You know, police cost way more than you would have ever expected. Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios, I'd like to welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher. I'm your host, Ramsey's job. He is Ramsey's job. I am about it bout it. We're listening to the Master Pier earlier so that people could know how I felt.
Today, I'm also c Ward and you are listening to Civic Cipher.
Indeed, and we got a lot for you to stick around for today, including that very subject. We're gonna be talking about exactly how much police cost cities, you know, especially the way that you know policing has done and regulated and policed. Dare I say at present, it's a
lot more expensive than you may know. And often enough, actually one hundred percent of the time, it's you and me, the taxpayers that end up putting the bill when it comes to like police misconduct, police brutality, settling lawsuits, and even paying for police that are injured on the job. That all comes from us. And so we're going to talk about some of those things and how we ended up in the system in ways that we can kind of change how things work. Also, we're going to be
talking about diversity, equity and inclusion DEI initiatives. You may or may not know, but recently DEI initiatives, a lot of which were started in twenty twenty during the you know,
the mass protest over George Floyd. A lot of those initiatives have come under attack from the right, from conservatives, and there are a lot of people that say the DEI either doesn't work, or it is like reverse discrimination, or all these other narratives that people are trying to sew into the minds and the hearts of the American people.
And so we figured we'd give you a little bit of substance and facts, because that's what we deal with on this show, so that you can push back if that ever makes its way, a conversation, ever wakes it makes its way to you. But first and foremost, we are going to start off, as always with some ebony excellence, shall we we shall So today's Ebony Excellence is sponsored by Major Threads for innovative fashionable sportswear. Check major threads dot com. And I'm going to be sharing from the Verge.
Comedian and media mogul Byron Allen has reportedly made a ten billion dollar offer to acquire the ABC TV network, FX and national geographic cable channels and local stations from Walt Disney, according to a report from Bloomberg. The publication source claims that the offer is preliminary and could change, and that Allan would work with banks and private equity firms to finance the deal, which is standards. That's how these things tend to work. The offer for ABC isn't
an unusual move for Allan. The comedian turn producer has invested one point three billion dollars over the last few years to add new assets to his media portfolio, including the Weather Channel and a string of local stations from Honolulu to Tucson. And the reason I wanted to talk about out Byron Allen and this maneuver as an example of EBNY excellence is because in my life, this sort of conversation even is something that is new. This is something that behind the scenes. There were a lot of
people that worked toward in the eighties. You know some of the names, some of these people that fell from prominence. But we recognize on this show at least that anybody that's moving to create opportunities, that's trying to be a black voice in the room, someone that has some additional perspective and that has the corporate sophistication and the fiscal backing to make these things happen. It deserves a shout
out from us. And so even though this hasn't happened, we applaud Byron Allen as an example of any excellence for at least getting this conversation started and get hope to all of us who would like to see that happen. Now, let's talk about how much the police cost. Okay, so let me give you a little bit of backstory. As you may or may not know, we share Q and I both share content all week long prior to recording
the show. We share content, and then we have a meeting before we actually turn on the cameras and the lights and the microphones, and we decide what portion of the ninety percent that we're going to leave on the cutting room floor. There's a lot that we don't get to talk about. Yeah, yeah, sure, But recently this came from Q. He sent over a post from Sean King.
Shawn King is an activist for those that don't know, who is very high profile activist, someone that we both look up to and who has supported us in our journey as well. But again someone who has he's he's worked in the activist space much longer than we have, and again someone that we look up to for a lot of what he a lot of his thinking and
the way he processes information. So he put up a post, and his post said, over the past decade, these ten NYPD cops accounted for more than sixty eight million dollars in misconduct payouts. All of them are still on the public payroll. The post goes on to cite an article from The Gothamist and the article. The headline of the article reads, over a decade, ten NYPD officers accounted for sixty eight million dollars in police conduct payouts police misconduct payouts.
I'm sorry report so first and foremost, I know that this is kind of illuminating specifically the New York Police Department, But the fact is that this is true largely around the country. It is very, very difficult for police to be held accountable for any sort of misconduct. It's very difficult to even bring about some sort of attention that
gets a proper investigation. When it comes to police, they're very well fortified and insulated from consequences due to not just qualified immunity, which I do want to talk about a little bit more later on, but also police unions. I think at some point I think either we have the conversation or I read recently that the becoming a
police officer is the safest job in the country. It's almost like impossible to get fired from it, and you probably have an easier time getting kicked out of the military. This allows for those bad apples. By the way, follow us on social media because we've been having a discourse about bad apples and good apples and what happens to
the good apples. But this framework allows for those bad apples to not only cross the line and cost the taxpayers money, but also to become repeat offenders, as we'll shoot soon. As we'll soon see. So I know you wanted to share a couple of thoughts, So let's get let's get you away in here, and then we'll get back to the.
The most difficult thing about uh, not just qualified immunity, but the very very strong union protection and insulation that officers have is the indoctrination of citizens. Right because the qualified immunity and protection from your unions typically keep them employed and keep them out of prison. But that implication of money that when they mess up, we pay for it,
sesus don't even care. Like in any other space, we'd be outraged if our politicians, well our politicians do make mistakes that I know what you're trying to say, but it was presented the same way, especially the way the right would approach it. If a Democratic candidate or politician did something that cost taxpayers sixty eight million dollars, they destroy that that person with rousing support from their base.
The indoctrination of the hero complex kind of that we've given to our law enforcement officers keeps us from even being upset by headlines like that, Like you think the people of New York would take to the streets as an angry mob to you know, protest and you know, storm the capitol quote unquote with regards to having to
pick up the tab on the misconduct. But not only is no one outraged, not only are these ten officers so that part again, ten officers being responsible for sixty eight million, it's so much still employed, probably still in the same position. I'm guessing they probably didn't lose any rank, no salary decrease, slap on the wrist, get to say you're sorry, probably some type of paid leave, take take
a couple of weeks off. Your checks will still be there, No no problem, just you know, collect yourself and we'll see you on the first.
There's so many things built in.
No public outrage, no accountability, and no loss in money by the officers.
Why be a good apple?
Why would you even consider it when you're the type of you know, the type of person that applies for a job that allows you to actually do anything you want unless it's like gross, you know, unavoidable, unhideable misconduct. You're kind of straight. It's really really we're really up against it with regards to that.
Yeah, yeah, and I'm glad you mentioned, you know, if it's something that you can't hide, because often on this show, the stories that we tell are stories of police cover ups. You know, they work together in concert to cover up the offenses or transgressions of their fellow officers, and not just officers, medical examiners, heroametics.
Like we've read stories where medical examiners have said a person that was beat to death die from a heart condition, Like absolutely, it's intense, man.
So the crazy part about that is that the stories that do make their way to us are stories that the cover up wasn't effective, and so that leads us to often question how many cover ups never make their way to us, how many cover ups by the police are successful, and the.
Crazy I guess a very high pursua because the data would support that they're investigating their own mis conduct the police police the police yet exactly.
That'd be like me stealing something or doing something I don't know, pick cries and then something and then I'm responsible atting you down to find the thing. You still ye say hey there, yeah exactly, And then I watched me pat myself right, yeah, nothing, sorry exactly, and and if the logic holds up, you realize that that's asinine. But again, whether this was taking me was that? And
we talked about this on the show before. The police are not quite like other industries or enterprises or operations. The police, how about this. We talk about capitalism a lot on this show, and for better or worse, we live in a capitalistic society. We often deal with the worst facets and aspects of capitalism on this show, but that's that's the society that we live in, and capitalism to be fair has its benefits. It does drive innovation, it does drive you know, not not unlike other things.
But you know, to those that would applaud capitalism.
I'd argue, however, there are other that innovation, and yeah, that all of that would exist even exactly.
That's the difference. That's what I'm trying to say. But I'm not sure this. I don't want to focus on capitalism as much as I do the capitalistic forces that are at play in the majority of our society. If someone builds a laptop and you buy the laptop and it breaks and it's cheap and it doesn't work, then the next time you're not going to buy that laptop.
You're going to buy a better laptop, right, And that incentive of you know, someone building a bad laptop incentivizes competition to build a better laptop so that consumers have that as an option. Right, And so there's a better alternative out there in that scenario, underneath the capitalistic model and under other models. But again, we live under capitalism,
police are not subjected to being any better. I'll take it a step further, something that maybe lies a little bit or maybe it's a little bit different, you know, it's it's not so capitalistic as this laptop model. Let's try a hospital. If I'm sick and I go to Hospital A, and they treat me very bad, and they you know, they're they're not really giving me the right medicine.
I have to go back a ton of times. And then a year later I get sick again, I go to Hospital B and they do much better, and I get to choose Hospital B into the future, well into the future, if I'm ever sick, if my children get sick, my family gets sick. Hospital A doesn't get as many patients, they don't get as much income coming in, and eventually they go the way of the Dodo right. Police again,
are not subject to those type of forces. There's only one number you can call, and one to partment that will respond, provided that it's in a certain jurisdiction. And so again there's no incentive, there's no competition, there's nothing driving police to be any better. And because we've all been influenced, we meaning ramses included rams. This is the
voice that you're hearing right now. Me I've been subjected to these forces too, in particular copaganda and for those that don't know, copaganda is the subtle influence of police stories over the years through entertainment, movies and media and so forth. The police are always the good guys, and unless it's Denzel for some reason, I don't want to make any connections there, but I'll leave you to do it for yourself. I'm talking about the movie Training Day.
But for the most part, police are always the good guys and are always catching the bad guys, and so
we've learned to trust the police. Well, that is something that was curated for the public, and it started with a show called Dragnet in Los Ange And in order to get those real police stories, the producers work with the police on the episodes, and the police wanted to make sure I think it was the Police Union or the Police Community Affairs off at, whatever it was, they worked with the producers of the show to make sure that the police were always presented in a positive light.
So you never got stories of police cover ups, you never got stories of corruption, you never got that sort of stuff. You only got one side of it. So over decades, the public, myself included, became indoctrinated to assume
that the police were always the good guy. And I don't want to be too harsh on police because I don't realize that for the most part, police are who you call, and for the most part, you know they do the job of police, I guess, but the error rate is enormous and disproportionately affects poor people, brown people, and black people. Hence this entire show that we do every single week now for years plural.
The interesting thing is that even in you know, cases of media, television and film where there is a bad officer portrayed that in Doctor Nation kicks in, where we see that person as an outlier, we don't look at like, man, look how corrupt the police are. It's very, very unique to the individual that we're pointing to Ie Denzel and Training Day, and of course there have been other examples, but it's the bad actor or bad faith actors in those settings. The movie doesn't have to explain to us
that's that that's unusual. Our minds automatically assume so, because as you said, the police are the good guys.
Yeah, and you know there's something else here too. When we're talking about who's establishing sort of the the bar or police, often there is no governing body that has a bar that is sufficient and I say often because I'm trying to use loose language, but the truth is there is no governing body that establishes a bar that is sufficient for all people, like the FAA, for instance.
If for the Federal Aviation Administration, if an airplane crashes, you know what, if a person dies while in the care of an airline, it's a five alarm fire, and they will push to ensure best they can that that never ever happens again. Okay, And there's no commission or oversight or investigative body like that for police in the United States because it's you know, based on jurisdiction and
that sort of thing. There's no real federal oversight when it comes to this sort of stuff, no meaningful federal oversight, I should say. And so they're like, imagine if for every one hundred flights that took off, one flight crashed, that would be unacceptable and at some point at that rate, people would stop flying. Sure, that's way to look. You know, let's go for every thousand flights, ten thousand flights that took off, one would crash. How about every hundred thousand
flights one would crash? Are we starting to border on police numbers? Or have we already surpassed it. I suspect we've surpassed it, you know, in terms of police misconduct where people are killed unnecessarily. Okay, now let's dial it back. Let's make it live in a more meaningful context for you,
our listener. If that's unaccepted the ball, then we need to question why we are so comfortable accepting the reality when it comes to police officers, because they also deal in life and death situations, they are the ones often introducing the dangerous element to the equation. Then get scared when they are well protected, they have the weapon they have, you know, then say that they're scared. Yeah, and someone's running away. Going back and forth on this for years,
they say they're scared, They're not really scared. I do not believe that these things are happening because these people are afraid or fear for their lives. You showed up and you drew your gun, and you shot someone who was running away.
I'm very, very curious as to how you're the one that was afraid for your life in that scenario.
I always think of a gentleman I believe his name was. I believe it was like Ray Schard, Brooks. I posted on Instagram it was smeears back but before we started doing the show. But I was still kind of very vocal about these sort of incidents where he was at a fast food restaurant in the middle of the night. He'd been drinking, pulled his car over to go to sleep in the parking lot. Police showed up, tried to investigate whatever. He was being cooperative. Then he's you know,
the tables turned. They're like, oh, we're going to arrest you, and he starts freaking out. So he starts trying to run away. Again. Black people, as a rule, the police haven't been very kind to us as the people over the years. And you can look back, look at the police how they handled doctor King, look at how they sick the dogs on the protesters, the fire hoses and all that stuff. That that was when they started filming it.
It's been that way ever since. The slave patrols. Okay, historically, we don't rock with the police because they have never treated us all that good. So Rayshard tries to run from the police. He's drunk, can't run, can't none of this sort of stuff. They shot him in his back on Boom Boom boom bom, as he's running away and he died. Okay, officers can say they were scared. They could say anything anything. They were scared for the people
that were across the street. As if Rishard, a drunk man was sleep in his car is going to run across the street and attack someone else or whatever, you know what I mean. They always come up with some version of the story that paints them as the victim, and you know, the black man unarmed in a lot of instances as the aggressor. And then the lawsuits come and you end up paying for it. And so instead of the also just to keep their job, and that
too and now being investigated, go on paid administratively. And so let me add to that. So Sean King for his article, he added this, He says, this is what we are up against. One cop had forty eight cases settled against him. That's in New York and is still on the force. One cop beat a child until he was paralyzed and it cost the city twelve million, and he kept his job. No job in the country is
more secure than this one. And what other profession could any of this happen and you still keep your job. My own organization would fire me if I behaved like this. So let me just mention a couple of things that show how taxpayer resources are squandered with police. And then often you know, the police are shaping outcomes, life and death outcomes for people that, as we see, don't always
deserve that. Task forces that don't produce results. We've talked about that sort of stuff, drug task force and they only get one gun off the street or one bag of drugs or whatever and then pose for a picture with it, right, increase police presence. That doesn't reduce crime rates. It does not do that. We've talked about that many times on the show. Spending money wisely for the community, for the benit of the community that impacts crime rates.
Some of the solutions to consider though, is that police should carry insurance like doctors. If they become uninsurable because of lawsuits, they won't be on the force anymore. And ending qualified immunity that's a big one. And also just defunding the police because that will reallocating police resources branded others. Be Defunding the police will impact crime rates better than police will