Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our mission is to foster allyship empathy and understanding. I am your host, Ramsey's.
Job is Ramsey's job. I am q ward. You are tuned in once again and hopefully for the ninety two hundredth times pacivic scit.
That's right, man, listen, we are ready for today's show. We got some some Jesse Jackson playing in the background a little earlier, were a little hyped up.
Thank you, rever.
Yes, yes, and we are feeling like we got a lot to share with you. So first off, rest in peace, Rico Way.
One time for the Dungeon family.
Okay, if you don't know about Rico Way, you need to get to know about him and then offer, you know, some some positive and cultivate some positivity and radiate that into the universe.
Our prayers and thoughts to the whole DF absolutely.
Absolutely, But stick around because today we're going to be talking about the police.
Not a whole lot new.
There, but something specific came out recently and our who came out that kind of compared police spending rates to the impact on crime rates, and so you know, city budgets for policing and whether or not more officers on the streets or better training or better you know whatever equipment, blah blah blah, what have you if that impacts crime rates and spoiler alerted doesn't. But we're going to break that down for you and so you can think about things a little bit more critically as you vote in
local elections. I just want to make sure you're going form. And then we're going to spend the second part of the show discussing some recent examples of police misconduct, police violence, police cover ups, all that sort of stuff that we haven't been able to get to. And you know, if we take a couple of weeks off to talk about you know, this or that or the other thing, these things tend to pile up. Indeed, I think we had like six or eight choices that were national stories and
we picked three to share with you today. So a lot to stick around. But first and foremost, it is time to discuss some ebony excellence. And today's Ebony Excellence is sponsored by Major Threads for Innovative Fashionable Sports, where check majorthreads dot com. And I'm going to share a bit from NBC News Ralph y'arrel. For those that remember, Ralph y'arl was the black teenager who survived being shot in the head after he rang the wrong doorbell. It's
about a year ago. He's now coming to grips with how the shooting has affected him, and we thought that this was an example of resilience and triumph over adversity, and so we wanted to share a little bit about his story. We've talked about him a couple of times on the show, but you know, as he continues to recover and kind of get back into his normal routine, we just want to continue saluting him, so I'll share a bit. Sometimes, y'all, age seventeen turns it inward, ignoring
phone calls and text from loved ones. He skipped senior prom because he was afraid people would ask him about the shooting and he wasn't sure how he'd respond, and he acknowledges that his brain doesn't process dense information the way that it once did.
That's okay, baby boy.
You do what you can. You focus on being the best version of yourself as you can be.
Here's a quote from him. Quote.
It's definitely a bumpy journey, he said in his first in depth interview about how the shooting has affected him. One year later. He goes on to say, whenever there's something that goes on that reminds me of what happened, I just have such a negative wave of emotions, anger, disgust. It's always a mix of good and bad days, and I feel like the good days are when I'm able to be around people that helped me build myself up. So recently on Easter, y'all was full of spunk, hiding
eggs in his aunt's backyard for his younger cousins. He's taking life one day at a time, and I'll leave you with this quote. I just feel I got lucky instead of being alive. And he plans to study engineering at university next ball, although he's undecided on where. So shout out to him for keeping it moving. All right, So let's get to this article. I'll just share a bit this from Publicnewsservice dot org. You're welcome to check this out, and of course there's other locations with this
is where we source this material. A new report shows that despite record spending on law enforcement in California, the clearance rate that is, the rate of prime solved was at the lowest ever. Researchers from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice found that the state spent a record twenty seven billion dollars on police in twenty twenty one, but the clearance rate was just thirteen percent for all reported defenses. And this is down from twenty percent as
far back as nineteen eighty five. So senior researcher for the Center and report author Mike Man explain, quote, it's that the police are simply not making arrest. In Oakland, for instance, they have a crime clearance a rate of two percent serious Part one violence and property offenses. State Department of Justice data shows that San Francisco's clear rate for all crimes in twenty twenty two was six point
six percent. That city's police department has blamed widespread autobreak ins for low clearance rates, but Males said that it's not enough to account for the decline and clearances over the last thirty years. Some in law enforcement have suggested that Prop. Forty seven, which raised the threshold for a theft to be charged as the felony, has contributed to the uptick and property crimes over the last two years
and to fewer arrests. But Assembly Member Isaac Bryan, was Democratic and from Los Angeles, noted the Prop forty seven saved the state more than seven hundred and fifty million dollars in incarceration costs in twenty fourteen and reinvested the money into programs that help people find housing, jobs, and treatment for addiction and mental illness. Quote, if we provided a economic opportunity and the resources for the people to thrive and live their lives, we wouldn't see rampant theft.
All right, I'm gonna stop here for a second, because so far in this article, this really affirms what we talk about quite a bit on this show. And I know that there are a lot of people are thinking, Oh, that's just California. No, We've covered this very thing several times on the show, this very phenomenon that people feel like spending more money on the police, more police officers,
police training, all these things lead to safer communities. People feel that way, and I understand why if I didn't know better, if I didn't do this show and have to research all of this like data all the time, I would feel the same way. It makes sense if you don't know otherwise. But the fact of the matter is that none of the things that I mentioned, not more police, not bigger police budgets, not better armed police, police with better equipment, not better police training. None of
these things impacts crime rates. The truth of the matter is that the more police that there are, the more police corruption that there ends up becoming. And you wouldn't know that unless you looked at the university based studies, and I employ you to go back and look. Almost every maybe two three episodes, we're doing something like this that's in depth. But I do recall when we spend some time discussing police training and how that doesn't work.
It's a myth, you know, these officers need better training. It's just a myth. You know, you might give some diversity training to an officer and send it back on on the streets. But after about a month, the studies, the university studies concluded that after about a month, the officers just kind of reverted to type. And that was indicative of the fact that there's a more pronounced police culture at play than individual and that culture has a
gravity that's more dominant than a person's individual sensibilities. Right, So there's a whole, a whole plethora of issues going on here, But insofar as spending is concerned, if we spend more money on police, then we will have less crime. That is an utter myth, and we've had to wrestle with that here quite a bit.
We and I don't simply mean Ramses and Q, but we, as whatever portion of society that thinks along the same lines as defund the police, have really done an awful job at even explaining the why that was. That was bad messaging in general. In my opinion, I said that the very first time I've ever heard on this show like saying it like that is a bad idea because
it's going to freak everybody out. But there's been a lack of explanation, and we've tried, but we just don't have enough time to explain it with the depth and
nuance necessary as to providing a better solution. And if you read in depth what people were trying to say when they said defund the police, you would have found a bunch of ideas, a bunch of ways to diversify spending or reallocate funds that made a lot of sense toward an end that would result in less crime, similar to some of the things mentioned in this article that
we're reading now. It's just that when that's the cover page, that's the headline, that's the headline, nobody's reading the rest. Because what you and I have to admit this is Qan Ramses and we have a long stated history on our position in policing in this country. When we show up at a nightclub or a concert, or a walk down on a dark street and see a police officer there, we feel safer, even us. And I know that because it happened to me like in the last ten days,
so I know that it's true for even me. So when society at large feels safer by the presence of police, they are not lining up to stand in the way of their being more police present, especially when they do not understand because they've been indoctrinated and taught and kind of brainwashed since childhood, that police are in essence, not just heroes but crime solvers and crime preventors and the narrative and any movie you want to watch about police,
even one of our favorites, Bad Boys, starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. These gentlemen are full time investigative detectives, solving and preventing crime at the highest level, and in no place on Earth does it work that way. Like some federal agencies work that way, but on a scale that's just way beyond the stuff that's happening in your local community. Right, So what we see in these increased budgets is more about the appearance of good policing, right.
And I make it similar to when the new Call of Duty comes out and you download the game where you buy that game, stop or whatever the case, and you see all the gear, you know, custom ar rifles and bulletproof vest and subs that have been repurposed as like tanks with bulletproof doors and a mini gun, and all these things that look really cool, that really look like Call of Duty is the best example, because they've marketed Call of Duty to be like cool military, like
kids want to dress up like that for Halloween instead of like firemen. It's the marketing of our military and the marketing of our local and state level law enforcement has led to this. Let's give them faster cars and bigger weapons thing with those budgets. Let's hire more officers and make them more intimidating so they can stand on corners and drive through neighborhoods and intimidate the crime out
of the place. Except the criminals look at that and laugh, because you're not going to be here when we commit crimes. You're going to show up after and try to find us and fam we.
Out outro That's why the solve rate is too PERCAI.
Yeah, we're not listen, You guys are are spending that budget preparing for some forgive the term for lack of better, for some war that's not going to happen. Like if there was a war between all the criminals and all the cops, the cops would win in a landslide that they got all the equipment. But you've lived your whole life, whoever you are listening to this, have you ever seen such a thing? And even in cases where you think they'd show up on some Gi Joe where innocent people
are being unalived and shot, they don't. They stay outside, They stay out the way, they get out the way, they run out of the way.
So much so that do you remember that episode that we did where we had to take a moment to acknowledge there was a police officer where they were in the Midwest, Yeah, toward the gun ward the gunfire, and we're like, that's a hero. He's actually going he's being brave. So we can call this one individual brave. He's going toward the gunfire. He's helping the people who are trying to escape stay behind that car, don't get up, and he's still going toward the gunfire. That's a hero. That's
a brave officer. Credit where it's due, Right, we're very critical of police on this show, but credit where it's due.
I mean, even what you just said isn't true though, because we're not very critical of police. We know a bunch of police officers that are awesome. We spend time as standing outside talking to them, walking from miles, exchanging ideas and having conversations with police officers that are amazing people. Sure, when we say police, we are not talking about your
officer that you know. We are talking about the system that exists that Unfortunately, even some awesome people succumb to part of the culture that is involved with that job and end up having to turn off their human being and be an.
Officer of the law. Yeah, they're police first, human second. That is something that is very problematic. Those type of people are indoctrinated. We believe with that police culture, police at all costs. You know, if you pull someone over and you search their vehicle and you pat them down, you're looking for something. And what this is something that I say to often lady friends of mine, that's usually where I have this conversation, but sometimes male friends too.
It's like when you're going through someone's phone, you know, like your partner's phone, right, if you're looking for something, you're going to find it even if it's not there.
And the interesting thing is it's a great example, just like in relationships in law enforcement, even when they don't find anything, it's not like, oh my god, I'm so sorry I did that.
Yeah, you don't get that.
Oh no, no, No, They're gonna make something what they wanted it to be, no matter how small, no matter how insignificant, no matter how unrelated it is, and it's never their fault. Right Like in our case, right, there was some drugs present. I know this car is k new. I know neither of you have ever had or tried drugs, but there were some drugs present. The guy could not just say my bad, fam yeah no he got had dog.
We didn't have all on the side of the hours, in the middle of the dark in Mississippi, and Strip searched the car, like, took parts panels off, took panels off of doors and seats out of this brand new car. Even then, it couldn't just be my bad man. He was tripping.
He was liken the dog dogs.
The dog's nose was nine hundred million, thousand trillion times stronger than the human knows. And a person with a joint in their pocket about nine hundred miles ago probably scraped when we left podcast rushed up against the car and that's what the dog. So we're going eighty miles an hour across two states, is that's when we last filled up, and that's the last time someone potentially got close to the car.
We were both in the car, by the way, so no one got close to the car. You couldn't have anyway anyway. So watch this. One of the things that I liken, this phenomenon too, this phenomenon of people feeling safe.
Right.
Oh, well, that we're increasing the police budget. So we're gonna make Denver a safer city or whatever city you live in, right, cracked down on crime.
Yeah, that sort of thing.
We're going to hire eleven hundred new police officers to make sure your community. Say right, so this rhetoric, I liken that too, because we know it doesn't work, does not prevent crime. That's what people will We know it doesn't work. Yeah, well we know it doesn't work. So this is what I like you.
Yeah, large doesn't the part that.
We're here to teach.
You know, we're trying. We even we get to push back because they don't a lot of people don't believe it because it comes across as we're biased. We have a negative bias towards the police.
Man.
Listen, so we're going to find all this data to make us right.
Let me let me help everybody that might feel that way out. We are DJs. We have a way funner job that we could be doing. This is necessary. This is something that is fueled by conviction. This is something that's appropriate given the space in which we work, and no one else is kind of working here, and we cannot continue to just throw parties and have fun and travel the world and dejail on beaches and stuff like that. And know that we have this opportunity and indeed this
responsibility to deliver these messages. But this is we're not doing this because we love it. We're not looking for statistics, so we can be right and that Lord knows, this isn't where we're getting money at so sure, but anyway, So what I like in that too, that phenomenon of people feeling like more police officers are going to make them safe. It's like the same thing as if you have like a mold problem. Right, if you have a
mold problem. Let's say there's mold growing on the walls in your bathroom or your kitchen or something like that, and you're aware that there's a mold problem there, and then you paint it. That doesn't fix the mold problem, but it doesn't look like there's mold anymore, doesn't look like it. But that problem is still there, and eventually it will affect you, it'll affect someone close to you.
Right.
So what we've been saying and what certainly more brilliant people in terms of strategy, more brilliant people than us. It might not be more brilliant in terms of marketing, but certainly in terms of strategy. They've come up with this idea of hey, let's allocate police resources into programs
that prevent the necessity of crime. In the first place, there's this this prevailing thought that people commit crimes because they're bad, right, and most of the crime there's certainly some people who commit crimes because they're just that's what they're going to do. But this isn't just anecdotal evidence you can look at you know, uh, and I'm not talking about even violent offenses, although and there's an argument to be made.
There, but property real just real unbiased data.
Yeah, property crimes there, this is these are crimes of people who are poor. Rich people aren't stealing bicycles. Rich people aren't, you know, That's that's not the thing.
We're so conflicted as a society, though, ramses, it is counterintuitive for a capitalist society to create the socialist infrastructure required for its citizens to not be starving, sick and hungry. It's it's it's it's actually against wise, it goes against the nature of it. So there's no actual incentive for them to do that, not because they want crime, but your alternative is creating situations where crime is less likely to happen, which means people are less likely to be poor.
And unfortunately, our capitalist system requires that some of us not have anything yet is it requirement for the system to exist?
Capitalism needs unemployments to keep wages low. It is a function of the formula. Now I'm going to double down on what you just said because I've taken an interest in Finland lately.
I've taken an interest in a bunch of places elsewhere.
Well, I'm just studying them. You actually want to move, man, I'm just studying them.
There's an election coming up, people. I mean, if it doesn't make sense why I want to move, please open your eyes, as Laurence Fishburne want to say it, wake up.
Well dig this. So in Finland they Finland is capitalistic, right, the capitalistic economic model there, but they have such robust socialist programs that it doesn't feel like the unfettered crony capitalism, the runaway capitalism that is part and parcel to American life.
Right.
And you know, there are people who make arguments foreign against socialism. There are people who make arguments foreign against communism or any other type of economic model. Right, But for better or worse, we will seed that on a global scale, capitalism is the idea that has won out. Capitalism drives the economies of the world. Right, we don't have to love. That's the reasons why you're so obvious though, Right.
Yeahs want to remain that system allows them to do so.
And trick they can.
They think that they can get there too. Right.
But I think that societies that offset the nature of capitalism with robust socialist programs, they're the ones where there's low crime rates, low incarceration rates, there's more economic mobility for people, on and on and on. Right, people don't readily fall through the cracks homelessness, you know, whatever, pick a thing, they suffer from less of those, right, And when we try to examine how could we do that here, well, it takes money, and where are we going to get
the money from. Well, the police were spending a lot on them. If we reallocate those resources, then we might end up with a more robust socialist program.
Just California, Rama said, spent twenty five billion. Yeah, no police, that's what we have. That's just California. That's not the United.
States twenty seven billion, one billion with the B. Yeah, so a lot to chew on here. There's certainly more here. But again check the article Publicnews Service dot org and then you know, hit us up, let us know your thoughts,