Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekingana Show. Thomas, Hey,
how are you done.
Speaker 2: I'm doing very well. Thanks for hosting me.
Speaker 1: Of course. Well, this is a subject that came out
of a Twitter conversation, but it's a subject that I've
talked about a lot in the past, and I know
you have some very strong opinions on. So let's get
into this. Let's talk about the police.
Speaker 2: The thing to keep in mind is that modern policing
it's it's it's as structured like as we conceptualize it
here in the United States, is a subject of recent vintage.
People seem to this idea. I mean, there's all kinds
of mythologies are on the modern state that somewhat deliberately
have been cultivated to try and seeing it in the teable,
this idea that these features are perennial, like structurally, I
mean as well as ethically, when they're not. So when
you raise the issue with people that modern policing is
kind of run its course and it's kind of being
phased out, like people seem to think one of two things.
If they don't know me and are particularly sophisticated on
you know, political sociology and things like that they have
this idea that I'm forwarding some some you know, some
miner gift argument like I want the police to go
away and they don't have a mandate. I'm not saying that.
I mean that that whether they're true or not doesn't matter,
or they think of suggesting that this kind of lump
and revolt, however contrived and you know, cultivated by but
by organized political interests, it's just going to be like,
you know, like public frusture is going to be such
that you know, police departments becomes so kind of gilded
and defang verbially speaking, that they can no longer implement
the mandate, that mandate that they've been granted. I'm not
I'm not saying that either, Okay, Like what I'm saying
is that in structural terms, this is something that's run
its course, okay, And increasingly, police functions are going to
continue to collapse and do what in the Postcold War
era has been viewed as kind of military and general
security functions. Police services are going to be increasingly privatized.
You know, there's gonna be less and less of a
distinction between the domains wherein armed force enjoys legitimacy, either
conditional legitimacy or an absolute sovereign capacity. Okay, and this
is inextricably bound up with the modern state as it
exists today being really rather obsolete. Okay, But to understand too,
like kind of what these exigencies are that are are
presenting these kinds of challenges to police departments, particularly big
city police forces. Not exclusively, it's not just a matter
of like you know, post George Floyd sentiment and kind
of political narratives like those narratives were able to take
a rude on grounds the phenomenon I'm talking about. Okay,
you know, and I think this is all very ill understood,
but you think the point a lot that the American
system like really mirrors the UK system, you know, politically,
and was the father quite literally of a of modern
policing was Robert Peel. He was also kind of the
founder of the modern Conservative Party in Britain, Like the
Tories existed before Peel's tenure as Prime minister, and he
was he was Prime Minister twice, but he he kind
of brought the party into the you know, into the
end of the modern age in a lot of ways. Okay,
And controlling populations at scale, particularly in a divided society.
That's really kind of the conditions president for a modern
police department. Okay, and make a mistake, the UK is
a uniquely divided society and it always has been. Okay.
That's one of many parallels between America and the UK.
It's it's not just anglical and cultural foundations. You know,
there's divisions in the UK that there's not in there
weren't in in Germany when Germany was uh, you know,
in that brief period it was, it was unified. But
also with sovereign republic, there's there's there's institutionalized divisions there
that that don't exist in France. Okay, And this this
bears directly on on Peel's mandate and and why he
proceeded the way he did and devising the first real
urban police department. Peel was born into money. His father,
uh was a career politician, but he'd made a fortune
and textile manufacturing. So Peele and his whole family they
were kind of insinuated into the They both had like
one foot kind of in the old nobility. And I
think I think Peele was a there was a there
was a baronet or a barony in his name. But
he also very much was part of the kind of
nascent you know, industrial producer class, you know. And it's
education from flipid that too, you know. He took a
degree both in classics and in mathematics. He first entered
the House of Commons as a very young guy, I
think around twenty two years old, eighteen oh nine. But
where he really kind of made his bones, as it were,
as kind of a it's kind of a political manager
and fixer. It was his home secretary, you know, in
home secretary, especially in those days kind of at the
zenith of the empire. It was a very important role,
you know, and the mandate was very broad and it
attracts not just ambitious men, but also a lot of
a lot of men who had ideas about you know,
the sociological nature and the mandate that the office carried
with it, you know. And he started out as kind
of a conventional old school Tory. Initially. He very much
was behind the institutionalized discrimination against Catholics. He did a
one eighty on that. And this wasn't just for cynical reasons,
because otherwise he wouldn't have stuck to his guns and
the way he did on these kinds of matters of
equity and so and social matters. He sponsored the Catholic
Relief Act of eighteen twenty eight, which for all practical
purposes repealed was glocally known as the Test Act, which
had banned Catholics from basically all manner of government service,
as well as making sure they didn't get officers commissions
in the British Army that would have put them in
instead influence, you know, policy in the in the outer Empire.
This is very institutionalized. Okay, that's not just something that
Fanians say or that you know, kind of like old
school like you know what remains like you know, the
kind of vestigial cadre of old school labor party types
who you know who who emphasized that is, you know,
being like a key tenant of the Tories as being
this this party sectarian bigotry. You know, it actually was.
The UK was Rabbi Yani Catholic until the twentieth century.
In a lot of ways they still are. Obviously, the
situation has come amplex in ways it wasn't because you know,
it's it's no longer a sovereign country and there's this
kind of constellation of ethnicities that that don't have any
meaningful you know, historical experience in the UK. But you know, incidentally,
the reason why like in the UK, you know, cops
are called Bobby's because you know of Robert Peel and
also they're called Peelers, which is interesting. I think there's
you know, uh, the former kind of trees like like
almost it just like a mascot role of the ladder,
you know, kind of kind of suggests that they're ops,
like you know, it's I think it's kind of telling
it's doing us as in the English language that I
think I'm a subtle and some people will allow. But
you know, at the end of the day, what I'm
getting is what is what what is peeals? What appeals
kind of progressive ideas about you know, the treatment of Catholics.
And to be clear too, nonconformist Protestants were included in
in these in these test acts, and we're technically precluded
from like many of the same roles and being available
to a lot of the same benefits and institutions as
catalyps were. But slowly but surely there were de fact
when the the jury exceptions carved out, particularly as a
situation in Ireland deteriorated. But you know, there was a
the law really from from the time of of like
the English Reformation, you know, until kind of the end
of the nineteenth century, like in every way it was
tailored to kind of guarantee that this like Anglican hegemony,
you know, like culturally, economically, like in every conceivable way.
Speaker 1: Okay, can I let me interrupt. Yes, were the Jews
included in US?
Speaker 2: Yes, But it was complicated because like it wasn't like
a lot of it was unsaid and in the case
of the Jews, and it's not like there was some party.
It's not like there was some like formal revolutionary cadre
that was like a Jewish fraternal organization that that also
you know, had the power to kind of like impact
like legislation in the commons. Like there was defect though,
but this also that even that wasn't as deep as
people think. Before the white thing, before the twentieth century,
it was just kind of like a non factor. That's
not like this Israeli became the Prime Minister like Grayat did.
Disraeli was he wasn't like Kissinger in terms of his
personality or in terms of his values, but uh, he
was kind of the Jewish Londoner who it sort of
shed his ethnosectarian skin in real ways, he wasn't just
some morno, you know. But that's a whole different issue,
and the way that was dealt with was a whole
different body of like custom and things that that didn't
have to do with you know, Christian sectarianism. It's it's
a totally iron thing, and we get into that, but
it's if we should do it in another series because
it doesn't really bear on this. But the uh, the
writing on the Wall and ultimately happened of course on
the heels of World War One in Ireland, like Peel
realized like there was gonna be a real problem here.
It's kind of like perfect storm of an increasingly radical
labor movement that was also increasingly mobilized, the threat of
general strike at the core of the Empire, which in
turn could touch off a sort of wildfire effect that
would spread you know, the colored dominions, and on top
of that, you know, an open cientarian revolt in Ireland
and in London and in Liverpool and in these major
urban centers in the UK. Proper like the British from islands,
I mean Ireland, obvis was part of the UK then too,
wherein there were you know, there were ghetto wise Catholics
who you know, appreciably appreciable numbers of them. This this
could have been a real bloodbath, figurative and literal. And
it uh was a frailty that people were aware of,
like men in government and you know, men insinuated not
just into titled society type roles, but who actually had
clout and power. You know, they realized that there was
a real danger here and these people had to be
brought into the fold and made, if not patriotic, made
to believe in good faith terms, that they had enough
of a stake in the enterprise that they wouldn't try
to burn it down. And a modern police force is
devised by Peel and as well as you know in America,
like you know Peel's counterparts in the post reconstruction era.
You know, they they had the same thing on their mind,
you know, modern policing. It's it's not just it doesn't
just owe to the peculiar exigencies of having to manage
theretofore you know, on uh, unthinkably highly scaled and complex
urban environments, which you know, basically how is you know,
one hundreds of thousands or millions of workers that staff
the national economy. Like the way to manage that sociologically
and politically, and the way to suppress the instincts to
revolutionary violence. They're you know, intrinsic to these populations and
the conditions they find themselves. They were pried very delicate balancing,
and you couldn't just treat these people, you know, like
uh like one might you know, Cooley's revolting in in
in India or something like politically aside of the fact
you don't do that anyway, you know, if if you
live in you know, if you live in like a
Western society of the era, but it's also politically it
would not have been tenable, you know. You know, for
contexts prior to that, in lieu of a police department,
you know, there were night watchmen going back to the
medieval period who quite literally post up you know, when
the when the town gates were closed, to keep watch
out for marauders or for military enemies, or or for fires,
you know, literally firewatch. And that was you know, essentially
a communitarian volunteer role for a younger men. I mean,
there was some kind of stipend and compensation of a
nominal sort, but you know, it was basically derivative of
a communitarian impulse. And in the case of of the court,
if there was a wanted man, you know, before the
King's bench or in America, you know, before the you know,
who was being hailed in the criminal court by the municipality.
There were constables in bailiffs who were on duty full time,
or you know, you deputize, you deputize a man of
good standing, sometimes even a man who was a lawyer.
You know, okay, you know, get a posse together and
go fetch this bastard, you know, bring him here, like
literally bring him into court. You know, there was so
I mean that that that essentially took care of it.
And you know, this idea that there's this kind of
permanently mobilized armed force that u is insinuated into the
community but also outside of it that literally patrols and
in this kind of permanent you know and creates like
a permanent visible presence like that didn't exist before. And
one of the things that caused so many problems for
the police is that a little over a century on
into this like urban policing model, which not coincidentally was
concominant with, you know, the War on drugs, the police
became this They ceased to be this communitarian element, and
they ceased to be this kind of symbolic sociological governm mechanism.
Like they became this kind of secretive, hostile element that
cultivated its own alienage visa via the community that it
was responsible for regulating, you know, and this wasn't some
conspiracy we're getting all out of ourselves. It owed the
realities of the Cold War. It owed you, you know,
the nature of criminality at scale in the late twentieth century.
It owed the inability of social problems to be resolved
by truly communitarian structures and as as authority, as official authority,
both localized as well as you know, in absolutely sovereign terms.
You know, that would hand like a dominion over the
entire entirety and territorial territorial space of the country. You know,
they they didn't know what to do about these things,
so their fallback was on this enforcement mechanism that had
the widest and the deepest mandate. Proverbially speaking, you know,
to regulate human behavior and conduct at scale, and to
bring to bear punitive sanctions on people who were unwilling
to comply with these edicts, be them like moral or
pragmatic or both. And that creates kind of a perfect
store of hostilities, you know. But we're not quite there yet,
but we'll get there as this goes on. To take
it back from that, to be clear too about the
test Acts and these laws governing the rights of peoples
owing to their sectarian confession. This wasn't just superficial, and
it wasn't just something that wasn't really enforced except in
a capricious manner when the authorities saw fit to, you know,
deprive somebody of of upward mobility for some discreete political reason,
going to emergent crisis or something. I mean, this was
very much a staple of the sociological structure, you know,
and it basically people supported it. You know. If you
weren't taking communion in the Anglican Church, you basically were
excluded from public life, you know. And even if you
claimed uh to not be a practicing kid like, even
if you weren't if you were not actively engaged with
the Anglican church, and if you did not have a
family pedigree, whether you were rich or poor or neither,
that demonstrably was was Anglican. You. You were reviewed as
a as an accusant, okay, and you were viewed as
somebody who is not to be trusted, and your neighbors
would probably whisper that you were some kind of secret Fenian,
even even if even if you were ethnically Irish, you know.
And again, like I said, nonconformists were included in these
measures too, But the Indemnity Act of seventeen twenty seven
alleviate some of these formal sanctions. But there's a there's
a complex history and kind of and like rather perverse
history between Nonconformists and Anglicans that endoors really until recent
memory with the troubles. But that's I raised this because
that's my own heritage, and like I don't mostly like
Michael Jones. He's got to have it when he says Protestants,
he's talking about Anglicans, and I don't appreciate that, and
not sex not because that what something against Anglicans, but
because it's he's making a caricature of the issue, and
you know, kind of employing an opportunity target and trying
to cast us, you know, like like reformed people as
a like with his like broad stroke, as if we're
some kind of a junior version of the the traditional
Norman aristocracy or something and that, and that's not remotely accurate.
That's why I emphasize that there's a guy, he's a
really good story and his name is Jonathan Jonathan Jonathan
Charles Douglas Clark, and he wrote a lot about I
think he's still alive. He's not. He's not. I mean,
he's getting pretty old. I think he's in his seventies now.
But he was neither like a Whig historian nor like
one of these Marxists. So he rejected both the kind
of the kind of tory what we view. It was
kind of like the neo condish like progressive view of
history and institutions as being this kind of mallible institutions,
you know, in the in the Anglophone world, being the
kinds of malleable things that you know, through this kind
of process of trial and error and ongoing enlightenment quite literally,
you know, social conditions become more equitable in like the
open society because of reality. He rejects that nonsense outright.
But nor is he like one of these. He speaks
a lot like Hobbsbow. I mean he he. I got
into an argument, not not not a hostile or cumulic Blowe,
but I got into an argument with somebody the other
day who credited Clerk with with coining the long century,
that that terminology or that signified, and he did. He
did speak of the eighteenth century as the quote long
eighteenth century in similar terms that Hobsblomb described the nineteenth century.
And undoubtedly they were familiar with each other's work products.
But you know, Clark wasn't really the Hegelian in the
terms that the hobbs Bomb was. But he obviously has
like some of those conceptual prejudices. I don't say prejudices
and punitive terms. I mean, that's just very much the
way he kind of his view of historical time is oriented,
particularly as regards you know, mind as as the kind
of prime move on in the historical process. But it's
o point was that Anglican aristocratic in gemony, that and
the challenge is emergent to its hegemony. That's really the
way to understand everything of a power political nature. That
happened within and without the United Kingdom, like really from
the from the time of the War three Kingdoms, you know,
up until like World War One. Okay, and I believe
he's correct, and an adequately deep reading of Hobbes with
somebody like Carl Schmidt was very very very adroit we
you know, conveyed in his writings not just in the
concept of the political but in the stuff he wrote
directly on Hobbes. He's very much making the same point,
although obviously like his topical his topical emphasies, you know,
are are generally more focused on discrete features, you know,
relating the kind of conceptual jurisprudness and things and and
kind of theoretical foundations that you know are intrinsic to
the kind of British cultural mind you know, and uh
and such that there is a British cultural mind. It's
it's it's it's Anglican and aristocratic and you know, so
it's a real, it's a real phenomenon. Okay, and again too,
like that's why the emergence of a modern police element
in the UK it was different than in in Germany,
whereby by and large, uh, you know, the poets I
have always been sort of like, uh, an internal security
element that was very much part of the military. Okay,
that that doesn't just owe to the fact that, you know,
the modern German state is the house that Bismarck built,
and that kind of conceptual perspective, especially visa the police
thing is very Prussian. I mean, that's part of it.
But I posit that that only became that that was
that only became a feature of the press and cultural
mind on grounds the basic imaginety that was accomplished. Now granted,
and yes, Germany's about one third Roman Catholic, but Bismarck's
culture comp was tremendously effective and basically rendering the German
state and the civil service that constituted that state at
level of executive enforcement, the same thing of decision making
had become very Protestant by design. And also sectarian challenges aside,
and I don't minimize those. I mean Germany was literally
ground zero of the thirty years of war. This was
not like a minor thing, but there it was, despite
the regional attachments to German and despite you know the
kind of several populations who are possessed of discrete cultural forms,
you know, like a Swabian is not a Prussian, is
not a Bavarian. But there is like a German identity,
like a Deutsche, like racial identity, if you will. There's
not a British race, Okay, there's constituent elements of Great Britain,
but I nobody would argue to the contrary. I don't believe, okay.
And that's fundamentally important. And that's one of the reasons
why again it's it's not just it's not just some
sort of like anglophone conceptual bias abstracted from historical experience
in the UK and America. One of the common strains
that is facilitated this kind of enduring like a mere
between the two political cultures, like always do both us
and them being like intractive, we divided societies and I
will I will die on that hill. Okay. Now bring
it back to Clark's kind of point and how it
relates to our discussion topically after about eighteen thirty or so,
despite the fact that yeah, the vast majority of not
just aristocrats but like upperly mobile middle class types in
England but also in the UK and and Ulster. Oh again,
in Ulster, it's a little more complicated. People basically believed
in like not just the divine right of the British crown,
but you know, they believe their hereditary nobility was basically
doing its job historical terms. You know, they believe the
kind of parameters of traditional authority from tennessa theseics on word,
with the Anglican Church being the kind of theological and
esthetical and cultural lynchpin of these things. They viewed that
is basically a good thing. Like nevertheless, there were political
variables that were very real that were undermining it, you know,
and a lot of these a lot of these sociological
and sociopolitical factors were the same things that ultimately were
you know, culminated like the eighteen forty eight revolutions, you know,
which in turn also you know, kind of kicked off
the decades on the process whereby revolutionary communism kind of
became the default perspective of the working classes, you know,
locally moderated as it may have been, by traditional cultural
practices or a vestigial attachment to the national or local
culture or just out now you know, like religious belief.
You know that the fact remains that in every punctuated
way there was cracks emerging within this structure that really
for the preceding you know, seven, eight, seven or eighth
centuries said had been essentially insurmountable, and such as threats
to it were emergent, they were emerging from without, and
the standard bears of these threat were characterized first and
foremost by their absolute alienage. Okay, so this changed everything.
But you know, and Peel the degree to which he
quite literally drafted like a manifesto and like various policy
papers on what the mandate should be of an urban
police department and what its relationships should be to the
judiciary and the executive and the Crown, but most importantly
to the community that it served. He drafted some of
his allies in the government to produce this document known
as the Royal Commission on Constabulary Forces. And the report
didn't just it wasn't just emergent as some kind of
last minute policy declaration to appease you know, the official
opposition or something like. There had been a serious committee
corral to evaluate exactly how this kind of nascent police
force I would work with the poor laws as they
were called, you know, to what degree the police were,
you know, to kind of like enforce these superficially paternalistic
but basically punitive, you know, legislative mandates which conferred upon
the local executive the ability to quite literally like place
people under arrest for fratal services and put them in
poor houses. You know. Peal was hyper aware of this potentiality,
and he basically said, like, we can't, we can't become
the kind of like uniformed enemy like of of the
wretched and the poor, you know, or of the or
or of the work or or of the working classes.
You know. We can't just become to be viewed as
this kind of like permanent uh cadre strike breakers or something.
So what he did was in addition to that, in
addition to this committee that you know then, as as
I just mentioned from them of their findings and the
form of his broad based study to the commons, he
also drafted what came to be known as the Pelion Principles. Okay,
I was like the rules one might have for like
eating an orange or something, but it's not. The nine
Plion Principles were one to prevent crime and disorder as
and this is key as an alternative to repression by
military force and as an alternative to recourse to increasingly
severe punishment. So basically, you know, anything short of you know,
some kind of seventeen eighty nine situation, you don't just
send in the red coats, you know, to buttstroke and
bayonet people. Nor do you start you know, drawing and
quartering people in the public square like you know in
the days of uh, you know, medieval rebellions or whatever.
You know, the people need to view the police forces
as working you know, like with them, you know, towards
accomplishing an equitable peace. You know. The second Peelian principle
was that the power of the police to fulfill their
functions and duties is absolutely dependent on public approval of
their existence, their actions and behavior in the course of
affecting custodial arrests, but also like an approval of their mandate.
You know, there's gotta be uh that there's got there
there There's gotta be some sort of you know, direct
uh connection between you know, these constituencies and how they're
represented and the commons and who represents them, you know,
and uh an ability of those representatives like directly impact
you know what what what you know, what what priorities
are as well as you know as well as the
kind of brass tacks of of how policing is conducted.
You know, there's gotta be some kind of formal accountability,
you know, to recognize always the extent to which cooperation
of the public must be secured, and how this diminishes
and proportion in terms the necessity of the use of
physical force. And this is why traditionally, like British police
don't pay heat. Okay, it's not because the British are naive.
It's not because they got a culture that wasn't steeped
in violence. Nor is it like in old movies where
you know there's some that the British kind of don't
know what the hell to do if somebody shows up
with a gun. Like look, Actually, until recently firearms are
pretty ubiquitous in the UK, and until the later eighties
you could procure a weapon as a private person without
a whole lot of hassle. The British sending the army
if they need to kill somebody, okay, or if they
need to like raid the hood and do like a
bulls on parade thing and like break heads. The whole
point of like the Pelion and the police is that
they don't do that you know, you don't you know,
you don't send you don't send a diplomatic element and
to negotiate with a gun on his hip. Okay, that
that's the ethos and this is key and that's kind
of like where America parted ways with the Pelion concept
and what we'll get into like why that is probably
not till part two though, but number five of the
pillion principles to seek and preserve public favor and partial
service to law, independence of policy, and without regard to
the justice or injustice of the substance of those laws,
but without pandering the public opinion. And uh, you know
in in the UK and historically you know how like
in Robinhood, like the big villain is the Sheriff of Nottingham.
Like a sheriff didn't used to be like a local policeman,
but he did basically have like the executive power of
the county with you know that that like concentrated in
his office. And there's a big concern that these rules
can't become politicized that you're talking about, you know, the
ability to affect custodial arrests and hail people into court,
you know, by way of like a permanent constabulary, like
there had to be some kind of accountability, but it
couldn't become just like another political office, you know, And
that's uh I stipilated in the early days, the UK
did a pretty good job of this, even if it's
you know, something that's not that they can't really be sustained,
you know, and in the absence as we saw with
mister Trump, regardless of anybody feels about Trump, the man,
you know, you got You've got a perfect example in
the FBI, where it's like you have a law enforcement
agency with tremendous power whose mandate disappeared decades ago. It's like,
what what do they become? Like they basically become this
They become this kind of like hatchet for hire for
entrench political interests, and that's that's highly corrupting, you know,
aside from the fact that it's it's uncomstable that you know,
the taxpayer is expected to you know, continue to fund
this apparatus, it's that you know that they're really is
like a there really is a deleterious influence of a
police organization that has become like especially owing to you know,
the the evaporation of its mandate has become really nothing
more than a a a cipher for you know, for
political right, for political capture. The six plion principle is
to use physical for us only when the exercise of persuasion,
advice and warning is found to be insufficient. And again too,
I know it's a lot of people and and like
a fair amount of of flat foots like follow my content.
We'll just we'll just fine. I was kind of surprised,
excuse me to discover that. But uh, I hear police
a lot, you know, talk about how like well, you know,
the British policing broke as fuck. They you know, they
they're too averse to force. And maybe they are. I'm
not I'm not like weighing in on that in absolute terms,
but it's something that precludes the kind of current totally
dysfunctional kind of culture of police thing like post Floyd,
post the political theater, you know, post political theater promised
one on the Floyd incident. It it just goes back to,
you know, literally an inception. And that's one of the
reasons why Operation Banner played out the way that it did,
you know, And we'll get into some of that. I
don't I don't want to turn this into the discussion
about the troubles because it's outside the scope. But there
are aspects that are relevant to the discussion. But you know,
my my point is people who view you know, partake,
I mean, there's a going going on here and I
don't want to I don't want to get into the
topic here knose averse to the topic although it's quite unpleasant,
but because that's how it's at the scope discussion of
the grooming gangs and and and sexual assault of vulnerable people,
particularly young girls and kids by by these hostile like
alien elements. The reason why that's happening, oh, is to
negatively political factors of you know, the post Nuremberg era.
That that that doesn't owe to like the bridge police
being in you know, unreasonably aversive force or something. But
instances where there is on display of comparative reluctance, you know,
to apply deadly force or to go in heavy as
people think of it in terms of police work, you know,
in a ing less lethal measures. That that that's a
different thing and it precedes you know, the current era,
and it's it's ideological shiles and things. The last uh,
the last few are kind of brass tech stuff. The
last few of the Peler principles of accountability, but the
key one is to uh is quote to maintain in
all times of relationship with the public because reality to
the historical tradition that the police are the public and
the public are the police. Community policing that phraseology as
well as the ethos that underlies it as a direct
import from the United Kingdom, and it's essential. Like regardless
of kind of how you fall on the matter of
what pass is good policing or like, that's not important.
I mean it's important, but I mean for purposes of
this particular aspect of the discussion, there does need to
be like a communitarian aspect to the police. Otherwise it's
not workable. And honestly, that is that is the future
as the process that we talked about at the top
of the hour, you know, kinda emerges in earnest and
policing becomes truly a localized function once again. That that
that's that's essential to local sovereignty and and essentially the
maintenance of i've anything approaching law and order. And I
made the point again and again you're gonna see moving forward,
there's not gonna be I mean, I realized I'm dating
myself with this reference. But there's I do not foresee
like a Thomas Chitthham Civil War two scenario that people
would be in nearly nineties. And I think him is
a great guy, and for context, he was writing about
this stuff in the wake of things like the La riots,
where like some kind of open ross and Kreeg was
really like in the running, which is terrible. I do
not see that happening at scale. What is happening, I mean,
I mean it's already underway, is the kind of secession
of discrete communities, some which are deliberate communities, some of
which have just kind of ossified around common cultural imperatives
and identitarian signifiers, just like owing to accident of you know,
historical developments and sociological realities. But as communities kind of
become more and more self contained, you know, like we've
talked about before, there's there's gonna be even greater and
more layered complex interdependence of an economic and financial nature.
But politically people are seceeding. You know, You're gonna see
communities that are like nine nine point nine percent Black,
that that are like nine nine point n a percent white.
You know that that are like the same as for
Raza or for like Easian people or other And similarly,
there's gonna be communities that owing either ideological commitment or
inability or unwillingness to establish you know, a deliberate living
pattern a relative scale. You know, there are gonna be
like mixed race communities that you know maybe or maybe
even you know, community such that are situated in the
aforementioned according to the afrementioned criteria, like going to something
like vestigial attachment to American civic myths. But regardless, like
any policing, it's gonna be a reflection in that community.
You're not gonna have like white or Spanish guys going
to police who live fifty miles away, like commuting in
is in black code to polices and like vice versa.
Like that's done, that's dead. You know, it's not the
liabilities attendant to police work are just going to kind
of force those sorts of developments. But also people aren't
gonna be willing to do the job anymore from a
position of communitarian alienage. Okay, But also again, you know,
like what was the what was the purpose appeals model
for police which in turn, also had strong relevance here,
you know, again owing to the basic social visions which
characterized both societies. What kind of derailed that really was
uh really, it was kind of like the collapse of
uh the cities as a low guy as like worker Barris.
For the national economy, it was the Cold War. It
was uh, you know, the earliest uh birthpaygs of globalism
when they really when they literally were like two systems
competing for global hegemony. That's really what underlay the war
on drugs. Like I watched the film drug Store Cowboy
the other day, which is actually a really good film.
I really liked that movie. It's got Kelly Lynch, it's
got James Raemar, it's got Matt Dylan, it's got Weymous
Burrows and this weird cameo. But it's kind of a
it's very much kind of a black comedy, but it's
also a serious treatment of of of of like narcotic addiction.
And it's also kind of like a you know, like
a crime movie. But Burrows plays this heroin and morphine
addicted priest. It's kind of like the grand old man
of this community of addicts that's perpetually ripping and running,
and he talks about the settings around nineteen seventy three,
and he's talking about, you know, I foresee a global
police state apparatus premised on the moral panic over use
of narcotics. And yeah, there was an aspect to that,
but the War on drugs is peak like Cold War,
I think, Okay, and everything else aside. It totally and
completely changed policing. It changed the way, it changed what's
considered evidence. It changed the way we conceptualize a criminal offense.
It changed the way the police view the community that
they are charged with regulating, and vice versa. It changed, uh,
people's attitude towards violence and when the police have a
defensible mandate to apply it. I mean, it made the
role something other than what it had been there too,
for it was that much of a a categorical paradigm shift. Okay,
and the War on drugs is coming to an end. Two,
which is really really interesting and very important, you know,
especially considering that agree to which you know, many aspects
of the health crisis are being driven by addiction. To two,
it's the obvious. But where uh, we're coming up on
the hours we want to stop now, I'm sorry to
be a party pooper. But if I change gears now,
like I'll have to stop, like in the middle of
a what I think is an important point, and I
don't want to do that.
Speaker 1: Then I will hold my questions until the next time
that we prefer.
Speaker 2: You can we can do them now if you want,
or we can wait.
Speaker 1: Well, let me let me just throw one in there. Yeah, man,
it seems it seems like in the United States policing
was taken over by the Irish. How did that happen?
Speaker 2: A few different ways, at least in Chicago. Bostin's a
bit different in Chicago, and they get into this and
Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, which is a great book, like
even if even if you don't accept Sinclair's you know,
views on political economy and and and historical processes and things.
But when the Jungle opens up, there's still like a
vestigel like German American kind of civic elite in Chicago,
you know, but they're slipping. Basically, the first unions were
Irish immigrants, and the first mob here was Irish, you know,
the Compone gang like went to war basically with like
with with the Irish. You know that, I mean yeah,
it was the north side of the South, So I
truly are different. And there wasn't some like rigid homogeneity
but between the gangs. But it was basically like you know,
Compone's Italians like going to war with the Irish. Okay,
So the Irish were running the street and the Irish
and you know, the Irish were running the the the
labored unions. So by consequence, you know, you had to
give the you had to give the Irish the police
department if you wanted to be able to regulate both
of those things, you know. And then from there, like
the Irish here they were able to capture they were
able to capture the the Synegap Paratus for you know,
like seventy years. The Irish are I'm not I'm not
like transhing the Irish. I mean, depending on how you
define things like I am Irish, like I don't really.
I think if you're not running cap like you're not
really a petty. But my point is, I mean, I
that's one of the reason I make fun of them
so much, just because it's kind of like an in
house rivalry. But I'm not banishing the Irish when I
say this, but there they are conspiratorial people, very tribal,
very uh, very in group focused, very prone to intrigues, okay,
and the best way under the national economic schema. You
know that existed in earnest from the eighteen seventies until
you know, really until the Kennedy era. You know, they
that that was how you captured cloud, you know in
the cities. So that that's how I you the guy.
I don't want to name drop him because I I
think he's retired now. I mean I think about this
the other day, like I'm getting so old. But I
went to law school and I became buddies with them.
Like when I went to law school, this guy named Corboy.
He's this big shot like King of Torch type lawyer.
He founded the scholarship at John Marshall Chicago. Or like
any Chicago policeman or woman can like get a full
ride if they can like get into John Marshall. So
I got to know like some of these flat foots,
including the guy who went on to become a honch
with a re turnover police. And I got to know
him pretty well because like he drive me home. I
mean we we had class on the weekends. We were
both going to law school at night if he was
working as he was, he was working as a cop.
Then he worked the West Side, you know, I was,
I was working a couple of different jobs, including this gym
and Edgewater. But so you go to class at night
and then on Saturday morning we had like lawyer ring skills.
He was basically legal writing. And uh, he'd meet me
at the Skoky Swifts l station and then we'd drive
to the Loop and then every class he'd drive me back.
It's the Skogy Swift and then I'd go home to Evanston.
So like I got to know him, went pretty well.
And he was the third generation cop. Like his brother
was a cop, his dad was a cop, his grandfather
been a cop, you know, and it's uh, it was interesting.
And and he married a lady who was very nice.
And he'd met her at is U where a lot
of cops used to go to college. I don't know
what today, but they're their police science program. It was
kind of a Feaer system for Chicago bed. But he
married a lady and like her dad was a cop,
you know. But at that point, being like, uh, I
got some insight, uh, because I'm like a north Shore
guy and so there was plenty of Irish around like
where I grew up. But you know, they were they
weren't the kinds of guys who become policemen, you know, like, uh,
they're the kinds of guys who were like lawyers and
stuff and like accountants like their dads. I mean, you know,
the prosperous serious that's not some kind of like flex
and like my family because like my dad, like my
dad's like a fucking genius, but he's like he's like
this academic guy and basically like a game theory guy.
We were kind of like we were like the poor people,
I'm sure, and like you guys you did it? Is
this first guy I know, like helping me. You know,
he's like, but don't do what he does. You won't
we get any money. It's like like I want your opinion.
But yeah, that was that was kind of a tangent man,
Sorry with it, and I forgive my I finally were
being sick, man, but I still got some congestion. Forgive me.
I realized I don't sound well, So forgive me for.
Speaker 1: It, no problem, uh, and drop some plugs and I'll
end this.
Speaker 2: You'll end it. All. That's struck me as funny as sorry.
I'm trying to be a cob. You can always find me.
The best place to find me is on substick. I'm
on hiatus from the pod until the first week in February,
but there's other good stuff that's popping up there and
I promise Season via the Pod is going to be
lit and tremendous. It's real Thomas seven seven seven dot
substack dot com. My website is kind of a one
stop location for a bunch of my content. It's number
seven h O M A S seven seven seven dot com.
I'm on social media at Capital r E A L
Underscore number seven h O M A S seven seven
and seven. I'm on Instagram, on Telegram. But yeah, there's
big things on the horizon and I think I think
the subs will very much appreciate and approve of these things.
And I want to give since I'm gonna thank everybody
for supporting the brand. People have really we've gotten like
a glut of new subscribers lately. It's it's just great,
you know, and your support makes this possible. I cannot
thank you enough. And in a week I'm going to
the inauguration and a bunch of the fellas and girls
are gonna be out there. I'm gonna I'm gonna stream
from out there, and I'm gonna try and capture some
worthwhile footage and b roles. So there's had to look
forward to also. But that's that's what I got, all.
Speaker 1: Right, man, Till the next time, Thank you. I want
to welcome everyone back to the Beginiana Show, Thomas Hey,
part two of the police series. How you doing, man?
Speaker 2: I don't well, thank you man. Yeah, I think it
was pretty Part one seemed to be pretty well received. People. Uh,
I guess some of the subs were confused that the
whole thing wasn't on YouTube. I don't know why. In
the description it said it was just like a preview.
Speaker 1: But let me address that real quick in the beginning
of this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the videos are not going
to be on YouTube, rumble bit shoot anymore. You get
a preview. If you decided something you want to watch,
you can go over to one of the podcast apps
and listen to it. Yeah, just not knowing that I'm
not gonna put out video anymore.
Speaker 2: No, No, that makes perfect sense, man. And and yeah,
like I didn't think it was confusing or anything that's
that seems like a perfectly reasonable way to do it.
So yeah, that's that's great.
Speaker 1: If it's a particularly if it's a subject that I
think we need video for, I'll release it for subscribers.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, no, that that that makes perfect sense.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, I I wasn't confused by the whole thing,
but a handful of people hit me up about it,
so yeah, thanks for thanks for shouting it out. I think, uh,
I think we finished it off last time talking about
Robert Peel and like the Peel Principles and they you know,
I emphasize that not to be pedantic or because I
get excited about trivialities and the historical record. But again
that agree to which policing really is a political phenomenon.
It's not. It's it's not the necessity whereby, oh, the
police have always been here, you know, the police have
existed for forty thousand years, like basically since man became
like sentient, and if they go away, there's anarchy. That's
not why you have a police department, you know. And
the American model the reason why there's not like there's
not like an American version of like the German order
police that are like part of the National Guard or
something is because there's a there's a strange situation in
the UK and America and for clarity to like, you know,
Peel absolutely was the thought, wasn't is the father of
modern what's called like metropolitan policing. The first, the first
true police department came from Scotland. That's a get another
thing that like the Scottish came up with in uh
in this the City of Glasgow Police like the first
like the first professional police department. They were established my
an Act of Parliament in eighteen hundred. I knew that,
but some of the some of like the scot some
of the Pikey's like shouted out and like what the
fuck the first police was quoting the quotes. So there
you go and Peel the London the London Metropolitan Police
were created by the Peace the Peace Preservation Act of
eighteen fourteen and Peel essentially like drafted that in all
but name. I don't know if he's credited as as
as the primary author, but yeah, for context in at
the turn of the nineteenth century, London had it had
four hundred fifty constables and service of the Kings or
Queen's bench and forty hundred night watchmen, you know, and
it was, uh, it wasn't within the contemplation that there'd
be like a permanent professional police force until Peel's reforms
and when he became Home Secretary. That's really when it
began in earnest. But there were significance to us in
this country. You know, everything kind of changed with the
New Deal regime and subsequent and you know, one of
the reasons why is people might age and older. Remember
one of the reasons why it was a big deal
when the media kind of turned on LAPD and you know,
when the Rodney King incident happened, and then like the
subsequent you know, like race war came about. I'm not
I'm not being shrill. I mean that there really was
a race war. You know. I think people kind of
confused William H. Parker with Darryl Gates. And I've noticed
that too because a lot of these it's fading because
like nobody takes woke shit seriously anymore. But at that
at the peak of that garbage, like I think around
like twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, there was a lot of these.
There was a handful like history as a Los Angeles
that made sound of a splash, and it kind of
me you know, a kind of mainstream academ which is
very midwood stuff. But there was this big effort to
kind of slander William H. Parker, and I realized because
I'm like, why they singling out Parker? And I'll get
to why that's weird in a minute. But then I
realized a lot of these people, I think Parker and
Gates are the same guy. You know, in Gates, I
I think Gates was kind of an ugly guy, like
not not for this, not for the reasons that a
lot of left wingers do, but I you know, I
I'll get into why I think that in a bit.
But but Parker, Parker was this big progressive, you know,
he and his He's kind of like the American Robert
Peel in some ways, you know, because like policing before
the nineteen fifties, really in America, it's like corruption was
kind of taken for granted, Like I mean, like graft
like besy was understood, like in any big city you
can like pay off the cops and get them off
your back. It was very ad hoc. I think that
until I think I think in the nineteen forties, the
city of Miami you had literally two sworn police officers,
you know, and even in cities where you had, you know,
a more mobilized police force, like Chicago, it didn't. It
didn't function the way like we think of it. They
were kind of like de facto, like you know, union
busters and strike breakers. You know, you kind of rely
on police services and you could like pay them to
show up like Below Board, you know. And it was
not in Gangs in New York, which I think is
a really great film, although like a lot of people
trash it for reasons I don't quite understand, but I
like it for a lot of reasons. I mean, it's
the only film that really deals with kind of the
the web life was like in big northern cities during
the War between the States. But Happy Jack, you know,
the the thug, like the like the policeman played by
John c Riley. He was like out there thugginghead like
that was pretty realistic, like by all accounts, man like that.
That's like what the police were like. You know.
Speaker 1: There was a show I can't remember if it was
on AMC or History, but it was. It only did
two seasons it was called copper uh.
Speaker 2: Huh, and it was I've never heard of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it was really good, and it really it
did a good job of showing it would be late
eighteen hundreds, eighteen eighties, eighteen nineties, and it did a
really good job of showing just exactly that the whole
John c Riley thing about how they were a lot
of them were just thugs. A lot of them grew
up thugs or they came back from the war and
they had nothing else that they could do, and they
they got thrown into into policing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were good at strong arming people when they
they and they yeah, and they were good with with
the with a hand on which at nose days. I
mean today, I'm still a terrible pistol shot. But these
days it's a lot easier to stay Ontario the pistol
than if you're using some old cold forty by peacemaker,
you know, like even I mean, you know all that
you're a gun guy. But but yes, that's you know,
it's basically what the police were. It's not some that's
not some progressive myth about you know, the bad guy
police or something. I mean, it's a fact. But it
but Parker, you know, all kinds of in every sense
in public policy, you know, always making the point that
sociology was a real discipline, like because of the Cold
War and because of the managerial state. And Parker was
one of these guys. I'll get to do his background
in a minute. But in the nineteen fifties and sixties,
like big city police chiefs or in Chicago police superintendent
says we call them, they weren't just like career cops
who you know, had like the ear of the mirror.
I mean, there's definitely some of that, but this idea
of you know, a cop needs to be some like
college educated type with with you know, preferably with the
with a kind of prestige degree, you know, which in
those days supposed like a degree in sociology, your economics
or like urban planning or something. You know, Like this
was a big thing, you know, and that's one of
the reasons why Parker didn't like a Hollywood But the
reason why shows like Dragnet were a big deal, Like
they worked with La PD, and Parker cultivated that, you know,
I get La Confidential. How that guy played like Kevin
Space even sends he's like always wearing h he's always
wearing Italian suits, and he's got like manicured fingernails, and
he's he's consulting with a guy he was supposed to
be Jack Webb. I'm dragnet. Like that was the real thing,
Like the Hollywood LA Cop Who knows who had them?
You know, who's interface of the media in a way
that that is essential kind of the public image, you know,
like they had stuff all came from Parker and uh,
you know that this was the l E PD was
held out as like the model police force, and if
you read the kind of stuff Parker said, it was
all like the Peel principles. You know, it's like we're
a community based police department. You know, like we're not here,
you know, just to arrest people and and smack people up.
You know, Uh, We're not just a bunch of stripe breakers.
Like he was like this big progressive who like was
was a who I mean, That's why it's weird they're
trying to present him as this kind of like clansman
type or something like, because he wasn't at all. He
was like this big progressive and his big thing was
that like the the La County sheriffs. The had a
reputation as being kind of like very redneck issh and
very rough, and his whole thing was like, we're not
like those guys, you know. Uh, Parker like high he
was into hiring blacks and uh and like mestizel people,
you know, the police their own hoods and stuff like this.
That was like this whole thing, you know, and like that.
People might be like, well, that's just like police work,
but yeah, that's why it's police work because of Parker.
And Parker was falling back on this stuff from the
UK because he was an educated guy and like most
of these guys, you know, he came up through the
service during the War two, like he'd been born in
uh in the Dakotas and found his way to give
me one second, my machine's freaking out there, we go. Yeah,
he was born he was born in South Dakota and
made his way uh in Deadwood, you know, which has
like an auspicious heritage as regards law enforcement and stuff.
And then he, uh, he made his way to southern
California like a lot of like a lot of people
did from that part of the country, including my paternal grandfather.
His uh, his grandfather, William H. Parker, was a war hero.
He fought up to the Union Army and in the
War between the States and later served in Congress. And
Parker was, uh, he was very Catholic, which obviously was unusual.
And in uh in like Los Angeles at the time,
which was which is kind of like a wasp it was.
It was a really it was kind of like a
wasp bread out like literally like rich waspy people. He
kind of settled it and those people like their their
descendants like still have a lot of cloud there, you know.
And and then and there was a lot of like
okies too, you know who like working in poor like
white folks. But you know, Parker was kind of outside
of that culture. But he uh he joined l A.
P d. And know, it was the eighteenth nine twenty,
he said, when he was going to law school, and
it's the idea was that it was just going to
like put him through school and it was like something
to do and like, you know, well during the course
of his studies and he said he could learn like,
you know, stuff about public policy or whatever. I'm at
the road in terms of functional application of the law,
you know, like in an executive role at street level.
But he decided every patch, the bar exam. He just
he decided to He decided to stay on is early
he early on, like he was a big advocate of
like a police the police union, which at that time,
I think the the New York and Chicago or paternal
or a police were already a thing. But like the
idea of public sector unions, I wouldn't gonna be wrong.
Like police work in them days was a lot different
than today, and like those guys actually did need some
kind of formal representation visa via the city council and stuff.
It's not it's not like ridiculous bullshit like I make
a teacher's union. But you know, public sector unions weren't
a thing, and uh back in those days in California,
I think throughout the state, so that there was any
kind of like cop representation, and in terms of organized labor,
it was generally like a police and firefighters union, and
that was that was his primary role. You know, he
wasn't mostly a beat cop, but he did. He took
leave to go fight in uh World War Two, and
he was in, UH he was in during combat. He
got a purple Heart for wounds that he received in Normandy,
and he'd been in uh, he'd been at the assault
in Sardinia, and because his background as a cop, they
put him. He was both in the role. It's kind
of like a counterinsurgency enter like in theater. He was
responsible for POWs and stuff and detention, as well as
you know, kind of policing, uh the ranks post occupation
in Munich and stuff. That's a uh, that's a resume.
I'm not trying to cast an ominous light on Parker,
but that's a resume. Not unlike John Burge, although Burge
I believe was engaged in Phoenix for raumsy stuff and
not for those that don't know, Burge was he was
a homicide police here in Chicago, very feared guy. His
name rang out and he he got indicted like years
after he retired from torturing suspects, procuring all these dubious
confessions that were procured under duress. But that agree to
what the military during like the draft era, you know,
and basically you know, World War One through and and
the relationship of LAPD to the Vietnam War particularly is
very interesting. Joseph Wamba gets into that. We'll talk a
little bit about Wamba. But during during the World War
two era, you know, like there was a glott of
guys who who'd uh, who'd been in in heavy action,
who became cops or guys like Parker who'd you know,
already been for an officers and then left, you know,
to leave, like you know, to join the service or
to be you know, satisfied their draft allegation or whatever.
But he got he got the war Cross. I'm not
even gonna try and pronounce it de croix, the GI
I think is what it's called. It's basically, uh, basically
the French equivalent of the war merit cross maintaining ordered
in the liberation of Paris. But out of the war,
he shot through the ranks, became one of the one
of the deputy chiefs, and by nineteen fifty he was
by the year nineteen fifty, like he was a big
shot and he he he's responsible for not just cleaning
up graft at street level, but you know, kind of
a insinuating la insulating lapd from like war to politics.
There's one of the reasons too. I like mafia guys
in the traditional sense, like couldn't really get a toe
hold in California, you know, like I I'm sorry to
keep citing a Hollywood movie as authoritative, but it draws
upon real stuff and some people are familiar with, you know,
like an LA Confidential, there's a scene where like Dudley
like Budd White, who's like isn'tforced her, you know, he's
like a goon police like they het word that he's
like East Coast mob guys are in Los Angeles for
some reason. So like Dudley has White in the goon
squad like Shanghai these dudes and like take them to
you know, take take them to some interrogation location and
like beat the fuck out of them. And then they
literally like put these guys like back on a train
going back east, like all like broken up and bang
up and battered. Like LAPD did stuff like that. And
that's one of the reasons Lava was always an open territory.
Like it's not just because the LAPD would literally fuck
your world up, you know if you were an outsider
trying to set up rackets there, but there really wasn't.
There wasn't like any ward boss you could go visit
in LA you know who if it didn't you know
who peeps be like, hey, I'm so and so, you know,
and my guy vouched for me, like let's do business.
And I mean you have like and you don't have
to you don't have just like you don't have the
same hood structure in La Man. I mean, yeah, it's
like like East La span is traditionally south central as black,
you know, and then you got like oki and white hoods.
But it's not like Chicago and New York. It's not
like there's like this like word system where you know,
you were were like bosses on from the ground up.
Is like how you got stuff done. So you know,
Parker kind of yeah, it's like okay, any man in
the airheads work cut out for him. But you know,
it's it's important to distinguish that Los Angeles was kind
of fertile grounds for a lot of this stuff and
a lot of this kind of social policy experimentation. That's
not to say it's a tabula rasa, but it's not
only that's one of reason too, Like, I mean, because
we just did a California series, this is one of
the reasons why people are kind of able to project
on to California, specifically Los Angeles. This kind of confabulated
narrative of its political heritage, you know, like one one
way or the other to try and shore up a
mandate of an ideological nature. But you know, the uh,
one of Parker's big things and gags later ran with
this will be a pretty very different reasons. But Parker, Uh,
Parker drammatically reduced the size of LAPD and he actually
militarized it in key ways, not in terms of its ethos,
but his whole thing was mobility. And you know, again
like his formad of experience at command level, and I
believe the rank of commander as a police rank came
about under Parker's tenure. But you know, his his experience,
his form of experience had been in the service, like
at the you know, in the military, and that perspective
shaped LAPD. And you know that's why like air mobility
by uh, like the Vietnam era was a huge thing
with LAPD too. You know, like they make use of
shoppers in a way that northern police departments do. I mean,
part of that's just because the geography and the vastness
of the territory they're responsible for, but it's also a
very military way of like staying on target or I
don't I don't know how the police what their nomenclature
is for that. I'm sure they call it something different
that sounds less ominous or or or direct the action
oriented but.
Speaker 1: Not not not to try to be funny, but Mayor
Goody and Philadelphia also used helicopters to change Philadelphia. Do
you remember that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, yeah, that's a fair point.
But the you know, the so it's on the one hand,
so it's kind of like two competing tendencies, like the
posture of police deployment away from you know, like uh
like like police literally walking beats in uh the same neighborhood.
It's just that they're insinuated into the community to like
rotating officers, you know, so they get like a citywide
perspective and get used to kind of interfacing with with
every major population segment. And you know, switching to police
cars over foot patrols. That was a huge Parker thing
because his whole thing too is like you know, and
being able to swarm a be you know, being able
to swarm units to uh to to reinforce officers in trouble,
you know, order to respond to the over running force
like that was a that was a Parker innovation and
uh this stuff, uh speaking of a wamba, I highly
recommend anything Wamba has written. But the Onion Field, which
is a horrible story. These two ILAPD playing clothes cops
were kidnapped and one of them was murdered. The other
guys survived and though the way he was treated was horrible.
But you know, in those days, like there there wasn't
you know, police radios were tied to the vehicle that
they were driving, and obviously there wasn't the same kind
of modern telecom and uh, if somebody got the drop
on you in those days, and previously, if you were
told to like surrender your weapon, you were like police
were told they should comply like subsequently, and this is
a Parker innovation. He said, like never ever surrender your
service weapon, you know, like Besis, you should die before
we ever give it weapon, you know, and the police
just adopted like a more military mindset and like across
the board. But at the same time, though, you know,
like I said, like Parker was very much part of
the sociologically progressive, academically polished class, that kind of bureaucrats
who represented the face twenty century policing, and interestingly, Gene
Roddenberry starred with lapd. You know, he's like the Star
Trek guy. I think Star Trek's goofy. I'm not a
fan of it, but the original series is a very
much kind of a time capsule of of like the
Kennedy sixties Kennedy or sixties. I realized it it endured
beyond that. But Captain Kirk is based on William H. Parker,
like like literally, like roden Berry said that, and like
he knew the guy, you know, and he's like that's
like Kirk is like this guy. He was like this
man of action, but he's also like mister you know,
he's always like exciting Abraham Lincoln in the Constitution and
he's like he's like mister like appeal to legal authority,
and we do everything by the book. He's supposed to
be William H. Parker, Okay. And that's also why, like
he's got like a multi racial crew and he's got
he's got the Russian guy on deck, he's got like
the effeminate Asian guy. He's got like the black woman
who's like his telecom officer. Like this this wasn't just
that this wasn't just token his time on television. I mean, yeah,
that was part of it, but that was very deliberate,
like this is this is whyam Mage Parker's police department
in space, you know, which which I think is interesting,
but ibe he had a kind of that kind of
stuff I'm talking about. And Wamba wrote directly about this
in his in the like he wrote it was in
the onion field, and he mentioned this later in his
life that like it's an ongoing like exam kind of
the weirdness of the of the sixties and kind of
the new the kind of new fangled progressivism of it.
It was on the game to be called colloquially the
coloquially the Blazer experiment, as in a blazer like a
sports jacket. And uh, this jurist this town called uh
Menlo Park in California, they hired this, but it was
they hired this police chief named, uh Victoria Cizankis. Cizankis,
I think I'm butchering that name, forgive me, but his
Melo Park was at They to say that had troubled community.
To say the troubled community relations the police department, I mean,
would be a gross understatement. Okay, I mean this was
nineteen sixty eight. That's kind of nationwide that these issues
were emerging, but it was pret particularly pronounced in Menlo Park. Okay,
they've been hit particularly hard by the nineteen sixties there.
It's located just south of San Francisco, so they caught
a lot of the same ship that the Bay Area
proper did, you know, a lot of like a lot
of a lot of a lot of a lot of
cultivated student radicalism. You know. When I say cultivated, I
mean you know, the usual suspects and g os and
things do what they can to provoke and orchestrate the
kind of thing. But it just like real, like real,
just like organic difficulties between the races, you know. As unfortunately,
as you know, southern California's associated with North and South. Uh.
The Memlo Park Coppers, their reputation is being kind of
a kick ass police department, and during racial incidents or
or anti war protest that got out of hand, like
like the police would go in and kickle out of
the ass. Okay, And this caused this, this, this this
caused real problems, all right. So Susannacis or Susankas, sorry,
Cesankas he's brought in and he's got this kind of
like radical orientation about policing. And it was called the
Blazer experiment because he did away with police uniforms. He's like, Okay,
from now on, he's like, we're not we're not We're
not gonna wear some paramilitary uniform with a sam Brown
belt and like uh, you know, like a piece on
your hip or we're not gonna do that anymore. So
these Menlo Park police, they started going around wearing like
khaki pants and these like green blazers, so they look
like guys who's worked at a country club or something.
And there's like this little like city crest on on
like the breast pocket like you can you can like
google is and it's it's ridiculous. And your your weapon,
your service weapon was always supposed to be out of view, okay,
either by way of a shoulder holster or you know,
discreetly squirreled away like in an ankle holster, you know,
because no one's never supposed to see it, you know.
And there's this whole there's this whole litany of kind
of rules for how you're supposed to and instigate like
basically a terarry stop and like even if you have to,
even if you have to, like you know, stop and
frisk somebody because they're obviously strapped, or because they're up
to you know, or because like your police instincts or
however they characterize it in those days, tells you that
you know that, you know, your spiky senses tell you
something you don't like about this this suspect. So frisk
imm and figure out the problem. Cause later you're supposed
to always like initiate those contacts by you know, but
by asking somebody if if if they if they have consent,
you know, ship like that, which is fucking stupid. Okay,
it was, it was. It was stupid, stupid today. It
was stupid back then. And like a lot of this
crap is coming back, but these days it's it's in
combination with various other factors, you know, like like like
policing as as it's existed is coming to an end, okay,
And so it's kind of interesting to me, Like in
nineteen sixty eight, uh, the the po model police work
as far from exhausted itself, obviously, but it's interesting that
some of this stuff is kind of coming back because
if it's an issue of first impression as people scrambled
kind of trying salvage this this obsolete model. But you know,
this caused, uh, this caused a lot of consternation among
the ranks of police departments because obviously there was these
like like like progressive types, you know, and including uh
Susanthas fans. They thought like this was great. But you know,
a cops who were who were dealing with burgeining anarchy
and real violence, you know in in Los Angeles and Chicago,
in Boston and Philly and New York City. You know,
being a cop was a dangerous job then, and you know,
you you very much were out gunned, you know, you
very much you were in jeopardy then in a way
you're not today. You know, I realized there's cops in
god forsaken places that are in fact under fire a lot,
and uh, they don't have the kind of forces and
being or the firepower to really be confident, you know,
and if if, if they get moved on. But that's
the exception, not the rule. Like in the nineteen sixties,
that was that was the rule, not the exception. Okay,
parts police department was was was was kind of the
exception because like they had all that stuff, but you know,
like very very very kind of rapidly this uh the
Blazer experiment. Uh, like people realize like this is just
not this is not something that's going to work. And
uh but the what did uh what what what did
linger though? Is you know, the the like like career
minded officers coming from more academically rigorous backgrounds. That's something
that endured really until like the early eighties, and then
by then like that was by then that was done.
You know, for a lot of reasons. Part of it
was a trickle down effect of of uh of military
industrial imperatives. I mean, I know that makes me sound
like some shopski. I don't. I don't mean it in
the same way that people like Key and zach Lyites do.
But it is a fact. But one of the one
of the one of the many kind of coheinds of
comical things about the Blazer experiments. The the organizational lingue
lingo of the police department was changed. Sergeants became managers
and police lieutenants and menlo were called directors.
Speaker 1: Like it.
Speaker 2: I mean that it's it's it's a comical bullshit. It's
got like the kind like there was some of that.
I don't like the Vietnam e are at military like
in the Poga and the Poe ranks. It's just you know,
a very strange era, man like this. But by the
early seventies, all this kind of all this all this
kind of stuff, and it kind of fallen out of
favor even, you know it even even among a kind
of the most art you know polemisis of uh, in
favor of you know, police reform, which in the interview
would you know kind of constitute a stripping of the
ability of big city police to you know, to meet
to meet brets. You know, this is like little remembered
the day, and it's remarkable the kind of short memory
people have. And I think about this a lot, especially
when there's when the regime tries been sitting with propaganda
about you know, domestic terrorism into in the policy discussions.
You know, uh, during the early nineteen seventies, there was
there was constant genuine like domestic terrorist incidents, you know,
coast to coast. Nixon and Jay R. Hoover, who you know,
even in the best of times, had a very contentious
and not at all friendly relationship to say the least.
This became such a concern that Nixon during June nineteen
seventy Nixon haled uh Hoover into the Oval Office and
he he said, have known certain terms that uh quote
revolutionary terror was the greatest single threat to like civil
order in America at the time. And that wasn't that
wasn't hyper believe. You know, there was like the weathermen
were going nuts. Uh. There was a half a dozen
other you know, self declared you know, like Mawist revolutionary
groupings that were dropping bodies and and and and and
pulling off ied attacks. You know, there were the Patty
Hurst incidents. It's almost so strange, like that seems like
something that like like a Hollywood screenwriter had like written
that Patty Hurst s l a situation into some script.
Like people would have laughed at it, saying there's no
way that could possibly happen. But I mean, but but
it happened.
Speaker 1: You know, you had there's a lot of hijacking, a
lot of hijacking the planes too.
Speaker 2: It became the norm. Yeah, it became something that was
as common as uh like armed robbery and yeah, the
the zebra killings you know, which were uh, which we're
what's we're horrifying, you know, And that was like part
of it was the deliberate suppression of of reporting on
on i've racially driven violence, so as the you know,
preclude escalation and the kindling effect, as it were. But
part of it was also like the zebra killings, people
don't know about them. It was this offshoot of the
five percenter faction of the ny who called themselves death Angels. Uh.
They went on this rampage of just random torture murders
of white people in the Bay Area, and the police
code UH for these incidents with zebra it's in it.
It's ironically accidental that, you know, the implication of zebras
is relating to black and white striping or whatever. But
that was going on at the same time the Zodiac
killer was was bodying people and and and taunting the cops.
So it's kind of overshadowed. But this is a real thing,
you know, and it uh there were throughout the seventies,
there was there was hundreds of these incidents every year,
you know, if not thousands, great and small the uh
and then downtown New York even this got this this
whole kind of air got kicked off. The summer of
sixty nine, this uh, this commie radical named Sam Melville,
him and his cadre, they bombed something like a dozen
buildings like in downtown Manhattan, you know, from the summer
of sixty nine until like that November, and then against
the seventies as ninety six nine, nineteen seventy it only
it only snowballed, you know, I mean, so it's kind
of it was kind of fertile ground for uh. Yeah,
by ninety seventy two, incredible as the city as I mean,
back in these days, FBI statistics were substantially more reliable
than today. In ninety seventy two, there was there there's
two thousand and five hundred politically motivated bombings or ied
attacks on American soil. That that that comes out to
five a day. Okay, excuse me, this is totally insane,
but that that's that's what laid the groundwork for kind
of nineteen eighties policing, which truly is when things truly
became paramilitarized, you know. And and Darryl Gates was the
standard bearer of that, you know, and Gates is most remembered,
I mean, I Gates was because I spent so much
time in La as a kid, and Gate Gates was
an intimidating guy, you know, like I any, and he
seemed he seemed the paramilitary, you know, like a lot
of big city cops either seemed they seem kind of
like either like Keystone cop eurocrats, you know, like goofs,
or they seemed just kind of like politicians like Gates,
like seemed like a bad dude, you know. And he'd
uh l a PD. You'd see him, uh, you know,
the L A p D. They didn't wear ties, they'd
wear those like uh, they'd wear those like v neck
like button. I'm sure it's like a vest. They looked
like super modern, and and they were all a bunch
of like in the eighties, they were all a bunch
of like buffed out, like tough looking guys. You know.
I was just I was used to like Chicago cops
look like goons and the and they've always come heavy,
but they like Scha cops. The air kind of looked
like fat ass like mob guys or something, you know.
So like in LA as a kid, I was always
kind of tripped out by Darryl Gates and OAPD. But
you know what Gates is most kind of known for
is stuff like the CRASH program, which began prior to
gates his tenure. But you know, the movie Colors like
was about CRASH, which is an acronym for Community Resources
against Street Hooligans. It uh, it originally was called TRASH
Total Resources against Street Houlians. And I would say the
references like we're like the garbage man, We're taking out
the fucking trash, and LABD realized like when that would
public well this this isn't like great pr But you know,
Gates also was the father of SWAT. He devised SWAT,
which initially was Special Weapons Assault Team. You know, then
we have special weapons and tactics. But uh, Gates divides
that during Parker's tenure, you know, and uh that was
actually very forward looking, like one of the reasons why
one of one of a million reasons why the FBI
is like it's head up his ass, you know how,
Like their direct to action capability is still the hostage
rescue team and their operational paradigm like until very recently
was that treat everything as if it's a hostage situation,
which makes which makes no sense. Whatsoever, Like Gates a
SWAT model was it? I mean he actually proceeded. He
proceeded kind of like a lot of the a lot
of the military types were dynamically and progressive minded of
the day in tactical terms, I mean not political terms.
You know, who were around like the Special Operations Forces community,
you know, and in those days, I was before there
was an integrated command or anything, and it was hard
to get anything done. It's like in the individual commands
it kind of what kind of made or broke everything was,
you know, who was in a leadership role. But but
for better or we worse LPD SWAT, you know, they
they were very dynamic, you know, and there's a kind
of a full repertoire of of of force responses that
they trained for, you know, and they were very serious guys.
But crash and which culminated in an Operation Hammer, which
the opening on the movie Colors, which I think Colors
is a fucking great movie, but the opening scene or
LAPD they they just like swarm the city and they
basically like they basically throw bracelets on like every known
gang member or like everybody or like every or every
like military age male like flying colors and they like
throw them in the county jail, you know, to kind
of get an idea like not like not just to
like send it, to literally lay the hammer down and
say like l E. P D runs the street. But uh,
they wanted to get an under they wanted they wanted
to also like get these guys government names all in
the system, but they also wanted to get an idea
like forest levels that like major sets head you know, crips,
Blood's Eighteenth Street, you know, all those all all those
mobs in in in south central and East LA. But
it was, uh, but that but that that was to
the end of like community based policing. It's like, okay,
we got the spare plunk of our forests. Crash you know,
every uh every police I think there's eighteen police districts
in Los Angeles and every district had a crash unit.
Now like a sign to it, but crash had like
city wide jurisdiction. Like a lot of these guys had
been actively gang banging like before they you know, went
to the police academy. L APD knew that and they
did like vet these guys somewhat, but obviously came in
you know, they ran into problems. One of the things
that blew the fucking lid off of a rampart scandal
is like one of the one of those dudes who
was affiliated with death Row Records was like one of
their security operatives. He was he was an act. He
was an active LAPD cop. He got into a shootout
with some other off duty cop over like this over
some traffic bullshits and dude died like whoever he was
throwing shots at like you know, return fire and killed him.
And uh, dude calls it in you know, the other
off duty cops like yeah, like you know, like that
has killed this guy who like you know, started squeezing
rounds off like lo and behold the found. This guy's
a cop. He like works for death Row. He's clicked
up with the you know, the same set that like
Suge Knight and all them guys were. But that but
that came about like l EPD tried to play it
off like all this guy was on bad apple loose
stood through the cracks, you know, and unfortunately a lot
of young guys from South central you know or insane
with into that that life and are thugging it. No,
that's that's not what happened, man, Like they like they
like the whole thing would crash was that a lot
of the guys were on record that like a lot
of their a lot of their officers like on record
with like different mobs. That's one of the reasons why
they were feared, you know. But that, uh, that's one
of the reasons too. Interestingly, also, you know, like the
Compton police Department no longer exists, and they were they
were like a heavy squad man like, they were very tough,
but they they were kind of like a micro cosm
of you know this, they had their own culture because
and I mean they were you know, they were their
own police department. But they I think now Common's police
by La County Sheriffs like like the the so call
fellas will correct me, but I think that to his jurisdiction.
But they it was like the same institutional sensibility and
Compton like in a scaled down way, but like Chicago
was different, Like uh, like Chicago was done like a
thug police department and still is in a lot of ways,
but like they did stuff differently, you know, and it
was like the big the kind of share punk of
Chicago Police was like the Red Squad which endured until
the eighties, you know, but they uh it was just different.
But the it uh and less like overtly paramilitary. I
guess that's like part of it. Like Chicago PD. The
is kind of like a moie thief, like the way
the way those guys their relationship to the outfit and
kind of just like the way they do things. It's
like it's like low key whatever presence. You know, it's
a it was a different kind of sensibility. But you
know that was the big thing. Uh, my big memory
of Gates, you know whatever, Like I said, growing up
when I when I'd be in so call, like you know,
Gates was on TV a lot and and then like
a lot of like kind of mainstream like right wing
guys like love Darryl Gates. There's even a video game.
You remember you were Sierras Systems that there's those those
kings Quest games. Okay, there was there was kings Quest,
there was Space Quest. Well there was Darryl Gates Police
Quest for like the Apple two C And I remember
like a friend of mine, like junior high, he like
gave me like a copy of it. Let me borrow
it or something. And uh yeah, like Darryl Gates is
like the only police pigs he please you in America.
He had like his face in a freaking video game.
But uh, but people, there's a there's a bunch of
like I remember fools like Martin Downey Junior like loved
Daryl Gates. But then the other side, you know, he was,
uh he was like this hate figure for for for
liberals and stuff. But I remember when poor Reginald Denny
got moved on by them people in South Central and
it was the truck driver got pulled out of his
pulled out of his truck and and and and beaten
an into his life. You know, his skull fractures. There's
a horrible case. Gates personally arrested, served the warrants on
those suspects, and he was in like full riot gear.
It seemed tasteless to me. It's like, okay, first of all,
it's not a role appropriate for a fucking police chief.
Like secondly, it's like you're using this poor guy's victimization
as some flex like get out of here.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: It's it really rubbed me the wrong way, you know,
And those are those were very bits times, but but Gates,
you know, he also one of the things that ampathet
to people about the about the O. J. Simpson case
is that the state deserve to lose that case. You're
not just like entitled to a verdict when you can't
when when you know, when when you can't account for
the chain of custody of your evidence, you know, when
you've got like literal clowns like uh like Chris Darden
and Mercia Clark hitting up your proscatorial team. But the
whole like keep also don't understand. And some of the
jurors attested to this, you know, Mark Furman is a
total fucking weirdo, like like a total weirdo, and like
it's not everybody's like, oh people just people just acquitted
OJ because of racism. That's not really what put people
off about Furman. I mean, yeah, that didn't help any
I'm sure with some of those jurors were like ignorant
people who were like, oh, he said the N word.
But the context of how those tapes came about, we're bizarre.
Furman was a compulsive liar. He was a stolen valor case,
like he lied about being like underfire and nom and
like like all these shit, the dude, it's a fucking psycho,
you know, Like that's the real issue with him. And
it was pretty obvious he and van at are they
basically framed a guilty guy, because that's just like what
they did. And this is like what LAPD did. You
show up on the scene, you decide how you know,
you can fabulate a narrative about how you came upon
the inculplatory evidence. Then you kind of just like arrange
it whoever you want. And that's like what you put
on record, as you know, and as to what becomes
the case in chief. And I've had guys say to me,
all police departments did that, and I'm like, no, they didn't. Man,
Like that's really nuts and really screwy. You know, that's
a screwy way to do it, and and unnecessary. You know,
like if they if they played that stray from from jump,
they would have gotten their conviction. But I mean everything
about it was like, goofy man. And then and then OJ,
he's an armed man, he's wanted for multiple murder. He's
traveling at a high rate of speed to the airport.
If I do that, I get shot in the face.
Immediately by like swat OJ they're like calling him on
his cell phone, like politely asking him to turn himself in.
So it's on the one hand, you're like framing a
guilty guy. We don't need to. But then instead of
like throwing the bracelets on him when he's when he
when he's when he's wanted for double murder, you're like
calling him and asking him to come by like at
the traffic tickets. I mean, this is this is real dysfunction,
you know, like and it's and that that's one hundred
ten percent the fault of the internal leadership cadre of LAPD.
It's not like God being liberals like ruining police work
like they did a lot of this ship to themselves.
You know, I have a and uh and having and
having dudes or like on record like with the crips
or whatever, like actively gang banging like in l E.
P D when and and it being like totally above
board that they're gang bangers. But it's okay because this
is part of how we this is this is part
of how we you know, we maintain our our high
level of police intelligence. These are the are four I
mean that that's that's totally insane and you can't you
can't put that on like the Enemies of Law and
order like that that came from insidellit PV man. But yeah,
we're coming up on the hour. I think, man, let's
let's call it. I'll do a part three on Joseph
Wamba and if you want me to or if if
if you yeah, okay, part will cover. Yeah, we'll cover
to the onion field and Joseph Wambas. I think that
that's important stuff. But yeah, I don't see.
Speaker 1: I mean there were nineteen eighty and nineteen eighty nine
there were race riots in Miami. I mean I lived
in Miami for you know, I lived in South Florida
because of police shootings and and and things. It was.
I mean, these were precursors to the to what happened
in l A. And they were bad overtown riots and
eighty nine I was. I was down there for that and.
Speaker 2: There was no joke man, nuts man, Yeah, no, I remember.
It was. It was. It was scary ship oh it was.
Speaker 1: It was open combat in the streets. It was open streets. Yeah.
Speaker 2: In Miami too because of cartel ship and other stuff.
There was like a ton of fucking hardware on the
street in Miami, man, Like everybody was like teeth, I mean,
dudes like shooting it out with like like literally.
Speaker 1: Mac Ten's were like two hundred bucks.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah crazy yeah. No, Miami is
no joke, man, especially then. Yeah, you've been all over
the South, man, Like that's that's fascinating.
Speaker 1: But uh, South Florida back in the eighties, cocaine cowboys.
It was bodies dropping everywhere everywhere.
Speaker 2: It was like, uh yeah, it was. It was like
low intensity and sometimes not the low intensity warfare. Man. No,
my Miami Dade the police department was a serious police
department too, man, Like, yeah, no doubt, that's fascinating stuff. Man,
Florida the fancaying state, man, and people like throw shade
on it, you know, like Florida man, and it's become
like a meme. I mean, and it's got kind of
a crazy history going back and something like the Black Seminoles,
Like you realized the Black Seminoles. It was like it
was like outlaw white dudes on the run. It was
like runaway slaves like Indian braves who had been like
cast out of their tribe whatever, who like became this
kind of like Mad Max sort of mob. That's what
the Black Seminoles were. It was like.
Speaker 1: Florida's Florida has always been insane. I mean, they never
surrendered in the war and like they know and and
DC was like, oh, we don't care, we'll leave them.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, it's it's an insane place. And yeah, yeah, no,
it's wild. But yeah no, Well we'll do a part
three then and Wamba and specifically the Onion Field and
some of his other stuff, and we'll get into like
the Vietnam War and the LPD culture because they were
inextricably bound up. But no, this was I'm going I'm
going to the inauguration in DC on Saturday, but all
we I'll want to be gone a few days back
in the twenty second. But if you want to bang
another one out before we go, or if you want
to do like movie night, we could do that too,
or if you want to wait to get big, that's fine.
Speaker 1: But techno, well, yeah, we'll talk. We'll talk about it.
I'll text to you later, do quick plugs, and we'll
get out of here. I gotta go do an o
GC meeting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, sir, yeah, Bescially if the fine, he's on Substick.
We'll launch the season three of the pod in February.
But there's all kinds of good stuff there, including a
pretty active chip. It's real Thomas seven seven seven dot
substick dot com. I'm on social media at Capital R
E A L Underscore number seven h O A S
seven seven seven. I'm on uh Instagram, I'm on t
ram Uh. You can find me on my website Thomas
seven seven seven dot com. It's at number seven and
move a T h O M A S seven seven
seven dot com. That's all I get.
Speaker 1: All right, thank you have Let's try and record something
before you leave. But if not, have fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no we will man, Thank you, Waddy.
Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pecamana Show. Thomas.
Let's finish out this police series. Uh, what'd you want
to talk about today? I think Joseph wambas in the
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 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 dizenith 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 all they'd relocate to la
to join LAPD. LAPD was like the top of policing.
And one of the things that was peculiar about nineteen
ninety one and the Rodney King situation, Like it wasn't
peculiar that that happened. It wasn't peculiar unfortunately that it
jumped off into this race war. But a lot of
people don't understand that. Unlike Chicago especially, but also like
unlike I mean, our police department, we all like a
thug police department, you know, like we really do. I
grudgingly like Chicago Feed for reasons. I've got like a
complicated relationship with them, but uh, they never had They
always had like a dirty fucking reputation. And New York,
you know, they always had a reputation as being like
corrupted by like ward BOSSESM and like mafia politics and stuff.
But like LA, it was considered to be this like impeccable,
impeccably professional police force, and they had a wrap for
like not being quote unquote recently and like they actually
had a rep for you know being you know, very
progressive according to the relevant metrics. I don't like that term,
but you know, just people understand what I mean. I'm sure.
So the fact that this like kind of took a
nose dive in the early nineties is interesting, you know,
but that's Wambach started writing when he was a cop,
and his first his first book was The New Centurions,
which is very much kind of like Approbe. It's almost
like the top gun of like the police Department. You know,
it's about like hero cops doing this crazy stuff like
a lot of and the centerpiece is kind of the
watch riots and then he wrote The Blue Night, which
was very much in that vein. But then like when
he when he realized he could get paid as an
author and his books were actually moving at volume, you know,
he retired away from the police department to write, and
then he wrote The Choir Boys, which is like this
kind of savage takedown of lapd you know it like
people get read to Catch twenty two, which I think
is an overrated book, but it's like way nastier than that.
It reminds me of the short Timers. It's like really
really nasty, but but not in a way that's unduly tunaive.
I think it actually reflects the eraror. I mean it
was before my time. You know, my civic memory begins
in the very early eighties. I don't remember the seventies.
I was born in the seventies. But in between that
kind of trilogy of fiction books, like later we started
writing kind of like hard boiled detective stuff. But in
between Nat he wrote this seminal. It's probably the it's
probably the seminal true crime book after in Cold Blood.
It was It's the Onion Field, which was a horrible case,
and uh Wamba was a was a police when this
incident happened. And uh, I'll get into the details of
it in a minute, but it these two police offers
ofs and was were abducted and murdered or one of
them was murdered, the other one got away. The guy
got away. It's almost like he endured a fate worse
than had he been murdered, you know. But that and
the film version. They made a TV movie out of it,
which one of which one of was one of James
Woods's first roles. And James Woods, the guy he plays
the cop killer was this guy named Gregory Ulis Powell.
Like if that's not like an old school comic name,
I don't know what it is. But Woods, they looked
exactly like to do. It was like uncanny, and you
know it. Uh, Parker was a LAPD chief when this
went down. And Parker, for all of his kind of
for all the good things we can say about him,
he really really mismanaged the aftermath of this situation. And
then it's interesting how, you know, despite the I'm the
first one to suggest that it's ridiculous, and people talk
about how, oh, in the pre Kennedy assassination era that
we lived in simple times or something like America was
totally fucking flure. There were no simple times, especially when
you're talking about America, which is like literally born out
of like race war, Like that's ridiculous. However, there was
a weird randomness to violence and particularly homicide that very
suddenly jumped off and endured in absolute earnest for about
thirty five years, and then very very suddenly stopped. I
kind of think of like the last incident of that
cycle in terms of perception and media narrative as Columbine okay,
and like it just like dropped off suddenly, like nobody
can explain it, you know, like the freakonomics types that
book's kind of fallen off would thankfully because it it's
an idiotic book. But the refrain of the kinds of
lefty progressives was, oh well, Roe v. Wade meant that,
you know, unwanted children weren't born, so all these kinds
of social pathologies that that would have afflicted this this
population that didn't exist. You know, we're absent. So you
know that that's why. That doesn't explain why, and it's
not you know, there there were many population booms to
immigration and only to other things, particularly glocalized. And this
hasn't like duplicated, like it doesn't make any sense. It's
it's I mean, I have my own thoughts on why
these kinds of things happened that, but that's probably you know,
mostly probably dismissed it as overly metaphysical because it may
like the Onion Field case, it very much like like
even more so than the Kidy Genevi's incident, which is
which has kind of been like mythologized and there's a
lot of cap around what actually happened there. You know,
that was that poor woman who was assaulted and like
stabbed to death in front of our neighbors, and nobody
did anything and nobody called it in. I mean, granted
that was particularly awful because she was truly like a
defenseless female, But the Onion Field situations ned more brazen
because like these guys they just like murdered a cop
and like the sub Keebles didn't do like that. I mean, yeah,
there's the public enemy's era, Like some decades before guys
would like shoot it out with the police, but it's
like straight up in cold blood like murdering a cop,
like shooting him in the face when you didn't have
to like that.
Speaker 1: That really, like, you know, 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 rep.
He was just like really real sad sack, kind of
loser hood guy who went by Jimmy Youngblood. He had
like forty names. I think it's his burname with Jimmy
Lee Smith, but he went by Jimmy Youngblood. Jimmy Youngblood.
He was a heroin addict and he'd been spending basically
his entire old 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
there really are dynamics like that. There's another thing as
like a partnership of equals between rappies who do bizarre
violent crimes. It's always and Powell too. He he didn't
have a traditional criminal background, Like he was raised in
some crummy suburb of Detroit. His father was a musician,
this itinerant musician, and they never had any money. But
Powell ran away from the home when he was fourteen
or fifteen, and he took up with this kind of fake,
a tinerant priest who molested him, totally screwed him up.
So after that, Powell would like he periodically decided he
was gay, even though like by the time he was arrested,
he had like a wife who was pregnant with his kid.
But then Powell goes to prison. First it was a
death row, and then he got manumitted, you know when
when the Supreme Court struck down the death penalty, you know,
and he got in in typo California fashion. There was
a couple of retrials, but he ended up serving a
life without parole. Okay, he had a couple of parole
hearings decades on, but I mean there was no chance
he was gonna get a conditional release. But when he
was behind the wall, he decided he was like full
on gay, and he started like writing for like gay
rights publications and stuff. It was like an early example
of like the gay movement having horrible optics because in
one of their rags that I guess was pretty widely
circulated in the West Coast in the seventies and eighties,
it's like, why do you have this like cop killer
like drawing little cartoons and writing for you so then
you know something like pulled that stuff. But you know,
just like a bizarre guy. And he when he when
he committed this murder, like apparently as a young guy,
like he did a bunch of he did a bunch
of felony stints for armed robbery because his thing was
like robbing liquor stores and grocery stores. Like he didn't
have a dope have or anything. He was like doing
this stuff. And he'd apparently had brain surgery that's it's
now believed was botched, and like he it basically like
fried his his impulse control. And I think today with
you know, modern imaging equipment and stuff, it would probably
be clear that this guy's brain was a wreck, like
his physical brain, because his criminal career doesn't make any sense.
And also just like the sexual stuff, like doesn't really
track and but he he Uh, Jimmy young Blood was
on was on parole and he was in this program
before method on was widely prescribed and before stuff like
sub attacks. There's this really strange compound that that apparently
had really deleterious effects on internal organ and things that
they were trying to give to heroin addicts because it
was kind of like the shot the alcoholics, but it
didn't really work. But young Blood was conditionally paroled and
he was he was able to go to this medical
center for parole league or they shoot him up with
this with this compound and that supposedly would would hear
him of his of his habit. And he ran across
Powell because Powell, along other bizarre things like Powell was
married to a white woman and his whole family was white,
but Powell basically exclusively hung around black folks, which is weird.
I mean, it's weird today, it was really weird in
nineteen sixty. But that's how young Blood ran into him.
And uh, he was pulling a heist with this degenerate
alcohol like like a hobo who was a part time
like shoe shine man and Powell somehow I mean presuma.
It was not really clear, but presumably it was because
young Blood needed money for dope that he got. He
got sucked into this nonsense of like pulling these like
Hindsted heights, like liquor stores and stuff or what amounts
to chump change. So their pads crossed with these cops
because one night, uh paula Youngblood, we cruising uh Los Angeles,
like presumably they were casing, you know, a place to rob,
you know, and they had this They had this ancient
nineteen forty six Ford coop, you know, like an old
gangster movies, you know, like it's it's got that like
sloped trunk and stuff, you know, if you know what
old Fords look like. And these two police, uh Ian
Campbell and Carl Hedinger. Campbell was the guy woended up
getting blasted and murdered, and you know, both young guys. Campbell,
if I memory series, was a Korean war vet, and
he was the older man. He was a Scottish type
guy like he played he literally played bagpipes, you know,
like a real heroic guy, you know, and and heading
Gerr obviously looked up to him. But they were they
were assigned to this March ninth, sixty three. They were
assigned to his duty and you know, in playing clothes
like you know, basically aggressive policing of the old type,
you know, and before surveillance tech, like you basically just
like look out for you know, possible possible subjects like
you know, like in like on the make or whatever.
You know. So they pulled over young Blood and Powell,
and Powell just suddenly like drew down on him. You
got the jump on him on Campbell and this is
key head Injurer. Uh had drawn his service revolver and
he refused to give it up until Campbell said he's
got a gun on me, meaning Powell, you know, give
up your weapon. And l EPD doctrine at that time
was that if somebody gets to drop on you, give
up your weapon, because nobody's going to kill a cop
for no reason, you know, like that was the thinking.
So then uh, Powell, he gets in the front seat,
he orders Campbell to drive his car. Young Blood he
gets in the back with Headinger, and I think young
Blood had a sowd off shotgun, you know. So then
Powell was just like drive, you know, and Campbell's like
where are we going? And Powell's like, just drive, you know.
He's like, I'm not gonna hurt you guys, but you
just got to drive. We got to get out of
the city. So he drives them all the way to
Baker's Field and he stops. Finally, he orders Campbell to stop,
literally in this onion field. And Headinger said that like,
even before they stop, he's like it was pitch play.
He couldn't see anything, but he's like the overwhelming odor
of onions. He's like it was making everybody's eyes tear up.
You think it was surreal. So they stop, Powell orders
everybody out, and then, according to both young Blood and Headinger,
Pawell look Campbell in the face and he says, are
you familiar with the Lindenberg Law. It's not clear what
he meant by that, Like, presumably he was referring to
the federal kidnapping statue, which kind of colopially, I guess
would have been the Lindenberg Law. And that was a
big deal because after Lindberg Baby, that's another horrible case.
After the after Lindberg's son, infant son was killed by
ransom kidnappers, you know, a federal statute was passed that
you know, imposed there was no there was no open
ended federal death penalty, but kidnapping for ransdom became a
death penalty offense after that. So presumably in like the
warped and like mangled mind of Powell, his notion was,
I don't want to waste you, but I have to
now because I kidnapped you, which makes zero sense. Then
he doesn't blast him in the face. He like, I
think he had like a twenty five automatic. He just
like emptied the magazine into him.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 2: Headinger related he heard somebody screaming, and He's like, at
first out it was Campbell. Then I realized it was
young Blood. Like young Blood just like freaked out and
presumab would save it head Inur's life because young Blood
was like panic panicking, and he didn't blast him. So
Hedinger ran for literally four miles and there was some kid,
some uh, some black kid who was getting an early start,
like some farm hand, you know, like three in the morning,
you know, had and told him what happened, and then
you know, he he called for help and everything. But
the way that dealt with Headinger, Parker forced him to
address like police academy classes. He forced into a dress
like squad rooms full of street officers, like basically reliving
what had happened to him and then having the watch
commander say, see, this is why you never give up
your weapon. You'll end up like him, I mean, like
basically torturing the guy, you know, under auspices. I mean,
I think Parker was that of too, so I think
he didn't realize what was wrong with this, and then
he put him on coaching duty as his personal driver
and headingers prodective. We started losing his mind, you know,
and he didn't know what it handlecks. On the one hand,
everybody like pitied him. On the other hand, they treated
him with this kind of like haughty contempt, like he
was some kind of pussy or something, and he gave
him a very sad end. He ended up getting dismissed
from the police department because he was he was doing
bizarre things, including like shoplifting worthless items, and it was
obvious that and he said, like the guy like blew
a gasket, I mean obviously not to be flippant or
mean about it. You know. He ended up up ended
up working as a gardener and then like drinking himself
to death in middle age. Like in the nineties. You know,
this is like a horrible situation, but that one of
the one of the this maybe huge impact on the
public consciouness, but particularly police and the cultural policing. It
was already going in kind of a strange direction anyway, okay,
And that that's really what that's really kind of what
put over the idea of like paramilitarized policing, you know,
and that stuff like the Watts riots like solidified it.
You know, like for context. During Watts there there was
like snipers taking up positions to like blast cops. You know.
It was like urban combat, you know. And Wallah makes
a big deal in the Choir Boys. By the nineteen seventies,
a lot of police departments, including a p D, had
adopted the commander rank. And he thought that this was
really bad, you know. And it's the subjects of the
Choir Boys. It opens up in Vietnam and two of
the two of the cops, two of the choir Boys,
they're they have this terrifying experience for their hiding from
the North Vietnamese Army in a cave like outside of Kusan.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: 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 l A p D
at the time. But all of them except got of
the old head he's around fifty, who's still a beat
cop just because that's where he's comfortable. They're all Vietnam vets,
and they're all unhinged. They've all got like a head
full of war and they are of LAPD. They act
that we sought out guys who had experienced and non
that wasn't accidental. Some of that went on here too.
I'm not even saying that was misguided on his own terrors,
but the way I questioned some of the motives for that,
Like John Burge, you know, who was a fucking menace
like here. You know, Berg tortured a bunch of confessions
out of people like and a lot of these guys
like hadn't done anything. But Burge. Burge was an MP
and NOM, but he was involved in all kinds of
strange stuff and he had a bronze star with the
valor device. He'd been in the action. But he also
a lot of his duty involved enhanced interrogation of Viet
Cong suspects. You know. So this man had a skill
set that for the nineteen seventies police department, it was
very much in demand. You know. And while I've always
makes the point in the Choir Boys especially, but in
a lot of his other stuff, you know, he's like
a police department's basically a political administration. He's like, you
have it. It has to be visible because the voters want.
The voters want to be able to call somebody if
not to be crassed, like their kids walking to school
and he runs about some guy jaking off in the
bushes or something. Okay, they want to believe it's some
kind of like formal recourse for that. But like the
police can't solve sociological problems, like the police can't solve
like a race war. The police can't make people like
not use drugs, like this isn't something, this isn't like
these aren't criminal matters. I mean, they can become that way.
But it's like Wahabbah's all points. So in the choir boys, basically,
these guys have an impossible job and some of them
are just like goons who want their name to ring
out and they just like to fuck people up. Like
some of them are like like nineteen sixties idealist boomer
types who think that like, oh, well, you know, if
you can if you can bring some kind of diplomacy
and understanding, you know, the officer civilian interaction, and then
we can have like a more peaceable community. But it's
like that's not the police's job either, you know. So
the recurring motif and wlahah blah stuff is like cops
and commit suicide because they just become like they just
like crash the fuck out, and especially them, that's the
very real thing, you know, and it's some walla blah
makes the point. You know, in the sixties or seventies
when all this crazy stuff was happening, even if you
survived twenty years as like a beat cop, like you
don't get shot, you don't get like maimed, you know,
you get like your full pension. He's like, oh, be fine.
Now I'm like retired, but I'm like forty one years old,
Like what I'm gonna do is with my life, And
a lot of these guys were divorced by then. They
got a drinking problem. It's like something like sit around
my house and like drink a lot, Like how many
fishing trips can you possibly take? Like it's not it's not.
Being like a big city cop is not a good
way to go through life, you know, and like I'm not,
I'm not I'm like trashing guys whose life shook out
that way. Like there's a lot of polices who like
follow my content and stuff and that's great, but you know,
while I'm like he basically, uh, there's always a stock
character in his novels or something like older guy who
like helps rookies understand I used to survive like in
the deep hood and how you can like make it
to twenty years. But then these guys like well, like
you know, three months after they retire, everybody gets a
word like blew their fucking brains out. And while boy
he kind of would hint around it because he, you know,
was like a reserved guy, but you know, he said,
there's a reason why like I left the police force
immediately when I started making money from writings. He's like,
I was gonna end up like one of those guys,
you know, And that's that's pretty that's pretty that's pretty
bleak man. But uh, the what significant too is is
what like a microcosm it is of of then versus now,
you know, And that's one of one of the reasons
for I mean, obviously the these these these horrible people
in government and and these in geo radicals and and
others he shall not be named, you know that they
obviously sees on stuff like like like the George Floyd situation,
you know, as a kind of detonation strategy. But the
reason why they're able to do that is because policing
as it's been conceptualized really from the mid twentieth century onward,
like that's that's that's dead, like that's obsolescent, you know,
like it doesn't you know, if we've said what Alma
said about it being basically a political function and a
kind of like sociological theater, like people don't respond to
it that way anymore. And also like do you like
what do your body camps changes everything because like what
cops do is such that like I'm not I'm not
talking about like Navary type police, but like Chicago PD,
you're like l EPD, You're like NYPD. Like the kind
of stuff these guys do, you know, Like basically, uh,
it basically evolves like breaking down like street dudes who
otherwise would be cavalier in the way that they apply violence.
And you can't have it it because you know, as
a sovereign government, local or otherwise can't allow that and
still retain credibility. But also there's got to be an
understanding that if you transgress certain parameters, like you're gonna
get broken down and you can't. That doesn't work in
the air of the Panopticon. But it's also people just
kind of move differently, like the whole One of the
one of the recurring motifs, especially in the Choir Boys,
is like when these cops answer calls, like in the
deep Hood, it's like you're all by yourself. And even
and until the eighties, squad cars were called cold radio
cars because cops didn't even have a radio on their person.
So basically, like you go through a door if you're
partnered with somebody, and police armers deployed how they deployed
like varied by region and by department. But at best
you're gonna have like one guy with you and the
most firepower you're gonna have as a twelve gage, which
is a great weapon, don't get me wrong, But that
doesn't if you're if there's RNA men five D. But
like that, that doesn't do anything, you know. So while
I'm talking about how scary it was to like have
to like breach doors by yourself, you know, but now
I mean not only the cops have body cams and
most police farmers it's like literally like a live feed
like back to where they're deployed from. You know, they're
in constant content with a radio on their person, like
deployment patterns of such of a total situational awareness. But
also like things are just like different, like you wouldn't
there's not the same potential for lawlessness. It's like when
lawlessness does jump up, it's very punctuated and it's very
scaled and it's very bad. But there'd never be a
situation like the Bronx was back in the eighties, or
like Wrigley Bill was in the early eighties, when it
was like a shithole where there's just kind of like
guys moving around and not like praying on random people,
you know, because they want money you're there or something
like that doesn't happen anymore, you know, not not because
not not because people have become less simian or something,
but it that's just not how you move anymore. If
if you're if you if you're on the make like that,
you know so and also too, like it like people
people are hip to the fact they're like always on camera,
you know, like if you're gonna do I mean, don't
get me wrong, Like horrible stuff does still happen, and
there's like a way you can do it where you're
you're out of sight of the electric eye. But it's
it's it's different and people's living patterns too, Like you
don't have you don't have situations anymore where people where
we've got like thousands and thousands of people are kind
of like trapped in some urban environment that's failing and
like even like the deep hood that's its own thing,
but it's different and it's kind of like bandit country,
you know. It's the people there aren't like actively engaging
with the police and wanting the police to kind of
help quash these anti social instincts that you know, periodically
flare up and stuff. So I maintain that like modern
policing is dying and you and in the traditional sense,
the traditionally understood sense of what the job entailed. It's
not like illegal for cops to move that way. So
I mean, this isn't you know, And I know that
especially a lot of older folks and I'm not transging
older folks. I am one. They have this idea like, well,
we just need to take the gloves off and quote
what cops do their job. Like they don't understand what
I'm talking about. Like even if like you told cops
like look you can you can crack heads and like
break people the fuck down, like it's nineteen eighty nine,
that wouldn't resolve the problem. And the public wouldn't like that,
I don't think, Like that wouldn't make them the wouldn't
make bougies feel safe. That's not what they want. They
don't want the police to go away. They're full of
shit when they claim that on Facebook or whatever. But
what I just describe like isn't what they want. But
also I get you know it, it uh I don't
think that, uh I, I don't. I don't think the
will would be there anyway because it's too open ended,
if that makes any sense. And uh I think too.
You know, this is not just for political reasons. But
this has been in the running for a minute. And
you know, guys like Tellus shit I used to write
about this in the nineties and he he and those
like him got something's wrong, but they got something's right.
And the privatization of armed force as well as protective services,
that's very much like a real thing, and that's increasingly
gonna become the face of policing and and and in
in fifty years. I don't think you're gonna have a
regular police department. Like, yeah, obviously, if you go you
go kill your neighbor, you know, somebody is going to
show up, somebody there was somebody who are gonna be
heavily armed. They're gonna like take you into custody and
pull you before we judge. But it's not gonna be
We have guys in these like blue and white cars
driving around like looking for people who are fucking up
or something like. That's done. That's not gonna happen anymore.
You know, and even even here where things are like
a lot more draconian and we're kind of like in
a time warp here, like police are like way way
less like aggressive in terms of what kind of conduct
though the the'll for bracelets on you for you know,
and it's not that that's not just uh and then
that's enduring even now that like you've got we've got
like a very like law and order president denewable office.
It's not it's not as the pendulum swinging back or
something like. It's like sociologically, the things have become such
that what we're describing is is no longer viable and
you know, I uh, it's it should it should seem
strange to people anyway, like whether you live in the
city or the country. This idea of we're gonna hire
a bunch of young military age meals who aren't from
your community, who you have no idea who these guys are.
They're going to be heavily armed and just kind of
like tell you to do things and lay the hammer
down on people when they decided crimes underway. That's like
really really really invasive, you know, And there's conditions where
you've got to sacrifice certain freedom of movement and liberty
because otherwise there can't be public order. And that's absolutely
the way things were in the mid twentieth century. Things
aren't like that anymore, you know. And one of the
things that underlies the fact that, like the gun control lobby,
you finally gave up, Like it's not just because the
issue became like a big loser politically, like that put
the mistakes, the cause or the effect, Like that issue
became a loser because frankly, if you don't want aggressive policing,
you you basically have to accept the fact that people
that American is going to be armed to the teeth,
you know. And it's really interesting, very abruptly, everybody just
kind of capitulated on that issue. You know, I realized
it's still token efforts and bullshit, you know, and meaningless
derivations you know, like oh, this is an assault weapons,
so it's bad and it's banned, even though assault weapons
don't exist, or there's you know, ways locally like here
you can sort of like bury people under paperwork to
deprive them of their Second Amendment rights in a defecto
kind of way, while still you know, complying with the
litter of the law. But you know, the circumstances I'm
always describing about deliberate communities, you know, quitting the the
social engineering regime, which is already happening. But in those
liberate communities, you're not gonna have just like random guys
from other places coming in to police them. People aren't
gonna tolerate that anymore, you know, Like it's not gonna
tolerate Like I'm like random white guys doing that, Like,
we're not gonna tolerate some like random fucking Hindu guys
who watched too much TV deciding they're gonna calle policas
Like that's over with, you know, gonna be places.
Speaker 1: 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 euphemism as for
the other gangs, but they're but there's like the there's
like the mostly Spanish gang but they're supposed to be
eighteenth Street and like they assault the crypts and uh
like the one dude, the one who's gotta mac ten
and then Don Hiedl he's got an a k and
they're like throwing the throwing like frags at each other.
Like it's not as like I was watching this movie
with this chick. I was watching them with this chick.
I know, it was like a lot younger than me,
and she was like laughing. I'm like, no, you don't understand,
like shit was like that, and like that's not just
like cartoons stuff, you know. And uh so, I mean,
I I I don't think Gates was was a great guy,
but I understand what is I understand is his tad
orientation and it wasn't just crazy or and he wasn't
just being some tyrant or something. But I mean, that's
that's not the way things that's not the way things
are anymore. And you know, also, I like nine to
eleven change things in ways that I don't think in
ways they're in ways they're severe but also somewhat subtle
man and like I you know, basically there's certain sorts
of conduct that take the individuals so engaged out of
consideration as a criminal actor and it becomes okay to
blast them. And this is what this is a fact.
You know. So this idea that well, you know, the
Norman idea, like well we need the police because like
what about terrorism or what about like may I shooters.
It's like, that's not really a police problem. Like that
means you need people to deploy to kill them, you
know what I mean, that's that's that's not to say
you post up the army of the National Guard to
patrol the streets, but that means that the response to
those kinds of crises are not We're going to send
a police department to frisk and arrest people. You know,
it's a totally different mission orientation. And increasingly that kind
of thing is going to be privatized. It's like, if
the idea is, which the idea should be for anyone
who's serious about physical security of that store, is to
preempt violence before it happens, well, I mean you you
basically it's like Derek Prince talked about after the attempt
on Trump's life on one of those podcasts. He's like
you don't really want a police sensibility if you're trying
to protect the president or presidential candidate. You know you're
not You're not looking for poth suspicious people. You're not
scanting the crowd for a guy who's maybe strapped. You know,
you're looking for threats. And when you identify those threats,
you you you neutralize them. And yeah, like sometimes you're
wrong and that's bad, But I mean that that's the
the liabilities, moral and material that attend any any any
profession that that you know deals with the violent its currency.
But you know that the Princess is an interesting guy
and he he, he understands this better than most people,
despite the facts his background is military, not police. But
I think that actually is one of the things to
which is insight, oh is because it's hard to see
the parameters of of changing phenomena, particularly sociological or or
or or political phenomenon like from within an institution, you know,
and if you're if you even if you're on the
younger side, if you'l like a cop who's been doing
this for a decade or longer, like like basically you're
in you're in your entire conceptual horizon, you know, orbits
around kind of like police science and and the kind
of strictures that uh, you know supposedly are the are
the kind of core tenets of of policing, when when
that's that's pretty much dead in the water. And I
mean especially these days too, you know. I Uh, one
of the I lament a lot the death of the
public intellectual like as a as a type of person,
because I think they played an essential role. And that's
one of the reasons things have been done down so
much unto the Cold War is it's hard to determine
this is like a causal Varia Bullard or just like
a secondary effect. Maybe it's both. But you know, there's
this really great documentary called The Futurists, and uh it
came out in the seventies, like around the time. It
very much like was riffing on Alvin Toffler, the guy
who wrote Future Shock, which is a really good book.
But you know, this is the only guy I've heard
talk about the fact that you know, these days, if
if you want to hurt people, or if you want
to or if you want to assassinate a public official
or a or a high value target, you don't even
need to put eyes on them and and and close
physical distance and blast them. I mean you could, you
could program drones to swarm them like that would take
some planning and some money. But there's there's guys who
have never even had a smartphone, like in the tribaler
is a Pakistan, like they they learn how to program drones.
It's not like you need to be some It's not
you need to be some like under seventeen like boy
genius to do it. You know, they're they're very they're
they're very utile in bail field situations for that reason,
you know. And uh so this idea too that like
well unless we have like physical eyes on the ground
doing like patrols like we we we can't control a
we can't not control. We can't we can't provide security
for you know, for a physical space like this nonsense,
Like you don't need to do that anymore. In fact,
that might not even help. But what are you gonna
hypothetically in God forbid and that God doesn't happen. I mean,
let's say let's say the president or you know, somebody
else wasn't like Trump situation and like it doesn't like
drones like converge on them like a series I was
gonna do we start blasting the drones. They're if they're
kind of cozy, drones are all gonna die and then
blow up, you know, I mean, like what what are
you gonna do about them? It's such that there is
a countermeasure. I mean, yeah, you do any you do
still need eyes on the operational area, like ly looked
like spotting where somebody controlling those drones. But that guy
could be fourteen klometer away. Okay, you know things like that,
you know, and I realized that like people pete, the
rebuttal is gonna be like like subs watch and it's
gonna be like, well, that's not what like beat cops do.
It's like no, But that comes back to what I
said before. A lot of this stuff is is becoming
private eyes and a lot of it, you know, there's
not really a civic culture that interfaces with the bureaugrac anymore.
You know, like in a lot of ways that's positive
because stuff like we're doing, we're building genuine community and
a deliberate way. But I I don't want to fuck
with the police, Like if somebody, if somebody tried to
hurt me or my dad and my home. I defend myself,
and God forbid, if somebody died, like somebody attagging me,
obviously i'd call it in so I didnt get charged
with murder. But beyond that, like if somebody, if somebody
if like if I was at Starbucks and I find
I discover somebody stole my wallet, I'm not gonna call
it police. They're not going to care, Like what are
they gonna do? You know, this isn't nineteen eighty or
something where it's like if you have a problem, oh,
you call the police. Because there's kind of like this
not particularly intimate or or or or or deep, but
there is this kind of like basic moral consensus where
it's like, okay, like all all you know, all non
marginal people like call the police to resolve you know,
these these kinds of slights to the person of their property,
Like nobody thinks that way anymore, you know, so a
lot of that's dead. And as far as like physical
security and stuff, it's like, well, you know, you should
be you should be thinking about self defense. You shouldn't
be thinking like I'm gonna call the police protect me.
I mean, don't'et me wrong. I realize there's you know,
if you're like a single woman in like a big
city or something like, I have no doubt that that
can be like very scary, and you know, you need
to be able to call people to help you and stuff,
because you know, some people are vulnerable and that's a
difficult question, you know, and there's gonna be there's gonna
be gaps in in the protection that certain vulnerable people need.
And that's not a good thing. But that's the way
things always are. That doesn't somehow neck gate or defeat
sociological trends that are driven by historical processes and move ons,
you know, So that's important. What I will say is,
I take it back, is not forgive me. One of
the I should have said this when we were kind
of breaking down Wandblas catalog. The New Centurions is like
a good book. Yeah, it's like pro police stuff. And
because he was he was like an LAPD sergeant when
he wrote it, and so obviously he wasn't gonna trash
the organization. But also, you know, like we talked about
an early earlier episode, LAPD has always been kind of
like uniquely inter based with media, Like I guarantee that
La PD was way more involved in like the process
A many officer was like writing something, whether it was
like a TV or a film script or a novel.
So I guarantee you he had like like administration guys
like literally looking over his shoulder. But it does this.
It basically it doesn't have a traditional plot. It's very
episodic and there's three It follows these three young guys
like through the police a kid, I mean, then like
they hit the street, and like one of the guys
names is Duran. He's basically like a he's like a
Tejano guy, but he's he's like a white dude. He
like doesn't identify with like Chicanos. He's not from East La.
But because of like his appearance and his surname, like
he gets deployed like East La and like a heart
Basically I think around echo Park, I have to reread it.
But he uh, that's probably the most like people criticised
the book saying like, oh well, but he draws none
of my characters in simple minded terms. I think that's
the wrong way to look at it, because always do
with Duran is that Duran's like he he gets like
the Echo park Beat or whatever, and he's like, I'm
not like these fucking people like their scumbaggs. But then
he realizes, like on the street, like you are Mexican,
like you are mister policeman. People think you're one of them.
You know, it doesn't matter, and like as and it's
interesting too because like his perspective obviously, and those the
people he's charged with policing, Like as the Watchwrights jump off,
you see, like what the Spanish folks are thinking, you know,
because they're kind of like they're kind of like this
third variable, you know. And then like one of the
dudes is he's like this guy like funk guy college,
you know, and he's like do something. So he becomes
a cop, you know, and he's convinced he's like smarter
than everybody and shit, and he kind of like looks
down on his fellow officers. He's just like it's kind
of like regular like middle class white dude. But then
like he gets he gets assigned like the deep hood.
It's like when watch jumps off, like he gets he's, uh,
he's like under fire and stuff, and then he realizes,
like uh, he gets like humbled by the whole experience,
you know, like stuff like that. It's you know, and
I'm sure some people, especially like younger guys and girls,
who would think it was like corny, like the kind
of you know, the kind of like nineteen sixties era
kind of like bumper sticker patriotism. But it is like
a it is kind of like a snapshot, and it's
called the New Centurion. It's like the third guy who
I think is supposed to be Wamba because he's just
kind of like this like regular dude, who's who's you know,
he wants to be a police officer and he doesn't
have a lot of vices and stuff. But the guy who, uh,
the guy who teaches him how to like be a
street cop, ends up coming suicide. But that dude tells
him like, we're the new Centurions because basically America is
like the failing Roman Empire, you know, and and the
only thing that stands between the barbarians, you know, and
and what remains a civilization like are us. And that's
that's kind of like as bleak and subversive as the
book gets. But then like the character that drops that,
like he blows his brains out and it turns out
he thinks it's a big alcoholic. So I think that's
like by dropping like we'll talk with the Albie. Oh no,
that's a disturbed character. But that's interesting because it I, uh,
one of the one of the vin yet say, like
in the movie Cruising with al But you know, which
is an underrated It's like the subject matter is gross
and that puts a lot of people off. But I
think it's kind of like an American Jallo picture. I
really like it. But the the opening scene, there's these
two cops and one of us played by Joe Spenell,
and uh, they're driving around. I guess it's uh, I
think it. I think they're actually in Alphabet City, but
I think it's supposed to be the village and they
go by and there's there's there's like these dudes like
in leather and these guys, you know, these transsexual and
stuff and spells. Just like he's like, what the hell
is happening? You know, and it's like, uh, you get
that sense like in the New Centurions, like especially like
in the dan Umois where like the characters passed finally
crossing to watch it's like, you know, I took this
job because I wanted to like help vulnerable people or whatever,
and like, I'm literally pinned down my a dumpster because
it's a sniper like popping off at me with a
thirty six, Like what's happening here? Like something's something's coming apart,
you know, And so it's worthwhile for every reason. Well
wrote some later books, and like I said, it's kind
of interestingly James Elroy what I have mixed feelings about.
But I I do think he's important to Los Angeles
culture in some ways, and I I identify with him
and in some respects. But he he said when he
was home with some he said, uh, he said, he
saved a bunch of his money from panhandling and stuff,
and and like and uh say goodbye the Onion Field.
It was like his favorite book, you know. And he
and he always like Whooped Up the Cops and things
like that. And so she she shot out Wamba a
lot in his books, and then Wamba started writing books
kind of in the vein of Elroy. Like the later
stuff he wrote was kind of like a hard boiled
type stuff. Like one of his books is about like
nineteen eighties, like like Salmonano Valley and like porn shit,
and it's kind of grimy. I mean, that's a grimy
fucking subject, but it but it's I didn't find it
off putting, but I thought that it was for tablo reasons.
I'm mean, I read all kinds of stuff that people
probably find I would think it's gross, but it seemed
so something. It seems kind of like affected about it.
But so I I wouldn't recommend is like later stuff,
but definitely definitely read The Onion Field. I don't read
The Choir Boys. The Choir Boys is one of the
when I was sending out Frog packages before it became
too like Bell Luminous to send them out to people.
I want to get back to doing that, but I'm
gonna have to do it in a way where it's
not just like me going to the post office and
sending packages. But I think I sent out like five
or six paperbacks to The Choir Boys because I like
the book that much and it uh, it's had a
not insignificant impact on my own writing. But yeah, that's
about all I got for one. I I appreciate you
abiding my suggestions because, like I said, I think I
think he's I think he's an important contributor to the
kind of catalog of police lid, particularly particularly in the
capacities we're talking about. So I thought it was important, man,
But I.
Speaker 1: Am I have I have a suggestion this This episode
was sort of sort of like our movie reviews, and
I think we should release one publicly so people can
see what's uh, you know, what we do. Yeah, man,
I think 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 will really get off
on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the reasons I wanted to review it
is because I thought people would be thirsty, because people
when I draw 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 jag Off.
I don't know to them be incited to other than
I don't have any great insight into the troubles, man.
I just I, I mean, kind of an obsessive study
of it because it's my heritage. But obviously you know
that that's a totally different thing. But yeah, I think
if it I think I think if it got the
right audience, they would really pop. And yeah, that's a
good idea. I think now is the time they do it.
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 that's talks 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 collad 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 I'm
season one from behind the paywall. I'm gonna keep doing
that every day. I'm gonna remove five episodes from mind
the paywall until season one and two are totally free,
and I'm gonna I'm gonna upload a bunch of other
like free shit like content that I haven't released before.
You can find all of that good stuff on my substack.
It's real Thomas seven seven seven at substack dot substack
dot com, on social media at capital r E A
L number seven h O M A S seven seven seven,
and you can go to my website Thomas seven seven
seven dot com. But the first T or the only
T is a seven tho are the best plays to
define me. And like I said, I'm gonna make some changes,
but I keep everybody in the loop of what I'm doing.
Like on substack, you know, I at least once a
week I shout out like what's happening and what I'm doing.
So that's the place to go.
Speaker 1: All right, thank you so much. Until the next time,
Jean