, complaints about major crimes by civilians dropped between three and six percent during my tenure, you could running for fucking state office, the general office on that ship, right, yeah. Yeah, And it's like, oh, we'll show you. I'll show you, guys, how much you need us. Actually you are the problem. No, Actually, things actually seem a lot better. Actually it's fine, you

know what, keep going, keep slowing down, guys. You know, I wanted a single cigarette the other day. I bought it. Nobody got choked. Yeah, it was fine. Everything, it's actually okay. It seems like it's actually okay, dude. Yeah. I would love to somehow or another try to invoke just the empathy and emotions of what like stopping frisk did psychologically, you know, as a young man, you know, or just just as a person in that sort of context and environment.

And of course you know obviously that you know, Bloomberg didn't last in the in the he it was a joke anyway, you know what I'm saying. But like, um, so, so there was no way I could have ever voted for him because I know it's psychologically what stopping frisk and like all that stuff did to us. But like, just I just think, think about what we're saying here is you can get stopped and searched for nothing for the possibility that you might be doing something. So like

it's just so moving about freely. You know, I brought up again earlier, like because the the l a version of that was like the gang injunctions. So if you were if if you and two of your friends happened to be walking home from basketball practice in your clothes kind of match, that's a gag, right, So no matter what, if there's more than one of you, you're in a gang. So and and there's and there's a there's a there's

a gang uptick. So like let's just say you do commit a petty crime or you were involved with a committing with a petty crime, if you were with someone that was either in the in the system as a gang member or it was more than one of you, you can get the gang up charge. So that just adds five years, right, even if something only took six even if it was like a petty crime and it was only like six to eight months probation, if you get the gang uptick is five years, right. So I

it was dudes that like disappeared off the streets. We didn't until we were in college because of this stuff. And so they came out of prison gangsters. They didn't go in gangsters that came out, you know. So like I I'm ranting, but like like please understand the psychological like part of that. Yeah, shit good you just you just like just the I mean, I'm a full grown man.

I paid freaking property taxes, I'm working on a damn home loan right now, and I still whenever I just hear that whoa, whoa, my body is still just kind of like uh yeah, Like that's the fucking thing to me, is like, like we talked such a fucking good game in this country about what freedom is, and if you live in a country, we're a huge percentage, if not most, because fucking white people feel this way when they hear the woolp of the police st everyone scared of them.

If you've got this unaccountable group of armed people who can funk up your day and possibly the rest of your life at any moment for no reason, even if you haven't done something wrong and experience no consequences. If that's built into your system, you're not free. Whatever nebulous concept freedom is, that's not it. It's not it. Yeah, Um, go back to the script. Yeah, the script is, the script is done. This is this is what we had

for today. Um. Yeah, we're gonna talk about the exist Rangers some which will be fun, and the militarization of police. We're gonna talk about the TV show Cops. Yeah, that'll be That'll be it for a little serious which is going to leave out just so much stuff, but doing doing the best we can over here. Man, I hope.

I'm gonna say this on record that like, man, what you've done for the cause by doing this you and Sophie, Like, man, y'all don't put yah, don't put stones and slingshots, boy by, Like this is just seven to ten hours of receipts that you know what I'm saying, Like, man, we appreciate this work. I know. I'm a part of But I

appreciate y'all for doing this. I mean, I think it's like, you know, it came at a certain point, like during covering the protests, where like things were starting to die down, in part because like people were getting exhausted, in part because the police got in trouble for all of the violence, and it was like, what's the next thing to do. It's make sure everybody like you want to you want

to keep people. People have to be angry about this for a long time if it's going to change, right, this is like, this is this is a long fight. This is not going We're not gonna like, no one's gonna like, like, in order to get one police department taken down in Minneapolis, and it hasn't yet happened, but it looks like it's going to happen, they had to burn a precinct. Like it was hard. Yeah, yeah, they they they fought like they fought like motherfucker's just to

take that down. Um, and that's just not going to happen nationwide. And but I we still need to stop this, and the only way to do that is to get enough people angry long enough that they wear them down. This is not like, it's not as simple as a vote in better people, And anyone who says that, like, okay, well, the real way to fix this is vote is lying to you. Voting is one part of the effort. And the only way voting works is if there is like clearly enough rage and and anger and um and and

activity in the street that it necessitates action. That number one, local governments are scared by the number of people out in the streets and realize that we're all gonna lose our fucking jobs if we don't do something. Um and also, physically exhausting the police is a part of it. Um running out there fucking budgets is a part of it. Making them realize that they are not making it. Making it not pleasurable to be an officer because people don't

view you positively is a part of it. For all of like, all of this is a part of it. Getting rid of cops was I think a bigger part of it than a lot of people realize. And I my hope with this is that it it helps keep people angry enough to stay in the fight and make the changes happen. You ever heard of Carl von Klauswitz, No Klauswitz was a German military he's like a he was a general, but he was also like a like.

He wrote a lot about strategy. He was He's very influential in the field of like thinking about how to to conduct war. And Klauswitz had a definition of war that is not all not not everyone agrees with it, but I find it really compelling. He defined war as

the continuation of politics through other means. Um. And police have been talking about how there's a war on police for a very long time, and I think that the actual falling number over forty years, you know, the number of police officers killed and wounded the line of duty

is continually fallen. Um. I don't think it's accurate in like the literal sense, but I do think you can look at what the police have been doing and stopping frisk is a big part of it as a war on the people of this country and responding in kind. It's not it's not a sitting in the trenches with

a rifle. It's not necessarily even on our side of things, it's not a it's not a doing violence to human beings war, but it's it's not dissimilar from the kind of war that like the Russian government has been attempting to carry out in places like Ukraine and Georgia. It is a it is a very complicated conflict, but it is a it is a conflict. UM. And yeah, I hope that this is has provided some some additional munitions. Yes, and it has good on you. Well, prop you want

to plug your plug doubles before we roll out? I do. This is uh, this is prop hip hop over here. Uh, website and Instagram and all those things are prop hip hop dot com. Um, there's cups and T shirts and music uh in other podcasts that I'm part of. Um, and I am don't have anything else to plug because I'm reliving my teen years in my head right now. Shit. Yeah, and I am very happy to be a part of this.

I'm very happy to be heard. That's another reference that Sophie appreciate that you won't know what I'm talking about. I I don't. I didn't get that at all. It's all good. It's coming to America, man, oh shit, Oh okay, yeah, okay. So at some point, Chris Daniel, whoever doing this, do not cut this part out. At some point when all this ship is over Sophie and I. We're going to spend one to two days at least, and I am just going to indoctrinate you in all of just black

culture references, urban culture references that you should know. And I just like, and you would appreciate, you know what I'm saying. I'm just like, I need you to know these jokes. I think that's a great idea. Actually, yeah we can. I mean, I know I need to. I've been told for a while I need to watch do the right thing. I think that's it correct. Yeah. Yeah.

And then there's the other there's the one that's about the fucking like the fast food joint or something, and like, um, I don't even know where you're going, Okay, maybe yeah, Yeah, you gotta do Harlem Nights. You gotta watch, you gotta watch do the right thing. You need to see soul food, you gotta see the color purple, you gotta see Friday at We got to catch you up, man, because yeah, and I feel like you'd appreciate all these Yeah, No, do the right thing is the one that I was

thinking about. That's the one at the pizza shop. Yeah, the pizza shop, Yeah, the right Yeah. Okay, okay, all right, you need to know the radio. Rahim is, yeah, you got to know this stuff. We will do this all right, but first we're going to go away and come back on Thursday. Talk about the police for like another ninety minutes. So buckle buckle up for that. Lads and ladies, boyos and non binarios. And there's not enough good slang yet.

It hasn't caught up to changes in our cultural conversation. We can end the podcast alright, alright, Oh boy, there's a threat about wanting to hear me wrap on the at it. That's probably a bad idea. Oh that's happening. Brom Behind the Police is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.