Civic Cipher 011522 Does Defunding the Police Work?

show in store for you. We are going to discuss whether or not defunding the police works obviously a very hot, very much a hot button issue, and you know, there's been some early reports back from different cities around the country, and we're gonna examine that, peel back a couple of layers and really try to figure out what that means. Also, we're going to examine that very common saying I'm not racist, I have a black friend. I'm want to feel back

a few layers of that as well. I think that that's necessary and that's timely, and that's kind of right up our alleys anyway. So you know, people that hide behind that statement, you might know them. It might be in your life. It might even be you. But we're going to really examine what that means and how if you're going to use it, how to use it and how not to use it. Also, we're gonna discuss the

origins of yoga. A lot of people, you know, know that yoga comes from you know, Asia, parts like South Southeast Asia, but yoga actually has roots in Africa, and we're going to discuss that as well. But first and foremost, like we always do with his time, we're going to talk about some ebony excellence. How about that Q as we should always do about this time, Yes, sir, so

Ebny excellence. Today we're going to talk about Sean puff Daddy or p Diddy Combs or Diddy or what he changed his name to love or something once upon a time.

people that do great things. But you know, Puffy has always been very pro black and very supportive of black businesses and black individuals and black culture and so forth and so on, and it's funny that we haven't talked about him yet, but even though we're late, we do get a chance to shout him out. So he actually

bought back his clothing line, Sean John. So originally he sold a majority stake of Sean John in twenty sixteen to Global Brands Holding Limited, that's a holding company that specializes in celebrity apparel, and they filed for Chapter eleven in July of twenty twenty one and they placed Sean John along with other assets up for auction. Well, Puff Daddy or p Diddy or Diddy went and bought it back.

So not only did he get a bag up front, but then he actually bought back his clothing line that carries his name and he got it for seven and a half million dollars, So he made money coming and going on that one. And of course he's going to continue to provide his black owned fashion to the world and we love to see it. So shout out to Sean P. Diddy Comb's aka Puff Daddy. Now moving on,

does defunding the police work real quick. Want to shout out Forbes magazine because that's where we drew the information for Diddy and buying back Shawn John And now our sources are the Wall Street Journal and Sean King. You know, we are fans of Sean King, you know, not diehard fans, but you know, certainly are fans of his work. You know, we are critical of everything that comes our way. We have to be. We're a separate journalistic institution here on

Civic Cipher, but we do like his high takes. We had appreciate his perspective in the same way with it, we appreciate the perspective of you know, other great speakers, comedians, people that just haven't an interesting view of the world. But defunding the police, that's one of the first questions that we were able to ask on this show when we had Zara from Black Lives Matter, And that's really the reason why we wanted to create Civic Cipher in

the first place. That's funny because you know, for those listening Q and I, we felt like in twenty twenty that the people on the streets with the bullhorns that were saying defund the police they were talking to just the people who were protesting and marching with them, and you know, they're reaching you know, a few hundred people to a few thousand people, depending on who who could hear them, you know, the thousands of people there, but

not everybody could hear. And you know, when we first heard defund the police, it sounded very scary, and you know, and I think that was kind of what their intention was. But when they explained it, we're like, oh, they've thought about this. They want to basically reallocate fiscal resources from the police departments to other programs that will actively prevent the causes of crimes, like why crimes happened in the

first place. You know, scarcity is the birthplace of a lot of crimes, you know, And so the idea there, once it was explained, made the statement defund the police a little bit more approachable, so that people could really get in there and kind of work with the reality, work with the real And we felt like this message needed to be on the radio station, not just in the streets on the bullhorns. And for those that know

the story, just bear with me. But we took this idea to our old radio station and asked them to create a space where we could interview these great thinkers and great speakers, that they could come up and really explain these concepts. And we were told no, And then we stepped away and we created Civic Cipher. And now you're hearing us in Chicago, and you're hearing us in Detroit, and you're hearing us in Phoenix and San Diego and no Vermont and Oregon and all over the country. And

we appreciate your support. This couldn't have happened without your support, just listening to us every week and downloading the show and so forth. But I digress does defunding the police work. Now we're at a point where we can look back and see the results of what some police departments have done. And I'll be honest, if you just look at the headlines and nothing else, and you don't have your critical

lens on what you see. The headlines say that communities don't want the defunding of their police departments, and that you'll see that, you know, crime has increased in certain areas when defunding has taken place, and so forth, and so the initial response to this doesn't seem very promising, you know, But when you peel away a couple of layers, you realize that the story, as they tend to, goes

a little bit deeper. So I'll read back in October of last year, Austin tried cutting Austin, Texas tried cutting funding to police departments and learned that there was less policing, less policing overall, and they only ask for calls to law enforcement in response to immediate threats to life or property or crimes still in progress. Right, So what you end up with is when you look at the headlines, you think, well, no, now police won't come out. They'll

only come out for stuff that really really matters. But you know they won't come out for all these other things. What's funny because Austin is I believe the city where the police chief stated that we the community are asking police to do too much. We're asking police to respond to everything from my cat stuck in a tree to

there's an active shooter and everything in between. My car is broken in, my boyfriend won't leave, you know, all these sorts of things, and not all of these things require a man to show up or a woman to show up with a gun and a you know, a lack of appropriate skills needed to really address every type of situation. Right, so they're asking for only for calls in response to immediate threats to life for property crime still in progress. Sounds approximately like what they wanted. Look,

we take care of this stuff. This is what we do. Call us for these things. The other things. There are other departments in theory that you should be able to call, right and that's kind of the step one. But when you say, well, you know, the police aren't taking as many calls and they're asking for less calls to come

their way, it's alarming to the community. It means it makes people think, well, I'll be on hold if I call the police, if I call nine one one, or they won't take the fact that someone broke into my car seriously, you know, and I'm feeling the hurt, you know, because someone broke into my car, instole my purse or whatever. And they think that by spending more money on the police that somehow it will alleviate that stress that they endure when they're waiting on an officer to show up.

Instead of twenty minutes, they have to wait forty minutes because those those type of police have not received enough funds to hire just extra people to sit around waiting to respond to acts of vandalism, are broken in cars

which they can't do anything. One thing that Zara did mention on the show is that the vast majority of you know, police responses are to crimes that have already taken place, where the person has already dis appeared from the scene, and the police show up and they do paperwork, and sometimes they investigate and get the guy or woman who commits the crime, and sometimes they don't. And that's really ninety seven percent of police policing in the country.

You just show up after the stuff, the bad stuff has already happened. So I feel like a lot of the media is taking some of the headlines and spinning it in such a way to where it makes it look like defunding the police doesn't work. But what you're seeing, if you're coming across these articles in the way that I have, is a half truth. You're seeing a story half told, you're seeing an experiment half completed. At least that's my initial reaction. What's your initial reaction, que, So.

word I'm looking for. Sometimes things just so happened to happen in order doesn't mean they were caused by that thing, Like if the vaccine, For example, if I take the vaccine and then I get hit by a car, an anti VAXX person could spin that very easily into see, getting the vaccine will get you hit by a car. Those things just so happened to happen in that order, right, So I think it's causality versus correlation. They don't actually have anything to do with one another, right, And lieu

of there being alternatives? Nine one right, the most well marketed phone number in history, because just saying those numbers means emergency now, right, there's no alternative to that though. So when your cat is stuck in a tree, I'm sure there is an animal rescue place you can call, but their phone number isn't nine one one. And because it's so readily available in your head every time something happens, that's.

type of trouble, people call the cops. The cops, however, be a switchboards or by having literal pieces of paper with the access to all of those different numbers on them, could should and could reroute those phone calls into someone who should be handling whatever that specific situation would require, instead of, like you said, a man or a woman with a gun showing up for something that should not escalate into a violent interaction but could just by the

very presence of the killing machine you have sitting on your hip. As rams will call it.

So his alarm went off in his house. Maybe one of his roommates or somebody living with him set off the alarm. He gets up, goes downstairs, closes the door, resets the alarm, calls the alarm company tells him it's a false alarm, goes back up and lays down. He's in his home in his underwear. Black man, bigger, bigger frame, black man, right, brown, brown skin. A few minutes later,

the police show up. Right, even though he called the alarm company as the owner of the property and said, hey, everything's on, police still show up right and do a welfare check. Right, So the police are his door. I guess he didn't lock it. So the off the first officer that arrived there kind of I guess, announces himself, and no one responds because the guy's upstairs he sleep, So the officer opens the door and then yells into the house. And then the guy wakes up and he

comes to the top of the stairs. Now he has his gun because someone's in his house yelling he's anyone home, So he has his gun and he goes to the top of the stairs and the guy says, oh, I'm a police officer, and he's like, do are there any weapons. He's like, yeah, I have my gun with me and he's like, okay, put the gun down. The guy puts

the gun down. He comes downstairs. He's in his underwear, a heavier black man right in his underwear, and he's talking to the officer and the officer's like, do me a favorite turnaround, you know, and he's like for what, you know, I just told you what happened. I called the alarm company, Like you know, I'm in my underwear. This is my house. You want to see the pictures on the wall, Like it was the wildest thing. The officers like, no, it's for our protection, blah blah blah.

And then, as we always see, a million, other officers show up and then they take the guy outside because he's like, Yo, this is asinine. This is my home. When you guys are in my house and do you need proofery like, you don't have to put me in handcuffs in my home. I was asleep the alarm on all I told you what have You can call the

alarm companies just pleading this case. These guys won't want to hear any of it because it's like when they show up, they're ready for blood, right, But what you see is a thirty minute interaction with six or eight officers and they're not all pictured, you know, And then there's probably another thirty minutes worth of paperwork in bottle

and then the guy ended up suing the department. And what people don't realize is that those are your tax dollars, and those tax dollars could be going to something more effective. One thing that I will not deny. I don't know if it's true, but I won't deny it based on what I know is Sean King when he said, you know, police departments are one of the worst run institutions, government institutions in the country in terms of how money translates into results. You know, and based on what I know

to be true. You know that checks out, you know, kind of checks based on my reality at least. You know, spending more money hasn't reduced crime. You know, it's gotten more people killed. You know, it's gotten a lot more bullies on the streets and so forth. But I don't want to be too cruel because we do have and

our believe or not, are gaining more friends. I will call them who are police officers who listen to this show and they recognize that they're part of a system that is not perfect, and they recognize that we can be critical of that system. And it doesn't mean that we hate them. We do not hate the humans. There is no hate in my heart and there never will be. But it's up to us to demand better for our community. And if we've chosen for these people to protect us,

then they also need to remember to protect us. I'll move on. Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco also have all defunded police and there are reports that correlate with those measures that show that there have been increases in property crimes and homicides. Right, But again I think that tells only part of the story. Right, As you mentioned, there's it's not just we defund the police and then the

crime goes up. You know. Okay, let's look at what were the trends of property crimes, what were the trends of homicides before this happened. Do we take into account that there is a pandemic? Do we take into account that there the that the reinvestment into those communities hasn't taken place too yet, right, Because defunding the police isn't

just take money away from the police. It's reallocate police funding into resources that will prevent crime, prevent the necessity of crime from happening in the first place, and that's how we reduce crime. It's a different way of thinking about how to fight crime. Right. But if you just think defund the police, I mean, Q said it on the show, and it's a fair point. When you just hear defund the police, and that's your own that's your

only that's your initial talking point. A lot of people tune out initially because they're like, well, that sounds crazy, right, But really it's reallocate police funding to uh, crime prevention measures that will prevent the necessity of crime from happening in the first place, you know, better housing opportunities, work opportunities, education,

and so forth, and so on. Things that where there's a proven correlation between a reduction and crime or a life of crime and a specific activity, develop these things in the community and crime goes down. Did you want to jumping right there when I finished?

killing people. Right, So, even if every person that has died after getting the vaccine, even if that were holistically the reason why there have been about four hundred and eighty million vaccine shots given out people like people who actually received the vaccine. I think it's four hundred and seventy million worldwide or something like that. Ten thousand. Those

people died after vaccine. The study that lists that data does not say those people died because of the vaccine, but the vaccine being present gives a person on the other side of that argument the grounds to stand on. Look, this vaccine is killing people. Yeah, so you have a million people that have died from contracting COVID, and even if every one of the people who have died after getting the vaccine were because of the vaccine, the percentages

are very, very very small. And I hate to say it in that way because we've gotten way too comfortable with death. I think we've made life cheaper throughout this pandemic with a really kind of gross selfishness. But it just points to that same thing, like, if we're not using the data correctly, you can paint a picture and tell the story that just isn't true, even though the information that you're using is.

a bunch of cops out on the streets. There's supposed to be a transfer of the money, but some of these cities didn't really take that into account. I want to add this, and this is for me. In a complex society, crime is always going to be with us. The remaining police can deal with crime, Traffic moderators can deal with traffic, welfare checks and crimes where the perpetrator

has left is basically paperwork. Something to remember, and Larry Krassner, district attorney in Philadelphia, said something that I think we should share. Out of one hundred shootings that happened in twenty twenty one, eighty three of them went unsolved by the police. So Sean King pointed out that of the eighty three arrests, some were innocent, resulting in a ninety percent failure rate by police to find and apprehend the

correct criminal. The budget is almost a billion dollars, suggesting that pouring more money into policing over the years has not made anyone safer. Stick around your radios. We're coming back with more Civic Cipher right after this