Modern Policing's Origins and Issues w/ Thomas777 - Complete

mean as well as ethically, when they're not. So when you raise the issue with people that modern policing is kind of run its course and it's kind of being phased out, like people seem to think one of two things. If they don't know me and are particularly sophisticated on you know, political sociology and things like that they have this idea that I'm forwarding some some you know, some miner gift argument like I want the police to go away and they don't have a mandate. I'm not saying that.

I mean that that whether they're true or not doesn't matter, or they think of suggesting that this kind of lump and revolt, however contrived and you know, cultivated by but by organized political interests, it's just going to be like, you know, like public frusture is going to be such that you know, police departments becomes so kind of gilded and defang verbially speaking, that they can no longer implement

the mandate, that mandate that they've been granted. I'm not I'm not saying that either, Okay, Like what I'm saying is that in structural terms, this is something that's run its course, okay, And increasingly, police functions are going to continue to collapse and do what in the Postcold War era has been viewed as kind of military and general security functions. Police services are going to be increasingly privatized.

You know, there's gonna be less and less of a distinction between the domains wherein armed force enjoys legitimacy, either conditional legitimacy or an absolute sovereign capacity. Okay, and this is inextricably bound up with the modern state as it exists today being really rather obsolete. Okay, But to understand too, like kind of what these exigencies are that are are presenting these kinds of challenges to police departments, particularly big

city police forces. Not exclusively, it's not just a matter of like you know, post George Floyd sentiment and kind of political narratives like those narratives were able to take a rude on grounds the phenomenon I'm talking about. Okay, you know, and I think this is all very ill understood, but you think the point a lot that the American system like really mirrors the UK system, you know, politically, and was the father quite literally of a of modern

policing was Robert Peel. He was also kind of the founder of the modern Conservative Party in Britain, Like the Tories existed before Peel's tenure as Prime minister, and he was he was Prime Minister twice, but he he kind of brought the party into the you know, into the end of the modern age in a lot of ways. Okay, And controlling populations at scale, particularly in a divided society. That's really kind of the conditions president for a modern

police department. Okay, and make a mistake, the UK is a uniquely divided society and it always has been. Okay. That's one of many parallels between America and the UK. It's it's not just anglical and cultural foundations. You know, there's divisions in the UK that there's not in there weren't in in Germany when Germany was uh, you know, in that brief period it was, it was unified. But also with sovereign republic, there's there's there's institutionalized divisions there

that that don't exist in France. Okay, And this this bears directly on on Peel's mandate and and why he proceeded the way he did and devising the first real urban police department. Peel was born into money. His father, uh was a career politician, but he'd made a fortune and textile manufacturing. So Peele and his whole family they were kind of insinuated into the They both had like one foot kind of in the old nobility. And I think I think Peele was a there was a there

was a baronet or a barony in his name. But he also very much was part of the kind of nascent you know, industrial producer class, you know. And it's education from flipid that too, you know. He took a degree both in classics and in mathematics. He first entered the House of Commons as a very young guy, I think around twenty two years old, eighteen oh nine. But where he really kind of made his bones, as it were, as kind of a it's kind of a political manager

and fixer. It was his home secretary, you know, in home secretary, especially in those days kind of at the zenith of the empire. It was a very important role, you know, and the mandate was very broad and it attracts not just ambitious men, but also a lot of a lot of men who had ideas about you know, the sociological nature and the mandate that the office carried with it, you know. And he started out as kind of a conventional old school Tory. Initially. He very much

was behind the institutionalized discrimination against Catholics. He did a one eighty on that. And this wasn't just for cynical reasons, because otherwise he wouldn't have stuck to his guns and the way he did on these kinds of matters of

equity and so and social matters. He sponsored the Catholic Relief Act of eighteen twenty eight, which for all practical purposes repealed was glocally known as the Test Act, which had banned Catholics from basically all manner of government service, as well as making sure they didn't get officers commissions in the British Army that would have put them in instead influence, you know, policy in the in the outer Empire.

This is very institutionalized. Okay, that's not just something that Fanians say or that you know, kind of like old school like you know what remains like you know, the kind of vestigial cadre of old school labor party types who you know who who emphasized that is, you know, being like a key tenant of the Tories as being this this party sectarian bigotry. You know, it actually was. The UK was Rabbi Yani Catholic until the twentieth century.

In a lot of ways they still are. Obviously, the situation has come amplex in ways it wasn't because you know, it's it's no longer a sovereign country and there's this kind of constellation of ethnicities that that don't have any meaningful you know, historical experience in the UK. But you know, incidentally, the reason why like in the UK, you know, cops are called Bobby's because you know of Robert Peel and

also they're called Peelers, which is interesting. I think there's you know, uh, the former kind of trees like like almost it just like a mascot role of the ladder, you know, kind of kind of suggests that they're ops, like you know, it's I think it's kind of telling it's doing us as in the English language that I think I'm a subtle and some people will allow. But you know, at the end of the day, what I'm

getting is what is what what is peeals? What appeals kind of progressive ideas about you know, the treatment of Catholics. And to be clear too, nonconformist Protestants were included in in these in these test acts, and we're technically precluded from like many of the same roles and being available to a lot of the same benefits and institutions as catalyps were. But slowly but surely there were de fact when the the jury exceptions carved out, particularly as a

situation in Ireland deteriorated. But you know, there was a the law really from from the time of of like the English Reformation, you know, until kind of the end of the nineteenth century, like in every way it was tailored to kind of guarantee that this like Anglican hegemony, you know, like culturally, economically, like in every conceivable way.

it was just kind of like a non factor. That's not like this Israeli became the Prime Minister like Grayat did. Disraeli was he wasn't like Kissinger in terms of his personality or in terms of his values, but uh, he was kind of the Jewish Londoner who it sort of shed his ethnosectarian skin in real ways, he wasn't just some morno, you know. But that's a whole different issue, and the way that was dealt with was a whole different body of like custom and things that that didn't

have to do with you know, Christian sectarianism. It's it's a totally iron thing, and we get into that, but it's if we should do it in another series because it doesn't really bear on this. But the uh, the writing on the Wall and ultimately happened of course on the heels of World War One in Ireland, like Peel realized like there was gonna be a real problem here.

It's kind of like perfect storm of an increasingly radical labor movement that was also increasingly mobilized, the threat of general strike at the core of the Empire, which in turn could touch off a sort of wildfire effect that would spread you know, the colored dominions, and on top of that, you know, an open cientarian revolt in Ireland and in London and in Liverpool and in these major

urban centers in the UK. Proper like the British from islands, I mean Ireland, obvis was part of the UK then too, wherein there were you know, there were ghetto wise Catholics who you know, appreciably appreciable numbers of them. This this could have been a real bloodbath, figurative and literal. And it uh was a frailty that people were aware of, like men in government and you know, men insinuated not just into titled society type roles, but who actually had

clout and power. You know, they realized that there was a real danger here and these people had to be brought into the fold and made, if not patriotic, made to believe in good faith terms, that they had enough of a stake in the enterprise that they wouldn't try to burn it down. And a modern police force is devised by Peel and as well as you know in America, like you know Peel's counterparts in the post reconstruction era. You know, they they had the same thing on their mind,

you know, modern policing. It's it's not just it doesn't just owe to the peculiar exigencies of having to manage theretofore you know, on uh, unthinkably highly scaled and complex urban environments, which you know, basically how is you know, one hundreds of thousands or millions of workers that staff the national economy. Like the way to manage that sociologically and politically, and the way to suppress the instincts to

revolutionary violence. They're you know, intrinsic to these populations and the conditions they find themselves. They were pried very delicate balancing, and you couldn't just treat these people, you know, like uh like one might you know, Cooley's revolting in in in India or something like politically aside of the fact you don't do that anyway, you know, if if you live in you know, if you live in like a Western society of the era, but it's also politically it

would not have been tenable, you know. You know, for contexts prior to that, in lieu of a police department, you know, there were night watchmen going back to the medieval period who quite literally post up you know, when the when the town gates were closed, to keep watch out for marauders or for military enemies, or or for fires, you know, literally firewatch. And that was you know, essentially

a communitarian volunteer role for a younger men. I mean, there was some kind of stipend and compensation of a nominal sort, but you know, it was basically derivative of a communitarian impulse. And in the case of of the court, if there was a wanted man, you know, before the King's bench or in America, you know, before the you know, who was being hailed in the criminal court by the municipality.

There were constables in bailiffs who were on duty full time, or you know, you deputize, you deputize a man of good standing, sometimes even a man who was a lawyer. You know, okay, you know, get a posse together and go fetch this bastard, you know, bring him here, like literally bring him into court. You know, there was so I mean that that that essentially took care of it.

And you know, this idea that there's this kind of permanently mobilized armed force that u is insinuated into the community but also outside of it that literally patrols and in this kind of permanent you know and creates like

a permanent visible presence like that didn't exist before. And one of the things that caused so many problems for the police is that a little over a century on into this like urban policing model, which not coincidentally was concominant with, you know, the War on drugs, the police became this They ceased to be this communitarian element, and they ceased to be this kind of symbolic sociological governm mechanism.

Like they became this kind of secretive, hostile element that cultivated its own alienage visa via the community that it was responsible for regulating, you know, and this wasn't some conspiracy we're getting all out of ourselves. It owed the realities of the Cold War. It owed you, you know, the nature of criminality at scale in the late twentieth century.

It owed the inability of social problems to be resolved by truly communitarian structures and as as authority, as official authority, both localized as well as you know, in absolutely sovereign terms. You know, that would hand like a dominion over the entire entirety and territorial territorial space of the country. You know, they they didn't know what to do about these things, so their fallback was on this enforcement mechanism that had

the widest and the deepest mandate. Proverbially speaking, you know, to regulate human behavior and conduct at scale, and to bring to bear punitive sanctions on people who were unwilling to comply with these edicts, be them like moral or pragmatic or both. And that creates kind of a perfect store of hostilities, you know. But we're not quite there yet,

but we'll get there as this goes on. To take it back from that, to be clear too about the test Acts and these laws governing the rights of peoples owing to their sectarian confession. This wasn't just superficial, and it wasn't just something that wasn't really enforced except in a capricious manner when the authorities saw fit to, you know, deprive somebody of of upward mobility for some discreete political reason,

going to emergent crisis or something. I mean, this was very much a staple of the sociological structure, you know, and it basically people supported it. You know. If you weren't taking communion in the Anglican Church, you basically were excluded from public life, you know. And even if you claimed uh to not be a practicing kid like, even if you weren't if you were not actively engaged with the Anglican church, and if you did not have a family pedigree, whether you were rich or poor or neither,

that demonstrably was was Anglican. You. You were reviewed as a as an accusant, okay, and you were viewed as somebody who is not to be trusted, and your neighbors would probably whisper that you were some kind of secret Fenian, even even if even if you were ethnically Irish, you know. And again, like I said, nonconformists were included in these measures too, But the Indemnity Act of seventeen twenty seven

alleviate some of these formal sanctions. But there's a there's a complex history and kind of and like rather perverse history between Nonconformists and Anglicans that endoors really until recent memory with the troubles. But that's I raised this because that's my own heritage, and like I don't mostly like

Michael Jones. He's got to have it when he says Protestants, he's talking about Anglicans, and I don't appreciate that, and not sex not because that what something against Anglicans, but because it's he's making a caricature of the issue, and you know, kind of employing an opportunity target and trying to cast us, you know, like like reformed people as a like with his like broad stroke, as if we're some kind of a junior version of the the traditional

Norman aristocracy or something and that, and that's not remotely accurate. That's why I emphasize that there's a guy, he's a really good story and his name is Jonathan Jonathan Jonathan Charles Douglas Clark, and he wrote a lot about I think he's still alive. He's not. He's not. I mean, he's getting pretty old. I think he's in his seventies now. But he was neither like a Whig historian nor like one of these Marxists. So he rejected both the kind

of the kind of tory what we view. It was kind of like the neo condish like progressive view of history and institutions as being this kind of mallible institutions, you know, in the in the Anglophone world, being the kinds of malleable things that you know, through this kind of process of trial and error and ongoing enlightenment quite literally, you know, social conditions become more equitable in like the open society because of reality. He rejects that nonsense outright.

But nor is he like one of these. He speaks a lot like Hobbsbow. I mean he he. I got into an argument, not not not a hostile or cumulic Blowe, but I got into an argument with somebody the other day who credited Clerk with with coining the long century, that that terminology or that signified, and he did. He did speak of the eighteenth century as the quote long eighteenth century in similar terms that Hobsblomb described the nineteenth century.

And undoubtedly they were familiar with each other's work products. But you know, Clark wasn't really the Hegelian in the terms that the hobbs Bomb was. But he obviously has like some of those conceptual prejudices. I don't say prejudices and punitive terms. I mean, that's just very much the way he kind of his view of historical time is oriented, particularly as regards you know, mind as as the kind

of prime move on in the historical process. But it's o point was that Anglican aristocratic in gemony, that and the challenge is emergent to its hegemony. That's really the way to understand everything of a power political nature. That happened within and without the United Kingdom, like really from the from the time of the War three Kingdoms, you know,

up until like World War One. Okay, and I believe he's correct, and an adequately deep reading of Hobbes with somebody like Carl Schmidt was very very very adroit we you know, conveyed in his writings not just in the concept of the political but in the stuff he wrote

directly on Hobbes. He's very much making the same point, although obviously like his topical his topical emphasies, you know, are are generally more focused on discrete features, you know, relating the kind of conceptual jurisprudness and things and and kind of theoretical foundations that you know are intrinsic to the kind of British cultural mind you know, and uh and such that there is a British cultural mind. It's it's it's it's Anglican and aristocratic and you know, so

it's a real, it's a real phenomenon. Okay, and again too, like that's why the emergence of a modern police element in the UK it was different than in in Germany, whereby by and large, uh, you know, the poets I have always been sort of like, uh, an internal security

element that was very much part of the military. Okay, that that doesn't just owe to the fact that, you know, the modern German state is the house that Bismarck built, and that kind of conceptual perspective, especially visa the police thing is very Prussian. I mean, that's part of it. But I posit that that only became that that was that only became a feature of the press and cultural

mind on grounds the basic imaginety that was accomplished. Now granted, and yes, Germany's about one third Roman Catholic, but Bismarck's culture comp was tremendously effective and basically rendering the German state and the civil service that constituted that state at level of executive enforcement, the same thing of decision making had become very Protestant by design. And also sectarian challenges aside, and I don't minimize those. I mean Germany was literally

ground zero of the thirty years of war. This was not like a minor thing, but there it was, despite the regional attachments to German and despite you know the kind of several populations who are possessed of discrete cultural forms, you know, like a Swabian is not a Prussian, is not a Bavarian. But there is like a German identity, like a Deutsche, like racial identity, if you will. There's not a British race, Okay, there's constituent elements of Great Britain,

but I nobody would argue to the contrary. I don't believe, okay. And that's fundamentally important. And that's one of the reasons why again it's it's not just it's not just some sort of like anglophone conceptual bias abstracted from historical experience in the UK and America. One of the common strains that is facilitated this kind of enduring like a mere between the two political cultures, like always do both us and them being like intractive, we divided societies and I

will I will die on that hill. Okay. Now bring it back to Clark's kind of point and how it relates to our discussion topically after about eighteen thirty or so, despite the fact that yeah, the vast majority of not just aristocrats but like upperly mobile middle class types in England but also in the UK and and Ulster. Oh again,

in Ulster, it's a little more complicated. People basically believed in like not just the divine right of the British crown, but you know, they believe their hereditary nobility was basically doing its job historical terms. You know, they believe the kind of parameters of traditional authority from tennessa theseics on word, with the Anglican Church being the kind of theological and esthetical and cultural lynchpin of these things. They viewed that

is basically a good thing. Like nevertheless, there were political variables that were very real that were undermining it, you know, and a lot of these a lot of these sociological and sociopolitical factors were the same things that ultimately were you know, culminated like the eighteen forty eight revolutions, you know, which in turn also you know, kind of kicked off the decades on the process whereby revolutionary communism kind of

became the default perspective of the working classes, you know, locally moderated as it may have been, by traditional cultural practices or a vestigial attachment to the national or local culture or just out now you know, like religious belief.

You know that the fact remains that in every punctuated way there was cracks emerging within this structure that really for the preceding you know, seven, eight, seven or eighth centuries said had been essentially insurmountable, and such as threats to it were emergent, they were emerging from without, and the standard bears of these threat were characterized first and foremost by their absolute alienage. Okay, so this changed everything.

But you know, and Peel the degree to which he quite literally drafted like a manifesto and like various policy papers on what the mandate should be of an urban police department and what its relationships should be to the judiciary and the executive and the Crown, but most importantly to the community that it served. He drafted some of his allies in the government to produce this document known

as the Royal Commission on Constabulary Forces. And the report didn't just it wasn't just emergent as some kind of last minute policy declaration to appease you know, the official

opposition or something like. There had been a serious committee corral to evaluate exactly how this kind of nascent police force I would work with the poor laws as they were called, you know, to what degree the police were, you know, to kind of like enforce these superficially paternalistic but basically punitive, you know, legislative mandates which conferred upon the local executive the ability to quite literally like place people under arrest for fratal services and put them in

poor houses. You know. Peal was hyper aware of this potentiality, and he basically said, like, we can't, we can't become the kind of like uniformed enemy like of of the wretched and the poor, you know, or of the or or of the work or or of the working classes. You know. We can't just become to be viewed as this kind of like permanent uh cadre strike breakers or something.

So what he did was in addition to that, in addition to this committee that you know then, as as I just mentioned from them of their findings and the form of his broad based study to the commons, he also drafted what came to be known as the Pelion Principles. Okay, I was like the rules one might have for like

eating an orange or something, but it's not. The nine Plion Principles were one to prevent crime and disorder as and this is key as an alternative to repression by military force and as an alternative to recourse to increasingly severe punishment. So basically, you know, anything short of you know, some kind of seventeen eighty nine situation, you don't just send in the red coats, you know, to buttstroke and

bayonet people. Nor do you start you know, drawing and quartering people in the public square like you know in the days of uh, you know, medieval rebellions or whatever. You know, the people need to view the police forces as working you know, like with them, you know, towards

accomplishing an equitable peace. You know. The second Peelian principle was that the power of the police to fulfill their functions and duties is absolutely dependent on public approval of their existence, their actions and behavior in the course of affecting custodial arrests, but also like an approval of their mandate.

You know, there's gotta be uh that there's got there there There's gotta be some sort of you know, direct uh connection between you know, these constituencies and how they're represented and the commons and who represents them, you know, and uh an ability of those representatives like directly impact you know what what what you know, what what priorities are as well as you know as well as the kind of brass tacks of of how policing is conducted.

You know, there's gotta be some kind of formal accountability, you know, to recognize always the extent to which cooperation of the public must be secured, and how this diminishes and proportion in terms the necessity of the use of physical force. And this is why traditionally, like British police don't pay heat. Okay, it's not because the British are naive. It's not because they got a culture that wasn't steeped

in violence. Nor is it like in old movies where you know there's some that the British kind of don't know what the hell to do if somebody shows up with a gun. Like look, Actually, until recently firearms are pretty ubiquitous in the UK, and until the later eighties you could procure a weapon as a private person without a whole lot of hassle. The British sending the army if they need to kill somebody, okay, or if they need to like raid the hood and do like a

bulls on parade thing and like break heads. The whole point of like the Pelion and the police is that they don't do that you know, you don't you know, you don't send you don't send a diplomatic element and

to negotiate with a gun on his hip. Okay, that that's the ethos and this is key and that's kind of like where America parted ways with the Pelion concept and what we'll get into like why that is probably not till part two though, but number five of the pillion principles to seek and preserve public favor and partial service to law, independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of those laws,

but without pandering the public opinion. And uh, you know in in the UK and historically you know how like in Robinhood, like the big villain is the Sheriff of Nottingham. Like a sheriff didn't used to be like a local policeman, but he did basically have like the executive power of the county with you know that that like concentrated in

his office. And there's a big concern that these rules can't become politicized that you're talking about, you know, the ability to affect custodial arrests and hail people into court, you know, by way of like a permanent constabulary, like there had to be some kind of accountability, but it couldn't become just like another political office, you know, And that's uh I stipilated in the early days, the UK did a pretty good job of this, even if it's

you know, something that's not that they can't really be sustained, you know, and in the absence as we saw with mister Trump, regardless of anybody feels about Trump, the man, you know, you got You've got a perfect example in the FBI, where it's like you have a law enforcement agency with tremendous power whose mandate disappeared decades ago. It's like,

what what do they become? Like they basically become this They become this kind of like hatchet for hire for entrench political interests, and that's that's highly corrupting, you know, aside from the fact that it's it's uncomstable that you know, the taxpayer is expected to you know, continue to fund this apparatus, it's that you know that they're really is like a there really is a deleterious influence of a police organization that has become like especially owing to you know,

the the evaporation of its mandate has become really nothing more than a a a cipher for you know, for political right, for political capture. The six plion principle is to use physical for us only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient. And again too, I know it's a lot of people and and like a fair amount of of flat foots like follow my content. We'll just we'll just fine. I was kind of surprised,

excuse me to discover that. But uh, I hear police a lot, you know, talk about how like well, you know, the British policing broke as fuck. They you know, they they're too averse to force. And maybe they are. I'm not I'm not like weighing in on that in absolute terms, but it's something that precludes the kind of current totally dysfunctional kind of culture of police thing like post Floyd, post the political theater, you know, post political theater promised

one on the Floyd incident. It it just goes back to, you know, literally an inception. And that's one of the reasons why Operation Banner played out the way that it did, you know, And we'll get into some of that. I don't I don't want to turn this into the discussion about the troubles because it's outside the scope. But there

are aspects that are relevant to the discussion. But you know, my my point is people who view you know, partake, I mean, there's a going going on here and I don't want to I don't want to get into the topic here knose averse to the topic although it's quite unpleasant, but because that's how it's at the scope discussion of the grooming gangs and and and sexual assault of vulnerable people, particularly young girls and kids by by these hostile like

alien elements. The reason why that's happening, oh, is to negatively political factors of you know, the post Nuremberg era. That that that doesn't owe to like the bridge police being in you know, unreasonably aversive force or something. But instances where there is on display of comparative reluctance, you know, to apply deadly force or to go in heavy as people think of it in terms of police work, you know,

in a ing less lethal measures. That that that's a different thing and it precedes you know, the current era, and it's it's ideological shiles and things. The last uh, the last few are kind of brass tech stuff. The last few of the Peler principles of accountability, but the key one is to uh is quote to maintain in all times of relationship with the public because reality to the historical tradition that the police are the public and

the public are the police. Community policing that phraseology as well as the ethos that underlies it as a direct import from the United Kingdom, and it's essential. Like regardless of kind of how you fall on the matter of what pass is good policing or like, that's not important. I mean it's important, but I mean for purposes of this particular aspect of the discussion, there does need to be like a communitarian aspect to the police. Otherwise it's

not workable. And honestly, that is that is the future as the process that we talked about at the top of the hour, you know, kinda emerges in earnest and policing becomes truly a localized function once again. That that that's that's essential to local sovereignty and and essentially the maintenance of i've anything approaching law and order. And I made the point again and again you're gonna see moving forward, there's not gonna be I mean, I realized I'm dating

myself with this reference. But there's I do not foresee like a Thomas Chitthham Civil War two scenario that people would be in nearly nineties. And I think him is a great guy, and for context, he was writing about this stuff in the wake of things like the La riots, where like some kind of open ross and Kreeg was really like in the running, which is terrible. I do

not see that happening at scale. What is happening, I mean, I mean it's already underway, is the kind of secession of discrete communities, some which are deliberate communities, some of which have just kind of ossified around common cultural imperatives and identitarian signifiers, just like owing to accident of you know,

historical developments and sociological realities. But as communities kind of become more and more self contained, you know, like we've talked about before, there's there's gonna be even greater and more layered complex interdependence of an economic and financial nature. But politically people are seceeding. You know, You're gonna see communities that are like nine nine point nine percent Black, that that are like nine nine point n a percent white.

You know that that are like the same as for Raza or for like Easian people or other And similarly, there's gonna be communities that owing either ideological commitment or inability or unwillingness to establish you know, a deliberate living pattern a relative scale. You know, there are gonna be like mixed race communities that you know maybe or maybe even you know, community such that are situated in the aforementioned according to the afrementioned criteria, like going to something

like vestigial attachment to American civic myths. But regardless, like any policing, it's gonna be a reflection in that community. You're not gonna have like white or Spanish guys going to police who live fifty miles away, like commuting in is in black code to polices and like vice versa. Like that's done, that's dead. You know, it's not the liabilities attendant to police work are just going to kind

of force those sorts of developments. But also people aren't gonna be willing to do the job anymore from a position of communitarian alienage. Okay, But also again, you know, like what was the what was the purpose appeals model for police which in turn, also had strong relevance here, you know, again owing to the basic social visions which

characterized both societies. What kind of derailed that really was uh really, it was kind of like the collapse of uh the cities as a low guy as like worker Barris. For the national economy, it was the Cold War. It was uh, you know, the earliest uh birthpaygs of globalism when they really when they literally were like two systems competing for global hegemony. That's really what underlay the war

on drugs. Like I watched the film drug Store Cowboy the other day, which is actually a really good film. I really liked that movie. It's got Kelly Lynch, it's got James Raemar, it's got Matt Dylan, it's got Weymous Burrows and this weird cameo. But it's kind of a it's very much kind of a black comedy, but it's also a serious treatment of of of of like narcotic addiction. And it's also kind of like a you know, like a crime movie. But Burrows plays this heroin and morphine

addicted priest. It's kind of like the grand old man of this community of addicts that's perpetually ripping and running, and he talks about the settings around nineteen seventy three, and he's talking about, you know, I foresee a global police state apparatus premised on the moral panic over use of narcotics. And yeah, there was an aspect to that, but the War on drugs is peak like Cold War, I think, Okay, and everything else aside. It totally and

completely changed policing. It changed the way, it changed what's considered evidence. It changed the way we conceptualize a criminal offense. It changed the way the police view the community that they are charged with regulating, and vice versa. It changed, uh, people's attitude towards violence and when the police have a defensible mandate to apply it. I mean, it made the role something other than what it had been there too, for it was that much of a a categorical paradigm shift. Okay,

and the War on drugs is coming to an end. Two, which is really really interesting and very important, you know, especially considering that agree to which you know, many aspects of the health crisis are being driven by addiction. To two, it's the obvious. But where uh, we're coming up on the hours we want to stop now, I'm sorry to be a party pooper. But if I change gears now, like I'll have to stop, like in the middle of a what I think is an important point, and I don't want to do that.

you know, but they're slipping. Basically, the first unions were Irish immigrants, and the first mob here was Irish, you know, the Compone gang like went to war basically with like with with the Irish. You know that, I mean yeah, it was the north side of the South, So I truly are different. And there wasn't some like rigid homogeneity but between the gangs. But it was basically like you know,

Compone's Italians like going to war with the Irish. Okay, So the Irish were running the street and the Irish and you know, the Irish were running the the the labored unions. So by consequence, you know, you had to give the you had to give the Irish the police department if you wanted to be able to regulate both of those things, you know. And then from there, like the Irish here they were able to capture they were able to capture the the Synegap Paratus for you know,

like seventy years. The Irish are I'm not I'm not like transhing the Irish. I mean, depending on how you define things like I am Irish, like I don't really. I think if you're not running cap like you're not really a petty. But my point is, I mean, I that's one of the reason I make fun of them so much, just because it's kind of like an in

house rivalry. But I'm not banishing the Irish when I say this, but there they are conspiratorial people, very tribal, very uh, very in group focused, very prone to intrigues, okay, and the best way under the national economic schema. You know that existed in earnest from the eighteen seventies until you know, really until the Kennedy era. You know, they that that was how you captured cloud, you know in the cities. So that that's how I you the guy. I don't want to name drop him because I I

think he's retired now. I mean I think about this the other day, like I'm getting so old. But I went to law school and I became buddies with them. Like when I went to law school, this guy named Corboy. He's this big shot like King of Torch type lawyer. He founded the scholarship at John Marshall Chicago. Or like any Chicago policeman or woman can like get a full

ride if they can like get into John Marshall. So I got to know like some of these flat foots, including the guy who went on to become a honch with a re turnover police. And I got to know him pretty well because like he drive me home. I mean we we had class on the weekends. We were both going to law school at night if he was working as he was, he was working as a cop. Then he worked the West Side, you know, I was, I was working a couple of different jobs, including this gym

and Edgewater. But so you go to class at night and then on Saturday morning we had like lawyer ring skills. He was basically legal writing. And uh, he'd meet me at the Skoky Swifts l station and then we'd drive to the Loop and then every class he'd drive me back. It's the Skogy Swift and then I'd go home to Evanston. So like I got to know him, went pretty well.

And he was the third generation cop. Like his brother was a cop, his dad was a cop, his grandfather been a cop, you know, and it's uh, it was interesting. And and he married a lady who was very nice. And he'd met her at is U where a lot of cops used to go to college. I don't know what today, but they're their police science program. It was kind of a Feaer system for Chicago bed. But he married a lady and like her dad was a cop,

you know. But at that point, being like, uh, I got some insight, uh, because I'm like a north Shore guy and so there was plenty of Irish around like where I grew up. But you know, they were they weren't the kinds of guys who become policemen, you know, like, uh, they're the kinds of guys who were like lawyers and

stuff and like accountants like their dads. I mean, you know, the prosperous serious that's not some kind of like flex and like my family because like my dad, like my dad's like a fucking genius, but he's like he's like this academic guy and basically like a game theory guy. We were kind of like we were like the poor people, I'm sure, and like you guys you did it? Is this first guy I know, like helping me. You know, he's like, but don't do what he does. You won't

we get any money. It's like like I want your opinion. But yeah, that was that was kind of a tangent man, Sorry with it, and I forgive my I finally were being sick, man, but I still got some congestion. Forgive me. I realized I don't sound well, So forgive me for.

stop location for a bunch of my content. It's number seven h O M A S seven seven seven dot com. I'm on social media at Capital r E A L Underscore number seven h O M A S seven seven and seven. I'm on Instagram, on Telegram. But yeah, there's big things on the horizon and I think I think the subs will very much appreciate and approve of these things. And I want to give since I'm gonna thank everybody for supporting the brand. People have really we've gotten like

a glut of new subscribers lately. It's it's just great, you know, and your support makes this possible. I cannot thank you enough. And in a week I'm going to the inauguration and a bunch of the fellas and girls are gonna be out there. I'm gonna I'm gonna stream from out there, and I'm gonna try and capture some worthwhile footage and b roles. So there's had to look forward to also. But that's that's what I got, all.

It's not. It's it's not the necessity whereby, oh, the police have always been here, you know, the police have existed for forty thousand years, like basically since man became like sentient, and if they go away, there's anarchy. That's

not why you have a police department, you know. And the American model the reason why there's not like there's not like an American version of like the German order police that are like part of the National Guard or something is because there's a there's a strange situation in the UK and America and for clarity to like, you know, Peel absolutely was the thought, wasn't is the father of modern what's called like metropolitan policing. The first, the first

true police department came from Scotland. That's a get another thing that like the Scottish came up with in uh in this the City of Glasgow Police like the first like the first professional police department. They were established my an Act of Parliament in eighteen hundred. I knew that, but some of the some of like the scot some of the Pikey's like shouted out and like what the

fuck the first police was quoting the quotes. So there you go and Peel the London the London Metropolitan Police were created by the Peace the Peace Preservation Act of eighteen fourteen and Peel essentially like drafted that in all

but name. I don't know if he's credited as as as the primary author, but yeah, for context in at the turn of the nineteenth century, London had it had four hundred fifty constables and service of the Kings or Queen's bench and forty hundred night watchmen, you know, and it was, uh, it wasn't within the contemplation that there'd be like a permanent professional police force until Peel's reforms and when he became Home Secretary. That's really when it

began in earnest. But there were significance to us in this country. You know, everything kind of changed with the New Deal regime and subsequent and you know, one of the reasons why is people might age and older. Remember one of the reasons why it was a big deal when the media kind of turned on LAPD and you know, when the Rodney King incident happened, and then like the subsequent you know, like race war came about. I'm not I'm not being shrill. I mean that there really was

a race war. You know. I think people kind of confused William H. Parker with Darryl Gates. And I've noticed that too because a lot of these it's fading because like nobody takes woke shit seriously anymore. But at that at the peak of that garbage, like I think around like twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, there was a lot of these. There was a handful like history as a Los Angeles that made sound of a splash, and it kind of me you know, a kind of mainstream academ which is

very midwood stuff. But there was this big effort to kind of slander William H. Parker, and I realized because I'm like, why they singling out Parker? And I'll get to why that's weird in a minute. But then I realized a lot of these people, I think Parker and Gates are the same guy. You know, in Gates, I I think Gates was kind of an ugly guy, like not not for this, not for the reasons that a lot of left wingers do, but I you know, I I'll get into why I think that in a bit.

But but Parker, Parker was this big progressive, you know, he and his He's kind of like the American Robert Peel in some ways, you know, because like policing before the nineteen fifties, really in America, it's like corruption was kind of taken for granted, Like I mean, like graft like besy was understood, like in any big city you can like pay off the cops and get them off

your back. It was very ad hoc. I think that until I think I think in the nineteen forties, the city of Miami you had literally two sworn police officers, you know, and even in cities where you had, you know, a more mobilized police force, like Chicago, it didn't. It didn't function the way like we think of it. They were kind of like de facto, like you know, union busters and strike breakers. You know, you kind of rely on police services and you could like pay them to

show up like Below Board, you know. And it was not in Gangs in New York, which I think is a really great film, although like a lot of people trash it for reasons I don't quite understand, but I like it for a lot of reasons. I mean, it's the only film that really deals with kind of the the web life was like in big northern cities during the War between the States. But Happy Jack, you know, the the thug, like the like the policeman played by

John c Riley. He was like out there thugginghead like that was pretty realistic, like by all accounts, man like that. That's like what the police were like. You know.

it's basically what the police were. It's not some that's not some progressive myth about you know, the bad guy police or something. I mean, it's a fact. But it but Parker, you know, all kinds of in every sense in public policy, you know, always making the point that sociology was a real discipline, like because of the Cold War and because of the managerial state. And Parker was one of these guys. I'll get to do his background

in a minute. But in the nineteen fifties and sixties, like big city police chiefs or in Chicago police superintendent says we call them, they weren't just like career cops who you know, had like the ear of the mirror. I mean, there's definitely some of that, but this idea of you know, a cop needs to be some like college educated type with with you know, preferably with the with a kind of prestige degree, you know, which in those days supposed like a degree in sociology, your economics

or like urban planning or something. You know, Like this was a big thing, you know, and that's one of the reasons why Parker didn't like a Hollywood But the reason why shows like Dragnet were a big deal, Like they worked with La PD, and Parker cultivated that, you know, I get La Confidential. How that guy played like Kevin Space even sends he's like always wearing h he's always wearing Italian suits, and he's got like manicured fingernails, and he's he's consulting with a guy he was supposed to

be Jack Webb. I'm dragnet. Like that was the real thing, Like the Hollywood LA Cop Who knows who had them? You know, who's interface of the media in a way that that is essential kind of the public image, you know, like they had stuff all came from Parker and uh, you know that this was the l E PD was held out as like the model police force, and if you read the kind of stuff Parker said, it was all like the Peel principles. You know, it's like we're

a community based police department. You know, like we're not here, you know, just to arrest people and and smack people up. You know, Uh, We're not just a bunch of stripe breakers. Like he was like this big progressive who like was was a who I mean, That's why it's weird they're trying to present him as this kind of like clansman type or something like, because he wasn't at all. He was like this big progressive and his big thing was

that like the the La County sheriffs. The had a reputation as being kind of like very redneck issh and very rough, and his whole thing was like, we're not like those guys, you know. Uh, Parker like high he was into hiring blacks and uh and like mestizel people, you know, the police their own hoods and stuff like this. That was like this whole thing, you know, and like that. People might be like, well, that's just like police work, but yeah, that's why it's police work because of Parker.

And Parker was falling back on this stuff from the UK because he was an educated guy and like most of these guys, you know, he came up through the service during the War two, like he'd been born in uh in the Dakotas and found his way to give me one second, my machine's freaking out there, we go. Yeah, he was born he was born in South Dakota and made his way uh in Deadwood, you know, which has like an auspicious heritage as regards law enforcement and stuff.

And then he, uh, he made his way to southern California like a lot of like a lot of people did from that part of the country, including my paternal grandfather. His uh, his grandfather, William H. Parker, was a war hero. He fought up to the Union Army and in the War between the States and later served in Congress. And Parker was, uh, he was very Catholic, which obviously was unusual. And in uh in like Los Angeles at the time, which was which is kind of like a wasp it was.

It was a really it was kind of like a wasp bread out like literally like rich waspy people. He kind of settled it and those people like their their descendants like still have a lot of cloud there, you know. And and then and there was a lot of like okies too, you know who like working in poor like white folks. But you know, Parker was kind of outside

of that culture. But he uh he joined l A. P d. And know, it was the eighteenth nine twenty, he said, when he was going to law school, and it's the idea was that it was just going to like put him through school and it was like something to do and like, you know, well during the course of his studies and he said he could learn like, you know, stuff about public policy or whatever. I'm at the road in terms of functional application of the law, you know, like in an executive role at street level.

But he decided every patch, the bar exam. He just he decided to He decided to stay on is early he early on, like he was a big advocate of like a police the police union, which at that time, I think the the New York and Chicago or paternal or a police were already a thing. But like the idea of public sector unions, I wouldn't gonna be wrong.

Like police work in them days was a lot different than today, and like those guys actually did need some kind of formal representation visa via the city council and stuff. It's not it's not like ridiculous bullshit like I make

a teacher's union. But you know, public sector unions weren't a thing, and uh back in those days in California, I think throughout the state, so that there was any kind of like cop representation, and in terms of organized labor, it was generally like a police and firefighters union, and that was that was his primary role. You know, he wasn't mostly a beat cop, but he did. He took leave to go fight in uh World War Two, and

he was in, UH he was in during combat. He got a purple Heart for wounds that he received in Normandy, and he'd been in uh, he'd been at the assault in Sardinia, and because his background as a cop, they put him. He was both in the role. It's kind of like a counterinsurgency enter like in theater. He was responsible for POWs and stuff and detention, as well as you know, kind of policing, uh the ranks post occupation in Munich and stuff. That's a uh, that's a resume.

I'm not trying to cast an ominous light on Parker, but that's a resume. Not unlike John Burge, although Burge I believe was engaged in Phoenix for raumsy stuff and not for those that don't know, Burge was he was a homicide police here in Chicago, very feared guy. His name rang out and he he got indicted like years after he retired from torturing suspects, procuring all these dubious

confessions that were procured under duress. But that agree to what the military during like the draft era, you know, and basically you know, World War One through and and the relationship of LAPD to the Vietnam War particularly is very interesting. Joseph Wamba gets into that. We'll talk a

little bit about Wamba. But during during the World War two era, you know, like there was a glott of guys who who'd uh, who'd been in in heavy action, who became cops or guys like Parker who'd you know, already been for an officers and then left, you know, to leave, like you know, to join the service or to be you know, satisfied their draft allegation or whatever. But he got he got the war Cross. I'm not even gonna try and pronounce it de croix, the GI

I think is what it's called. It's basically, uh, basically the French equivalent of the war merit cross maintaining ordered in the liberation of Paris. But out of the war, he shot through the ranks, became one of the one of the deputy chiefs, and by nineteen fifty he was by the year nineteen fifty, like he was a big shot and he he he's responsible for not just cleaning up graft at street level, but you know, kind of a insinuating la insulating lapd from like war to politics.

There's one of the reasons too. I like mafia guys in the traditional sense, like couldn't really get a toe hold in California, you know, like I I'm sorry to keep citing a Hollywood movie as authoritative, but it draws upon real stuff and some people are familiar with, you know, like an LA Confidential, there's a scene where like Dudley like Budd White, who's like isn'tforced her, you know, he's like a goon police like they het word that he's like East Coast mob guys are in Los Angeles for

some reason. So like Dudley has White in the goon squad like Shanghai these dudes and like take them to you know, take take them to some interrogation location and like beat the fuck out of them. And then they literally like put these guys like back on a train going back east, like all like broken up and bang up and battered. Like LAPD did stuff like that. And that's one of the reasons Lava was always an open territory.

Like it's not just because the LAPD would literally fuck your world up, you know if you were an outsider trying to set up rackets there, but there really wasn't. There wasn't like any ward boss you could go visit in LA you know who if it didn't you know who peeps be like, hey, I'm so and so, you know, and my guy vouched for me, like let's do business. And I mean you have like and you don't have to you don't have just like you don't have the

same hood structure in La Man. I mean, yeah, it's like like East La span is traditionally south central as black, you know, and then you got like oki and white hoods. But it's not like Chicago and New York. It's not like there's like this like word system where you know, you were were like bosses on from the ground up. Is like how you got stuff done. So you know, Parker kind of yeah, it's like okay, any man in

the airheads work cut out for him. But you know, it's it's important to distinguish that Los Angeles was kind of fertile grounds for a lot of this stuff and a lot of this kind of social policy experimentation. That's not to say it's a tabula rasa, but it's not only that's one of reason too, Like, I mean, because we just did a California series, this is one of the reasons why people are kind of able to project

on to California, specifically Los Angeles. This kind of confabulated narrative of its political heritage, you know, like one one way or the other to try and shore up a mandate of an ideological nature. But you know, the uh, one of Parker's big things and gags later ran with this will be a pretty very different reasons. But Parker, Uh, Parker drammatically reduced the size of LAPD and he actually militarized it in key ways, not in terms of its ethos,

but his whole thing was mobility. And you know, again like his formad of experience at command level, and I believe the rank of commander as a police rank came about under Parker's tenure. But you know, his his experience, his form of experience had been in the service, like at the you know, in the military, and that perspective shaped LAPD. And you know that's why like air mobility by uh, like the Vietnam era was a huge thing with LAPD too. You know, like they make use of

shoppers in a way that northern police departments do. I mean, part of that's just because the geography and the vastness of the territory they're responsible for, but it's also a very military way of like staying on target or I don't I don't know how the police what their nomenclature is for that. I'm sure they call it something different that sounds less ominous or or or direct the action oriented but.

every major population segment. And you know, switching to police cars over foot patrols. That was a huge Parker thing because his whole thing too is like you know, and being able to swarm a be you know, being able to swarm units to uh to to reinforce officers in trouble, you know, order to respond to the over running force like that was a that was a Parker innovation and uh this stuff, uh speaking of a wamba, I highly recommend anything Wamba has written. But the Onion Field, which

is a horrible story. These two ILAPD playing clothes cops were kidnapped and one of them was murdered. The other guys survived and though the way he was treated was horrible.

But you know, in those days, like there there wasn't you know, police radios were tied to the vehicle that they were driving, and obviously there wasn't the same kind of modern telecom and uh, if somebody got the drop on you in those days, and previously, if you were told to like surrender your weapon, you were like police were told they should comply like subsequently, and this is

a Parker innovation. He said, like never ever surrender your service weapon, you know, like Besis, you should die before we ever give it weapon, you know, and the police just adopted like a more military mindset and like across the board. But at the same time, though, you know, like I said, like Parker was very much part of the sociologically progressive, academically polished class, that kind of bureaucrats who represented the face twenty century policing, and interestingly, Gene

Roddenberry starred with lapd. You know, he's like the Star Trek guy. I think Star Trek's goofy. I'm not a fan of it, but the original series is a very much kind of a time capsule of of like the Kennedy sixties Kennedy or sixties. I realized it it endured beyond that. But Captain Kirk is based on William H. Parker, like like literally, like roden Berry said that, and like he knew the guy, you know, and he's like that's

like Kirk is like this guy. He was like this man of action, but he's also like mister you know, he's always like exciting Abraham Lincoln in the Constitution and he's like he's like mister like appeal to legal authority, and we do everything by the book. He's supposed to be William H. Parker, Okay. And that's also why, like he's got like a multi racial crew and he's got he's got the Russian guy on deck, he's got like the effeminate Asian guy. He's got like the black woman

who's like his telecom officer. Like this this wasn't just that this wasn't just token his time on television. I mean, yeah, that was part of it, but that was very deliberate, like this is this is whyam Mage Parker's police department in space, you know, which which I think is interesting, but ibe he had a kind of that kind of

stuff I'm talking about. And Wamba wrote directly about this in his in the like he wrote it was in the onion field, and he mentioned this later in his life that like it's an ongoing like exam kind of the weirdness of the of the sixties and kind of the new the kind of new fangled progressivism of it. It was on the game to be called colloquially the coloquially the Blazer experiment, as in a blazer like a

sports jacket. And uh, this jurist this town called uh Menlo Park in California, they hired this, but it was they hired this police chief named, uh Victoria Cizankis. Cizankis, I think I'm butchering that name, forgive me, but his Melo Park was at They to say that had troubled community. To say the troubled community relations the police department, I mean, would be a gross understatement. Okay, I mean this was nineteen sixty eight. That's kind of nationwide that these issues

were emerging, but it was pret particularly pronounced in Menlo Park. Okay, they've been hit particularly hard by the nineteen sixties there. It's located just south of San Francisco, so they caught a lot of the same ship that the Bay Area proper did, you know, a lot of like a lot of a lot of a lot of a lot of cultivated student radicalism. You know. When I say cultivated, I mean you know, the usual suspects and g os and things do what they can to provoke and orchestrate the

kind of thing. But it just like real, like real, just like organic difficulties between the races, you know. As unfortunately, as you know, southern California's associated with North and South. Uh. The Memlo Park Coppers, their reputation is being kind of a kick ass police department, and during racial incidents or or anti war protest that got out of hand, like like the police would go in and kickle out of the ass. Okay, And this caused this, this, this this

caused real problems, all right. So Susannacis or Susankas, sorry, Cesankas he's brought in and he's got this kind of like radical orientation about policing. And it was called the Blazer experiment because he did away with police uniforms. He's like, Okay, from now on, he's like, we're not we're not We're not gonna wear some paramilitary uniform with a sam Brown belt and like uh, you know, like a piece on

your hip or we're not gonna do that anymore. So these Menlo Park police, they started going around wearing like khaki pants and these like green blazers, so they look like guys who's worked at a country club or something. And there's like this little like city crest on on like the breast pocket like you can you can like

google is and it's it's ridiculous. And your your weapon, your service weapon was always supposed to be out of view, okay, either by way of a shoulder holster or you know, discreetly squirreled away like in an ankle holster, you know, because no one's never supposed to see it, you know.

And there's this whole there's this whole litany of kind of rules for how you're supposed to and instigate like basically a terarry stop and like even if you have to, even if you have to, like you know, stop and frisk somebody because they're obviously strapped, or because they're up to you know, or because like your police instincts or however they characterize it in those days, tells you that you know that, you know, your spiky senses tell you

something you don't like about this this suspect. So frisk imm and figure out the problem. Cause later you're supposed to always like initiate those contacts by you know, but by asking somebody if if if they if they have consent, you know, ship like that, which is fucking stupid. Okay, it was, it was. It was stupid, stupid today. It

was stupid back then. And like a lot of this crap is coming back, but these days it's it's in combination with various other factors, you know, like like like policing as as it's existed is coming to an end, okay, And so it's kind of interesting to me, Like in nineteen sixty eight, uh, the the po model police work as far from exhausted itself, obviously, but it's interesting that some of this stuff is kind of coming back because if it's an issue of first impression as people scrambled

kind of trying salvage this this obsolete model. But you know, this caused, uh, this caused a lot of consternation among the ranks of police departments because obviously there was these like like like progressive types, you know, and including uh Susanthas fans. They thought like this was great. But you know, a cops who were who were dealing with burgeining anarchy and real violence, you know in in Los Angeles and Chicago,

in Boston and Philly and New York City. You know, being a cop was a dangerous job then, and you know, you you very much were out gunned, you know, you very much you were in jeopardy then in a way you're not today. You know, I realized there's cops in god forsaken places that are in fact under fire a lot, and uh, they don't have the kind of forces and being or the firepower to really be confident, you know, and if if, if they get moved on. But that's

the exception, not the rule. Like in the nineteen sixties, that was that was the rule, not the exception. Okay, parts police department was was was was kind of the exception because like they had all that stuff, but you know, like very very very kind of rapidly this uh the Blazer experiment. Uh, like people realize like this is just not this is not something that's going to work. And uh but the what did uh what what what did linger though? Is you know, the the like like career

minded officers coming from more academically rigorous backgrounds. That's something that endured really until like the early eighties, and then by then like that was by then that was done. You know, for a lot of reasons. Part of it was a trickle down effect of of uh of military industrial imperatives. I mean, I know that makes me sound like some shopski. I don't. I don't mean it in the same way that people like Key and zach Lyites do.

But it is a fact. But one of the one of the one of the many kind of coheinds of comical things about the Blazer experiments. The the organizational lingue lingo of the police department was changed. Sergeants became managers and police lieutenants and menlo were called directors.

a very strange era, man like this. But by the early seventies, all this kind of all this all this kind of stuff, and it kind of fallen out of favor even, you know it even even among a kind of the most art you know polemisis of uh, in favor of you know, police reform, which in the interview would you know kind of constitute a stripping of the ability of big city police to you know, to meet

to meet brets. You know, this is like little remembered the day, and it's remarkable the kind of short memory people have. And I think about this a lot, especially when there's when the regime tries been sitting with propaganda about you know, domestic terrorism into in the policy discussions. You know, uh, during the early nineteen seventies, there was there was constant genuine like domestic terrorist incidents, you know,

coast to coast. Nixon and Jay R. Hoover, who you know, even in the best of times, had a very contentious and not at all friendly relationship to say the least. This became such a concern that Nixon during June nineteen seventy Nixon haled uh Hoover into the Oval Office and he he said, have known certain terms that uh quote revolutionary terror was the greatest single threat to like civil order in America at the time. And that wasn't that

wasn't hyper believe. You know, there was like the weathermen were going nuts. Uh. There was a half a dozen other you know, self declared you know, like Mawist revolutionary groupings that were dropping bodies and and and and and pulling off ied attacks. You know, there were the Patty Hurst incidents. It's almost so strange, like that seems like something that like like a Hollywood screenwriter had like written that Patty Hurst s l a situation into some script.

Like people would have laughed at it, saying there's no way that could possibly happen. But I mean, but but it happened.

five percenter faction of the ny who called themselves death Angels. Uh. They went on this rampage of just random torture murders of white people in the Bay Area, and the police code UH for these incidents with zebra it's in it. It's ironically accidental that, you know, the implication of zebras is relating to black and white striping or whatever. But that was going on at the same time the Zodiac killer was was bodying people and and and taunting the cops.

So it's kind of overshadowed. But this is a real thing, you know, and it uh there were throughout the seventies, there was there was hundreds of these incidents every year, you know, if not thousands, great and small the uh and then downtown New York even this got this this

whole kind of air got kicked off. The summer of sixty nine, this uh, this commie radical named Sam Melville, him and his cadre, they bombed something like a dozen buildings like in downtown Manhattan, you know, from the summer of sixty nine until like that November, and then against the seventies as ninety six nine, nineteen seventy it only it only snowballed, you know, I mean, so it's kind

of it was kind of fertile ground for uh. Yeah, by ninety seventy two, incredible as the city as I mean, back in these days, FBI statistics were substantially more reliable than today. In ninety seventy two, there was there there's two thousand and five hundred politically motivated bombings or ied attacks on American soil. That that that comes out to

five a day. Okay, excuse me, this is totally insane, but that that's that's what laid the groundwork for kind of nineteen eighties policing, which truly is when things truly

became paramilitarized, you know. And and Darryl Gates was the standard bearer of that, you know, and Gates is most remembered, I mean, I Gates was because I spent so much time in La as a kid, and Gate Gates was an intimidating guy, you know, like I any, and he seemed he seemed the paramilitary, you know, like a lot of big city cops either seemed they seem kind of like either like Keystone cop eurocrats, you know, like goofs, or they seemed just kind of like politicians like Gates,

like seemed like a bad dude, you know. And he'd uh l a PD. You'd see him, uh, you know, the L A p D. They didn't wear ties, they'd wear those like uh, they'd wear those like v neck like button. I'm sure it's like a vest. They looked like super modern, and and they were all a bunch of like in the eighties, they were all a bunch of like buffed out, like tough looking guys. You know. I was just I was used to like Chicago cops look like goons and the and they've always come heavy,

but they like Scha cops. The air kind of looked like fat ass like mob guys or something, you know. So like in LA as a kid, I was always kind of tripped out by Darryl Gates and OAPD. But you know what Gates is most kind of known for is stuff like the CRASH program, which began prior to gates his tenure. But you know, the movie Colors like was about CRASH, which is an acronym for Community Resources against Street Hooligans. It uh, it originally was called TRASH

Total Resources against Street Houlians. And I would say the references like we're like the garbage man, We're taking out the fucking trash, and LABD realized like when that would public well this this isn't like great pr But you know, Gates also was the father of SWAT. He devised SWAT, which initially was Special Weapons Assault Team. You know, then

we have special weapons and tactics. But uh, Gates divides that during Parker's tenure, you know, and uh that was actually very forward looking, like one of the reasons why one of one of a million reasons why the FBI is like it's head up his ass, you know how, Like their direct to action capability is still the hostage rescue team and their operational paradigm like until very recently was that treat everything as if it's a hostage situation,

which makes which makes no sense. Whatsoever, Like Gates a SWAT model was it? I mean he actually proceeded. He proceeded kind of like a lot of the a lot of the military types were dynamically and progressive minded of the day in tactical terms, I mean not political terms. You know, who were around like the Special Operations Forces community, you know, and in those days, I was before there was an integrated command or anything, and it was hard

to get anything done. It's like in the individual commands it kind of what kind of made or broke everything was, you know, who was in a leadership role. But but for better or we worse LPD SWAT, you know, they they were very dynamic, you know, and there's a kind of a full repertoire of of of force responses that they trained for, you know, and they were very serious guys.

But crash and which culminated in an Operation Hammer, which the opening on the movie Colors, which I think Colors is a fucking great movie, but the opening scene or LAPD they they just like swarm the city and they basically like they basically throw bracelets on like every known gang member or like everybody or like every or every like military age male like flying colors and they like throw them in the county jail, you know, to kind of get an idea like not like not just to

like send it, to literally lay the hammer down and say like l E. P D runs the street. But uh, they wanted to get an under they wanted they wanted to also like get these guys government names all in the system, but they also wanted to get an idea like forest levels that like major sets head you know, crips, Blood's Eighteenth Street, you know, all those all all those mobs in in in south central and East LA. But it was, uh, but that but that that was to

the end of like community based policing. It's like, okay, we got the spare plunk of our forests. Crash you know, every uh every police I think there's eighteen police districts in Los Angeles and every district had a crash unit. Now like a sign to it, but crash had like city wide jurisdiction. Like a lot of these guys had been actively gang banging like before they you know, went to the police academy. L APD knew that and they did like vet these guys somewhat, but obviously came in

you know, they ran into problems. One of the things that blew the fucking lid off of a rampart scandal is like one of the one of those dudes who was affiliated with death Row Records was like one of their security operatives. He was he was an act. He was an active LAPD cop. He got into a shootout with some other off duty cop over like this over some traffic bullshits and dude died like whoever he was throwing shots at like you know, return fire and killed him.

And uh, dude calls it in you know, the other off duty cops like yeah, like you know, like that has killed this guy who like you know, started squeezing rounds off like lo and behold the found. This guy's a cop. He like works for death Row. He's clicked up with the you know, the same set that like

Suge Knight and all them guys were. But that but that came about like l EPD tried to play it off like all this guy was on bad apple loose stood through the cracks, you know, and unfortunately a lot of young guys from South central you know or insane with into that that life and are thugging it. No, that's that's not what happened, man, Like they like they like the whole thing would crash was that a lot of the guys were on record that like a lot of their a lot of their officers like on record

with like different mobs. That's one of the reasons why they were feared, you know. But that, uh, that's one of the reasons too. Interestingly, also, you know, like the Compton police Department no longer exists, and they were they were like a heavy squad man like, they were very tough, but they they were kind of like a micro cosm of you know this, they had their own culture because and I mean they were you know, they were their

own police department. But they I think now Common's police by La County Sheriffs like like the the so call fellas will correct me, but I think that to his jurisdiction.

But they it was like the same institutional sensibility and Compton like in a scaled down way, but like Chicago was different, Like uh, like Chicago was done like a thug police department and still is in a lot of ways, but like they did stuff differently, you know, and it was like the big the kind of share punk of Chicago Police was like the Red Squad which endured until the eighties, you know, but they uh it was just different. But the it uh and less like overtly paramilitary. I

guess that's like part of it. Like Chicago PD. The is kind of like a moie thief, like the way the way those guys their relationship to the outfit and kind of just like the way they do things. It's like it's like low key whatever presence. You know, it's a it was a different kind of sensibility. But you

know that was the big thing. Uh, my big memory of Gates, you know whatever, Like I said, growing up when I when I'd be in so call, like you know, Gates was on TV a lot and and then like a lot of like kind of mainstream like right wing guys like love Darryl Gates. There's even a video game. You remember you were Sierras Systems that there's those those kings Quest games. Okay, there was there was kings Quest,

there was Space Quest. Well there was Darryl Gates Police Quest for like the Apple two C And I remember like a friend of mine, like junior high, he like gave me like a copy of it. Let me borrow it or something. And uh yeah, like Darryl Gates is like the only police pigs he please you in America. He had like his face in a freaking video game. But uh, but people, there's a there's a bunch of like I remember fools like Martin Downey Junior like loved

Daryl Gates. But then the other side, you know, he was, uh he was like this hate figure for for for liberals and stuff. But I remember when poor Reginald Denny got moved on by them people in South Central and it was the truck driver got pulled out of his pulled out of his truck and and and and beaten an into his life. You know, his skull fractures. There's a horrible case. Gates personally arrested, served the warrants on those suspects, and he was in like full riot gear.

It seemed tasteless to me. It's like, okay, first of all, it's not a role appropriate for a fucking police chief. Like secondly, it's like you're using this poor guy's victimization as some flex like get out of here.

and Mercia Clark hitting up your proscatorial team. But the whole like keep also don't understand. And some of the jurors attested to this, you know, Mark Furman is a total fucking weirdo, like like a total weirdo, and like it's not everybody's like, oh people just people just acquitted OJ because of racism. That's not really what put people off about Furman. I mean, yeah, that didn't help any I'm sure with some of those jurors were like ignorant people who were like, oh, he said the N word.

But the context of how those tapes came about, we're bizarre. Furman was a compulsive liar. He was a stolen valor case, like he lied about being like underfire and nom and like like all these shit, the dude, it's a fucking psycho, you know, Like that's the real issue with him. And it was pretty obvious he and van at are they basically framed a guilty guy, because that's just like what

they did. And this is like what LAPD did. You show up on the scene, you decide how you know, you can fabulate a narrative about how you came upon the inculplatory evidence. Then you kind of just like arrange it whoever you want. And that's like what you put on record, as you know, and as to what becomes the case in chief. And I've had guys say to me, all police departments did that, and I'm like, no, they didn't. Man, Like that's really nuts and really screwy. You know, that's

a screwy way to do it, and and unnecessary. You know, like if they if they played that stray from from jump, they would have gotten their conviction. But I mean everything about it was like, goofy man. And then and then OJ, he's an armed man, he's wanted for multiple murder. He's traveling at a high rate of speed to the airport. If I do that, I get shot in the face. Immediately by like swat OJ they're like calling him on his cell phone, like politely asking him to turn himself in.

So it's on the one hand, you're like framing a guilty guy. We don't need to. But then instead of like throwing the bracelets on him when he's when he when he's when he's wanted for double murder, you're like calling him and asking him to come by like at the traffic tickets. I mean, this is this is real dysfunction, you know, like and it's and that that's one hundred ten percent the fault of the internal leadership cadre of LAPD.

It's not like God being liberals like ruining police work like they did a lot of this ship to themselves. You know, I have a and uh and having and having dudes or like on record like with the crips or whatever, like actively gang banging like in l E. P D when and and it being like totally above board that they're gang bangers. But it's okay because this is part of how we this is this is part of how we you know, we maintain our our high

level of police intelligence. These are the are four I mean that that's that's totally insane and you can't you can't put that on like the Enemies of Law and order like that that came from insidellit PV man. But yeah, we're coming up on the hour. I think, man, let's let's call it. I'll do a part three on Joseph Wamba and if you want me to or if if if you yeah, okay, part will cover. Yeah, we'll cover to the onion field and Joseph Wambas. I think that

that's important stuff. But yeah, I don't see.

Like you realized the Black Seminoles. It was like it was like outlaw white dudes on the run. It was like runaway slaves like Indian braves who had been like cast out of their tribe whatever, who like became this kind of like Mad Max sort of mob. That's what the Black Seminoles were. It was like.

in the twenty second. But if you want to bang another one out before we go, or if you want to do like movie night, we could do that too, or if you want to wait to get big, that's fine.

seven dot com. That's all I get.

as an essential institution of government. And Wamba was an East Coast guy. He came from Pittsburgh. He was German Irish and his dad was a policeman out there. But Wamba he joined LAPD when he got out of the Marine Corps as a young guy, and I think he started about fourteen years as a police you know, from nineteen sixty until the mid seventies. But for context, like a lot of dudes would all they'd relocate to la to join LAPD. LAPD was like the top of policing.

And one of the things that was peculiar about nineteen ninety one and the Rodney King situation, Like it wasn't peculiar that that happened. It wasn't peculiar unfortunately that it jumped off into this race war. But a lot of people don't understand that. Unlike Chicago especially, but also like unlike I mean, our police department, we all like a thug police department, you know, like we really do. I

grudgingly like Chicago Feed for reasons. I've got like a complicated relationship with them, but uh, they never had They always had like a dirty fucking reputation. And New York, you know, they always had a reputation as being like corrupted by like ward BOSSESM and like mafia politics and stuff.

But like LA, it was considered to be this like impeccable, impeccably professional police force, and they had a wrap for like not being quote unquote recently and like they actually had a rep for you know being you know, very progressive according to the relevant metrics. I don't like that term, but you know, just people understand what I mean. I'm sure.

So the fact that this like kind of took a nose dive in the early nineties is interesting, you know, but that's Wambach started writing when he was a cop, and his first his first book was The New Centurions, which is very much kind of like Approbe. It's almost like the top gun of like the police Department. You know, it's about like hero cops doing this crazy stuff like a lot of and the centerpiece is kind of the watch riots and then he wrote The Blue Night, which

was very much in that vein. But then like when he when he realized he could get paid as an author and his books were actually moving at volume, you know, he retired away from the police department to write, and then he wrote The Choir Boys, which is like this kind of savage takedown of lapd you know it like people get read to Catch twenty two, which I think is an overrated book, but it's like way nastier than that.

It reminds me of the short Timers. It's like really really nasty, but but not in a way that's unduly tunaive. I think it actually reflects the eraror. I mean it was before my time. You know, my civic memory begins in the very early eighties. I don't remember the seventies. I was born in the seventies. But in between that kind of trilogy of fiction books, like later we started writing kind of like hard boiled detective stuff. But in

between Nat he wrote this seminal. It's probably the it's probably the seminal true crime book after in Cold Blood. It was It's the Onion Field, which was a horrible case, and uh Wamba was a was a police when this incident happened. And uh, I'll get into the details of it in a minute, but it these two police offers ofs and was were abducted and murdered or one of them was murdered, the other one got away. The guy got away. It's almost like he endured a fate worse

than had he been murdered, you know. But that and the film version. They made a TV movie out of it, which one of which one of was one of James Woods's first roles. And James Woods, the guy he plays the cop killer was this guy named Gregory Ulis Powell. Like if that's not like an old school comic name, I don't know what it is. But Woods, they looked exactly like to do. It was like uncanny, and you know it. Uh, Parker was a LAPD chief when this

went down. And Parker, for all of his kind of for all the good things we can say about him, he really really mismanaged the aftermath of this situation. And then it's interesting how, you know, despite the I'm the first one to suggest that it's ridiculous, and people talk about how, oh, in the pre Kennedy assassination era that we lived in simple times or something like America was

totally fucking flure. There were no simple times, especially when you're talking about America, which is like literally born out of like race war, Like that's ridiculous. However, there was a weird randomness to violence and particularly homicide that very suddenly jumped off and endured in absolute earnest for about

thirty five years, and then very very suddenly stopped. I kind of think of like the last incident of that cycle in terms of perception and media narrative as Columbine okay, and like it just like dropped off suddenly, like nobody can explain it, you know, like the freakonomics types that book's kind of fallen off would thankfully because it it's

an idiotic book. But the refrain of the kinds of lefty progressives was, oh well, Roe v. Wade meant that, you know, unwanted children weren't born, so all these kinds of social pathologies that that would have afflicted this this population that didn't exist. You know, we're absent. So you know that that's why. That doesn't explain why, and it's not you know, there there were many population booms to immigration and only to other things, particularly glocalized. And this

hasn't like duplicated, like it doesn't make any sense. It's it's I mean, I have my own thoughts on why these kinds of things happened that, but that's probably you know, mostly probably dismissed it as overly metaphysical because it may like the Onion Field case, it very much like like even more so than the Kidy Genevi's incident, which is which has kind of been like mythologized and there's a

lot of cap around what actually happened there. You know, that was that poor woman who was assaulted and like stabbed to death in front of our neighbors, and nobody did anything and nobody called it in. I mean, granted that was particularly awful because she was truly like a defenseless female, But the Onion Field situations ned more brazen because like these guys they just like murdered a cop

and like the sub Keebles didn't do like that. I mean, yeah, there's the public enemy's era, Like some decades before guys would like shoot it out with the police, but it's like straight up in cold blood like murdering a cop, like shooting him in the face when you didn't have to like that.

and like robbing. People said he could get dope, you know, and Powell really kind of like roped them into this like psycho stuff, you know. And that's not just a that's not just the cop out at trial. Those dynamic there really are dynamics like that. There's another thing as like a partnership of equals between rappies who do bizarre violent crimes. It's always and Powell too. He he didn't have a traditional criminal background, Like he was raised in

some crummy suburb of Detroit. His father was a musician, this itinerant musician, and they never had any money. But Powell ran away from the home when he was fourteen or fifteen, and he took up with this kind of fake, a tinerant priest who molested him, totally screwed him up. So after that, Powell would like he periodically decided he was gay, even though like by the time he was arrested, he had like a wife who was pregnant with his kid.

But then Powell goes to prison. First it was a death row, and then he got manumitted, you know when when the Supreme Court struck down the death penalty, you know, and he got in in typo California fashion. There was a couple of retrials, but he ended up serving a life without parole. Okay, he had a couple of parole hearings decades on, but I mean there was no chance

he was gonna get a conditional release. But when he was behind the wall, he decided he was like full on gay, and he started like writing for like gay rights publications and stuff. It was like an early example of like the gay movement having horrible optics because in one of their rags that I guess was pretty widely circulated in the West Coast in the seventies and eighties, it's like, why do you have this like cop killer like drawing little cartoons and writing for you so then

you know something like pulled that stuff. But you know, just like a bizarre guy. And he when he when he committed this murder, like apparently as a young guy, like he did a bunch of he did a bunch of felony stints for armed robbery because his thing was like robbing liquor stores and grocery stores. Like he didn't have a dope have or anything. He was like doing this stuff. And he'd apparently had brain surgery that's it's now believed was botched, and like he it basically like

fried his his impulse control. And I think today with you know, modern imaging equipment and stuff, it would probably be clear that this guy's brain was a wreck, like his physical brain, because his criminal career doesn't make any sense. And also just like the sexual stuff, like doesn't really track and but he he Uh, Jimmy young Blood was on was on parole and he was in this program before method on was widely prescribed and before stuff like

sub attacks. There's this really strange compound that that apparently had really deleterious effects on internal organ and things that they were trying to give to heroin addicts because it was kind of like the shot the alcoholics, but it didn't really work. But young Blood was conditionally paroled and he was he was able to go to this medical center for parole league or they shoot him up with this with this compound and that supposedly would would hear

him of his of his habit. And he ran across Powell because Powell, along other bizarre things like Powell was married to a white woman and his whole family was white, but Powell basically exclusively hung around black folks, which is weird. I mean, it's weird today, it was really weird in nineteen sixty. But that's how young Blood ran into him. And uh, he was pulling a heist with this degenerate alcohol like like a hobo who was a part time like shoe shine man and Powell somehow I mean presuma.

It was not really clear, but presumably it was because young Blood needed money for dope that he got. He got sucked into this nonsense of like pulling these like Hindsted heights, like liquor stores and stuff or what amounts

to chump change. So their pads crossed with these cops because one night, uh paula Youngblood, we cruising uh Los Angeles, like presumably they were casing, you know, a place to rob, you know, and they had this They had this ancient nineteen forty six Ford coop, you know, like an old gangster movies, you know, like it's it's got that like sloped trunk and stuff, you know, if you know what old Fords look like. And these two police, uh Ian

Campbell and Carl Hedinger. Campbell was the guy woended up getting blasted and murdered, and you know, both young guys. Campbell, if I memory series, was a Korean war vet, and he was the older man. He was a Scottish type guy like he played he literally played bagpipes, you know, like a real heroic guy, you know, and and heading Gerr obviously looked up to him. But they were they

were assigned to this March ninth, sixty three. They were assigned to his duty and you know, in playing clothes like you know, basically aggressive policing of the old type, you know, and before surveillance tech, like you basically just like look out for you know, possible possible subjects like you know, like in like on the make or whatever. You know. So they pulled over young Blood and Powell, and Powell just suddenly like drew down on him. You got the jump on him on Campbell and this is

key head Injurer. Uh had drawn his service revolver and he refused to give it up until Campbell said he's got a gun on me, meaning Powell, you know, give up your weapon. And l EPD doctrine at that time was that if somebody gets to drop on you, give up your weapon, because nobody's going to kill a cop for no reason, you know, like that was the thinking. So then uh, Powell, he gets in the front seat,

he orders Campbell to drive his car. Young Blood he gets in the back with Headinger, and I think young Blood had a sowd off shotgun, you know. So then Powell was just like drive, you know, and Campbell's like where are we going? And Powell's like, just drive, you know. He's like, I'm not gonna hurt you guys, but you just got to drive. We got to get out of the city. So he drives them all the way to Baker's Field and he stops. Finally, he orders Campbell to stop,

literally in this onion field. And Headinger said that like, even before they stop, he's like it was pitch play. He couldn't see anything, but he's like the overwhelming odor of onions. He's like it was making everybody's eyes tear up. You think it was surreal. So they stop, Powell orders everybody out, and then, according to both young Blood and Headinger, Pawell look Campbell in the face and he says, are

you familiar with the Lindenberg Law. It's not clear what he meant by that, Like, presumably he was referring to the federal kidnapping statue, which kind of colopially, I guess would have been the Lindenberg Law. And that was a big deal because after Lindberg Baby, that's another horrible case.

After the after Lindberg's son, infant son was killed by ransom kidnappers, you know, a federal statute was passed that you know, imposed there was no there was no open ended federal death penalty, but kidnapping for ransdom became a death penalty offense after that. So presumably in like the warped and like mangled mind of Powell, his notion was, I don't want to waste you, but I have to now because I kidnapped you, which makes zero sense. Then he doesn't blast him in the face. He like, I

think he had like a twenty five automatic. He just like emptied the magazine into him.

was like panic panicking, and he didn't blast him. So Hedinger ran for literally four miles and there was some kid, some uh, some black kid who was getting an early start, like some farm hand, you know, like three in the morning, you know, had and told him what happened, and then you know, he he called for help and everything. But the way that dealt with Headinger, Parker forced him to

address like police academy classes. He forced into a dress like squad rooms full of street officers, like basically reliving what had happened to him and then having the watch commander say, see, this is why you never give up your weapon. You'll end up like him, I mean, like basically torturing the guy, you know, under auspices. I mean, I think Parker was that of too, so I think he didn't realize what was wrong with this, and then he put him on coaching duty as his personal driver

and headingers prodective. We started losing his mind, you know, and he didn't know what it handlecks. On the one hand, everybody like pitied him. On the other hand, they treated him with this kind of like haughty contempt, like he was some kind of pussy or something, and he gave

him a very sad end. He ended up getting dismissed from the police department because he was he was doing bizarre things, including like shoplifting worthless items, and it was obvious that and he said, like the guy like blew a gasket, I mean obviously not to be flippant or mean about it. You know. He ended up up ended up working as a gardener and then like drinking himself

to death in middle age. Like in the nineties. You know, this is like a horrible situation, but that one of the one of the this maybe huge impact on the public consciouness, but particularly police and the cultural policing. It was already going in kind of a strange direction anyway, okay, And that that's really what that's really kind of what put over the idea of like paramilitarized policing, you know, and that stuff like the Watts riots like solidified it.

You know, like for context. During Watts there there was like snipers taking up positions to like blast cops. You know. It was like urban combat, you know. And Wallah makes a big deal in the Choir Boys. By the nineteen seventies, a lot of police departments, including a p D, had adopted the commander rank. And he thought that this was really bad, you know. And it's the subjects of the

Choir Boys. It opens up in Vietnam and two of the two of the cops, two of the choir Boys, they're they have this terrifying experience for their hiding from the North Vietnamese Army in a cave like outside of Kusan.

at the time. But all of them except got of the old head he's around fifty, who's still a beat cop just because that's where he's comfortable. They're all Vietnam vets, and they're all unhinged. They've all got like a head full of war and they are of LAPD. They act that we sought out guys who had experienced and non that wasn't accidental. Some of that went on here too.

I'm not even saying that was misguided on his own terrors, but the way I questioned some of the motives for that, Like John Burge, you know, who was a fucking menace like here. You know, Berg tortured a bunch of confessions out of people like and a lot of these guys like hadn't done anything. But Burge. Burge was an MP and NOM, but he was involved in all kinds of strange stuff and he had a bronze star with the

valor device. He'd been in the action. But he also a lot of his duty involved enhanced interrogation of Viet Cong suspects. You know. So this man had a skill set that for the nineteen seventies police department, it was very much in demand. You know. And while I've always makes the point in the Choir Boys especially, but in a lot of his other stuff, you know, he's like a police department's basically a political administration. He's like, you

have it. It has to be visible because the voters want. The voters want to be able to call somebody if not to be crassed, like their kids walking to school and he runs about some guy jaking off in the bushes or something. Okay, they want to believe it's some kind of like formal recourse for that. But like the police can't solve sociological problems, like the police can't solve like a race war. The police can't make people like not use drugs, like this isn't something, this isn't like

these aren't criminal matters. I mean, they can become that way. But it's like Wahabbah's all points. So in the choir boys, basically, these guys have an impossible job and some of them are just like goons who want their name to ring

out and they just like to fuck people up. Like some of them are like like nineteen sixties idealist boomer types who think that like, oh, well, you know, if you can if you can bring some kind of diplomacy and understanding, you know, the officer civilian interaction, and then we can have like a more peaceable community. But it's

like that's not the police's job either, you know. So the recurring motif and wlahah blah stuff is like cops and commit suicide because they just become like they just like crash the fuck out, and especially them, that's the very real thing, you know, and it's some walla blah makes the point. You know, in the sixties or seventies when all this crazy stuff was happening, even if you survived twenty years as like a beat cop, like you don't get shot, you don't get like maimed, you know,

you get like your full pension. He's like, oh, be fine. Now I'm like retired, but I'm like forty one years old, Like what I'm gonna do is with my life, And a lot of these guys were divorced by then. They got a drinking problem. It's like something like sit around my house and like drink a lot, Like how many fishing trips can you possibly take? Like it's not it's not.

Being like a big city cop is not a good way to go through life, you know, and like I'm not, I'm not I'm like trashing guys whose life shook out that way. Like there's a lot of polices who like follow my content and stuff and that's great, but you know, while I'm like he basically, uh, there's always a stock character in his novels or something like older guy who like helps rookies understand I used to survive like in the deep hood and how you can like make it

to twenty years. But then these guys like well, like you know, three months after they retire, everybody gets a word like blew their fucking brains out. And while boy he kind of would hint around it because he, you know, was like a reserved guy, but you know, he said, there's a reason why like I left the police force immediately when I started making money from writings. He's like, I was gonna end up like one of those guys, you know, And that's that's pretty that's pretty that's pretty

bleak man. But uh, the what significant too is is what like a microcosm it is of of then versus now, you know, And that's one of one of the reasons for I mean, obviously the these these these horrible people in government and and these in geo radicals and and others he shall not be named, you know that they obviously sees on stuff like like like the George Floyd situation,

you know, as a kind of detonation strategy. But the reason why they're able to do that is because policing as it's been conceptualized really from the mid twentieth century onward, like that's that's that's dead, like that's obsolescent, you know, like it doesn't you know, if we've said what Alma said about it being basically a political function and a kind of like sociological theater, like people don't respond to

it that way anymore. And also like do you like what do your body camps changes everything because like what cops do is such that like I'm not I'm not talking about like Navary type police, but like Chicago PD, you're like l EPD, You're like NYPD. Like the kind of stuff these guys do, you know, Like basically, uh, it basically evolves like breaking down like street dudes who otherwise would be cavalier in the way that they apply violence.

And you can't have it it because you know, as a sovereign government, local or otherwise can't allow that and still retain credibility. But also there's got to be an understanding that if you transgress certain parameters, like you're gonna get broken down and you can't. That doesn't work in

the air of the Panopticon. But it's also people just kind of move differently, like the whole One of the one of the recurring motifs, especially in the Choir Boys, is like when these cops answer calls, like in the deep Hood, it's like you're all by yourself. And even and until the eighties, squad cars were called cold radio cars because cops didn't even have a radio on their person.

So basically, like you go through a door if you're partnered with somebody, and police armers deployed how they deployed like varied by region and by department. But at best you're gonna have like one guy with you and the most firepower you're gonna have as a twelve gage, which is a great weapon, don't get me wrong, But that doesn't if you're if there's RNA men five D. But

like that, that doesn't do anything, you know. So while I'm talking about how scary it was to like have to like breach doors by yourself, you know, but now I mean not only the cops have body cams and most police farmers it's like literally like a live feed like back to where they're deployed from. You know, they're in constant content with a radio on their person, like deployment patterns of such of a total situational awareness. But also like things are just like different, like you wouldn't

there's not the same potential for lawlessness. It's like when lawlessness does jump up, it's very punctuated and it's very

scaled and it's very bad. But there'd never be a situation like the Bronx was back in the eighties, or like Wrigley Bill was in the early eighties, when it was like a shithole where there's just kind of like guys moving around and not like praying on random people, you know, because they want money you're there or something like that doesn't happen anymore, you know, not not because not not because people have become less simian or something,

but it that's just not how you move anymore. If if you're if you if you're on the make like that, you know so and also too, like it like people people are hip to the fact they're like always on camera, you know, like if you're gonna do I mean, don't get me wrong, Like horrible stuff does still happen, and there's like a way you can do it where you're

you're out of sight of the electric eye. But it's it's it's different and people's living patterns too, Like you don't have you don't have situations anymore where people where we've got like thousands and thousands of people are kind of like trapped in some urban environment that's failing and like even like the deep hood that's its own thing, but it's different and it's kind of like bandit country,

you know. It's the people there aren't like actively engaging with the police and wanting the police to kind of help quash these anti social instincts that you know, periodically flare up and stuff. So I maintain that like modern policing is dying and you and in the traditional sense, the traditionally understood sense of what the job entailed. It's not like illegal for cops to move that way. So I mean, this isn't you know, And I know that especially a lot of older folks and I'm not transging

older folks. I am one. They have this idea like, well, we just need to take the gloves off and quote what cops do their job. Like they don't understand what I'm talking about. Like even if like you told cops like look you can you can crack heads and like break people the fuck down, like it's nineteen eighty nine, that wouldn't resolve the problem. And the public wouldn't like that, I don't think, Like that wouldn't make them the wouldn't make bougies feel safe. That's not what they want. They

don't want the police to go away. They're full of shit when they claim that on Facebook or whatever. But what I just describe like isn't what they want. But also I get you know it, it uh I don't think that, uh I, I don't. I don't think the will would be there anyway because it's too open ended, if that makes any sense. And uh I think too. You know, this is not just for political reasons. But

this has been in the running for a minute. And you know, guys like Tellus shit I used to write about this in the nineties and he he and those like him got something's wrong, but they got something's right. And the privatization of armed force as well as protective services, that's very much like a real thing, and that's increasingly gonna become the face of policing and and and in in fifty years. I don't think you're gonna have a

regular police department. Like, yeah, obviously, if you go you go kill your neighbor, you know, somebody is going to show up, somebody there was somebody who are gonna be heavily armed. They're gonna like take you into custody and pull you before we judge. But it's not gonna be We have guys in these like blue and white cars driving around like looking for people who are fucking up or something like. That's done. That's not gonna happen anymore.

You know, and even even here where things are like a lot more draconian and we're kind of like in a time warp here, like police are like way way less like aggressive in terms of what kind of conduct though the the'll for bracelets on you for you know, and it's not that that's not just uh and then that's enduring even now that like you've got we've got like a very like law and order president denewable office. It's not it's not as the pendulum swinging back or

something like. It's like sociologically, the things have become such that what we're describing is is no longer viable and you know, I uh, it's it should it should seem strange to people anyway, like whether you live in the city or the country. This idea of we're gonna hire a bunch of young military age meals who aren't from your community, who you have no idea who these guys are. They're going to be heavily armed and just kind of like tell you to do things and lay the hammer

down on people when they decided crimes underway. That's like really really really invasive, you know, And there's conditions where you've got to sacrifice certain freedom of movement and liberty because otherwise there can't be public order. And that's absolutely the way things were in the mid twentieth century. Things

aren't like that anymore, you know. And one of the things that underlies the fact that, like the gun control lobby, you finally gave up, Like it's not just because the issue became like a big loser politically, like that put the mistakes, the cause or the effect, Like that issue became a loser because frankly, if you don't want aggressive policing, you you basically have to accept the fact that people that American is going to be armed to the teeth,

you know. And it's really interesting, very abruptly, everybody just

kind of capitulated on that issue. You know, I realized it's still token efforts and bullshit, you know, and meaningless derivations you know, like oh, this is an assault weapons, so it's bad and it's banned, even though assault weapons don't exist, or there's you know, ways locally like here you can sort of like bury people under paperwork to deprive them of their Second Amendment rights in a defecto kind of way, while still you know, complying with the

litter of the law. But you know, the circumstances I'm always describing about deliberate communities, you know, quitting the the social engineering regime, which is already happening. But in those liberate communities, you're not gonna have just like random guys

from other places coming in to police them. People aren't gonna tolerate that anymore, you know, Like it's not gonna tolerate Like I'm like random white guys doing that, Like, we're not gonna tolerate some like random fucking Hindu guys who watched too much TV deciding they're gonna calle policas Like that's over with, you know, gonna be places.

that's a really great movie. It's just cool, but it's also you know, like when it opens up and it's Operation Hammer, where Gates is basically like like Flying Crash, they're just like they're throwing the brace Thatt's on like any like any military age male, like Flying Gang Colors, because Gates's notion is like, let's arrest like all these motherfuckers.

And even if they bond out, you know, in thirty six hours when they get in front of a judge or even if like you know, they get cut loose without even a bonding set, He's like, now we know.

Now we've got an idea like the forest levels of these guys and what they're set is, and like what what territory they claim, you know, so we can build like a conceptual picture of like what op for is and uh, like it really was like a war, you know, and the movie gets into that, you know, like especially where I think, uh, they don't other than the crypts in the Blood is like they use euphemism as for the other gangs, but they're but there's like the there's

like the mostly Spanish gang but they're supposed to be eighteenth Street and like they assault the crypts and uh like the one dude, the one who's gotta mac ten and then Don Hiedl he's got an a k and they're like throwing the throwing like frags at each other. Like it's not as like I was watching this movie with this chick. I was watching them with this chick. I know, it was like a lot younger than me,

and she was like laughing. I'm like, no, you don't understand, like shit was like that, and like that's not just like cartoons stuff, you know. And uh so, I mean, I I I don't think Gates was was a great guy, but I understand what is I understand is his tad orientation and it wasn't just crazy or and he wasn't just being some tyrant or something. But I mean, that's that's not the way things that's not the way things

are anymore. And you know, also, I like nine to eleven change things in ways that I don't think in ways they're in ways they're severe but also somewhat subtle man and like I you know, basically there's certain sorts of conduct that take the individuals so engaged out of consideration as a criminal actor and it becomes okay to blast them. And this is what this is a fact.

You know. So this idea that well, you know, the Norman idea, like well we need the police because like what about terrorism or what about like may I shooters. It's like, that's not really a police problem. Like that means you need people to deploy to kill them, you know what I mean, that's that's that's not to say you post up the army of the National Guard to patrol the streets, but that means that the response to those kinds of crises are not We're going to send

a police department to frisk and arrest people. You know, it's a totally different mission orientation. And increasingly that kind of thing is going to be privatized. It's like, if the idea is, which the idea should be for anyone who's serious about physical security of that store, is to preempt violence before it happens, well, I mean you you basically it's like Derek Prince talked about after the attempt

on Trump's life on one of those podcasts. He's like you don't really want a police sensibility if you're trying to protect the president or presidential candidate. You know you're not You're not looking for poth suspicious people. You're not scanting the crowd for a guy who's maybe strapped. You know, you're looking for threats. And when you identify those threats,

you you you neutralize them. And yeah, like sometimes you're wrong and that's bad, But I mean that that's the the liabilities, moral and material that attend any any any profession that that you know deals with the violent its currency. But you know that the Princess is an interesting guy and he he, he understands this better than most people,

despite the facts his background is military, not police. But I think that actually is one of the things to which is insight, oh is because it's hard to see the parameters of of changing phenomena, particularly sociological or or or or political phenomenon like from within an institution, you know, and if you're if you even if you're on the younger side, if you'l like a cop who's been doing this for a decade or longer, like like basically you're

in you're in your entire conceptual horizon, you know, orbits around kind of like police science and and the kind of strictures that uh, you know supposedly are the are the kind of core tenets of of policing, when when that's that's pretty much dead in the water. And I mean especially these days too, you know. I Uh, one of the I lament a lot the death of the public intellectual like as a as a type of person,

because I think they played an essential role. And that's one of the reasons things have been done down so much unto the Cold War is it's hard to determine this is like a causal Varia Bullard or just like a secondary effect. Maybe it's both. But you know, there's this really great documentary called The Futurists, and uh it came out in the seventies, like around the time. It very much like was riffing on Alvin Toffler, the guy who wrote Future Shock, which is a really good book.

But you know, this is the only guy I've heard talk about the fact that you know, these days, if if you want to hurt people, or if you want to or if you want to assassinate a public official or a or a high value target, you don't even need to put eyes on them and and and close physical distance and blast them. I mean you could, you could program drones to swarm them like that would take

some planning and some money. But there's there's guys who have never even had a smartphone, like in the tribaler is a Pakistan, like they they learn how to program drones. It's not like you need to be some It's not you need to be some like under seventeen like boy genius to do it. You know, they're they're very they're they're very utile in bail field situations for that reason,

you know. And uh so this idea too that like well unless we have like physical eyes on the ground doing like patrols like we we we can't control a we can't not control. We can't we can't provide security for you know, for a physical space like this nonsense, Like you don't need to do that anymore. In fact, that might not even help. But what are you gonna

hypothetically in God forbid and that God doesn't happen. I mean, let's say let's say the president or you know, somebody else wasn't like Trump situation and like it doesn't like drones like converge on them like a series I was gonna do we start blasting the drones. They're if they're kind of cozy, drones are all gonna die and then blow up, you know, I mean, like what what are you gonna do about them? It's such that there is

a countermeasure. I mean, yeah, you do any you do still need eyes on the operational area, like ly looked like spotting where somebody controlling those drones. But that guy could be fourteen klometer away. Okay, you know things like that, you know, and I realized that like people pete, the rebuttal is gonna be like like subs watch and it's gonna be like, well, that's not what like beat cops do. It's like no, But that comes back to what I

said before. A lot of this stuff is is becoming private eyes and a lot of it, you know, there's not really a civic culture that interfaces with the bureaugrac anymore. You know, like in a lot of ways that's positive because stuff like we're doing, we're building genuine community and a deliberate way. But I I don't want to fuck with the police, Like if somebody, if somebody tried to

hurt me or my dad and my home. I defend myself, and God forbid, if somebody died, like somebody attagging me, obviously i'd call it in so I didnt get charged with murder. But beyond that, like if somebody, if somebody if like if I was at Starbucks and I find I discover somebody stole my wallet, I'm not gonna call it police. They're not going to care, Like what are they gonna do? You know, this isn't nineteen eighty or something where it's like if you have a problem, oh,

you call the police. Because there's kind of like this not particularly intimate or or or or or deep, but there is this kind of like basic moral consensus where it's like, okay, like all all you know, all non marginal people like call the police to resolve you know, these these kinds of slights to the person of their property, Like nobody thinks that way anymore, you know, so a lot of that's dead. And as far as like physical security and stuff, it's like, well, you know, you should

be you should be thinking about self defense. You shouldn't be thinking like I'm gonna call the police protect me.

I mean, don't'et me wrong. I realize there's you know, if you're like a single woman in like a big city or something like, I have no doubt that that can be like very scary, and you know, you need to be able to call people to help you and stuff, because you know, some people are vulnerable and that's a difficult question, you know, and there's gonna be there's gonna be gaps in in the protection that certain vulnerable people need. And that's not a good thing. But that's the way

things always are. That doesn't somehow neck gate or defeat sociological trends that are driven by historical processes and move ons, you know, So that's important. What I will say is, I take it back, is not forgive me. One of the I should have said this when we were kind of breaking down Wandblas catalog. The New Centurions is like a good book. Yeah, it's like pro police stuff. And because he was he was like an LAPD sergeant when he wrote it, and so obviously he wasn't gonna trash

the organization. But also, you know, like we talked about an early earlier episode, LAPD has always been kind of like uniquely inter based with media, Like I guarantee that La PD was way more involved in like the process A many officer was like writing something, whether it was like a TV or a film script or a novel. So I guarantee you he had like like administration guys like literally looking over his shoulder. But it does this.

It basically it doesn't have a traditional plot. It's very episodic and there's three It follows these three young guys like through the police a kid, I mean, then like they hit the street, and like one of the guys names is Duran. He's basically like a he's like a Tejano guy, but he's he's like a white dude. He like doesn't identify with like Chicanos. He's not from East La.

But because of like his appearance and his surname, like he gets deployed like East La and like a heart Basically I think around echo Park, I have to reread it. But he uh, that's probably the most like people criticised the book saying like, oh well, but he draws none of my characters in simple minded terms. I think that's the wrong way to look at it, because always do with Duran is that Duran's like he he gets like the Echo park Beat or whatever, and he's like, I'm

not like these fucking people like their scumbaggs. But then he realizes, like on the street, like you are Mexican, like you are mister policeman. People think you're one of them. You know, it doesn't matter, and like as and it's interesting too because like his perspective obviously, and those the people he's charged with policing, Like as the Watchwrights jump off, you see, like what the Spanish folks are thinking, you know, because they're kind of like they're kind of like this

third variable, you know. And then like one of the dudes is he's like this guy like funk guy college, you know, and he's like do something. So he becomes a cop, you know, and he's convinced he's like smarter than everybody and shit, and he kind of like looks down on his fellow officers. He's just like it's kind of like regular like middle class white dude. But then like he gets he gets assigned like the deep hood.

It's like when watch jumps off, like he gets he's, uh, he's like under fire and stuff, and then he realizes, like uh, he gets like humbled by the whole experience, you know, like stuff like that. It's you know, and I'm sure some people, especially like younger guys and girls, who would think it was like corny, like the kind of you know, the kind of like nineteen sixties era kind of like bumper sticker patriotism. But it is like a it is kind of like a snapshot, and it's

called the New Centurion. It's like the third guy who I think is supposed to be Wamba because he's just kind of like this like regular dude, who's who's you know, he wants to be a police officer and he doesn't have a lot of vices and stuff. But the guy who, uh, the guy who teaches him how to like be a

street cop, ends up coming suicide. But that dude tells him like, we're the new Centurions because basically America is like the failing Roman Empire, you know, and and the only thing that stands between the barbarians, you know, and and what remains a civilization like are us. And that's that's kind of like as bleak and subversive as the book gets. But then like the character that drops that, like he blows his brains out and it turns out he thinks it's a big alcoholic. So I think that's

like by dropping like we'll talk with the Albie. Oh no, that's a disturbed character. But that's interesting because it I, uh, one of the one of the vin yet say, like in the movie Cruising with al But you know, which is an underrated It's like the subject matter is gross and that puts a lot of people off. But I think it's kind of like an American Jallo picture. I really like it. But the the opening scene, there's these two cops and one of us played by Joe Spenell,

and uh, they're driving around. I guess it's uh, I think it. I think they're actually in Alphabet City, but I think it's supposed to be the village and they go by and there's there's there's like these dudes like in leather and these guys, you know, these transsexual and stuff and spells. Just like he's like, what the hell

is happening? You know, and it's like, uh, you get that sense like in the New Centurions, like especially like in the dan Umois where like the characters passed finally crossing to watch it's like, you know, I took this job because I wanted to like help vulnerable people or whatever, and like, I'm literally pinned down my a dumpster because it's a sniper like popping off at me with a thirty six, Like what's happening here? Like something's something's coming apart,

you know, And so it's worthwhile for every reason. Well wrote some later books, and like I said, it's kind of interestingly James Elroy what I have mixed feelings about. But I I do think he's important to Los Angeles culture in some ways, and I I identify with him and in some respects. But he he said when he was home with some he said, uh, he said, he saved a bunch of his money from panhandling and stuff, and and like and uh say goodbye the Onion Field.

It was like his favorite book, you know. And he and he always like Whooped Up the Cops and things like that. And so she she shot out Wamba a lot in his books, and then Wamba started writing books kind of in the vein of Elroy. Like the later stuff he wrote was kind of like a hard boiled type stuff. Like one of his books is about like nineteen eighties, like like Salmonano Valley and like porn shit,

and it's kind of grimy. I mean, that's a grimy fucking subject, but it but it's I didn't find it off putting, but I thought that it was for tablo reasons. I'm mean, I read all kinds of stuff that people probably find I would think it's gross, but it seemed so something. It seems kind of like affected about it. But so I I wouldn't recommend is like later stuff, but definitely definitely read The Onion Field. I don't read

The Choir Boys. The Choir Boys is one of the when I was sending out Frog packages before it became too like Bell Luminous to send them out to people. I want to get back to doing that, but I'm gonna have to do it in a way where it's not just like me going to the post office and sending packages. But I think I sent out like five or six paperbacks to The Choir Boys because I like the book that much and it uh, it's had a not insignificant impact on my own writing. But yeah, that's

about all I got for one. I I appreciate you abiding my suggestions because, like I said, I think I think he's I think he's an important contributor to the kind of catalog of police lid, particularly particularly in the capacities we're talking about. So I thought it was important, man, But I.

because that's my bloodline and my confessional heritage. But obviously, I mean, I'm I'm a fucking like Chicago jag Off. I don't know to them be incited to other than I don't have any great insight into the troubles, man. I just I, I mean, kind of an obsessive study of it because it's my heritage. But obviously you know that that's a totally different thing. But yeah, I think if it I think I think if it got the right audience, they would really pop. And yeah, that's a

good idea. I think now is the time they do it.

that every day. I'm gonna remove five episodes from mind the paywall until season one and two are totally free, and I'm gonna I'm gonna upload a bunch of other like free shit like content that I haven't released before. You can find all of that good stuff on my substack. It's real Thomas seven seven seven at substack dot substack dot com, on social media at capital r E A L number seven h O M A S seven seven seven, and you can go to my website Thomas seven seven

seven dot com. But the first T or the only T is a seven tho are the best plays to define me. And like I said, I'm gonna make some changes, but I keep everybody in the loop of what I'm doing. Like on substack, you know, I at least once a week I shout out like what's happening and what I'm doing. So that's the place to go.