This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI AM six forty The Gary and Shannon Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app. Coming up in oh not too far away less than half an hour. We'll be talking to LAPD chief Jim McDonnell about the goings on with the department and the city. Great of him to take some time to talk with us. We'll also be talking with Justin Worsham, hosts of dad podcast, How to Raise patient Children in an instant fix world, how to raise
patient adults too. I mean, we're all kind of we've all kind of fallen prey to that instant fix world we live in.
There's something about my wife and I have said this repeatedly for all I shouldn't tay all. Most kids that we've ever had to hang around, whether they're friends of our kids, the kids of our friends, whatever, However it works out, any kids that we've had to hang around makes you appreciate your own kids that much more. And we got very lucky because our kids were, for the most part, always very pleasant and happy to be around
outside of the normal teen stuff that goes on. But there's always a point where you have to on the one hand, take credit for their who they are. You want, I should say, you want to take credit for who they are. And then the other times where you like it had nothing to do with us. It had nothing like my daughter's a chemistry she's going for a chemistry PhD.
That had nothing to do with us. Sure it did. I don't think so.
Of course it did, only in that we just said, hey, whatever you want to do, there's a zero limitation on you for whatever.
There's nothing You don't think.
That she was inspired by your wife going back to school and getting her nursing degree and becoming an icy U nurse as a as a fresh out of school nurse, which never happens in the world of nursing. That she went straight to the head of her class and I graduated of her class and then went and walked into an ICU job. Like you don't think your daughter when
she was going to school was inspired by that. Of course she was, well, I hope so, I mean, I hope that she thought to herself, you've done nothing right.
But that's my point.
I'm totally kidding, but you know what I mean. I mean, the kids look to their parents for cues on how to behave socially and professionally, and absolutely you play a role in that. Do you have any sort of advanced knowledge in chemistry? No, but your kids are going to learn things that you've never learned. And that's just the way the world is.
I will say this, and I think that my wife has exemplified it more than I have. Is feel free to bite off more than you can chew. You can always spit it out if it doesn't like. But don't be afraid to try something that you know is going to be difficult. Yeah, investigating the cause of the eat And fire doesn't appear to be as difficult. There are a lot of arrows that point to so cal Leedison as potentially being the cause of the fire that sparked
January seventh, a few hours after the Palisades fire. And there right now, the concentration is on a group of towers, utility towers that exist out in Eaton Canyon, and the La Times has been on this story pretty considerably over the last couple of months, you can understand, and they've pointed to a few things. Number One of the three lines that run through the hillsides out there, one of
them hasn't carried electricity for decades. It was actually de energized back in the seventies, and that that, or I should say, but that could still be the cause of this fire. So a few dozen feet away from the other towers is this MESA Silmar transition transmission line which has not been connected to a power source since the seventies.
Like I said, but some investigators, and now of course the attorneys who are relying on those investigators, believe that there are ways that that line, even though it's not connected to a battery down at the other end, or however you want to put it, could still become energized. On January seventh, the company said in a filing this is Edison that it is trying to evaluate whether the fire was started by a re energizit just try that again, re energization, I think that's always say it of the
MESA Silmar line that is unused. A fire safety scientist Veto Bobrowskis that's quite a name, has said it is certainly possible that the line could have become re energized on January seventh because of a principle called induction, an electromagnetic field from the transmission line that is operating, and again it's just a few feet away, would basically cut
through a deadline and induce a current in it. There have been dozens and dozens of work orders that have been that Edison knows exist on those lines for a lot of things to prevent fires, to weed debatement, tree limb clearing, and stuff like that. And he said that those work orders do cite ignition risks preak precisely because of the induction possibility that high voltages.
Would be induced.
So even though it was technically a deadline, it had not been connected to a power source for a few decades, the potential could still exist that that.
Was the cause of the fire. That's all I lost you.
Oh no, I just thought that we had established that they caused the fire. All the power that power and energy companies are evil. They are They're going to tell you anything they can to shirk any sort of responsibility and liability.
Two things Gavin Newsom coming up. Number one, he wants to borrow more money. He wants to borrow billions of dollars because the state is paying for health care for illegal aliens. But also the interview that he did with Governor Tim Walls in his This is Gavin Newsom, Governor Tim Walls says something that will make you laugh out loud.
Oh, I can't wait, and he meant it so seriously, I can't wait.
I feel bad that I've spent zero time checking out Gavin Newsom's podcast, but I feel like the highlights highlights are making their way to me to where I don't have to sift through all the detritis to come up with a few gems.
There's about fifty five zero minutes of fluff and then like four or five minutes notable. Sometimes are positive, notable agreements that Gavin Newsom has with Republicans or MAGA people, and then there's just the most ridiculous things you've ever heard in your life.
I salute the people that sift through these podcasts and bring me the highlights.
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Live everywhere on the iHeart Radio app. Jarry Shannon, you two are not d's, you're a's. You're like angels.
Because if it wasn't for your show, my day just would not be complete.
All right, guys, SEO, thank you, Well, that's very sweet and was very concerned. How many did we.
Get that said, yeah, you're absolutely we're not going to play those. Yeah, exactly, look at you picking and choosing. Remember the guy, the reporter out of Kansas City who was found dead at the Super Bowl and there was a woman charged with his murder.
The Telemundo reporter, Yeah, rising star there in Kansas City.
This is his third straight Super Bowl he was covering and turned up dead. It was alcohol and xanax and a combination. If you're not used to it, it'll kill you, especially when you throw up in your sleep. And that's what happened with this guy. And that was not an endorsement to get used to it. I'll uh white lotus, but you know what I mean. He apparently was not the first person that this woman had drugged with the goal of robbing them. Apparently this is what she does.
She gives guys alcohol, she pretends to party with them, she laces their drinks with xanax until they pass out, and then she robs them. In fact, she was on probation at the time of this murder. She was serving a ten year suspended sentence in connection with the drugging of another man. She was convicted of multiple felonies in that case in October, and she was not given a prison sentence. She was given a suspended spended sentence. And in fact, the attorney in that case had said, she's
going to kill someone. You don't put her in prison. She's going to keep doing this, She's going to kill someone, and she did. It's wild. And it's often that you hear about a woman drugging a man. I bet it happens more often than not, but men just don't report it because they're embarrassed totally.
How many.
Sex workers, since that's the new term, do this, Yeah, because they know dudes are dumb.
I'm surprised sex worker is still in vogue. That it's not like sex entrepreneur or sex visionary, physical task entrepreneur, physical is sex influencer.
Oh that's a good one.
Governor Newsom is saying that he's not going to stop providing healthcare to illegal aliens in California, despite being billions b billions of dollars short on state healthcare costs. The governor this week requested two point eight billion dollars.
To help cover the soaring Medicaid costs.
This is two point eight billion dollars on top of the three point four billion dollars that he's had to borrow from the state's general fund to cover the cost of all of this so far. He expected it to be about six billion when he expanded medical to cover all people in the state, regardless of immigration status, and it has ballooned to at least nine and a half billion. He said he's not changing his mind at all. Ashley' zavalla from kcra up in Sacramento caught up with him.
Is there anything you can share about just the undocumented healthcare expansion and how that's contributing to what's.
Happening right now?
That's partial. We've seen in Pennsylvania, Colorado, Indiana, and that don't have that expansion, they had even more sizeable supplementals into their medicaid system. This was something we previewed in the January budget and something that I had previewed in separate conversations.
With other governors.
It was highlighted actually in December at the Democratic Governors Association as an issue we were seeing all across the country.
So now it's essentially the cost of doing business for operating a sanctuary state.
Yeah, and then no acknowledgment of Hey, wait a minute, maybe we underestimated what the costs are going to be. We should rethink the program. No, no, it's throw more money at the program.
Because it's going to cost you more than if you don't have the program. Like I said, the cost the cost of doing business. If you're going to open up your borders for everybody, they're gonna get sick, and what's the cheapest way to take care of them because you have to.
It's this way.
Do you remember when Jesse Smolette was interviewed after the alleged I.
Will never be the man that this did not happen to. They're setting on fire every double naked, then I will never not be the not be the man of this did not happen to.
Remember he said the reason he was attacked is because he goes so hard at forty five or whatever. This for some reason this echoed that to me. Governor Tim Wallas Minnesota was on with Gavenusom on the podcast GAUSMS.
This is this Gavenusom.
And they were talking about the right and right leaning media's infatuation with masculinity and Tim Walls not living up to their standards. According to Walls.
Just baffled me how much time they spent trying to attack me that I wasn't like masculine enough in their vision, Like I would have never believed this. I saw Fox News did like a couple of days because I used a straw and I'm like, hell man, what am I? How else do you drink a milkshake type of thing? But they focused on it obsessively, which I think again is their obsession, their weirdness. We buy their frame on these issues of sexuality, but.
I think this notion of I think it's this notion of toxicity and masculinity needs to be separated. And I think it's been conflated. And I think we're going to have to work on that a little bit. And I think there is a Christ.
I think I scare them a little bit what.
He scares us with his masculinity.
Now, when you think of masculine, does Tim Walls embody that freely?
Wait? My brain froze a little bit when he was talking about this straw. Was he saying that they were they were making fun of him because he had a straw in his drink?
Yeah?
Okay, was it a plastic straw? I have no idea. I don't know what he's talking about.
Okay, I kind of remember this he had at I think it was a cocktail or.
Something or something claims it was a milkshake. Well, anyway, No, I'm not scared of Tim Walls. He goes on to say, I I give both of.
These guys should not be but these two guys are not who they're talking about when they're talking about toxic masculinity and things that if you are scared of that, I e. Show me the bear and not the man in the woods. These two are not the ones you're worried about.
Well, and Gavin Newsom has in the past referred to this the idea of toxic masculinity because he's got teenage boys at least one I don't know, I'm not sure the age of his kids, and he was referring to this having this is an issue that he's going to
have to deal with, right you said it yesterday. Stop telling boys that they're bad, that they're inherently bad, or that they're inherently violent or they're inherently sexual predators, like, stop telling them that because you're going to destroy them from the inside.
Turn them into that or you're going to turn them into that.
Yeah, and he at least acknowledges that that's an issue. But the idea that somehow someone's afraid of Tim Walls's masculinity, or that he was afraid that Republicans are afraid that Tim Walls could kick their ass, was another thing that he said.
It's I mean, maybe they were to say that trust me, maybe you're not masculine.
I'm trying to think about how he's thinking about this. Maybe he's saying that the Republicans, while they're planting their flag on this toxic masculinity isn't a bad bad thing. If they looked at Tim Walls and saw here's a masculine guy who cares about women's issues or trans people, what have you, that they're worried about that because it
shows that you can be both. He should have articulated that, because I can see that argument of like, here's a guy, and I think that's what they were trying to sell honestly on that ticket, is that Tim Walls is a guy who's a dude's dude hunter. Yeah, but yet all that stuff whatever, whatever, These people are all so self important. It's just so gross to me. No one's spending that much time thinking about you. We all forgot about the
straw incident because we didn't care when it happened. Nobody's still thinking about that. Nobody's thinking about either one of you. Like the fact that they have a podcast where they're just talking about themselves and their own ideologies and everything is just so indicative of the problem with people that are in power politically.
It's what you said yesterday about Chuck Schumer thinking that he has to turn candle.
His book tour. All right.
LAPD chief Jim McDonald scheduled to join us next segment.
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI AM six.
Forty I AM six forty Live Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app on this Wednesday, March nineteen am.
I getting to the age where just stand up isn't funny because it's hurtful.
It's potentially well we've we talked with him last month. Shannon, you were out so you didn't get the opportunity, But LAPD chief Jim McDonald has joined joined us. Chief, thanks for taking time for us once again.
Good morning, Thank you both for having me on.
I was just thinking about you well, it wasn't just thinking about you was a couple of years ago when I finally got to Fenway.
And beautiful, Oh my gosh.
Yeah, And I'm standing outside and it's all the things. It's like, all the build up of thinking of going to Fenway, it all pays off, you know what I mean.
Like, it's not just a romantic thing in your head.
It's like, I'm standing outside there and I just get chills, and I was just like and then I was thinking, like you you grew up right around.
There, Yeah, right down the street. Yeah, it's a special place I think in American history. Really.
Yeah, it's fantastic. I would go if I haven't been here. Is your endorsement to go exactly?
Chief.
This week, you guys released the end of your crime report for twenty twenty four.
Let's go over some of those numbers. What were the highlights for you?
Yeah, I think the big ones had struck me or the retection and homicides were down fourteen percent from the year before, and that is that's a big one. That's the one that everybody counts very accurately, so I think as a measure of success, certainly we looked to that one for twenty twenty four. Then we built on that in the first quarter this year. We're down an additional forty percent. For twenty twenty four, the victim shot a number of people shot was down nineteen percent. Rapes decreased
by almost one hundred during the year. Robberies saw a slight decline and then a large decline and aggravated assaults from over twenty thousand down to seventeen thousand and six, and so all in, I'll look at our numbers across the board, twenty twenty four was a good year for Los Angeles.
I remember a press conference five hundred years ago. You were an assistant chief at the time. Bill Bratton was there, and you guys, the focus was talking about community policing and you know, the broken windows theory. And I know you're a big community policing guy. And now that you're back at the helm of the LAPD, do you see room for more of that? Is that one of the items on your agenda is to really I mean post pandemic,
post protest life. Is this something that could really create great strides in Los Angeles right now in twenty twenty five.
Yeah, absolutely, I think it's we're looking at community policing as more of a philosophy how we do business looking at the root causes rather than just the symptoms or incidents. That's a focus that we have taken and will continue to take. I look at, you know, the areas that are covered by our folks who work the Community Safety Partnership Bureau, where they focused community policing efforts and strategies on particular places. Homicides fell by forty percent in those
areas in twenty twenty four. And so when you look at the success of engaging with the community. Nobody knows a particular neighborhood better than the people who live there. So if we can make them part of the public safety equation and partner with them, we get tremendous results. So the effort will be to continue that and take it to a new level.
One of the criticisms from people who watch crime numbers like this is that the definitions of crime have changed over the years, and that can alter what appears to be a drop or an increase in a specific crime.
How do you account for that?
How do you make sure that the numbers are as accurate as you can possibly make them.
Yeah, we do the best we can to try and be able to compare Apple stables and have. This year has been a modification in that because the whole nation has transferred in process of transferring from the uniform Crime Reporting System, which is the one we've used for well over one hundred years, to now the National Incident Based Reporting System or NIGHBERS. That fundamentally changes the way crime
data is collected and analyzed. But while it's more labor intensive and takes more people to be able to do the input on the front end, it captures a lot more data, so it gives us the ability to do a greater level of analysis and to be able to identify patterns and trends and clusters of crime. So all in all, it'll be worth the transition down the road, but for this year, comparing it year to year data
will be difficult. It happened the transition took place in May of last year, and so in May of this year we'll start at a point where we can compare year to year moving forward.
We're talking to LAPD Chief Jim McDonell, and you're a Long Beach guy, if memory serves, I was just in Long Beach. We spend some time there and I was talking to a friend and she was talking about the e bikes, and I know Orange Counties got some things in the works in terms of kind of just getting a handle on the proliferation of these things. And she was saying that she was walking around Long Beach and there was all these kids on the e bikes and what can be kind of done.
In terms of getting a handle on that.
I guess for lack of a better because there's no you can't pass any laws against them or anything like that, but they certainly seem to be kind of a nuisance at least in some parts.
Of LA Yeah. You know, like anything good, there will be some people who abuse it and use it for other purposes and become either a nuisance or worse. In the case of e bikes, much like any of our traffic issues that we deal with, we try and do education to educate the community about the dangers of using certain methods to get around of how they can better protect their roads safety and the safety of the public.
And then usually we would look at engineering, where are these being allowed to be operated, how do we operate them? And again going back to the first part, letting people know what the dangers of them are and then enforcement. You know, if they're operating this vehicle or any other vehicle in an unsafe manner, we can take enforcement action. And I think that's hopefully a last resort, but those are the way we deal with these type of problems.
Education in the schools as well. Social media also may have an impact.
We're talking about LAPD Chief Jim McDonald. Jim, if you have an opportunity, Chief, can you stick around for another segment?
Oh? Sure, I'm good.
Good.
We got a couple more questions. I want to get into technology also.
And I also want to ask him the Jeopardy question of the day because it's about Ireland and I feel like he's going to know it better than you will.
Right more with LAPD Chief McDonald when we come back.
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI AIX.
Live Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. We are talking to la PD Chief Jim McDonell, who I think was everybody's pick, everybody's favorite to lead the department where he spent so much time. He spent time really everywhere Long Beach LAPD Sheriff's Department, and he is back at the helm of the LAPD and has found it in his heart to spend some time with us.
How about them Dodgers.
Chief, They're doing great, maybe unstoppable.
Can you believe about Rodney Pete in the middle of the night snagging that ball from Max Munsey along the first baseline there, Mike, we should.
Lock him up? Maybe we locked up? You beat him on the tarmament.
Rodney works down the hall from us, so he's one of our friends here at Yeah, it really is a great family. Chief.
We're talking about crime numbers, and we've talked a lot about artificial intelligence for in all different industries and different walks of life. Is there a move at all, whether it's LAPD specific or law enforcement in general, to use artificial intelligence in policing.
Yeah, there's a lot of vendors trying to be able to enter the market and the public safety arena. Certainly a lot of money to be made long term in it, but also a great tool, but one that I would deest that we, you know, my peers, that we beat judicious about employing that and not doing it too fast
and end up losing a great tool. But I think where we can see at end of the market now is to be able to go into realms and reams of data to be able to find things that are detective, say it could normally find if they had the time, but they don't, and allow them to be able to narrow the field and look at clues or data that they need to be able to put a case together twise with redaction and so many other things that we do that we just don't have the personnel to do it.
To be able to get.
An assist from AI or machine learning, uh, you know, to begin with Uh, it would be a big help.
How refreshing to hear somebody in power say, yeah, there's a lot of money to be made in contracts, especially with you know, public money right to be made with contracts with the city or the police department or fire what have you. But to make sure all right, yeah, we we it's the future. We'll probably contract out the in the future, but just be careful and do it right exactly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's a great tool. And like so many other great tools, we have a tendency to rush into things and and put them to work right away, and it's you know, premature, and we end up losing some some good opportunities.
Well, I think you lose. You have the potential also to lose.
What makes what makes the job a great thing is that it's human interaction.
I mean, yeah, you know we may I mentioned last time that we.
Were talking with you chieved that of the thousands of contacts that the LAPED has every single day with people, we only hear one or two or three, and they're usually not positive. I mean that's and there's thousands of other great, positive contacts that happen every single day that just don't get the attention.
Yeah.
Now, probably literally millions of contacts a year. Uh, And you hear about the ones that go wrong, and we hit it when any go wrong. But when you think about people call it police when their world is upside down,
their situation is out of their control. The police come into a situation that's emotionally charged or more difficult with you know, alcohol, drugs and mental illness involved so often the case today, and try and be able to de escalate the situation and restore some order and get people the services they need. That's pretty challenging for anyone in any field. And that's what they do.
Call after call.
Chief McDonald may have been from Boston area Brookline, but he is.
A graduate of the LA Police Academy.
Do you remember, and I'm putting you on the spot here, but do you remember of any of those like early interactions you had, whether it was in the academy or after you got the academy with people in the community that kind of stick with you throughout your masterful career. I mean now as head of the LAPD, but thin like interactions or cases or things that stuck with you that remind you of why you do what you do.
Oh absolutely, you know, thinking back, that was forty four years ago and I remember it like it was yesterday. But coming out onto the street in the city I didn't know at the time with people I had never met before was something that was exciting but challenging, and to be able to kind of acclimate to a new
culture and certainly a new career. I look back on that and the thing that reminded me continuously of why we do what we do sometimes under the most difficult to circumstances is because of the victims, the people out there who truly need the police, who without the police would be living in terror, be locked in their homes, and not be able to function in the way that we all as Americans would expect to be able to.
And so yeah, I've constantly been reminded throughout my career of why I'm here, primarily because of the people who need us the most.
All right, are you ready for your jeopardy question? Okay, all right, this is something we do every day.
I ask Gary a stupid jeopardy question from the stupid desk calendar we have. But today it's Ireland for one thousand dollars, Chief, Founded in nine fourteen.
Founded in nine fourteen.
This city, known for its crystal, is the oldest in Ireland.
Crystal.
It's in the south. It's in the south. Waterford's Waterford Crystal.
Wow, Why do I not know that that's the most carbon crystal.
Yeah, that's all right.
Listen, I went to Waterford in Ireland and it was nothing to write home about. It was very industrial, the crystal warehouse was very nondescript.
But the crystal is beautiful.
Stump me on that one.
I'm sorry. Next next time, I'll make sure to get you gimme.
Chief. Thanks for your time once again, we'll talk soon.
It's a pleasure.
Thank you very much.
For having me.
Absolutely lapd Chief two McDonald there with the latest and yeah, we like like these conversations with him and hopefully well he'll come back.
Yeah, absolutely, up next swamp.
Watch what's going on in DC, specifically the call with Trump and Zelenski from today.
Also, the hard hitting topic is the doggie bag dead.
I have a doggie bag story.
Do you? Yeah?
Is it about your dog when it was dying? Yeah? Yeah, I don't want to hear the story again. It's very sad.
How about a story about a doggie bag that you got in before you didn't die.
Well, he got into it before, he didn't know, but he was like a death's door. Means it was a nice story.
To share emotions. And now now you know why I don't share emotions. You miss any part of the podcast, go back and check out the podcast. Miss better any part of the show. Gary and Shannon on the iHeart App or anywhere you find your favorite.
We've gotten to the point, what ten years down the line where it's like, ah, I don't tell that, sorry.
Don't tell me, don't tell me, don't tell me French fries. Yeah, how'd you know? Gary and Shannon will continue right after this you've been listening to The Gary and Shannon Show.
You can always hear us live on KFI AM six forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.