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America’s Militarized Police · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
0:14
Speaker 2: shuck and it's just us today. But that's okay because
0:16
Speaker 2: this is stuff you should know. The Is this a
0:22
Speaker 2: good idea?
0:24
Speaker 1: Oh, I think it's a good idea. You know, we're
0:27
Speaker 1: just going to kind of report what happened over the
0:30
Speaker 1: last you know, sixty years or so in the United States.
0:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's been this increasing trend that Yeah, I guess
0:40
Speaker 2: it's about how long it's been going on where the
0:44
Speaker 2: police departments across the US have become increasingly militarized. And
0:50
Speaker 2: to be specific, it's not just a question of wearing
0:54
Speaker 2: technical helmets and vests, carrying assault rifles sometimes driving through
1:00
Speaker 2: through cities and m wraps and tanks. It's also a
1:05
Speaker 2: change in attitude that it's created where people are no
1:10
Speaker 2: longer citizens who are presumed innocent until proven guilty. They
1:15
Speaker 2: are the enemy and the police at that moment are
1:18
Speaker 2: an occupying force coming in full force to that person's house,
1:24
Speaker 2: or even when they're not doing that, just looking intimidating
1:27
Speaker 2: to basically everyone who sees them. That's essentially what people
1:30
Speaker 2: who talk about this stuff consider the full scope of
1:33
Speaker 2: the militarization of the police.
1:36
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. And like I said, this has been
1:39
Speaker 1: happening since about the nineteen sixties. If you go back
1:43
Speaker 1: in time to like the eighteen hundreds, when cops first
1:47
Speaker 1: started being a thing in the United States, they were
1:50
Speaker 1: initially just hired as politicians. It was called a patronage system,
1:54
Speaker 1: so they were kind of appointed. It wasn't until the
1:57
Speaker 1: nineteenth century that they started get a little more like, hey,
2:02
Speaker 1: let's squash that patronage. Let's hire police instead of appointing them,
2:07
Speaker 1: so they basically don't work for politicians. And that's when
2:11
Speaker 1: union started being founded. That's when formal training programs started.
2:16
Speaker 1: I know a lot of this stuff we've covered in
2:18
Speaker 1: other episodes, but I know, if we talked about Robert
2:21
Speaker 1: Peel and the London Metropolitan Police is sort of a
2:24
Speaker 1: big north star that when America started their like real
2:29
Speaker 1: police force, they often looked to London and how he
2:32
Speaker 1: did it.
2:33
Speaker 2: Yeah for sure. And part of that was what's called
2:36
Speaker 2: the professionalism movement of police. Like you said, no longer
2:39
Speaker 2: making them political appointees in the pocket of some politician
2:42
Speaker 2: who wants them to go rough up as opponent and
2:45
Speaker 2: part of professionalism. One of the central tenets is that
2:47
Speaker 2: essentially the police is its own silo within society. It's
2:51
Speaker 2: not influenced by politics and all that stuff, which is
2:55
Speaker 2: good in that sense, but in the other sense, the
2:57
Speaker 2: police then kind of become their own well police force,
3:02
Speaker 2: and they make a lot of decisions about society, and
3:05
Speaker 2: as there's less I guess control or input or influence
3:09
Speaker 2: from society, things can start to get out of hand.
3:13
Speaker 2: On the other hand, professionalism also meant like, you know,
3:15
Speaker 2: people who are trained as police now know what they're doing.
3:18
Speaker 2: They're actually getting professional training.
3:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it was in some ways it was
3:23
Speaker 1: a progressive era at first when the professionalism movement started,
3:27
Speaker 1: but even early on there was a guy in California
3:30
Speaker 1: and Berkeley, of all places, the chief of police there
3:33
Speaker 1: named August August Volmar, who you know, even way back then,
3:38
Speaker 1: was like, hey, I think you know, it should be
3:41
Speaker 1: more like the military. He had a quote where he said,
3:44
Speaker 1: after all, we're conducting a war, a war against the
3:46
Speaker 1: enemies of society. So even back then there was some
3:49
Speaker 1: ideological seeds being planted. Other people have defended Volmer in
3:55
Speaker 1: this movement and saying, hey, you know, he actually is
3:59
Speaker 1: one of the people who first started formal training. He's
4:02
Speaker 1: the first person to encourage the escalation and hire the
4:06
Speaker 1: first black and women police officer. So he also had,
4:09
Speaker 1: you know, people kind of sticking up for his movement
4:13
Speaker 1: as well.
4:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's become kind of the poster child for who
4:16
Speaker 2: started all this, and other people are like, that's just
4:18
Speaker 2: not really fair. So either way, he definitely was a
4:23
Speaker 2: huge proponent of police reform and kind of established a
4:26
Speaker 2: lot of the ways that police thought. And like you said,
4:30
Speaker 2: part of it was this idea that there should be
4:32
Speaker 2: some degree of militarization of the police. And then after
4:36
Speaker 2: August Volmer, nothing happened for about sixty years, and then
4:40
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty five things nothing happened, nothing, The police
4:47
Speaker 2: just went along doing their thing and everybody was happy
4:49
Speaker 2: with what they were doing. Yeah, no, I know what,
4:52
Speaker 2: in the sixties everything turned and you can really trace
4:56
Speaker 2: the militarization of the police back to a couple of
4:59
Speaker 2: years in the sixties. There are other things that happened
5:02
Speaker 2: along the way. I think in the eighties there was
5:05
Speaker 2: a shootout in Miami nineteen eighty six that ended up
5:10
Speaker 2: leading to full throated support for police getting access to
5:13
Speaker 2: bulletproof vests, which I really don't think is problematic. Another one,
5:20
Speaker 2: we've done an entire podcast on the North Hollywood shootout
5:23
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety seven. Yeah, that led access to police
5:27
Speaker 2: being equipped with long guns like assault rifles and stuff
5:31
Speaker 2: like that after that. And in both those cases, the
5:33
Speaker 2: police were unprepared. They were shown to be unprepared, So
5:37
Speaker 2: there were steps taken to prepare them that you can
5:40
Speaker 2: kind of say are military in nature, I guess, But
5:45
Speaker 2: that's nothing compared to the effect that the riots of
5:48
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixties had on the militarization of the police.
5:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, And we covered some of these in
5:55
Speaker 1: our episode on riots. But in nineteen sixty five, the
5:58
Speaker 1: Watts riots occurred. Then a couple of years later, in
6:02
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven, there were riots in Newark and Detroit,
6:05
Speaker 1: and this stuff was all over the news. It was,
6:09
Speaker 1: you know, being widely reported. Americans were getting pretty worried
6:13
Speaker 1: about just crime in general, sort of in the nineteen sixties,
6:16
Speaker 1: you know, thinking things were kind of out of control.
6:18
Speaker 1: There was a poll in nineteen sixty nine in Newsweek
6:22
Speaker 1: that found that sixty six percent of white Americans thought
6:26
Speaker 1: police should be given more power, and the Watts riots
6:29
Speaker 1: directly led to the creation of swat units. You know,
6:33
Speaker 1: we talked about this in our Swat episode all the
6:36
Speaker 1: way back in twenty ten.
6:38
Speaker 2: Wow.
6:39
Speaker 1: But there was a guy named Darryl Gates, who I'm
6:42
Speaker 1: pretty sure isn't that the same guy who was chief
6:44
Speaker 1: during the Rodney King riots? Okay, well, back then in
6:48
Speaker 1: sixty five, he was an laped inspector and he basically
6:53
Speaker 1: said what you said was like they were just completely
6:55
Speaker 1: unprepared for how to handle something like that at that scale.
6:59
Speaker 1: So he went directly to the military and said, Hey,
7:03
Speaker 1: I want to create a special unit that's more like
7:05
Speaker 1: you guys that can handle something like this, And out
7:08
Speaker 1: of that came America's first SWAT team in Los Angeles.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and swat teams are specifically considered a paramilitary police
7:16
Speaker 2: units or PPUs, like they are a sterling example of
7:19
Speaker 2: militarization of the police, right, And so you can thank
7:22
Speaker 2: Darryl Gates for creating this, like you said, although I
7:25
Speaker 2: suspect along the way somebody would have come up with
7:29
Speaker 2: something like this since they already existed in the military, right,
7:32
Speaker 2: So that was one big key point in the militarization
7:35
Speaker 2: of police. Another big one came from Lyndon Johnson. In
7:39
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty five, under his guidance, I guess, the United
7:44
Speaker 2: States passed the Law Enforcement Assistance Act, and Johnson had
7:48
Speaker 2: declared a war on crime, and part of it allowed
7:51
Speaker 2: the federal government to give military weapons to local police departments.
7:55
Speaker 2: So that was the first time this is actually happening
7:57
Speaker 2: all the way back in sixty five. And again these riots.
8:00
Speaker 2: There was one hundred and sixty riots in one summer
8:03
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven alone, So people were nervous, and like
8:07
Speaker 2: you said, a lot of people were in support of
8:09
Speaker 2: the police having things like access to military weapons. Then
8:13
Speaker 2: after that, a year later, there was the Omnibus Crime
8:16
Speaker 2: Control and Safe Streets Act, and that created this permanent
8:21
Speaker 2: administration that oversaw transferring military weapons to local police departments.
8:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was it was called the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration.
8:31
Speaker 1: And because of that, cops were like, all right, I
8:34
Speaker 1: mean we can start, you know, police departments could start
8:37
Speaker 1: stockpiling these you know, military grade weapons, and that's really
8:39
Speaker 1: when it kicked off. People did, and this is a
8:43
Speaker 1: pretty important part of this episode, but not everyone was
8:48
Speaker 1: just saying, yeah, this is awesome. Some people stood back
8:51
Speaker 1: and said, wait a minute, why don't we like kind
8:53
Speaker 1: of look at like why these riots are happening. Of course,
8:56
Speaker 1: we need to be able to deal with this stuff,
8:58
Speaker 1: but if we get to the root of the problem
8:59
Speaker 1: and maybe try and stop them before they happened, that
9:02
Speaker 1: might be a good approach. And so in nineteen sixty seven,
9:07
Speaker 1: Johnson formed a commission. It ended up resulting in what's
9:11
Speaker 1: called the Kerner Commission Report. It was officially called the
9:14
Speaker 1: National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, but it was named
9:18
Speaker 1: after its chairman, Auto Kerner, and he said, I want
9:22
Speaker 1: to find out three things. What happened, why it happened,
9:26
Speaker 1: and how can we keep it from happening again. They
9:29
Speaker 1: surveyed different riots and uprisings in twenty three cities and
9:34
Speaker 1: assigned people and investigators to go out and you know,
9:36
Speaker 1: kind of get to the bottom of it. And the
9:39
Speaker 1: conclusions of the report didn't lead to any substantive change.
9:46
Speaker 1: It was basically ignored.
9:48
Speaker 2: It was and that's I mean, it was like the
9:51
Speaker 2: most controversial document ever produced by the US government that
9:56
Speaker 2: basically said there's institutional racism in the US and that
9:59
Speaker 2: is directly responsible for riots in low income, majority black areas, right,
10:06
Speaker 2: But part of it was like, part of the problem
10:08
Speaker 2: is heavy handed policing. And the current report went even further,
10:12
Speaker 2: and they said the Commission condemns moves to equip police
10:16
Speaker 2: departments with mass destructive weapons such as automatic rifles, machine guns,
10:20
Speaker 2: and tanks. Weapons that are designed to destroy, not to control,
10:24
Speaker 2: have no place in densely populated urban communities. So all
10:27
Speaker 2: the way back in the late sixties, this government appointed
10:31
Speaker 2: panel is like, we should not be militarizing the police.
10:33
Speaker 2: That is the wrong direction. And like you said, it
10:37
Speaker 2: was just totally ignored. And not only that, rather than
10:41
Speaker 2: go in the direction of getting to the bottom of
10:44
Speaker 2: the root causes of this stuff and trying to cure
10:47
Speaker 2: social ills that way, probably forever, America went the other
10:53
Speaker 2: way and said, no, let's overwhelm these neighborhoods with full
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Speaker 2: military style force, equipping the police with military weapons and armor,
11:03
Speaker 2: and we'll keep Bryant suppressed that way, And it worked,
11:08
Speaker 2: but at a really huge cost, which is essentially an
11:11
Speaker 2: erosion of trust in the police, not just in those
11:15
Speaker 2: communities but across the country.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean, if you're wondering, like, wait a minute,
11:20
Speaker 1: Lindon Johnson did so much work for civil rights, this
11:22
Speaker 1: doesn't quite add up. That was kind of one of
11:25
Speaker 1: the reasons he didn't bury the report. I mean, you know,
11:28
Speaker 1: it came out and it was published, even in a book,
11:30
Speaker 1: so it got people talking at least, but he never
11:32
Speaker 1: spoke publicly about it. And one of the reasons why
11:35
Speaker 1: was because of his good track record with civil rights.
11:38
Speaker 1: He was like, this report, he felt like it was
11:41
Speaker 1: an indictment on his presidency, and he was like, I
11:43
Speaker 1: don't like the way it makes me look. And so
11:46
Speaker 1: not only did he never even address it, but apparently
11:49
Speaker 1: when you have commissions like this, there are these customary
11:52
Speaker 1: letters thanking the commissioners for their service that they draw
11:54
Speaker 1: up that the presidents sign. I think they drew up
11:58
Speaker 1: those letters, but he wouldn't even sign those.
12:00
Speaker 2: No, they sent him out without his signature because he's
12:02
Speaker 2: being a big fat baby about the whole thing. That's
12:06
Speaker 2: essentially what happened. Yeah, sure, but yeah, because he ignored
12:10
Speaker 2: it publicly, and because they refused to implement any of
12:14
Speaker 2: the stuff, it went well they it wasn't implemented, but
12:18
Speaker 2: it was also given a lot of media attention, and
12:20
Speaker 2: it kind of laid the groundwork for discussions about race
12:24
Speaker 2: and the existence of institutional racism in America from that
12:28
Speaker 2: point on. So, even though Johnson ignored it or his
12:32
Speaker 2: administration didn't implement anything that it did get some attention.
12:36
Speaker 2: That book you mentioned became a best seller. There's a
12:40
Speaker 2: lot of media attention, and it really laid the groundwork
12:42
Speaker 2: for discussions about racism in America and institutional racism that
12:47
Speaker 2: would come.
12:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So should we take a break and
12:52
Speaker 1: then talk about Nixon? Yeah?
12:53
Speaker 2: I think so, because that's a really big turning point
12:55
Speaker 2: as well.
12:56
Speaker 1: All Right, we're gonna take a break and we're gonna
12:59
Speaker 1: talk about Richard nick right after this. All right, we
13:37
Speaker 1: promised talk of Richard Nixon and his war on drugs,
13:42
Speaker 1: and I don't know why it didn't occur to me
13:44
Speaker 1: until ten minutes ago, But war on crime, war on drugs,
13:48
Speaker 1: if we're talking about the militarization of the police, maybe
13:51
Speaker 1: they should stop using words like war about everything.
13:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really good point. As a matter of fact,
13:56
Speaker 2: some people basically lay the blame on the militarization of
14:00
Speaker 2: America on Congress. Even Ran Paul Well, I don't necessarily
14:05
Speaker 2: agree with traditionally. He wrote in twenty fourteen and an
14:09
Speaker 2: op ed in Time that like, it's basically all Congress's
14:12
Speaker 2: fault for police militarization happening in the US because of
14:17
Speaker 2: all of these policies that were passed.
14:19
Speaker 1: Over the years. Yeah, So Richard Nixon comes along in
14:23
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, declared this war on drugs. He very
14:26
Speaker 1: famously called drug abuse public Enemy number one. And you know,
14:32
Speaker 1: there has always been drug problems in the United States,
14:34
Speaker 1: and along with that ghost crime. I don't think anyone
14:36
Speaker 1: disputes that drug deaths were increasing at a pretty big
14:40
Speaker 1: rate in the seventies, and so he decides to do
14:44
Speaker 1: something about it. If you talk to people on the inside,
14:48
Speaker 1: they'll say it actually has to do with other things.
14:51
Speaker 1: One of his adviser's name was John Airlickman, who we
14:54
Speaker 1: talked about before, But he said what the War on
14:57
Speaker 1: drugs really was, if you knew Nixon, it was a
15:00
Speaker 1: ploy to attack his enemies, which was the anti war left,
15:04
Speaker 1: the progressive left, and black Americans. He has a quote
15:08
Speaker 1: he said, we knew we couldn't make it illegal to
15:10
Speaker 1: be either against the war or black, but by getting
15:12
Speaker 1: the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks
15:15
Speaker 1: with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily. We could disrupt
15:19
Speaker 1: those communities.
15:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, and one of the hallmarks of Nixon's War on
15:23
Speaker 2: drugs was really aggressive policing police tactics. One of the
15:29
Speaker 2: things that they set up was the Office of Drug
15:31
Speaker 2: Abuse Law Enforcement ODALE, which was the predecessor to the DEA.
15:36
Speaker 2: And this really aggressive approach moved the focus of fighting
15:43
Speaker 2: drug trafficking by targeting huge drug traffickers, which was traditionally
15:47
Speaker 2: how law enforcement had done it to basically busting like
15:51
Speaker 2: not even just low level dealers, but drug users in
15:55
Speaker 2: their homes. And one of the big things that they
15:58
Speaker 2: came up with to facilitate those raids on their homes,
16:02
Speaker 2: military style raids on homes was the no knock warrant,
16:06
Speaker 2: another big concept in the militarization of police.
16:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know how it traditionally worked was you
16:13
Speaker 1: get a warrant and you go and you knock on
16:15
Speaker 1: someone's door and you see if they answered the door,
16:19
Speaker 1: and then when they answered the door, you know, start
16:22
Speaker 1: the process from there. A no knock warrant is just
16:24
Speaker 1: what it sounds like we've seen them on the news
16:26
Speaker 1: when they just go barging in a house. Basically previous
16:29
Speaker 1: to this, the Drug Enforcement Agency, or the predecessor rather,
16:33
Speaker 1: had conducted five no knock searches in the five years
16:36
Speaker 1: leading up to the formation of ODALE, and in its
16:39
Speaker 1: first six months they had over one hundred no knock grades,
16:44
Speaker 1: And over the course of about thirteen months from April
16:47
Speaker 1: seventy two to May seventy three, they conducted almost fifteen
16:51
Speaker 1: hundred no knock grades.
16:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, and one of the huge problems that people have
16:56
Speaker 2: with no knock raids is that it's just rude. It
17:00
Speaker 2: is very rude. It results in property destruction. If they
17:05
Speaker 2: or I should say, when they kick in your front door,
17:08
Speaker 2: you're on the hook to replace your front door, even
17:10
Speaker 2: if your house was mistakenly raided. They use flashban grenades
17:14
Speaker 2: that can injure people, and I mean just police using
17:18
Speaker 2: grenades I think should kind of stand out to you.
17:21
Speaker 2: They will engage in gunfire with assault rifles. It can
17:25
Speaker 2: be a really bad jam. But even like on a
17:27
Speaker 2: more fundamental level than when those things go really wrong
17:30
Speaker 2: or even when they go right, and the destruction that
17:33
Speaker 2: can result is the philosophical change that they represent something
17:37
Speaker 2: we talked about earlier, where if you go up to
17:40
Speaker 2: someone's house and you say you have a warrant, you
17:42
Speaker 2: say you're the police, you knock on their door, that
17:46
Speaker 2: you're treating that person like a citizen who is suspected
17:50
Speaker 2: of something but hasn't been proven guilty. If you throw
17:52
Speaker 2: a flash bang grenade through somebody's window and kicking their
17:55
Speaker 2: front door and come in like a seal team, yeah,
17:58
Speaker 2: you're basically saying you're guilty. We're here to remove you
18:01
Speaker 2: and take you to jail. And you basically have very
18:05
Speaker 2: little rights if any.
18:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, and any sudden movement, and I would imagine there's
18:10
Speaker 1: probably nothing but sudden movements. When someone does that, yeah,
18:13
Speaker 1: you're probably shot. And as an animal lover, that dog
18:18
Speaker 1: of yours that runs up and barks at someone that
18:20
Speaker 1: barges in the house is immediately shot on the spot.
18:23
Speaker 2: Yeah. So there's a lot of problems with these no
18:26
Speaker 2: knock warrants. They've been a target of police reform for years,
18:29
Speaker 2: but essentially there's nothing that's been done about them.
18:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So while this is going on, all
18:36
Speaker 1: this increase of militaristic approach Darryl Gates is in LA.
18:41
Speaker 1: He's got his swat team up and running in the
18:43
Speaker 1: seventies and there were some really high profile shootouts. We've
18:48
Speaker 1: talked about. It's funny how many of these things have
18:51
Speaker 1: come up over the years. But one famous shootout with
18:54
Speaker 1: the Black Panthers, another one with the Symbionese Liberation Army
18:58
Speaker 1: the SLA that Patty Hurst was involved in. We covered
19:02
Speaker 1: that one, but they were very high profile on the
19:05
Speaker 1: news kind of things, and the whole concept of swat
19:08
Speaker 1: teams was all of a sudden, like really in the
19:11
Speaker 1: public eye and in cities all over the country, you know,
19:14
Speaker 1: major cities for sure, and even smaller towns they were like, hey,
19:17
Speaker 1: we won a swat team too, leading to the point
19:20
Speaker 1: where even though there are no there are no official stats.
19:23
Speaker 1: There was a criminologist named Peter Kroska who did some
19:26
Speaker 1: estimates that they're between fifty thousand and eighty thousand swat
19:30
Speaker 1: raids a year in the United States, right, So that's
19:35
Speaker 1: the point where we're at now.
19:36
Speaker 2: It's it's also well that and I think he also
19:40
Speaker 2: determined that in nineteen eighty there were something like three thousand,
19:44
Speaker 2: so that's quite a quite an uptick over the years. Yeah.
19:50
Speaker 2: I think one of the other overlooked influences on normalizing
19:54
Speaker 2: SWAT teams was the TV show Swat from the mid seventies.
19:58
Speaker 2: I think it just was on a season or two,
20:00
Speaker 2: but it was really popular, so people were like, SWAT
20:03
Speaker 2: teams are kind of awesome. Like you said, even small
20:07
Speaker 2: towns were getting these right now. From what I could find,
20:10
Speaker 2: the smallest town that has its own SWAT team, not
20:13
Speaker 2: just access to a SWAT team, but they maintain their
20:15
Speaker 2: own SWAT team is a town called Kerville, Texas, and
20:18
Speaker 2: it is a population of twenty five thousand. So SWAT
20:21
Speaker 2: team's definitely spread. And one reason why is not so
20:25
Speaker 2: the police can be like, man, this is so great.
20:27
Speaker 2: I love carrying out these raids and using flash bang grenades.
20:30
Speaker 2: I'm quite sure that it is a sentiment among some cops,
20:33
Speaker 2: but definitely not all. They are incentivized in every way,
20:38
Speaker 2: shape or form to have SWAT teams and to use
20:41
Speaker 2: them to carry out raids for basically anything. And the
20:45
Speaker 2: reason why they're incentivized to do that is because, like
20:48
Speaker 2: ram Paul said, the federal government has been incentivizing it
20:51
Speaker 2: over the years with policy after policy starting with Johnson
20:55
Speaker 2: and leading up till today.
20:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, you get a TV show like
20:59
Speaker 1: SWAT coming out and promoting and encouraging and sort of
21:03
Speaker 1: glorifying the use of SWAT teams. Yet Magnipi comes out
21:07
Speaker 1: and not every city is saying, hey, we need super
21:10
Speaker 1: hot guys in ferraris investigating things privately.
21:15
Speaker 2: No, but ironically, SWAT teams started to wear short shorts
21:18
Speaker 2: after magnum Pi came out during their raids. It was
21:21
Speaker 2: a trend for a little while.
21:23
Speaker 1: I sent you that picture of Tom Selleck at eighty
21:26
Speaker 1: years old the other day, Yeah, and he said he
21:28
Speaker 1: looks better than I done that.
21:31
Speaker 2: Man.
21:32
Speaker 1: He's put on a little weight, But I gotta say, man,
21:34
Speaker 1: Tom sellok still looks pretty dang good.
21:36
Speaker 2: It does, especially for eighty. Sorry to be agist, but
21:39
Speaker 2: it's true.
21:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, handsome older man. One thing you mentioned a second
21:43
Speaker 1: ago was the incentivization. Is that the word of cops
21:48
Speaker 1: to carry out these no knock rades and stuff like that.
21:51
Speaker 1: That really ramped up with President Ronald Reagan in the
21:55
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties. Under his presidency, they started doing more or
22:00
Speaker 1: more drug raids, a lot more frequent, a lot more intense,
22:04
Speaker 1: for sure. And part of the reason is because in
22:07
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four he passed the Federal Crime Bill, which
22:11
Speaker 1: expanded civil forfeiture laws relating to drug arrests. So basically, hey,
22:16
Speaker 1: if you conduct a no knock grade and you go
22:19
Speaker 1: in there and you get you a gym bag full
22:22
Speaker 1: of money and cocaine, you get to keep that, keep
22:26
Speaker 1: those spoils.
22:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, before they had to turn it all over to
22:29
Speaker 2: the Department of Justice. The Fed's got all that.
22:32
Speaker 1: That's right, So it literally financially incentivized these no knock grades.
22:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, because if you're a budget strapped police department and
22:42
Speaker 2: all of a sudden you can make millions of dollars
22:44
Speaker 2: a year for your police department, or keep drug dealers
22:47
Speaker 2: cars and auction them off or whatever, that's a huge
22:51
Speaker 2: financial incentive to carry out those raids and get as
22:53
Speaker 2: much of that money as you possibly can. I don't
22:56
Speaker 2: think that that's to say unfairly that that's the reason
23:01
Speaker 2: why cops are organizing raids like that. Like, I think
23:05
Speaker 2: that it's just like I was saying, or we both said,
23:08
Speaker 2: a real incentive to carry out those raids rather than
23:11
Speaker 2: you know, say non military policing.
23:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. That was eighty four was a federal
23:18
Speaker 1: crime bill. Then a few years later in eighty seven,
23:21
Speaker 1: Congress created a new office basically that almost like a
23:26
Speaker 1: one stop shop if you want to militarize your local
23:29
Speaker 1: police department. They helped with a transfer of military equipment.
23:33
Speaker 1: They literally set up a hotline and a cat and
23:36
Speaker 1: printed a catalog.
23:37
Speaker 2: Yeah like this year's the Facebook for police chiefs.
23:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, that they would send out to police chiefs and
23:43
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, it just sort of streamlined the
23:45
Speaker 1: whole process and made it much easier.
23:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is that's pretty easy as it is, but
23:50
Speaker 2: the whole thing really kind of got going under Bill Clinton.
23:54
Speaker 2: He kind of tossed a bone to progressives by coming
23:57
Speaker 2: up with the Community Oriented Policing Services Act. I guess
24:01
Speaker 2: which is is that spell cops? Yes, it does good
24:05
Speaker 2: call And it's the opposite of professionalization, where they're like, no,
24:10
Speaker 2: we need more input from the community and society in
24:13
Speaker 2: how police police and all that. That's one thing, so
24:17
Speaker 2: it's like a conceptually it makes sense in that respect,
24:21
Speaker 2: but in practice it really just gave more funding to
24:23
Speaker 2: police departments to hire more cops. The really big part, though,
24:28
Speaker 2: came in nineteen ninety seven as part of the National
24:31
Speaker 2: Defense Authorization Act that created what's known as the ten
24:34
Speaker 2: thirty three program, which is it permanently authorized the Department
24:39
Speaker 2: of Defense to funnel military grade weapons and supplies to
24:45
Speaker 2: police departments in the US. It said, this is official.
24:48
Speaker 2: These are no longer executive orders. This is an act
24:51
Speaker 2: of Congress saying you guys can do this, and let's
24:54
Speaker 2: make it happen.
24:55
Speaker 1: Yeah. And since that, which was in nineteen ninety seven, again,
25:00
Speaker 1: they have sold I guess, I mean they're selling this stuff, right, No,
25:05
Speaker 1: I well, they just giving it.
25:07
Speaker 2: I believe that they're essentially giving it to them. If yes,
25:10
Speaker 2: and if they're selling it, then police departments can apply
25:13
Speaker 2: four grants from the federal government to buy the stuff
25:16
Speaker 2: from the federal government.
25:18
Speaker 1: They're like, man, we're all the shame team here a
25:22
Speaker 1: lou that was a very bad wiggam. I used to
25:24
Speaker 1: do that better. But since then, there has been more
25:27
Speaker 1: than seven point six billion dollars worth of military equipment
25:33
Speaker 1: given out to police departments across the US.
25:36
Speaker 2: In less than thirty years. Yeah, that's a lot. The
25:40
Speaker 2: two thousands really kind of changed things as well. I
25:44
Speaker 2: guess every decade really did, but not. The nine to
25:47
Speaker 2: eleven attack really kind of refocused America's thoughts on public safety,
25:54
Speaker 2: law enforcement, that kind of thing. And one of the
25:56
Speaker 2: upshots of it was the creation of the Department of
25:59
Speaker 2: Homeland Security, which created a program in two thousand and
26:03
Speaker 2: three that that essentially gave grants to police departments for
26:09
Speaker 2: training against terrorism and equipping them with weapons to fight terrorism.
26:14
Speaker 2: And so terrorism also gave local police departments a new
26:18
Speaker 2: justification and rationalization for becoming militarized. It's not only was
26:22
Speaker 2: a drug users anymore. Now we had potential terrorists coming
26:25
Speaker 2: to the US, and police departments needed to know how
26:28
Speaker 2: to deal with a terrorist attack, which I mean kind
26:32
Speaker 2: of it makes sense. It's tough to argue with. It's
26:35
Speaker 2: just another kind of ripple in the pond of this
26:39
Speaker 2: whole thing, though.
26:40
Speaker 1: Well yeah, but what it did was, you know, you've
26:43
Speaker 1: got these SWAT teams sitting around in a maybe smaller town,
26:47
Speaker 1: and if they don't have any terrorists to go fight,
26:49
Speaker 1: they don't want that tank to get rusty, right, So
26:53
Speaker 1: in the two thousands we saw SWAT raids. It wasn't
26:55
Speaker 1: just drugs anymore, like you said they were. There have
26:57
Speaker 1: been swat raids on bar shops because they didn't have
27:01
Speaker 1: a license. Yeah, there have been swat raids against teenage drinking,
27:06
Speaker 1: small time gamblers like you know, the back room poker game,
27:08
Speaker 1: stuff like that.
27:09
Speaker 2: It.
27:10
Speaker 1: You know, once they had that system in place, they're like, well,
27:13
Speaker 1: we got to use this stuff for something.
27:14
Speaker 2: Right, So just having it makes you want to use it.
27:17
Speaker 2: You're financially incentivized. You can get it for free, all
27:20
Speaker 2: of this stuff. And so if you add all that
27:22
Speaker 2: stuff up, you have every incentive to not only have
27:26
Speaker 2: a swat team, but to use them fairly often. And
27:30
Speaker 2: then also on top of that, they're further incentive advised
27:34
Speaker 2: to use no knock warrants because the Supreme Court ruled
27:37
Speaker 2: in two thousand and six in a case called Hudson v.
27:40
Speaker 2: Michigan that even if you didn't obtain a no knock warrant,
27:44
Speaker 2: which is a warrant that says you don't even have
27:46
Speaker 2: to knock, right, if you didn't even bother to get that,
27:50
Speaker 2: and you still performed a no knock search, came blazing
27:53
Speaker 2: in with flash bang grenades and kicking down the door
27:56
Speaker 2: and coming in through the window without a warrant, whatever
28:00
Speaker 2: evidence that you discovered was still admissible in court.
28:04
Speaker 1: That's right, So just one more incentive, and maybe we
28:08
Speaker 1: should take a break.
28:09
Speaker 2: I think we shouldn't.
28:10
Speaker 1: For sure, I'm incentivised to take a break, right, very nice, man.
28:13
Speaker 1: I'm gonna dab your forehead with the cool cloth, okay,
28:16
Speaker 1: and we're gonna pick up in the twenty ten's right
28:18
Speaker 1: after this.
28:56
Speaker 2: So, Chuck, We've been basically going on the premise this
28:59
Speaker 2: whole episode that the militarization of the police is problematic
29:03
Speaker 2: in and of itself, right, And I wanted to understand
29:07
Speaker 2: exactly why, Like why didn't America just say forget police forces,
29:11
Speaker 2: We'll just use the military all the time. And so
29:14
Speaker 2: I looked into it, and essentially the answer that I
29:17
Speaker 2: could find from academia is that the military is well
29:22
Speaker 2: aware that it could take over the country anytime it wants,
29:26
Speaker 2: so it submits to civilian rule. And part of that
29:31
Speaker 2: is based on the idea that civilian rule is better
29:33
Speaker 2: for democracy than military rule, just because civilian politicians tend
29:38
Speaker 2: to know how to run things better. There's more rights
29:41
Speaker 2: afforded to people who are citizens not being ruled by
29:45
Speaker 2: the military, And so by militarizing the police, and having
29:50
Speaker 2: a police presence that looks like a military occupation. It
29:55
Speaker 2: normalizes the concept of the military occupying its own country,
30:01
Speaker 2: and so it erodes that custom of the separation of
30:05
Speaker 2: the military from domestic affairs, that could conceivably lead to
30:11
Speaker 2: the idea of the military actually starting to run the show.
30:15
Speaker 2: It's supposed to be a separation, and the cops are
30:18
Speaker 2: moving that overton window by becoming militarized. That's essentially the
30:22
Speaker 2: basic argument that I've seen against police militarization. There's all
30:27
Speaker 2: sorts of other symptoms and factors that it creates too
30:29
Speaker 2: that people use to argue against it.
30:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And you know, we can't ignore the
30:34
Speaker 1: fact because this is happening in real time this week
30:37
Speaker 1: as we record the current administration, and this isn't militarizing
30:42
Speaker 1: the police. This is using the actual military on US soil.
30:46
Speaker 1: As you know. The latest example is the federal military
30:50
Speaker 1: takeover of crime in Washington, d C. So that's kind
30:54
Speaker 1: of just happened over the last couple of days as
30:56
Speaker 1: we record this, right.
30:57
Speaker 2: Yes, So one of the things that is leading the
31:01
Speaker 2: huge pushback of militarization, aside from more and more people
31:04
Speaker 2: being exposed to an unsettled by a police officer in
31:08
Speaker 2: full tactical gear holding an assault rifle. Is the advent
31:13
Speaker 2: of the smartphone, and people can actually record this stuff
31:16
Speaker 2: and then broadcast it widely, and so it's kind of
31:18
Speaker 2: captured the attention of the average person. I would say
31:23
Speaker 2: to the concept that police militarization is in and of
31:27
Speaker 2: itself a heavy handed police tactic, that is questionable.
31:33
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. And I just had another quick point.
31:36
Speaker 1: I don't want to get too much grief for this,
31:38
Speaker 1: but there's a pretty obvious elephant in the room here,
31:42
Speaker 1: which is if you're if you think all this is great,
31:45
Speaker 1: and you say, well, hey, they got those weapons, so
31:48
Speaker 1: why can't the cops have those weapons? They have those
31:51
Speaker 1: weapons because of policy as well, you know, explain well
31:58
Speaker 1: citizens like saying, hey, you know, citizens have assault rifles,
32:01
Speaker 1: like the cops should have assault rifles, and like the
32:04
Speaker 1: citizens have the assault rifles because the US government said
32:08
Speaker 1: it was okay to So yeah, you know, it's sort
32:11
Speaker 1: of I don't know.
32:12
Speaker 2: I had the same thought that you can trace you
32:14
Speaker 2: can trace that argument back to okay, well that's actually
32:16
Speaker 2: an argument in favor of gun control.
32:19
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure.
32:20
Speaker 2: I had the same thought, because yeah, that is a
32:22
Speaker 2: huge argument. People be like, well, if you take the
32:24
Speaker 2: cops assault rifles away, only outlaws will have assault rifles.
32:27
Speaker 2: It's like, no, take the outlaws assault rifles away first,
32:31
Speaker 2: then we can talk about the cops giving theirs up right.
32:34
Speaker 1: They didn't used to have them, you know exactly.
32:36
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, so no, I'm with you. I thought that too.
32:39
Speaker 1: So you brought up smartphones or did you say smartphones?
32:43
Speaker 2: I did. I talked all about smartphones. I talked about yeah,
32:46
Speaker 2: the iPhone four, the iPhone seven, all the way up
32:49
Speaker 2: to the iPhone thirteen and just stop there inexplicably.
32:53
Speaker 1: You know what's funny is a month before the new
32:57
Speaker 1: iPhone comes out, we talked about play and obsolescence. My
33:01
Speaker 1: trusty old iPhone twelve was finally dying.
33:05
Speaker 2: I think that's when. That was during the time when
33:07
Speaker 2: Apple was caught purposely draining batteries to make you have
33:11
Speaker 2: to replace your phone.
33:13
Speaker 1: I'm not conspiracy guy, but I'm just saying, like I
33:15
Speaker 1: was going to get the new in anyway because it
33:17
Speaker 1: was I usually do every three, and I waited four
33:19
Speaker 1: this time, and so you no, I waited five because
33:24
Speaker 1: I got a twelve and it's the seventeen, but yeah,
33:27
Speaker 1: it's my battery just started going to zero and shutting
33:30
Speaker 1: off and rebooting and uh.
33:32
Speaker 2: Oh wait, it just happened. Your iPhone twelve just broke down.
33:36
Speaker 1: Oh like last week.
33:37
Speaker 2: That's actually pretty good.
33:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess so. But I was able to get
33:41
Speaker 1: a aftermarket battery installed for sixty five bucks from the
33:45
Speaker 1: local guy.
33:46
Speaker 2: I know you know this, but I want to share
33:49
Speaker 2: it to everybody.
33:51
Speaker 1: Okay.
33:51
Speaker 2: I had a lawnmower, a gas powered lawnmower, admittedly, but
33:55
Speaker 2: it was broken, like ready for the dump, and I
33:58
Speaker 2: was like, no, I'm going to this. So I called around.
34:01
Speaker 2: There were some repair shops. They wanted to charge some
34:03
Speaker 2: dough and I looked into what was probably wrong. It's
34:06
Speaker 2: probably the carburetor, and I said, I'm going to replace
34:09
Speaker 2: this carburetor. And by god, I replaced the carburetor and
34:13
Speaker 2: when I was done, the first pull that lawmower started
34:16
Speaker 2: for the first time in years.
34:19
Speaker 1: I got a text from Josh on Tuesday at twenty
34:21
Speaker 1: six penom, I just fixed my law mower by replacing
34:24
Speaker 1: the carburetor and gas lines started on the first pole.
34:27
Speaker 1: And then I replied. Eventually I put a radiator in
34:30
Speaker 1: a VW Jetta in my thirties.
34:32
Speaker 2: Yeah.
34:33
Speaker 1: It was the only real manly thing I've ever done.
34:36
Speaker 1: He said, Bam, all right, we should probably get back.
34:40
Speaker 1: We had to have a laugh at some point, so
34:43
Speaker 1: that parts over.
34:44
Speaker 2: That's it. That's the one laugh. Everybody be quiet.
34:46
Speaker 1: Back to smartphones changing the game because of all of
34:49
Speaker 1: a sudden obviously people can see the stuff on social
34:52
Speaker 1: media with their own two eyes much more than before.
34:55
Speaker 1: And in the mid twenty tens. In twenty fourteen, the
34:59
Speaker 1: Ferguson protes us We're a really good example of this
35:02
Speaker 1: kind of happening. They were protesting after Michael Brown was
35:06
Speaker 1: killed by officer Darren Wilson. The Obama administration declined to
35:10
Speaker 1: prosecute that, and police got really aggressive on these protests.
35:15
Speaker 1: They were, you know, the armored trucks came in, snipers
35:18
Speaker 1: came in, those flash bang grenades that Josh loved talking about,
35:22
Speaker 1: in tear gas, and there was a big public outcry
35:25
Speaker 1: after that, such that Obama said, hey, maybe we want
35:28
Speaker 1: to put some guardrails around this ten thirty three program.
35:30
Speaker 2: Right, and they did. They said, okay, no more tanks
35:33
Speaker 2: and grenade launchers, among some other stuff. But This is
35:36
Speaker 2: I think the first time anyone had stepped in and
35:38
Speaker 2: been like, we need to take some sort of prohibitions
35:43
Speaker 2: or bands on what local police departments can get from
35:47
Speaker 2: the military. Yeah.
35:49
Speaker 1: And also, you know, if you're saying, like, why don't
35:52
Speaker 1: they just get rid of ten thirty three A, it's
35:54
Speaker 1: not going to happen. But critics of that will say, hey,
35:57
Speaker 1: it's not just military weapons. They also take like our
36:01
Speaker 1: old air conditioners that we were going to throw out
36:03
Speaker 1: if a cash strapped police department needs a new air
36:06
Speaker 1: conditioner and stuff like that. And I guess my response
36:09
Speaker 1: to that is like, why don't you just create an
36:11
Speaker 1: act about air conditioners?
36:12
Speaker 2: Then? Well, right, exactly, like there's no reason you can't
36:15
Speaker 2: continue the ten thirty three program, but ban yes, military
36:18
Speaker 2: style weapons and armor, you know, not bill proofessed by armor,
36:22
Speaker 2: I mean like M wraps and tanks and troop transports
36:25
Speaker 2: and like helicopters like black Hawks and stuff like that.
36:29
Speaker 2: There's it'd be easy as pie to do that. There's
36:32
Speaker 2: just nothing.
36:33
Speaker 1: I was kidding, by the way about the air Conditioner Act, so.
36:36
Speaker 2: I know you were, but it is I mean, it's
36:38
Speaker 2: a valid argument that there's actually lots of stuff that
36:40
Speaker 2: doesn't make the news that's really helpful to police departments
36:44
Speaker 2: that comes from the ten thirty three program. That's just
36:47
Speaker 2: you could really easily adjust things, for sure.
36:50
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, So Obama rolls back some of this in
36:53
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen. Then the next administration came in and very
36:57
Speaker 1: quickly rolled back those ten thirty three were four and
37:02
Speaker 1: that's when the you know, the sort of ramped up
37:04
Speaker 1: use of paramilitary forces to break up protests, increase guarding
37:08
Speaker 1: federal monuments and statues and stuff like that because of vandalism.
37:12
Speaker 2: One of the things I just want to say. One
37:14
Speaker 2: of the things real quick that that Trump did when
37:16
Speaker 2: he rolled back those reforms. Bayonets had been banned previously
37:20
Speaker 2: and they got allowed again as part of that executive order.
37:24
Speaker 2: And if there's one thing that you do not need
37:28
Speaker 2: as a police officer is a bayonet.
37:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, think about it. We should do it shorty on bayonets.
37:37
Speaker 1: It's interesting, like, yeah, it's the concept of putting a
37:39
Speaker 1: weapon on the front of your weapon. Yes, like a
37:41
Speaker 1: less good weapon on the front of your web.
37:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's meant to just an interesting stab somebody through
37:45
Speaker 2: the chest or the neck or the face or something
37:47
Speaker 2: like that like, and the concept of those things showing
37:52
Speaker 2: up at a peaceful protest in case it breaks out
37:56
Speaker 2: into violence, Like I just can't. It just is mind
37:59
Speaker 2: boggling to me that bayonets were ever allowed.
38:02
Speaker 1: Well, it just seems very old school. I mean, I
38:04
Speaker 1: know why they've made bayonets just because back then those
38:06
Speaker 1: the long rifles took a long time to reload. And
38:09
Speaker 1: maybe we're hard to shoot in close quarters. So if
38:11
Speaker 1: you were all of a sudden had a guy run
38:13
Speaker 1: upon you on battle, you got to do some stab in.
38:16
Speaker 1: And stab in from you know, three and a half
38:18
Speaker 1: feet away is better than stabing in your hand. But
38:22
Speaker 1: this isn't the French Foreign Legion, you know.
38:24
Speaker 2: No, And what you're talking about is a military engagement,
38:27
Speaker 2: not a law enforcement engagement. There's no place for bayonets
38:31
Speaker 2: and law enforcement. I think that that is objectively true
38:35
Speaker 2: as far as I'm concerned.
38:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So in twenty twenty two, President Biden
38:41
Speaker 1: signed an executive order reinstating and expanding some of these
38:46
Speaker 1: ten thirty three reforms that the previous administration had gotten
38:48
Speaker 1: rid of. They limited the use of no knock entries
38:53
Speaker 1: and you know, basically try to you know, how it
38:56
Speaker 1: happens when different administrations come in, they try to undo
38:59
Speaker 1: what the previous person right.
39:01
Speaker 2: And I looked high and low to see if President
39:03
Speaker 2: Trump had come in on his second term and reversed
39:07
Speaker 2: biden orders, and I couldn't see anything that said that.
39:11
Speaker 2: All the talk about the reversal of the ten thirty
39:14
Speaker 2: three orders was from the first term. But I did
39:17
Speaker 2: see that it's possible that Biden's executive orders were never implemented,
39:22
Speaker 2: so there was really nothing to roll back In practice.
39:25
Speaker 1: Well, I mean that's another thing, and to itself. You
39:29
Speaker 1: can get on TV and sign a thing, but implementation
39:32
Speaker 1: is where the rubber meets arous.
39:33
Speaker 2: That's where it's at. And you do get the impression
39:35
Speaker 2: that there is a cynical thing among politicians that like, yeah,
39:39
Speaker 2: we're not going to touch this ten thirty three program.
39:41
Speaker 2: In reality, like it's like you said, it's not going anywhere.
39:44
Speaker 2: If it didn't go anywhere. After the summer of twenty twenty,
39:47
Speaker 2: after George Floyd's murder, Yeah, when there's never been more
39:53
Speaker 2: and widespread focus on police, police tactics, militarization of the police,
39:58
Speaker 2: so much ink was dr I actually found a teen
40:02
Speaker 2: Vogue article from twenty twenty titled What's a no knock Warrant?
40:06
Speaker 2: Teen Vogue was talking about it and if it survived
40:09
Speaker 2: that it's gonna be really tough to ever just fully
40:13
Speaker 2: get rid of it if you want it gotten rid of.
40:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you weren't even researching, you were just reading
40:19
Speaker 1: teen Vogue on the toilet.
40:20
Speaker 2: I couldn't believe it. I was like, you got to
40:22
Speaker 2: kid talking about COVID talking about no knock warrants. Teen
40:26
Speaker 2: Vogue had their finger on the pulse.
40:29
Speaker 1: So the question remains, you know, is this move to
40:34
Speaker 1: militarize the police has it rather led to like better
40:39
Speaker 1: public safety? I mean, because that's the ultimate goal seemingly,
40:44
Speaker 1: And it kind of depends on what you define, you know,
40:46
Speaker 1: how you define public safety, because that's going to change
40:48
Speaker 1: depending on who you are. We have seen that militarization
40:53
Speaker 1: canon has escalated encounters there have you know, it just
40:58
Speaker 1: this is anecdotal. I don't know if there's a study,
41:00
Speaker 1: but I feel like every time there's a protest happening
41:04
Speaker 1: and the tanks roll in, that's when it goes bad.
41:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's exactly what a lot of people say
41:10
Speaker 2: about say for example, Ferguson. I from what I could tell,
41:15
Speaker 2: the riots started before the police responded, but they started
41:21
Speaker 2: like after the police showed up. So yes, some people
41:24
Speaker 2: are saying just seeing police like that is intimidating and antagonizing,
41:29
Speaker 2: I guess, and that I think the next day after
41:33
Speaker 2: the whole world was like what are you guys doing
41:36
Speaker 2: in Ferguson, the governor of Missouri told the Ferguson Police
41:41
Speaker 2: Department to stand down and send out the Missouri Highway
41:45
Speaker 2: Patrol and they they basically walked step in step with
41:50
Speaker 2: the protesters, the peaceful protesters, and they used that law
41:54
Speaker 2: enforcement tactic and apparently it was to pretty good effect.
41:58
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, one thing is for sure is that
42:01
Speaker 1: it's led to the killing of a lot more citizens
42:05
Speaker 1: by the police. And this is a pretty shocking stat
42:09
Speaker 1: and you know, anytime you're comparing the UK to the
42:12
Speaker 1: United States, it's I mean, some people might say that's
42:15
Speaker 1: not a fair comparison because they just do things so differently,
42:18
Speaker 1: but that's kind of the point, and you know, delivering
42:20
Speaker 1: these statistics. So the Guardian reported that in the first
42:24
Speaker 1: very first month in January, only of twenty fifteen American
42:27
Speaker 1: police killed more US citizens than police in the UK
42:31
Speaker 1: had in the last twenty four years combined. Yeah, one month,
42:36
Speaker 1: twenty four years.
42:36
Speaker 2: Right, And those are typically like used most often, we
42:42
Speaker 2: guess we should say there are very few states that
42:44
Speaker 2: actually require police departments to maintain statistics, including on swat teams,
42:49
Speaker 2: how often they're used, where they're deployed. Again, anecdotally, they
42:53
Speaker 2: do seem to be much more present and much more
42:56
Speaker 2: used in predominantly black communities. But there have been studies
43:02
Speaker 2: that have shown like this is actually counterproductive. Did you
43:06
Speaker 2: see that one from Princeton from I think twenty eighteen.
43:12
Speaker 2: It was it basically found that the militarization of police
43:18
Speaker 2: has a counterproductive effect on police themselves, in that it
43:23
Speaker 2: affects it negatively impacts public perception of police. And the
43:27
Speaker 2: study showed that it actually had a negative impact on
43:31
Speaker 2: public support for expanding police budgets. So by militarizing, you
43:37
Speaker 2: can make a case that they're also shooting themselves in
43:39
Speaker 2: the feet metaphorically.
43:43
Speaker 1: No pun intending, right, shooting themselves in the feet with
43:45
Speaker 1: a grenade launcher.
43:46
Speaker 2: Right. And there was another study I wanted to mention too.
43:50
Speaker 2: It was from Emery here in Atlanta. It was from
43:53
Speaker 2: twenty twenty. And there are these two studies that came
43:56
Speaker 2: out in twenty fourteen twenty seventeen that are pretty prominent
43:59
Speaker 2: in they're typically used to support the idea that militarization
44:03
Speaker 2: of police actually has a like increases public safety. And
44:08
Speaker 2: this twenty twenty study looked at those studies and said
44:11
Speaker 2: these studies did not have enough data to come to
44:15
Speaker 2: these conclusions and basically debunked them. And again, the reason
44:18
Speaker 2: why is because no statistics are required in most states
44:21
Speaker 2: on things like swat use. So you can't possibly say
44:25
Speaker 2: that if you carry out one hundred rates a year,
44:28
Speaker 2: public safety is going to go down by or going
44:30
Speaker 2: to increase by ten percent or something like that. You
44:33
Speaker 2: just you can't do it. So studies on that are
44:36
Speaker 2: inherently faulty. And before you say, well, what about that
44:38
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen Princeton study that looks specifically at Maryland, which
44:44
Speaker 2: is one of those rare states that does require reporting
44:47
Speaker 2: by police departments. Yeah, so you got anything else to
44:53
Speaker 2: say about it?
44:55
Speaker 1: Plenty? But I feel like this is a good stopping boy.
44:57
Speaker 2: Okay, I would love to hear from police officers who
45:00
Speaker 2: listened to stuff you should know out there who are
45:02
Speaker 2: for militarization and against it. I would definitely, yeah, for
45:06
Speaker 2: sure those opinions in.
45:07
Speaker 1: Point yeah, we'll read some of that stuff on the
45:09
Speaker 1: air very nice.
45:10
Speaker 2: Well, since Chuck agreed to read some stuff on the air,
45:13
Speaker 2: that means it's time for listener mail.
45:17
Speaker 1: All right. We're getting a lot of good feedback about
45:20
Speaker 1: our heavy metal episodes, which makes our heart warm because
45:23
Speaker 1: we care about all the episodes. But I think everyone
45:26
Speaker 1: could tell we were pretty jazzed about those yep this
45:30
Speaker 1: one and I'll probably be reading a lot of metal
45:32
Speaker 1: emails over the next few weeks, but this one's from Kevin.
45:35
Speaker 1: It's kind of fun. Hey, guys, thanks for the metal ups.
45:37
Speaker 1: Growing up in the eighties, pop radio and MTV taught
45:40
Speaker 1: me that metals big three were tights, makeup, and hairspray.
45:45
Speaker 1: I was way too cool for that and opted for
45:46
Speaker 1: the other big three. Dismissed the Cure and Depeche Mode.
45:50
Speaker 1: I was doing both, my friend, because you can. But
45:53
Speaker 1: I always enjoy a musical history lesson, so thanks. Later
45:56
Speaker 1: in life, I joined a cover band and will grudgingly
45:58
Speaker 1: admit that some of the hair band songs worked well
46:01
Speaker 1: for us, which is why I'm still mythed that my
46:04
Speaker 1: idea for naming our band was rejected. It was Cheryl Crue.
46:09
Speaker 2: Oh that's a great one. That's up there with Overdry. Yeah.
46:14
Speaker 1: I'm generally not a pun band name guy, except for
46:18
Speaker 1: the Beatles and Cheryl Crue.
46:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty good.
46:21
Speaker 1: That is from Kevin. And I also wanted to mention
46:25
Speaker 1: real quick that I read in like four days. I
46:28
Speaker 1: had the Nicky six Heroin Diaries book sitting on my
46:32
Speaker 1: shelf for a couple of years and had just finished
46:38
Speaker 1: where did I just finish? I finished the Bruce Springsteen book,
46:42
Speaker 1: the one about the movie coming out, and I dove
46:44
Speaker 1: right into the Heroin Diaries and read it in three days.
46:47
Speaker 1: And it is a boy. I can't say it was
46:50
Speaker 1: a fun read. It was harrowing. Yeah, to read the
46:53
Speaker 1: Diaries of Nicky six in those days.
46:56
Speaker 2: I just finished the letter in Encyclopedia metanicis sweethe volumes.
47:03
Speaker 1: Oh very nice.
47:04
Speaker 2: I'm just kidding. I am kidding, by the way. Oh okay,
47:09
Speaker 2: who was that that wrote in Kevin?
47:11
Speaker 1: Yeah that was Kevin.
47:12
Speaker 2: Nice work, Kevin. We appreciate that. Into all of you
47:15
Speaker 2: who enjoyed the Metal episodes, Thank you, rock on and
47:19
Speaker 2: If you want to get in touch with us, you
47:21
Speaker 2: can send us an email to send it off to
47:24
Speaker 2: stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
47:30
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
47:33
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47:38
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.