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And again, thank you so much for your support. So,
as you heard at the end there of Vince Cokeley's show,
going into the news, the press conference was held up
in Minneapolis, the scene of a shooting that occurred at
a Catholic school for K through eight grades. It was
at the Annunciation Catholic School and students were in a
morning mass service. According to the chief of police in Minneapolis,
the gunman approached the church began firing through the windows
from outside. He had a rifle, a shotgun, a pistol.
Two kids were killed, ages eight and ten. Seventeen others
were injured, fourteen of those were children. Two were reportedly
in critical condition, and then the gunman.
Speaker 1: Killed himself.
Speaker 2: That's all the information we have right now, and so
as I do in all of these types of cases,
I wait until we get more information. There's no indication
as to who the shooter was. Also, I will not
name him when we find out who he was. And
I think despite what the mayor in a grotesque fashion,
dismissed thoughts and prayers, no prayers are important. That's what
the kids were doing at the time. So pray for
the families up there in Minneapolis, and we'll give you
more information as it becomes available. But right now there
just is not a lot of information to report to you.
This issue though, of crime, it's not going away, despite
what I think a lot of political leaders would prefer,
particularly political leaders in our large cities in America. In fact,
a second, I've got the latest Associated Press NARC poll.
The vast majority of Americans see crime as a major
problem in large cities. Eighty one percent say it's a
major problem. And of course this is the Associated Press,
and so they will frame this as literally a concern
Trump has seized on, because remember Republicans always pounce or
seize sometimes both. When a scandal is about Democrats, then
the media coverage is always the Republican reaction to the scandal.
And make no mistake about it. Crime in Democrat controlled
cities is a scandal for Democrats. That's why you get
this framing of the Republican reaction and that they are
seizing on this in order to make Democrats look bad.
It's not that Democrats have made themselves look bad. It's
not that they've proven themselves unable to govern large cities. Now,
whether voters will ever say, you know what, let's give
some Republicans a shot and see if they can clean
up the city, not sure if that's ever going to happen.
Tribalism is real, and so they the voters are, in
my estimation, probably not going to make any kind of
a change. They'll just keep picking different Democrats who always
have to cater to the same base. Despite the perception,
data shows that violent crime in DC is at a
thirty year low. So we're still getting this narrative from
the Associated Press when covering the crime stats in DC.
Despite all of the stories now, and there are multiple
different stories, I've got another one in the stack about
how DC has been lying about the stats. Here's a
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just read to you the line from the Associated Press
story about Washington's crime rate getting better. It's down thirty percent,
and the crime stats prove it right. A recent Department
of Justice report shows that violent crime is down thirty
five percent since twenty twenty three, returning to the previous
trend of decreasing crime. That puts the district's violent crime
rate at its lowest in thirty years. But as we
heard like two weeks ago, word broke that a DC
police commander had been suspended for shall we say, massaging
those very numbers for his district. This is a piece
by Beege Wellborn at hotair dot com. Surely it's no
big deal if there's only one rotten apple in a barrel, right,
that's how one rotten apple and a barrel works. I
think it never spreads off of the one rotten apple, right,
that's the old axiom. Well, it turns out that the
officer was suspended in May and only placed under investigation
when he fingered a big guy in the department in
an equal opportunity complaint, and then his union stepped into
the fray and the union then began gathering the evidence.
The Fraternal Order of Police chairman Greg Pemberton said at
the time, when our members respond to the scene of
a felony offense where there is a victim reporting that
a felony occurred, inevitably there will be a lieutenant or
a captain that will show up on the scene and
direct those members to take a report for a lesser offense.
The police department's command staff is focusing on two categories
in order to get the numbers to fall, Pemberton said,
armed with a dangerous weapon and injured person to the hospital.
Those are the two categories when management officials are directing
the rank and file officers to take a report for
felony assault or if they're going back into police databases
and changing offenses to felony assault. Well, felony assault is
not a category of crime that's listed on the department's
daily crime stats.
Speaker 1: Does that mean they.
Speaker 2: Created a category of felony assault that they don't report,
and then they tout a decline in violent crime while
not including felony assaults. But now, oh wait, there's more.
Now Here comes the Washington Free Beacon, a national treasure
with a report that in a sane and rational world
would probably cut the legs right out from under that
whole narrative. It's down thirty percent, but it obviously will not.
A former DC cop sued the department in twenty twenty,
and the city has now quietly settled her lawsuit. Do
you know what she sued them for. I'll give you
three guests. Three guesses, and the first two don't even count.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: It was for juice and the stats. The District of
Columbia quietly settled a lawsuit from a sergeant who accused
Metropolitan Police Department leaders of misclassifying offenses to deflate the
district's crime stats. This is according to court records obtained
by the Washington Free Beacons. So now you have two
different officers, two saying that this has been occurring and
has been occurring for a while. Because this lawsuit was
filed in twenty twenty, the brass at the department repeatedly
told officers to downgrade theft cases, knife attacks, and violent
assaults to downgrade them to lesser offenses. According to internal
Metropolitan Police Department emails, depositions, and phone call transcripts that
the Free Beacon has now reviewed the former sergeant. Her
name is Charlotte Jossoue. She sued the department in twenty twenty,
alleging that police leadership punished her for speaking out against
the scheme. Josu, who joined the force after serving honorably
in Iraq, accused MPD brass of attempting to distort crime
statistics by quote downgrading a number of felonies to misdemeanors
so that there will be fewer felonies in the statistics.
By the way, I wonder how many other cities are
seeing this. Are any other jurisdictions engaged in this kind
of data manipulation, right, Because when this sort of thing happens,
that's just the first time you caught it, right, And
it's only because you had a couple of whistleblowers that
did so. And I'm curious, like, maybe there are other jurisdictions.
Maybe here in Charlotte, somebody, some enterprising young cub reporter
could try to root this out. I don't know, but
it's going to rely on whistleblowers and people coming forward
and having the proof, right, that's what this is going
to require, as these two cases have the evidence themselves.
She also provided records showing that police leaders explicitly instructed
their subordinates to underclassify certain instances of theft to keep
them out of the crime stats that the city reports
to the public. Josue reported also according to the Free Beacon,
one case in which a female was cut on the
side of her face was a deep, open cut with
an unknown object from her forehead to the bottom of
her chin. While the responding officer had called in the
crime as assault with a dangerous weapon, the captain allegedly
classified the offense as a sick person to the hospital,
which isn't really the same thing. Josue called Captain Conbo. Really,
that's his name, Captain Conboy how Dickensian, the captain who
ordered officers to use the TPO sorry tpwor strategy is
what they called it. About another case from twenty nineteen.
In that instance, there was an on duty watch officer
who downgraded an assault with the deadly weapon to a
misdemeanor simple assault, and Josue said, I feel like they're
just downgrading the classifications.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a reason why. It's because they are.
Speaker 2: Captain Conboy was then promoted for his work. He was
appointed Captain of the Metro Police Departments Research and Analytical
Services Branch in twenty twenty one. And do you know
what you do when you're in charge of that branch.
He's responsible for overseeing the development of statistical reports, charts
and maps covering crime trends and patterns. In other words,
this has been rigged in DC for years, for years.
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better returns. All right, So then there's this story out
of Chicago. This was okay, cards on the table. I
gotta give you full disclosure here. I never thought this
was a really good idea. The violence interrupters. You know,
the whole concept seemed a bit too social worky, you know,
like we're gonna get these like old gang bangers. We're
gonna get these people that came from the gangs, and
we're going to like give them some reflective vests and
have them walk around the worst parts in the most
crime ridden areas and they're going to quote interrupt the violence.
I kind of thought it might actually contribute to the
violence a little bit because they're wearing reflective vests and
people may see them as like an extension of law
enforcement and anyway, so it hasn't really gone It hasn't
really gone that well, in particular in Chicago. Okay, so
this is from CWB Chicago dot Com, state, county, and
city programs. A lot more than one hundred million dollars
to so called violence prevention programs in Chicago. Much of
that money is distributed to violence interrupters, people whose life
experiences on the street are supposed to make them uniquely
qualified to intervene in and defuse conflicts before they spiral
into shootings. I don't think it's working. I understand it.
There's like a bunch of people murdered, like every in
Charlotte or uh, Chicago, But there are some new questions
about what some interrupters are actually doing. And now the
questions are starting to pile up. See back in March,
a woman was shot during a chaotic teen takeover in Streeterville.
I do not know what a teen takeover is. I
assume it's like one of the street takeovers, or it's
like the wheelie boys that drive their ride their bicycles
and motorized scooters and stuff and traffic and assault people
and scare people and jam up the traffic patterns and
all of that.
Speaker 1: I assume it's like that.
Speaker 2: I don't know if they card you to make sure
you are eighteen, Like, I don't know if you're a
twenty year old and you're trying to access the teen
takeover and they're like, no, you can't be part of
our teen takeover.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how that all works.
Speaker 2: But there was a teen takeover and one of the
self styled violent interrupters ended off ended up speeding off
after two or three teens jumped into his car, so
he drove the getaway car from a teen takeover event,
which is illegal. I guess these teen takeovers, they're not
exactly smiled upon by law enforcement. And I guess when
the cops showed up, a violence interrupter took a bunch
of the teens maybe they can't drive, don't have licenses
because they're too young, or something, just piled them in
the car and help them evade arrest. So I mean,
and now, to be sure, that is a form of
violence interruption, right, particularly if the teens were to have
tried to resist arrest. Then Earlier this year, one of
these peacekeepers received a nine year prison sentence for taking
part in a mob beating that left a motorist badly
injured in little village of former Obama administration official excused
his conduct by saying the man mishandled the stress of
being a violence prevention worker. See, and that happens to
me all the time, Like people are like Pete, you know,
we need you to come in here and try to
keep the peace, and it's just so stressful, you know,
for people who don't know, I did a stint as
a bouncer at a bar years and years ago. Well
to be all right, to be honest, I was more
of a of a door guy, like I just carded people,
but it did require some sort of contract work as
a bouncer. Whenever there would be a fight or something,
I would have to go in and help the other
guys break it up.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 2: That was just very stressful too, and that just made
me beat people up like that. So I totally understand
how that could happen. You're there to prevent the violence,
and then it's just so stressful preventing all the violence
that you end up beating a dude into the hospital, right,
So I mean that does make some bit of sense,
I guess. And then on Sunday, a new video surfaced
showing men claiming to be violence interrupters heckling and interfering
with Chicago cops who were trying to arrest a man
accused of illegally carrying a gun with an extended ammunition magazine.
And I watched the video and the guy is on
the ground resisting arrest, and you know what he's saying
to the police. They don't have their knee on his
neck or anything like that. One cop has him by
one arm, another cops got the other arm, and they're
trying to stand him up, and he's struggling against them,
and you know what he's saying, I can't breathe, which
is what a lot of people who don't want to
get arrested say. Now, they say I can't breathe, and
they're being captured on somebody's smartphone so they can be
the next Saint George Floyd. All Right, if you're listening
to this show, you know I try to keep up
with all sorts of current events, and I know you do,
you too, And you've probably heard me say get your news.
Speaker 1: From multiple sources.
Speaker 2: Why, well, because it's how you detect media bias, which
is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's
an app, and it's a website, and it combines news
from around the world in one place so you can
compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out
at check dot ground, dot news slash pete. I put
the link in the podcast description too. I started using
ground News a few months ago and more recently chose
to work with them as an affiliate because it lets
me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom.
The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored
by the left and the right.
Speaker 1: See for yourself.
Speaker 2: Check dot ground, dot news slash pete. Subscribe through that
link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I
use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature.
Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it
also supports ground News as they make the media landscape
more transparent. Some messages from the text line driven by
Liberty buick GMC data. This is from Bubba Data. Manipulation
is alive and well in cmpd pete, twenty cars broken
into at an apartment complex is just one incident, not twenty.
In the white shirts eyes, it's funny you mentioned that
there was in my neighborhood. There was a string of burglaries.
There's a there are a set of docks down on
the other side of the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: I don't have a boat, but some people in.
Speaker 2: The neighborhood do, and they had somebody came up and
slashed all of the boat covers and stuff and stolen
things out of the boats or whatever. And that's exactly
what they did in that scenario too. They tied it
all to a single incident report versus individual even though
the boats are all owned by different people and the
boat's slips are also owned.
Speaker 1: By those people.
Speaker 2: They counted it all as one incident instead of a
slew of incidents all at the same location. So can
confirm they that is what they do. Kevin says, could
you imagine being a DC police officer and you arrest
somebody for shooting someone, and because your supervisor tells you
to reclassify the offense, the next day, you see this
dangerous individual back out on the street. That has got
to be frustrating. Well, it absolutely is. And if you
talk to law enforcement officers and you can get them,
you know, in sort of an unguarded moment, they will
tell you they are supremely frustrated as well. The Justice
Department should make a public announcement that all whistleblowers will
be protected from reprisals by the federal government if they
come forward. Well, yeah, I mean there are whistleblower laws
that do protect them from when they come forward, but
I think every state is different. But there's the federal
whistleblower law. And so if, yeah, if you go blow
the whistle with the Feds, then I don't know if
that would protect you, you know, to a higher standard.
Somebody wanted to know the website for the Alzheimer's Association
walk again, it is al Z for Alzheimer's al z
dot org slash walk and then if you want to
make a donation or you want to walk with my team,
it's just search for my team named Pete's Pack. Pete's Pack.
That's not Political Action Committee. That's pac k like a
like a pack of wolves, but friendly one dogs, like
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I was going for the alliteration, not really the canine reference.
Kirk says, I am supportive of the federal takeover in
DC of law enforcement, but I think to do the
same in the States is not constitutional. I tend to
agree with that that they can ask for support, they
can call it their own national guard, and they can
do that sort of stuff. But these are democrat controlled cities.
They can actually direct their own law enforcement agencies to
do more. But they can and not juice the stats.
But the other big part of this, and I'm going
to get into this in the next hour, particularly here
in Charlotte, the bigger component are the courts. It is
the magistrate judges, it is the judges, magistrate judges, Yeah,
the magistrates, it's the judges on the bench. And it
is state law that allows for these generally juvenile offenders
to be immediately released right back out into the general public.
And in my view, this experiment has failed. Okay, that
wasn't the problem, right when you when you allow people
who are fourteen fifteen years old to break all sorts
of laws and not suffer any immediate repercussions, but instead
get turned right back out onto the street, back onto
the you know, the guardianship of their parents or guardians
who obviously are not doing a bang up job as
it is, it's not solving the problem. In fact, it's
sending the message that you can do all of this
stuff and to the point where and I have had
these discussions with law enforcement officers when talking about like
all of the kids that walk through the neighborhoods and
pop locks on doors. Right, they walk up the street
and they just go into your driveway and they check
your door handle and if you leave it unlocked. First off,
that's a stupid thing to do. But secondly, they open
up the door and now they get access to your car,
and they can steal your car. They can take everything
in your car. And those kids are often organized by adults.
The adults will drive the kids to a neighbor a neighborhood,
send them out into the neighborhood, and then they come
back and they turn over all of the stolen merchandise.
They get paid some money, they get to keep some stuff,
and then the adults go and fence the rest of
the stuff, either online or at pawnshops. So you've created
juvenile criminal gang enterprises. The experiment is not working. There
needs to be some sort of a shift here. One
other note in Chicago with these violence interrupters. Back in
twenty twenty three, police allegedly found a full time violence
interrupter hiding naked under a bed with fifty thousand dollars
in cash on the floor, narcotics in the room, and
a gun on a kid windowsill. That same summer, two
peacekeepers were shot in separate incidents, including one who was
on electronic monitoring at the time. Again, I'm not sure
this experiment is really working. All right, that'll do it
for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I
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thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything
while I'm gone.