Speaker 1: If you want to support the show and get the
episodes early and ad free, head on over to Freemanbeyond
the Wall dot com forward slash Support. I want to
explain something right now. If you support me through substack
or Patreon, you have access to an RSS feed that
you can plug into any podcast sure including Apple, and
you'll be able to listen to the episodes through there.
If you support me through a subscribe, Star, gum Road
or on my website directly, I will send you a
link where you can download the file and you can
listen to it any way you wish. I really appreciate
the support everyone gives me. It keeps a show going.
It allows me to basically put out an episode every
day now, and I'm not going to stop. I'm just
going to accelerate. I think sometimes you see that I'm
putting out two even three a day, and yeah, can't
do it without you, So thank you for the support.
Head on over to Freeman Beyond the Wall dot com,
forward slash Support and do it there.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekaana Show. Thomas,
let's finish out this police series. What do you want
to talk about today? I think Joseph Wombas on the menu.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I I marked out Joseph Wamba for a dedicated
episode because I think he's important. I he wasn't. He's
still alive. I think he's got to be very elgerly
not what he's got to be on ninety. He was
very much a documentarian though, of the period in which
we're talking about, when it was in when police modern
policing was very much in transition, and when arguably it
was a kind of a zenith in terms of you know,
it's administrative clout and it's it being respected kind of
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 travel, they'd relocate to la
to join LAPD. LAPD was like the top of policing
and one of the things I 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 got like a thug
police department, you know, like we really do. I grudgingly
like Chicago feed for reasons something I've got like a
complicated relationship with them, but 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 bosses and like mafia politics and stuff. But
like LA it was considered to be this like impeccable
and peccay professional police force, and they had a rep
for like not being quote unquote racist, 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 a probe.
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 in 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 to to write,
and then he wrote The Choir Boys, which is like
this kind of savage takedown of l EPD, you know,
like people get maried 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 tunitive. I think it accurately 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 officers, officers 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 l E
PD 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 missed manage 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 flu are 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 that 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 books kind of fall off would thankfully because
it's it's an idiotic book. But the refrain of these
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 globalized,
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 it'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 Genevis 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 and like stabbed to death in front of her
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
did more brazen because like these guys they just like
murdered a cop and like the some Keeples didn't do
back 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 that really.
Speaker 1: Like, I grew up with a lot a lot of
guys who went NYPD, and when you talk to them
about people who kill cops, they say, the reason they
take it more seriously is because if they're willing to
kill a cop, they're willing to kill anyone.
Speaker 2: And Powell was a really creepy guy, Like he his rampy.
He was just like really real sad sack kind of
loser hood guy who went by Jimmy Youngblood like forty names.
I think it's his birth name of Jimmy Lee Smith,
but he went by Jimmy Youngblood and Jimmy Youngblood. He
was a heroin addict and he'd been spending basically his
entire life in prison, but it was for bullshit, you know,
like stealing radios and like breaking into cars 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 they
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, the Satinoran musician,
and they never had any money. But Powell ran away
from the home when he was fourteen or fifteen, and
he took up this kind of fake itinerant priest who
who molested him and then 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 typeo 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
of like the gay movement having horrible optics because in
one of their rags that I guess was pretty widely
going in the West Coast in the seventies and eighties,
it's like, what 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 hab 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 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
cure 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 shnine 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 hindsight heights, like liquor stores and stuff
or what amounts to chump change. So their pass crossed
with these cops because one night, uh Paulla young Blood
recruising uh Los Angeles, like presumably they were casing, you know,
a place to rob. You know, 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, he 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 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 heading your 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 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 his onion field. And Headinger said that like
even before they stop, he's like it was pitch blay.
You couldn't see anything, but he's like the overwhelming odor
of onions. He's like it was making everybody's eyes tear up,
like it was surreal. So they stop. Powell orders everybody out,
and then, according to both young Blood and head injure,
Paul 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. And Headinger related he
heard somebody screaming, and he's like, at first out it
was Campbell, but then I realized it was young Blood.
Like young Blood just like freaked out and presumable that's
would save it Heading's life because young Blood was like
panic panicking, and he didn't blast him. So Hedinger ran
for literally four miles and there's 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. Hading 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 worst 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
coach of duty as his personal driver, and Headingers predictively
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 it was some kind of
pussy or something, and he came to 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 he ended up working as a gardener
and then like drinking himself to death at 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 conscousness, 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 Wallaba makes a big
deal in the Choir Boys. By the nineteen seventies, a
lot of police departments, including l A p D, had
adopted the commander rank, and he thought that this was
really bad, you know, and it's the subjects to 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.
You know, the one man is a panic attack. And
and then years later, you know, like five years later,
when he's on duty with UH with l A p D.
You know, he has a flashback and he and and
there's a horrible outcome because he ends up blasting this
this unarmed civilian and ruining his life. But uh, all
the choir boys who are the subject of the book,
they're all these kind of like these kind of like
prestige characters of different archetypes that were on LAPD 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're 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, Birg tortured a bunch of confessions
out of people like and a lot of these guys
like hadn't done anything. But Burge Bird was an MP
and NOM but he was in and all kinds of
strange stuff, and he had a bronze star with the
Valor device. He'd been in heavy 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 from 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 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 Wallaba'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 uh 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, then
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 who 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 wallah blah.
Makes the point, you know, in the sixties or seventies
when all this crazy stuff was happening, even if you
survive twenty years as like a beat cop, like you
don't get shot, you don't get like maned. You know,
you get like your full pension. He's like, oh you 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 just survive
like in the deep hood, and how you can like
make it to twenty years. But then these guys like
all like you know, three months after they retire, everybody
gets a word like they 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's
significant too is is what like a microcosm it is
of of them 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
indio radicals and and others show them not be named.
You know, 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 Navy 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 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 cop didn't even have a radio
on their person. So basically like you go through a
door if your 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 gauge, which is a great weapon, don't get me wrong,
But that doesn't if you're if there's arna men five
D but like that that doesn't do anything, you know.
So while I'm talking about like 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 is 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 just like 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 off, it's very punctuated and it's
very scaled and it's very bad. But they're never a
situation like the Bronx was big in the eighties, or
like Wrigleyville 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 sinnion or something. But it
this is 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 guy. 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 that 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 trashing
older folks. I am one. They have this idea like, well,
we just need to take the gloves off and quote
what cop 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, They wouldn't
make boogies 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.
Speaker 1: And uh.
Speaker 2: I think too. You know, this is not just for
political reasons, but this has been the running for a minute.
And you know, guys like Thomas Shit, I'm used to
write about this in the nineties and he got He
and those like him got something's wrong, but he 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's
gonna be heavily armed. They're gonna like take you into
custody and pull you before I 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. It'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 work here, like police are like
way way less like aggressive in terms of what kind
of conduct, though they'll they'll forro bracelets on you for
you know, and that'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 males who aren't
from your community who you have no idea who these
guys are. They're gonna be heavily armed and just kind
of like tell you to do things and lay the
hammer down on people when they decide to 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 like gave up. Like it's not
just because the issue became like a big loser politically,
like that put that 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 America is going to be
armed to the teeth. 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 deliberate communities, you're not gonna have just like
a random guys from other places coming in to police them.
People aren't going to tolerate that anymore, you know, Like
it's not gonna tolerate like 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
police us. Like that's over with.
Speaker 1: You know, places, I think I think people. I think
people instinctively, even like the big law and order boomers
and everything like that, know that if you send somebody
into police, like if you're sending you know a bunch
of suburban white guys into the hood, in the in
the inner city. That's just an invading army. And even
if people can't even if people can't articulate that, they
instinctively know it and they're reacting to it.
Speaker 2: And it's a terrible idea. And I mean, no, make
no mistake, like I'm more sympathetic to nineteen eighties LAPD
than a lot of people. And whether in the movie Colors,
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 euphemisms 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 crips and uh like
the one dude, uh, the one who's got a mac
ten and then don Hievel he's got an a K
and they're like throwing they're throwing like frags at each other.
Like that's not as like I was watching this movie
with this chick. I was watching the Move 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 that are 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
normal 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,
And 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 sort, is to preempt
violence before it happens. Well, I mean you you basically
it's like Eric 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 both 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 neutralize them. And yeah, like sometimes you're wrong
and that's bad. But I mean that's the the liabilities,
moral and material that attend any any any profession that
that you know deals with violence its currency. But you
know that that 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 political phenomenon like
from within an institution, you know, and if you're if
you even if you're on the younger side, if feel
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 kind of core tenets of
of policing. When when that's that's pretty much dead in
the water. And I 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 out of 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 I was riffing on Alvin Toffler,
the guy who wrote a few your Shock, which is
a really good book. But you know, Prince 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'll take some planning and some money. But there's there's
guys who have never even had a smartphone, like in
The Traveler 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 bailfy 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 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, and what are
you gonna hypothetically and 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 we see I
was gonna do start blasting the drones, and they're if
they're kind of casey, 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 I
looked like spotting where somebody controlling those drones, but that
guy could be fourteen kilometers away. Okay, you know things
like that, you know, and I realized that like people pete,
the rebuttal is gonna be like like subs watching. 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 in
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 didn't get charged
with murder. But beyond that, like if somebody, if some
if like if I was at Starbucks and I find
I discovered somebody stole my wallet, I'm not gonna call
the police. They're not gonna 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'tthing wrong.
I realize there's you know, if you're like a single
woman and like a 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 with 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 negate or defeat sociological trends that are driven
by historical processes and move ons. You know. So that's important.
But 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 Wildblos catalog.
The New Centurions is like a good book. Yeah, it's
like pro police stuff. And because he was he was
like an l EPD sergeant when he wrote it, and
so obviously he wasn't gonna trash the organization. But also,
you know, like we talked about the earlier earlier episode,
l a p D has always been kind of like
uniquely interfaced with media. Like I guarantee you that l
a p D 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 we had like like administration guys
like literally looking over his shoulder. But it does. It's
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, uh, 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 criticizes
the book saying like, oh, well, but he draws no
my characters in simple minded terms, that's the wrong way
to look at it, because always 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, you know what I mean.
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
a signed 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 just
like regular dude. He'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 committing 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's think
it's a big alcoholic. So I think that's like by
dropping like real 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 vignettesa like in the
movie Cruising with Help 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 giallo picture. I really like it.
But the the opening scene, there's these two cops and
one of us played by Joe Spinell, 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 Spinells
just like it'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 mint a dumpster because there'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, I'm about like
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 whooked up the Cops and things
like that, and so she she shot out Womba a
lot in his books, and then Wamba I 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 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 will 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 his
like later stuff, but definitely definitely read The Onion Field.
I definitely 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 set out
like five or six payer backs 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 WAM. 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 lit, particularly
particularly in the capacities we're talking about.
Speaker 1: So I thought it was important, man, But I am yea,
I have I have a suggestion. Yeah, this this episode
was sort of sort of like our movie reviews, and yeah,
I think we should release one publicly so people can
see what's uh you know, what we do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, I.
Speaker 1: Think uh, I think Resurrection Man would be a good
one to release publicly because that's one where you're just
breaking down the whole history of everything in the real
guys and area. I think people really get off on that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: One of the reasons I wanted to review it is
because I thought people would be thirsty, because people when
I draw up troubles oriented content, like people seem to
be really interested in it, you know, And I try
and do so very respectfully because for obvious reasons, and
I'm lucky that you know, I'm lucky that Ulster natives,
including like you know, my dear friend Lady of Schelle,
I've been willing to collab with me on stuff, you know,
because that's my bloodline and my confessional heritage. But obviously,
I mean, I'm I'm a fucking like Chicago jig Off.
I don't do 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 to do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll throw it up on my YouTube channel and
direct everyone there to it. So thank you for this.
We'll talk about what to do next and privately and
do some do some plugs, and I'm gonna go talk
to the o g go talk to the old Glory
Club guys.
Speaker 2: That's great. I'm a I'm launching season three of the
pod the first week in February and the guy who's
gonna collab with me on the first couple episodes. I
talked to him by phone today, which was which is awesome.
I'm gonna tweak it a little bit. I'll explain before
I releave, before I upload it, but I'm every day today,
like I took five the first five episodes from season
one from behind the paywall, I'm gonna keep doing that
every day. I'm gonna remove five episodes on 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 subs deck.
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. Those the best place 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 a sub stack, 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.
Speaker 1: All right, Thank you so much, till the next time.
Yeah in