Behind the Bastards - How The First Police Went From Gangsters, To An Army For The Rich

Episode Date: June 18, 2020

When U.S. police departments didn't evolve out of slave patrols, they tended to form out of a desire to protect the property of the wealthy. In practice, this meant beating, murdering and arresting people who didn't want to work 12 hour days until they died.FOOTNOTES: Krypteia: A Form of Ancient Guerrilla Warfare  The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles The Beginning of American Policing How Stereotypes of the Irish Evolved From ‘Criminals’ to Cops REMEMBERING THE 1906 STRIKE FOR UNION IN WINDBER, PENNSYLVANIA State Police were warned about possible racial bias in car searches. The agency's answer? End the research. The Pinkertons Still Never Sleep Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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you get your podcasts. Here's to the great American settlers. The millions of you have settled for unsatisfying jobs because they pay the bills. Of course, there is something else you could do if you got something to say. Start a podcast with Spreaker from iHeart and unleash your creative freedom. Maybe even earn enough money to one day tell your old boss, hey, I'm no settler. I'm an explorer. Spreaker.com. S-P-R-E-A-K-E-R. That's a lot over today. Executive producer Paris Hilton brings back the hit podcast How Men Think, and that's good news for anyone that is confused by men, which is basically everyone. It's real talk straight from the source. The How Men Think podcast is exactly what we need to figure them out. It's going to be fun, informative, and probably

a bit scary at times because we're literally going inside the minds of men. Listen to How Men Think on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. When I was 18 years old, a nun at my high school was brutally murdered. Getting to the truth has opened a Pandora's box of secrets, exposing abuse of power and a world of lies at one Miami monastery. I mean, the woman was stabbed 90 plus times. There's got to be something else going on here. Listen to Sacred Scandal on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Behind the Police, a production of iHeart radio. Welcome back to Behind the Police, a behind the bastards special miniseries about, you know, the

police in America, some of the most persistent bastards in our nation's long and bastardful history. I'm Robert Evans, the host and the researcher and the writer. And my guest today is Jason Petty, better known as hip hop artist propaganda prop. How you doing today? What up? What up? What up? Socially and emotionally prepared for this train. Awesome. Did you like how professional my introduction was? That was some NPR shit. Here's the thing, bro. Like you're, you are unmatched in intros and transitions. There's nothing like this. Thank you. I want to be the voice. I want to retrain your self talk voice and just continue to say you nailed it. Even when you didn't. Just even when I didn't. You nailed it. Beautiful.

I will continue to point out when you fuck it up and praise you when you don't. Like now, wonderful intro, Robert. Very professional. Thank you. Thank you. Way better than that time. I just shouted Hitler. That was, that was a train wreck. Yeah. I didn't know what to do with that one. I just was, if you ever walked by like a wall of cords and just felt the need, like I go, especially like backstage somewhere like in festivals. I got to work on this. Yes. No, or like, I'm going to yank them all out. It's going to happen. And it's like, I'm holding my hand away. Like I can't be backstage. I'm going to yank one of these out. I feel like that was like you and like the Hitler thing to where you're just like, yeah,

don't say it. Don't say it. Don't say it. Oh my God. I want to say it. Yeah. Cause you can't script an introduction, right? Like that's the first rule of, of, of broadcast is you can never script an intro. So we're, we're left with me winging it. So prop yesterday we talked about the origins of American policing with a focus on like the slave patrols. And that is the thing like online since kind of this whole uprising against the police began. That's the thing everyone's been focusing on that like police came out of slave patrols. And that is very true for a huge chunk of American policing. Today we're going to talk about the other chunk because it was not just slave patrols because a sizable chunk of American

policing came out of a desire to suppress folks. Number one that we today would call white, but at the time kind of the people with money didn't really consider to be white, but also more than anything, it came out of a desire to police labor, like the working class. So today we're going to kind of hit that other side of the, of the where cops come from. Yeah. Divide. Yeah. So this is a, this is a lesson in intersectionality guys. It is. Yeah. And, and like all good lessons in intersectionality, it comes from, it includes people being racist when that's directly in opposition to their needs and an actual benefit. Yeah. A deep seated oppression. Yeah. And an oppression that's taken advantage of by the ruling class in order to continue to. Yeah.

Mm hmm. Yep. Yeah. And we're going up north too. You know, they free up there, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, Lord. They're not. Yeah. Yeah. The north, the north. I mean, it was better than the Confederacy, but that's like saying. It really was. Yeah. Like vomiting in the toilet is better than vomiting on your friend's floor, which like, yes, but it's both are not ideal. Astrict. Yeah. So you may not know this, but President John Fitzgerald Kennedy designated the week of May 15th to be National Police Week. I don't think we celebrated it this year. Yeah. I was like, I never heard that. Yeah. I must have missed that one. During his speech announcing this, he stated that police officers had been protecting Americans

since the birth of the United States. Now, we of course know that this is untrue. The first formal police department was started in Boston in 1838 and, you know, slave patrols existed earlier, but they sure weren't protecting people. Now, one of the inciting incidents that led to the creation of the Boston Police, who again, yeah, that's the first police department, was the Broad Street Riot. And the basic story of the Broad Street Riot is that a funeral procession of Irish immigrants in 1837 ran into a volunteer firefighting company of U.S.-born Protestants who were on their way back from fighting a fire. And obviously, like now, I think most people is just like, oh, you know, Protestants and Catholics, they're all just sort

of like, you know, relatively mainstream Christian denominations. But you get it right. It was like, it was like a huge deal when JFK became the first Catholic president. People were like, is he gonna? Yeah, sorry. Yeah, I was going to say, yeah, that's how like open to diversity and melting pot we are as a country, that like, it was a scandal that this fool was a Catholic. Yeah. I got like, yo, that's the, that's just the other room of the same house. Yeah. If you really want an idea of like how fucked up America has been about diversity, like we were like, not even a decade away from putting a man on the damn moon. And JFK came to power and people were like, is he going to take secret Pope orders? Oh, yeah. And the news flash to every

Protestant was like, you know, we was all Catholic until 500 years ago. I don't know if you know that, but we was all Catholic. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Oh, it was, it's wild. Yeah. So yeah, Catholics and Protestants back then had some real issues with one another. So this, this Irish funeral procession like runs into the middle of this Catholic or a Protestant firefighting company. And the two just start beating the shit out of each other. And all of this spills out into a riot that eventually involves one fifth of Boston's population, which is like 15,000 people, which is still a pretty good size riot today. Yeah. Yeah. So ethnic tensions being what they were, the riot quickly turned into a race riot and Protestants burned and looted the entirety of the

heavily Irish Broad Street neighborhood. Just like Jesus would call them to. Yes. He was a big fan of burning and looting. Just burning, you know, your turn that he was like, hey, he flipped over the tables. He flipped over the temple tables. Yeah. But those weren't like his homies tables. Anyway. Yeah. And what did he, didn't he say burn the other cheeks? Something like that? Something like that. I may be missing. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, very, very taking their religion seriously here. So in decades prior to the Broad Street riot, merchants had been forced to finance their own guards to secure the transportation of their goods. Establishing police, which were paid for by the Commonwealth, shifted the burden for protecting capital off of capitalists and

onto the community. But even prior to the establishment of the first police departments, law and order in the United States was primarily a for-profit endeavor and not a manner of public safety. The Broad Street riot was kind of used as an excuse for like why we need a police force, but the tensions had been building and like frustration had been building and like, oh, we got to pay to take care of our own shit from, you know, the merchant class. So this was kind of an opportunity for them to get people on board. Now, as we covered in the first episode, most policing in the English speaking world prior to the 1800s was primarily a community affair. Enforcement of the law was done by members of the community who tended to rotate through shifts,

keeping order in their own towns. Public spirit is generally the term used as what was like the primary method of social control in those days, rather than centralized authority. And that is kind of the thing that like, I was just in the Seattle autonomous zone or whatever you want to call it, you know, may not be really an autonomous zone. I don't think they've actually kind of firmly decided yet because the police got back in briefly, but like public spirit is the primary manner of social control there. There's no centralized organization. There's no like even mass kind of votes because people are so distributed there. But there is kind of a broad public spirit of like, what if we don't have cops here, right? Like that's kind of the idea. And that was kind

of the way that it worked for a very long time in particularly like English speaking chunks of the world. But not just that. So yeah, this system began to fade out as like, oh, you know, as the kind of industrial age dawn and distinct communities that had been like more or less like somewhat isolated at least, homogenized into cities and sprawling urban areas. Like now, you know, we say London, but back in the day, it was like a bunch of fucking towns and then a much smaller London. And then as they all turned into like this big fucking metropolitan area, this public spirit fades. So historian Henry Pringle writes that by the 1700s, the legal system had formalized enough that its architects were quote, confident that they could

by a system of incentives and deterrence, rewards and punishments, bribes and threats, so exploit human greed and fear that there would be no need to look for anything so nebulous and unrealistic as humans or as public spirit. So that's kind of like the real dawn of a formalized law enforcement is things get big enough and these people are like public spirit, you can't really rely on it to do what I want it to do. And I'm the guy with the money. So we need to build a system of deterrence and rewards. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, it scans. Yeah. Yeah, it scans. So gradually the Yeah, it keeps scans. And I was also going to say as a side note, the and I hate, I hate the very principle of what I'm about to say. Sure. But

at the old folks in the church would say it's true anyhow. I absolutely love of like the Irish like culture. Oh, yeah. It's just so irreverent. And like, they just don't take themselves serious. Everything is sarcastic. Yeah, drink it and going to sing at parties. And I'm just like, it just it just your normal slang like, hey, old ball bag, how you doing? Like you call your homeboy a ball bag. That's a scrotum, fam. Yeah. That's what you refer to your friends as. You refer to your friends as scrotums. I old ball bag. And it's like, look, I respect that so much. I just somehow I respect them. They're just ready to fight at any moment. Yeah, drink a lot. You know what I'm saying?

And then when you got to America, you created your own hood, like just the South Boston, just South the Irish, pissy. Don't even don't even mess with your grade. Like your grandmother ready to scrap. Like I respect that so much. Yeah, I love this is my favorite place to visit Ireland. I love the like what you're talking about, like this idea that even with like your elected leaders, like you should kind of be able to shout at them, right? Yeah, there's a bit of that in England, too. Like this idea that like we had a thing here and it happened in Minneapolis with Mayor Frey, where like he had to go out to this crowd. And like when he said something didn't like this crowd of thousands, like told him to go the fuck home. Yeah. And we had that

in Portland with our mayor, like he showed up in the middle of this crowd to take questions and everyone just told him like, you had the cops shoot at us a bunch and we don't like that and you're a bad mayor and everyone just got to like yell at the mayor. And that's how it ought to be with all elected officials. They should all have to stand in the middle of a crowd of their voters and get heckled when they fuck up. It's like, yes, every elected official should have to do some sort of like open mic, like stand up, just dive bar where you have to feel the heat. Dude, my my first few years of touring, like the heat of being like, okay, listen, it's it's almost it's it's 815. You know what I'm saying? Everybody's just pre-gaming, trying to figure out who

they're going to hit on later. And I have to go up and rap for 15 minutes and try to convince this room to pay attention to me for I got 10 minutes of commissions. Like that is the best school of hard knocks as like a live performer that anyone could ever I feel like every mayor should have to do that. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Like this the public the whole public spirit thing. Obviously, there's a lot of more people now where there's a lot more complexity. You need you need more than just public spirit. But this idea that like if everyone just kind of hates this dude, like he should have to stand in the middle of them and either try to convince them that they're wrong or at least just take the fucking fire for a while. Right? If you could take that fire

and or when some of us over, I would be like, you know what? Okay, maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was wrong about this dude. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, anyway, back to the fucking cops. So gradually, the profit motive became the central motivating force behind law enforcement. So kind of public spirit moves aside for we just pay people to do this shit. Yeah. And the change started at the level of the constable. Traditionally, constables had been unpaid members of the community who took turns at the job. But most citizens came to dislike taking their turn as constable, especially since each turn involved a one year unpaid period of working to enforce laws that were often very unpopular. Because there was like centralized state authority. It just there

wasn't like super organized law enforcement. It's like the king or whoever would make like a law that people didn't like. And then you would take your turn and you have to enforce that law. And that doesn't make you popular. No. Which is was an issue with the system, who was making the laws. So over time, deputies began to realize that the power of their office held other opportunities for profit. According to a paper on the development of private police by Steven Spitzer of Northern Iowa University and Andrew School of the University of Pennsylvania, quote, once in office, the deputy soon found that profits could be gained from selling protective and investigative services or demanding rewards and fees in return for recovered goods. Deputies often made such a

profitable trade of their offices that many were prepared to serve for nothing. So this goes from like this ugly job that you take because you have to to a job that, you know, because you kind of find a way to you kind of you kind of find side hustles. Your position allows you to exploit. And then it becomes really profitable, even though there's not a salary for the gig. Yeah. Yeah. And so you kind of freelance police at this point, right? Like that's the gig. So this suited early local governments in England and her colonies pretty well, because these these governments and these peoples like just because of an aspect of the culture felt a deep resistance to the idea of paying for a salaried police force. Individual constables who were successful in their

jobs could sell their services to the highest bidder, augmenting their official duties with what was essentially private security work. The system made it over to the North American colonies. During the first decades of the 1800s, New York City police officers were noted as being more, quote, private entrepreneurs than public servants. The same was true in Boston before and after the formal establishment of their police department. Spitzer and Skoll write, quote, since the main concern of the victim was restitution, they function then as personal injury lawyers operate today on a contingency basis, hoping to get a large part, perhaps half of the proceeds. So cops would kind of hang around like a like a bad lawyer. They would wait to see, oh, somebody

just got robbed. Somebody just got beaten up. Somebody's store got broken into. Then they would show up and be like, hey, if I get that stuff back, can I have half of it? Like that was those were the first cops like in the North and stuff. Yeah. Before there's like really police departments. You know, so like, okay, so when you it's so crazy when you think of it in context, which is like the best thing to do as somebody that really wants to understand humans, it's like, can you blame them for being like, you know, maybe, maybe we should centralize this. What if like, yeah, kind of like maybe we should come up with some sort of department that maybe above this, you know, this is great. Yeah, it sucks. You know what I'm saying? So you're like, hey, it's maybe it's maybe it's,

I don't know, maybe this maybe was a bad idea the way we're doing this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely like you you you kind of transition away for everybody taking turns as the cops to like cops being basically mercenaries and people are like, mercenaries kind of suck. Got a fan of this. Strike two guys. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's yes, you're absolutely right. You can't totally blame people for being like, well, what if we tried to like make this a more official thing? Yeah. Like we can like identify him. And it's not just like, it's not just like my neighbor Dave down the street that I just trust this fool. Like I don't trust Dave. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, you know, he's a shady son of a bitch. He's kind of shady, man. Yeah. Yeah. So

yeah, yeah, this was yeah, most police in this period worked as actually not even uniformed thugs, just kind of thugs protecting the businesses and streets that paid them or as private detectives hunting down stolen goods or other criminals on a contingency basis. The system provided no real benefit for the average person and only marginal benefit for the capital holding class. See this was back before the dawn of the industrial economy and people weren't used to the idea of just working all of the time because that was their job. Farm labor was seasonal and skilled laborers usually didn't work more than they needed to in order to live comfortably. Law enforcement officers kind of work the same way. So these people would take enough jobs to maintain a decent lifestyle and

then when they had enough money, they'd stop working. So suddenly the constable would be like, yeah, I'm not going to do anything for the next couple of months. Like I'm good. I had a big case. Like, sorry, you need help. But like, why would I work right now? I don't need to and I'm not going to work if I don't need to. Yeah. Yeah. So to make matters worse, at least for the business owning class, the way bounties were structured actually discouraged police from catching criminals. Historian James F. Richardson writes in his history of the New York police, quote, the police reports published in the newspapers in these years are filled with accounts of instances in which the property was returned with financial rewards for the police officer, but in which

the criminal was not brought to justice. The officer received a larger fee or award for recovering the stolen property than he would have received for bringing the criminal in. Often the arrangement was consummated even before the robbery or burglary took place. An officer would be privy to a crime and after its commission would endeavor to recover the stolen property in return for a liberal award. Part of the reward would then go to the thief as a share. Sheesh. See, this is the shadow. So like you mean to tell me by design the cop was crooked. Like, yeah, yeah. It's just baked into the I am incentive. Like, listen to what, listen to what Professor Evans just taught you. You know what I'm saying? I am incentivized to cheat. It is

better for all of us. Yeah. If I just cheat and y'all think and I was crazy about like, here's here's why like what just just pure unchecked capitalism does to your brain is you would think, oh yeah, he's just it's just competition. You know what I'm saying? Like, hey, man. Hey, dude, if you get my stuff back, I just want you to know like, I'll pay you more if you get my stuff back. You were good at your job. I'm just going to pay you more for it. And it's like, well, I don't know, man. Maybe there's a way I can get both. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What if I just work with the guy that's going to steal your stuff? Like, he doesn't want the stuff he wants money. Yeah. We all win in that situation. You got your stuff back. I mean, it's money. Like, it just yeah.

Yeah, it's great. There's like a tax on rich people by, I don't know, not necessarily poor people. Well, maybe the thieves were, but like, yeah, it's whatever. Yeah. So up until the mid 1800s, policing in the cities of the American North had been a fundamentally reactive endeavor. Officers went off in response to specific criminal acts rather than seeking to prevent said acts. You know, there were some exceptions. Sometimes people will be like, let's hire some officers to like watch this neighborhood where we have a bunch of shops or whatever. But generally, it was pretty reactive. And as the first major metropolitan police departments were established in the 1830s and 40s, this started to change. These new police departments focused on the dangerous classes.

You remember hearing that? Here we go. Here we go. The first episode. Yeah. Here we go. And dangerous classes were largely made up of poor immigrants who were seen as being fundamentally criminal. The idea began to spread that by patrolling, surveilling and deploying force against these populations, police could stop crime from occurring. Now, whether or not someone counted as a member of a dangerous class had an awful lot to do with whether or not that person also counted as white. The full subject of what whiteness meant in the North in this period of time is much too complicated for a series that's already going to be complicated. What is important to understand is that a lot of groups, again, that we all lump in as white today, weren't really white yet.

During the mid 1800s, this included at varying points, Germans, Italians, Jews of all national origins, and of course, the Irish. Yes. Now, again, as I noted in the last episode, talking about this is complicated or a fact that a lot of modern racists or at least kind of people who like to deny the suffering of black people will claim that like, oh, it was just as bad for the Irish. And it absolutely was not. But also anti Irish bigotry was still a mother fucker. Like there was a lot of that going around. Yeah, no one's. Yeah, it's from from from someone from the black community. I'm like, OK, no one's arguing that the Irish were not not treated unfairly. It was terrible. Yeah, they went through. It's not. Yeah, come on, guys. It's not. It was not the same.

Yeah. It's like, you know, I like I am a, you know, cisgender heterosexual male. And when my wife got pregnant, no part of me said, we're pregnant. Yeah. That's just like, I can't stand when husbands say that, yo, we're pregnant. I'm like, nigga, no, we're not. You know what I'm saying? I'm saying she is doing it while I'm in there with her. Nigga, no, you are not. I remember standing on the side of the room when my wife was about to go in labor being like, women are are magical superheroes because I don't know a single male on earth that could do this. So I'm like, no, no, man, it is not the same. OK, it's not the same. We are not pregnant. Shut your mouth. All I got to do is go get weird fucking ice cream and Doritos. That's my job. Go get some

ice cream and Doritos. She is cooking a human. We are not pregnant. So in the same way, I'm like, look, OK, yeah, we both going through this experience. I'm tired too. I got to get up and, you know, feed this child is three in the morning. I'm tired, but I am not the child's food source. The milk ain't coming out of my boob. It's coming out of her boob. It is not the same. And it's like, that's not a diss. It's just not the same. Like, let it not be the same. You know, it's OK that different groups suffer in different ways. It's OK in place. Yeah, we can we can we can explore the ways in which the suffering is unique and also the ways in which it has common roots of origin without conflating things. I'm not going to play the oppression

Olympics. Like, yeah, I'm not going to do not play in the oppressive. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, we're talking a lot about how police departments developed out of the desire for the capital holding classes to publicly fund the protection of their shit, but also the increasing populations and racial mixtures of American cities had a big impact on it, too. Race riots became increasingly common in the 1830s and 40s, as long as well as other riots. There were just a shitload of riots in this period of time. And all this unrest helped sell the growing middle class on the idea of police departments. Policing also offered offered an opportunity for non-white groups of white people like the Irish to gradually gain social acceptance. The first Irish policeman in the

United States is generally believed to be have been a Bostonian dude named Barney McGinniskin, which is an incredibly. Wow. Fucking Barney McGinniskin. Jesus Christ. Yeah. It's like they made him in a lab. Yeah. So Barney McGinniskin was hired in 1851 and a local alderman was infuriated by this on the grounds that it would create a dangerous precedent. Irishman, he continued, commit most of the city's crime and would receive special consideration from one of their own wearing the blue. Now, McGinniskin's career lasted only three years when the nationalist anti-Catholic no-nothing party took over the Massachusetts legislature. The Irish would not make major inroads into northern police departments until their population grew large

enough that the Democratic Party realized they could guarantee Irish votes by giving Irishman jobs on police departments. And that's why there's kind of a stereotype of the Irish police officer today. Like the Patty Wagon went from being a wagon that you throw Irish people onto on their way to jail because they're all criminals to just like a term for a cop car because all cops are Irish. Like that that that change happened over the course of the 1800s. Okay. Yeah. And it was kind of it wasn't the only thing that had to do with this, but it was kind of a part of Irish people sort of becoming white, you know, as they kind of take up positions helping to enforce the social order and stop being kind of on the fringes of it. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing that happens.

Rebellion type stuff. Okay. Yeah. I'm with it. Yeah. So one thing all scholars seem to agree on is that these early police departments were uniformly corrupt and violent. Local police party ward leaders who were like local politicians in charge of tonight's neighborhood and shit tended to appoint the police officers in charge of their neighborhoods and society being what it was back then, these ward leaders often also owned the local tavern and ran the local gambling and prostitution racket. So if you were like, if you were like the equivalent of like a local like senator or whatever or an alderman or some shit or a city council member, you would also own the bar in your area and you would run like the prostitution and gambling

rackets and you would also run the police. Like that's kind of how it worked. And so everybody was, it was just a bunch of gang bosses gangsters gang bang it. Yes. Yeah. And that's, you know, that's not that different from the way the ancient Rome worked too, to be honest, like pretty similar. Yeah. Yeah. So these ward leaders controlled both the police and the gangs and both the police and gangs, mostly of local youths who would help organize voter drives and would intimidate people into making the right choices on voting day. The first police departments then were just one of several violent tools available to these early political bosses in the big cities of the north and, you know, kind of the middle of the country. It wasn't really the middle,

it would have been like the fringe at that point, but like whatever you get what I'm saying. We get it. Yeah. Police salaries were also augmented by bribes paid by the owners of illegal businesses. And I'm going to quote again from Dr. Gary Potter here. In the system of vice organized violence and political corruption, it is inconceivable that the police could be anything but corrupt police systematically took payoffs to allow illegal drinking gambling and prostitution police organized professional criminals like thieves and pickpockets trading immunity for bribes or information. They actively participated in vote buying and ballot box stuffing. Loyal political operatives became police officers. They had no discernible qualifications

for policing and little if any training in policing. Promotions within the police departments were sold, not earned. Police drank while on patrol. They protected their patrons vice operations and they were quick to use preemptory force. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All scans. All scans. Yeah. What's funny to me is too is like when you from the street level, part of the like outrage is when that cop all of a sudden just one day decides to act like an upright citizen. Yeah. You know. And so if you know, it's like any other relationship to where it's like, okay, you and your brother, your little sister, like you're all scumbags, you're all stealing, you're all you're all sneaking out. And then one day your brother goes, you know,

mom, Robert's been sneaking out all week. You're like, what the so are you serious? Yeah. Are you serious, bro? Like, what are you talking about? You know why I snuck out to steal you some weed? You know what I'm saying? So like, yeah, anyway. So it's like when you when you look at it from that perspective, like why somebody would in turn be like, man, you know what? I ain't got no time. And I got no mercy for y'all. I'll treat you no different than anybody else is because you don't act no different than anybody else. Yeah. It's fucking. Yeah. It is weird that like in this period, too, most people would have looked at like a dude who was like a fucking a pimp or a yeah, like as the same way they would a cop, like you guys are two

sides of the same fucking coin. Yeah. Same thing. Yeah. And we'll talk in a later episode, we will get to sort of the media operation that was kind of to form what are what up until very recently were sort of the modern kind of mainstream consensus on police officers as like upstanding members of the community and shit. Yeah. But like, yeah, for a very long time, they were just seen as another kind of thug. Like, yeah, they're gang. Yeah, they're gang. Yeah. Now, Samuel Walker, a professor and expert on the history of police accountability says that during this period, municipal police were used as delegated vigilantes by the empowered classes of the new United States. That's an interesting term. Now, yeah, they were men entrusted with power by those in

power to use violence against again, the dangerous classes who were seen as fundamentally criminal. Interestingly enough, Walker seems to believe this idea of having delegated vigilantes grew into a central aspect of American identity. Quote, many of the worst abuses of official criminal justice agencies represent a form of delegated vigilantism. The public has tended to condone if not encourage police brutality directed against the outcasts of society or the mistreatment of inmates in penal institutions. So this thing that we all recognize, I think, I don't have to like go into detail about this idea that like, we should have delegated vigilantes, it's okay. If we have people, we all agree should be fucked up that some people go fuck them up.

Like this really central aspect of American culture starts in this period with this idea of like the police as delegated vigilantes to damage the dangerous classes. Wow. Yeah. You know, and then, yeah, it's the idea of like something built in it's like, in the very construction of the concept. Like a lot of times I compare this to when you try to tell somebody that like, hey, your story about like the founding of our nation wasn't, it's not as like pretty as you think it was. These are just, you know what I'm saying? When you try to like start laying that down. You're missing some paragraphs. You're missing some paragraphs, guys. It's like how earth shattering and just like, I have to reconstruct reality. So like,

so when you, so when you fast forward and we go, no, most of your, most of our founding fathers were slave owners. They weren't, they were not at all Christians. I don't know where you get this founded on Christian thing from. You know what I'm saying? Like that's earth shattering. So I think like, like this one, this, this series is going to be that for people when you're, they're just like, well, then is the sky blue? Can I trust my eyes with my hands? If like, like we're, this is multiverse level reality shattering for people. You know what I'm saying? When you go back as far as you going, yeah. Yeah, I hope so. I mean, it's pretty interesting. It's interesting to me because like, if you, if you, if you really start off like digging into

this idea of delegated vigilantism, it's kind of a central thing that Americans believe in. You, you, you led to some uncomfortable kind of patterns or pathways of thought because like, yeah. So one of the most popular methods used today even to justify the violence of the police is the supposed criminality or deviance of the people that the police are victimizing. Yes. And I, I, it's interesting to me that you can draw, you really can draw a direct line between the delegated vigilantism that started in the 1800s fucking Batman and the right wing reaction to the murder of Trayvon Martin. Yeah. Like, yeah. He's a hero. Well, I mean, it was a guy shouldn't have been back there anyway. Yeah, it's, yeah, exactly. Oh my God, it's Batman. Uh-huh.

It's for sure. Batman. Batman. I never thought of it because I'm always like, I, because I'm more of the trade. Like I'm the seventh. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, Hey, let's start a coup. Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullock. And I'm Alex French in our newest show. We take a darkly comedic and occasionally ridiculous deep dive into a story that has been buried for nearly a century. We've tracked down exclusive historical records. We've interviewed the world's foremost experts. We're also bringing you cinematic historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler. And I got a

lot to say for one, my personal history is raw, inspiring and mind blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads or do we just have to do the ads? From my heart podcast and school of humans, this is let's start a coup. Listen to let's start a coup on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I'm Lance Bass. And you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space

with no country to bring him down. It's 1991. And that man Sergei Krekalev is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a

horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. You're okay with a bag of skittles cutting through a backyard. You know what I'm saying? Just trying to get home so my dad doesn't get mad. You know what I'm saying? And if some dude is like following me, my thought is I better beat this fool to a pulp

because it's scary. Because I just don't want to, you know what I'm saying? So like I never thought of it as like, oh, this fool thinks he's Batman. Dang. Yeah. This fool thinks he's the fucking, he's the vigilante hero that we... Oh my God. I'm going to protect the city from scum. Yeah. It's gum shoes. It's to say, oh my gosh. Yeah. It's why fucking cops have punisher patches on their fucking cars. And it's why all sorts of people have fucking pun it. Like it's this core, very core, even maybe even more core than this like nebulous love of freedom that we have is like this. There should be people who beat the fuck out of people I think are bad. Like it's just an origin story. Yeah. DNA strand. Okay. Yeah. Want to take an ad brick real quick? Yeah. You know who

won't beat the fuck out of people who don't deserve it in a misplaced desire for vigilante justice? These disembodied products that are keeping the lights on. Kind of constitutionally incapable of violence as products. Yes. Autonomously, that's not the word I'm looking for. Ontologically, that's not the word. I don't know. Okay. We're done. We're rolling some ads. Yes. The Gangster Chronicles podcast is a weekly conversation that revolves around the underworld. When criminals and entertainers to victims of crime and law enforcement, we cover all facets of the game. Gangster Chronicles podcast doesn't glorify promote illicit activities. We just discussed the ramifications and repercussions of these activities because after all, if you play

against the games, you are ultimately rewarded with gangster prizes. Our heart radio is number one for podcast, but don't take our word for it. Find the Gangster Chronicles podcast on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's to the great American settlers. The millions of you have settled for unsatisfying jobs because they pay the bills and you just kind of fell into it. And you know, it's like totally fine. Just another few decades or so and then you can enjoy yourself. Of course, there is something else you could do if you got something to say. You could, oh, I don't know, start a podcast with Spreaker from iHeart and unleash your creative freedom and spend all day researching and talking about stuff you love and maybe even earn enough money to one

day tell your irritating bosses you quit and walk off into the sunset. Hey, I'm no settler. I'm an explorer. Spreaker.com. That's a S-B-R-E-A-K-E-R. Hustle on over today. This is Roxanne Gay, host of the Roxanne Gay Agenda, the bad feminist podcast of your dreams. Now, what is the Roxanne Gay Agenda, you might ask? Well, it's a podcast where I'm going to speak my mind about what's on my mind and that could be anything. Every week I will be in conversation with an interesting person who has something to say. We're going to talk about feminism, race, writing in books and art, food, pop culture, and yes, politics. I started show with a recommendation. Really, I'm just going to share with you a movie or a book or maybe some music or a comedy set, something that I really

want you to be aware of and maybe engage with as well. Listen to the Luminary Original Podcast, the Roxanne Gay Agenda, the bad feminist podcast of your dreams, every Tuesday on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. And we are returned. So the system of American policing would have its next major evolution in the late 1800s as a result of the growing union movement. So obviously, the late 1800s is kind of the period in which Americans really start to unionize. There had been unions in the United States. I think the first one was 1778, but their existence had been fairly scattered and of kind of minimal consequence until 1866 when the National Labor Union formed to convince

Congress to limit the workday for federal workers to eight hours. By the 1880s, union membership had spread widely across the private sector and union strikes were constant across the big cities of the North. From 1880 to 1900, New York had more than 5,000 strikes involving more than a million workers. Chicago had 1737, I think more than half a million workers. So I call these strikes and I think modern historians call these strikes and modern people would recognize them as strikes. But at the time, politicians, business owners, and like the wealthy classes called them riots. And they turned their still fairly new police departments to the task of breaking up these riots. They turn it. Yeah. Yeah. That's where riot police start is like,

oh, these people don't want to work more than eight hours a day. Better have the cops beat the shit out of us. Like, yo, man, I, before I did music full time, like I taught high school for, I taught ninth graders, you know, and I just knew instinctually, you know, I was a young teacher, you know, I'm like, my, before I taught ninth graders, I taught seniors and I'm like, I'm four years older than you. So I'm not going to like, I'm not going to send you to the office. Like that's stupid. Like I'm not going to try to act like some sort of boss here. I just figured it was real simple. I performed better for teachers I liked. Yeah, it's just that simple. So I'm just like, yeah. So I just felt like this, you know, my best, the best way to have

classroom management is if these kids like you. Yeah, it's the, it's the thing that made so much sense when I was in Rojava in northeast Syria, which is the idea that like kind of the basic, the stuff that we would consider like the core of law enforcement, which is like patrolling around a neighborhood, making sure shit's fine. Like that's often done by like local councils, heavily made up of like old folks, like fucking grandma and stuff. Because like, you don't want to, you don't want to be acting like a fucking piece of shit in front of your grandma. Like for the grandma. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Everybody's straight enough, fly right grandma, come around the corner, you know? So I did, yeah, that's, that's the principle. I just,

I've never understood how the boss, and I mean, I got, I got like an assistant and, you know, management and stuff like that. So it's people on my payroll and I just never, like, why would they work? Why would I, who want to work for somebody they don't like? Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like, so if you just, if you run things, like, I just, it just seems so logical to me that you, it's like to, for bag security purpose, even if I'm like, just go to that, like, I'm just trying to secure this bag. I feel like my employees should feel like I like them. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe that's why I'm not a cojillionaire, because yeah, yeah, there's some I don't get caring about what people think. Yeah, man, I'll never be accountable to

your fellows. Yeah. Being accountable to feeling like I don't have to be the smartest guy in the room all the time. That's why I hired an accountant because you better. Yes. Yes. Shout out to my accountant too. Yes. Thank you, Sean. So right. Yeah. Again, so riot police kind of get started to break up these fucking these, these what are essentially strikes, what are definitely strikes. And, you know, this was a really good deal for the owners of businesses, because since the police departments were now funded by the state, they got to break up strikes against their businesses without spending, you know, their own money to do it. And as Dr. Potter notes, the use of delegated vigilantes to break up strikes confused the issue of workers rights with the issue of crime.

So people might be sympathetic towards workers who are striking for a better deal, but they're not sympathetic towards criminals who are rioting. So you frame a strike as a riot, then you have a free your hand and just beat the shit out of everybody involved. Yeah, all these thugs. Yeah, thugs. They're just thugs. They had drugs on them. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah, definitely. It's a drug. It's all it is. Got it. So early police broke up strikes in the same way we're familiar with riot cops breaking up protests today, unspeakable violence. But they also had subtler methods of achieving the same end. Public order arrests, which were essentially police declaring someone's behavior a crime for a nonspecific reason and then arresting them.

These gave police a way to break up union meetings and gatherings before they could turn into strikes. In Chicago during this period, 80 percent of all arrests were public order arrests of workers. Yeah. Yeah. So the infraction is y'all standing around. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. That's that's the that's the OK. Yeah, you're loitering. Yeah. Yeah. You just now you're going to jail. Yeah. You're allowed to stand here. Yeah. Again, you can make some comparisons to all the states that put in curfews and then suddenly said now it's illegal to be out after five. So if you're out after five, we can fuck you up. Did you see the ones? I forget. I think there was a few of them out here in California. One of the one of the cities was like things you can

do after the curfew. Go to the store. Go to the groceries. Pick up your children being stuck in traffic. Things you can't do after after curfew. Yeah. Gather in large groups in front of city hall. Yeah. I was just like, oh, we're OK. So yeah, really? Like oh, we're OK. Got too much free speech going on here. Got to stop that shit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Carry cardboard signs you can't do after. Got it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Great First Amendment we have. So yeah. Between 1875 and 1900, nearly a million workers were jailed for public order offenses in just Chicago. Now, a lot of cities also made use of what were called tramp acts. These criminalized traveling without having a visible means of support. So if you were moving around in the city or the world and you didn't

have money clearly, like you didn't clearly have a job, you were committing a crime. So in other words, it was illegal in a lot of cities to be an unemployed, poor person who left their home. So when workers would go on strike and would lose their jobs for going on strike, they were then breaking the law because they were outside in the city and doing something besides looking for a new job. What the fuck? I know, right? That's fucked up. You landed the free life. Are you serious? How? Good Lord, man. Pretty good. Pretty good. Yes. Yeah. And again, like 80% of the arrests are of these people. So if you're talking about like the police protecting people, you know, who are they protecting? Who are they serving?

It's not most of the people. Yeah. No. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Tramp acts were, of course, not applied to members of the middle class or wealthy individuals. It was only illegal to be out and not laboring if you are a member of the dangerous classes. Meanwhile, good citizens, respectable citizens, these were all regular terms used, which again, we're all kind of terms for fully white citizens with money and property. Yeah. These people were increasingly able rather than being increasingly suppressed by the police, those folks were increasingly able to call on the police when they felt uncomfortable or afraid. The very first alarm boxes were set up in major cities during this period of time. And these were similar to the dedicated, you know, like on a college

campus, there'll be like very well lit like police phones that like, presumably if you're getting sexually assaulted or something, you'd like run over to it and call the cops. This was the same basic idea. And they were set up, started being set it up in cities in this area, particularly in sit, like parts of cities where they were like businesses and, you know, upper, upper income housing and stuff. And but they were locked. So you couldn't, most people couldn't actually use the alarm boxes. But local businessmen and wealthy people were all given keys because the police existed to be their on call personal security. Oh my gosh, like just all out in the open. Yeah. Yeah, there's not a lot of, not a lot of, I don't know, masks on it and stuff.

No, it doesn't even seem convenient. I'm like, if I'm actively, if I'm rich and I'm being robbed, you think I got time to like, figure out which key this is. Yeah. And I don't think it was mostly them being robbed. I think they would see like, oh, there's a bunch of fucking Italians hanging out in this corner. I'd better get the cops over here to kick their asses. Like I don't, I don't want Italians on my street corner. Like they're careening, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Dude, they're always more than one of them. Must be a gang. Must be a gang. So yeah, thanks to the advances of technology that allowed alarm boxes to exist, property owners were able to call on the police department, which was funded by everyone's taxes in order to protect

their private wealth and increasingly just to kind of protect their sense of comfort. So policing tools developed with the need to break up strikes and riots, patrol wagons began taking to the streets. This allowed police to easily travel in large groups and easily arrest large groups of people. Police on horseback also started to appear because horses were seen as the most effective way to break up a group of protesters. Officers began carrying long nightsticks because breaking in activist skulls was an increasing part of their job. Yeah. Yeah. Throughout the later half of the 1800s, early police departments were faced with the question of whether or not officers should be uniformed and given firearms. Sir Peele,

the father of police work, the guy who created the London Metropolitan Police, was pretty stringently against cops packing heat. American police, though, began carrying guns independently by virtue of arming themselves years before such equipment became standard. So decades really before police departments are giving everyone a gun, cops are just kind of buying their own guns. Yeah. Because it is America. Yeah. I mean, it's just to be real. Yeah. And you know what? You're right. It's effective. If it's just like it's like drinking again. It's like drinking bleach. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it'll cure. I mean, I'm pretty sure it'll, you won't die. You drink enough, it'll get rid of that. Yeah. Yeah. You won't die from coronavirus. You're right. You drink enough

bleach for sure. If you drink enough bleach, just like, you know what? If you really want to send everybody home, you know what? You're right. Beat the shit out of them with billy clubs and guns. You're right. That will end the protest. So the U.S. police departments first started to kind of like in an organized way issuing arms to police in like the 1840s. And when this started to happen, the American public was extremely skeptical of the idea because again, we are a freedom loving people. And the idea that police would be allowed to deploy deadly force at will against citizens was extremely unpopular at first. People were like, what the fuck are you talking about? You're like, again, these people, we all understand these people are basically the same

as thugs and you want to, you want to pay, have the state pay for them to have guns now? Like that's not a great idea. Yeah. Yeah. But as Dr. Gary Potter writes, quote, the value of armed paramilitary presence authorized to use indeed deadly force served the interests of local economic elites who had wanted organized police departments in the first place. The presence of a paramilitary force occupying the streets was regarded as essential because such organizations intervened between the property of elites and propertyless masses who were regarded as politically dangerous as a class. Now, these property classes also considered it essential that police be uniformed so that respectable citizens could identify them when they needed help and so that they would

create an obvious visible presence to clamp down on unrest by the dangerous classes. Now, again, uniforms would appear kind of scattershot in different police departments and not for never for all of the police, but for some units and stuff would be uniformed for a period of time. Many officers resisted uniforms because, again, they're basically criminals and it made them into a target. The very first uniformly uniformed, everybody wears a uniform and that's part of the definition of what this group is. The very first police force for that to be standard in was the Pennsylvania State Police. This is in the United States at least. So the Pennsylvania State Police, the first explicitly fully uniformed police force that we have in this country. Now,

the Pennsylvania State Police were formed in 1903 in the wake of the great anthracite coal strike of 1902. For reference, the strikers were fighting for a 20% pay increase, a reduction from 10 to eight hours a day in their workday and a fairer system for weighing coal. This strike caused the price of coal to skyrocket right as winter hit, which put enormous pressure on the state government and on the federal government to put Pennsylvania's minds back to work because Pennsylvania's like the fucking the coal basket. Yeah. So the great anthracite coal strikers were opposed by a mix of Pinkerton's who were essentially a mercenary police force. We'll talk more about them a bit later. And the coal and iron police. Now, the coal and iron police was a 5,000 man army run by the

coal companies in Pennsylvania, but empowered and funded by the state of Pennsylvania to basically do whatever they had to do to break strikes. This generally involved horrific violence. And over the course of the great anthracite coal strike, the coal and iron police gunned several people down, but the strikers were able to put pressure on mine owners for 163 straight days. And they eventually gained, you know, modest concessions and they didn't get a 20% raise in an eight hour workday, but they got a 10% raise in a nine hour workday. So, you know, take what you can. Yeah. Oh, this was okay. No, I was going to ask a question, but I answered it myself. I mixed it with like, I thought maybe that was like the railway company guy that like started a city

and had it. Yeah. That's something else. Okay. Nevermind. That is happening during this period. You know, you're having and the coal and iron police are kind of the same thing. Like they're these communities are all miners and using state partially at least state funds, the mine companies establish a police department to keep their mines in order and really to keep their workers from striking. So the Pennsylvania state police was established after the great anthracite coal strike or anthracite strike, whatever, because the state was governed by mine owners and their friends and the state wanted a dedicated paramilitary unit to violently suppress future strikes. The coal and iron police weren't good enough at their jobs. So this is where we get the first uniformed police

department in US history is specifically like, we didn't kill enough people last time, we needed like a force that can really fuck with people who go on strike. So in our last episode, we discussed the fact that police departments in the American South evolved out of slave patrols, which were essentially a counterinsurgency force. That similar evolution at least occurred elsewhere in the United States, even outside of the South. In 1898, the United States went to war with Spain, one of the least justified wars in our long history of unjustified wars. But because Spain was at the time also a terrible colonialist empire, the US wound up fighting them for control of the Philippines. Now Spain had controlled that mass of islands quite brutally and the US continued

this tradition, murdering as many as 200,000 civilians battling the insurgency that followed our occupation of the Philippines. Much of this murdering was done by the Philippine Constabulary, the occupation force our government put in place over those islands. And back in the United States, the Pennsylvania state police were formed directly in imitation of the Philippine Constabulary. So yeah, and this is still the state police in Pennsylvania today, they started out as people looking at, okay, you remember when we killed, we committed that quasi genocide in the Philippines. What if we take all of that advice, use it to make up the Pennsylvania state police and have them fuck up anyone who goes on strike? That's where the Pennsylvania state police come

from. Okay. God, like, oh, yeah. So Pennsylvania residents, the next time you see a Pennsylvania state police car, be like, Hey, man, granddad's an asshole. Anyway, yeah, yeah. So the Pennsylvania state police were formed as an all white, all native, meaning, you know, born in the United States force. So that's what you mean by native? Okay, yeah, exactly. White people born in the US as opposed to white people who immigrated here, right? Like, that's what they mean by native. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, buddy. Yeah. So the singular purpose of the Pennsylvania state police was to break the strikes that increasingly popped up in Pennsylvania's coal fields near the turn of the century. Mine workers tended to be a mix of Irish, German and Eastern European immigrants. A lot of

checks were in this kind of like mining population, also a lot of like Russians and kind of people, we don't call Russians today, but we're Russians back then because Russia was bigger. And it was only logical to the rich white mine owners and their friends in government that the same tactics that worked on undesirable races in Southeast Asia would also work on undesirable races right here in the United States. It was seen as critically important then to stop the Pennsylvania state police from developing any kind of rapport from the people they controlled. The state police lived in special barracks outside of the mining towns. And this was done to avoid any kind of social intermingling. The only time these people should see the folks they were policing is when they were

cracking their fucking skulls. They rode horses to allow them to more effectively trample strikers. In 1906, 5,000 windbird Pennsylvania miners went on strike against their employer, the Burwind White coal mining company. Burwind White was anti-union and the largely Slovak miners of windbird wanted to join the United Mine Workers of America. The Pennsylvania police responded by riding into town, murdering three adult miners and one young boy by firing wildly into crowds and brutally trampling anyone who fell down. And letters home to their families, the immigrant miners referred to the Pennsylvania state police as Cossacks. Do you know what the Cossacks were? I mean, they're still around. Where have I heard that word? It's an ethnic group in Russia,

but it was during the period of the Tsar. These were basically kind of like these tribes of horse mounted warriors who the Tsar used as his shock troopers. Primarily like they fought in wars, but their biggest job was fucking up riots and protests and committing some genocide occasionally. Yeah. So these people who are used to the Tsar sending in his Cossacks when there's unrest to murder people, they come to the US and they see the Pennsylvania police murdering them and they're like, oh, these are like the same fucking things as the Tsar's shock troopers. Yeah. Yeah. Why did we risk coming across a whole ocean before airplanes just to get this? What are we even doing? Like if shit was different here. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, yo, this ain't like the five old American,

you know, American tale story. I thought there was no cats in America. You know what I'm saying? This is supposed to be better when we get here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And y'all came by choice. So that's the part where I'm just like, why didn't y'all look at each other and be like, you know what guys? Maybe a bad call. Maybe this was a bad call. Yeah. Beer's worse too. Then the beer sucks. So on a related note, while doing my research, I came across a January 23rd, 2020 article in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette about the Pennsylvania State Police in case you're curious about how the Pennsylvania State Police is doing today. This article points out that in 2002, following a New Jersey scandal over state troopers engaging in racial profiling, the Pennsylvania State Police

began collecting racial data on their traffic stops and sending it to the University of Cincinnati for analysis. And to its credit, to their credit, the data revealed that the Pennsylvania State Police were not exhibiting any racial bias and who they pulled over. So that's nice. However, the data did show that they were exhibiting hella bias when it came to who they searched. Troopers were two to three times as likely to search black or Hispanic drivers as white drivers, even though black and Hispanic drivers were vastly less likely to have contraband on their persons than white drivers. Now, and again, this is pretty true across the nation, but it was specifically true for the Pennsylvania State Police. They're like three times as likely to search you if you're

black or Hispanic, but white people are the ones actually bringing all the drugs in. So when this data was made public, the Pennsylvania State Police ended their relationship with the University of Cincinnati because the University of Cincinnati showed that they were being racist as hell. And the Pennsylvania... What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the US and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt and I'm Alex French. In our newest show, we take a darkly comedic and occasionally ridiculous deep dive into a story that has been buried for nearly a century. We've tracked down exclusive historical records. We've interviewed

the world's foremost experts. We're also bringing you cinematic historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler and I got a lot to say. For one, my personal history is raw, inspiring, and mind-blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads or do we just have to do the ads? From iHeart Podcast and School of Humans, this is Let's Start a Coup. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I'm Lance Bass and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some

pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991 and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left offending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic

science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI.

How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus, it's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. State police is now the largest of only 11 statewide law enforcement agencies in the nation who do not collect racial data during stops. Wow. So that's good. Good on you. Okay, there it is. Pennsylvania State Police. Yeah. Yeah. If I could if I could draw some logical like ties with this one, like, you know why black and brown people are less likely to have contraband on them is because we more likely to be searched. That's just it's real. It's real simple. You know, like,

you know, so we're not going to have it on us, right? Also, and a little tangent on this, but like you're and it's so crazy that like it's it's all out of this fear of these, you know, this dangerous class. But like the truth is, we're probably not going to rob that Chad or Tyler or Hunter or Karen, because the police will come if we rob you. So truth is, you're actually more safe than the rest of us because because if one of us die, if one of us get robbed, please don't care. You know what I'm saying? But but I know the police coming if if Karen has issues. So it's such a like this like this this bias that like is a reality of our life, you know, in some ways. Again, I get how it's worked. If we're talking sheer pragmatism in favor for this white ruling class, which is why

we call it privilege, if you can follow along, you know what I'm saying? Like it's but it's just it's but it's privileged, but not how you think. It's like it's it's different. It's not it's not the way you set it up for. Yeah, yeah, it's this thing. It's like there was that video going around of, I don't know, a week or so ago and maybe a week into the protests when like those, I think it was an LA this like big group of like white people all like recited a thing, renouncing their white privilege. I'm like, yeah, it doesn't work like that. You can't just it's guys. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, like, yeah, I'm sure you feel good. But like, now if you were to get rid of the LAPD, then you actually have reduced your white privilege. That's a step. Then you have less privilege. Yeah. I'm

like, you could just like use it for good. You know, like, there's that you upset. Yeah, that's so funny. It's like, we'd be like, man, some some some somebody's and it sucks to say it because I like I am deeply and intimately involved with and love white progressive circles. I am involved. These are my friends. This is my family, you know what I'm saying? But it's so funny to watch them like simultaneously do the most and nothing at all at the same time. I'm saying like that's such a that's such a grand statement to be like, I'm denouncing my privilege. But that literally does nothing for me. So like, it's like, it's, I can't. It's like, I don't know. I don't know what to tell you guys. Like, I just just, you know, treat us fairly and help us defund the police. That's all

like, you know, you ain't got to fuck you. What are you wearing a kente cloth for? Like just make some good laws, make some good laws, just make some good laws or remove bad ones. Either helps just just one of them things. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate it. I see you're we're here. We're listening. Yeah. I see it. Can you just like make some laws though? You know, yeah. Unfuck the fuckness a little bit. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. That feels like a good note to take a break on. I'm just saying speaking of unfucking the fuckness. You know what won't fuck the fuckness more is these products. Executive producer Paris Hilton brings back the hit podcast, How Men Think. And that's good news for

anyone that is confused by men, which is basically everyone. Get an inside look at what goes on in the mind of men from the men themselves. It's real talk straight from the source. The How Men Think podcast is exactly what we need to figure them out. It's going to be fun and formative and probably a bit scary at times because we're literally going inside the minds of men. As much as we like to think all men are the same, they're actually very different. Each week, a celebrity guest host provides honest advice in his area of expertise. When I agreed to do this reboot, I had a few conditions. No sugarcoating, no mind games, and absolutely no mansplaining. Men are hard enough to understand without the mind games. Listen to How Men Think

on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tanya Sam, host of the Money Moves podcast powered by Greenwood. This daily podcast will help give you the keys to the kingdom of financial stability, wealth, and abundance. With celebrity guests like Rick Ross, Amanda Seals, Angela Yee, Roland Martin, JB Smoothe, and Terrell Owens, tune in to learn how to turn liabilities into assets and make your money move. Subscribe to the Money Moves podcast powered by Greenwood on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. And make sure you leave a review. I'm Jake Halbert, host of Deep Cover. Our new season is about a lawyer who helped the mob run Chicago. We control the courts. We control absolutely everything. He bribed judges

and even helped a hitman walk free until one day when he started talking with the FBI and promised that he could take the mob down. I've spent the past year trying to figure out why he flipped and what he was really after. From my perspective, Bob was too good to be true. There has got to be something wrong with this. I wouldn't trust that guy. He looks like a little scumbag liar, stool pigeon. He looked like what he was or at. I can say with all certainty, I think he's a hero because he didn't have to do what he did and he did it anyway. The moment I put the wire around the first time, my life was over. If it ever got out, they would kill me in a heartbeat. Listen to Deep Cover on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

We're back and we're talking about using your privilege for good. And one way you can use your privilege for good is, I don't know, if you're listening and you happen to have purple heart plates and you have a bunch of friends who have to drive substances somewhere, maybe you ought to be the one driving the substances because the police aren't going to give a shit about you. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, veterans for drug smuggling. Yes, I want to go on record that I'm not trying to go hard. I'm not trying to go hard at my white progressives. Yeah, I appreciate you telling the cost. I just want to say that. It's a fun day. So, yeah, it's worth considering within the broader context of the development of US law

enforcement that the cops did not always cite enthusiastically with capital when it came to struggles over labor. We previously did a two-part episode on the Battle of Blair Mountain, which was a massive coal strike that ended in an enormous pitched battle that included aerial bombardment, machine guns and thousands of combatants on both sides. One of the great union heroes of that whole mess was Sheriff Sid Hatfield, who gunned down several mercenaries from the Baldwin Feltts detective agencies. Many strikes did take place in small communities out in the middle of nowhere and law enforcement in those places was much more kind of rooted in public spirit, these old attitudes of what law enforcement should be than kind of the new attitudes about

law enforcement. And in those cases, you know, cops who were sort of like elected or brought up within the community and felt like a part of it and the community was all union, law enforcement would regularly side with the strikers in those situations or it would at least feel too frightened of their neighbors to enthusiastically back the mine companies. And this was enough of a problem, this wasn't everywhere, but it was enough of a problem that starting in the 1870s, capitalists also began using private police as strike breakers with increasing frequency and no private police agency did a better job of this than the Pinkertons. You know about the Pinkertons, we're talking some Pinkertons now. I do know about the Pinkertons. Yeah,

we're talking about some motherfucking Pinkertons. Yeah, we're gonna have to do a whole two-parter probably in the Pinkertons at some point, but you can't talk about the history of US law enforcement without talking about some motherfucking Pinkertons. Yeah, the cocksucking Pinkertons to pull from fucking Deadwood. So here it goes, Alan Pinkerton was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1819. His father was a policeman of the for-profit freelance variety and he was killed on the job. So Alan grew up dirt poor, laboring from an early age to help keep his family fed. He became an activist in his youth, agitating for democratic reform in Great Britain, and he was violenced by the state for speaking out against it. By 1842, he had been forced to flee the country with his wife. The pair wound up

living in Dundee, Illinois, and Alan set up a barrel-making business. In 1847, the 28-year-old Alan Pinkerton traveled out to an uninhabited island to look for wood that he could make into more barrels because that was his thing. He found a campsite there and the campsite was abandoned, but clearly fresh. And because he was a born and bred cop, this guy was like kind of in his fucking bones, a cop, Alan decided not to mind his own damn business. He returned to that night and hid nearby until the camp's occupants, a group of counterfeiters, returned. Alan instantly went to the sheriff and reported them and the gang was arrested. So not my kind of dude, but like fundamentally a cop, like emotionally a cop. So counterfeiting was a massive problem for business

owners in the early United States, and the local merchants made Pinkerton into a hero for busting this group. He started getting offers to investigate other crimes, and very quickly, Alan Pinkerton had become the go-to man for busting counterfeit coin operations in Illinois. He was soon deputized by the sheriff of Cane County, Illinois, and in 1849, he became the city of Chicago's first full-time detective. By 1850, Alan founded Pinkerton's Detective Agency. In less than 20 years, it had expanded to include branches in New York and Philadelphia. Alan quickly expanded outside of just detective work. He created Pinkerton's Protective Police Patrol, a group of uniformed night watchmen that local businesses could hire to protect their shops. Pinkerton men, some of whom

were women, also acted as undercover cops, often feeding information on criminal syndicates directly to regular police. The Pinkerton's grew to become a legendary force in the Old West, helping to hunt down criminals like Jesse James. And there is some moral complexity here. This isn't an easy story, because while Alan Pinkerton was absolutely just a total fucking cop, he was also a really staunch and consistent abolitionist. Part of what drew him to hunt down Jesse James was the fact that James had been an enthusiastic Confederate soldier. Pinkerton, meanwhile, had worked for the Underground Railroad and had helped to guard Abraham Lincoln. But even when Pinkerton targets were clearly bad people like James, their methods were often still unaccountably brutal. The Pinkerton

Agency actually raided Jesse James' house. It was basically like a no-knock raid that they carried out. And they fucked up and attacked during a time when James was not present. And instead, during the raid, they blew off his mother's arm and murdered his eight and a half year old younger brother. Like, yeah, this is a fucking no-knock raid. Yeah. So again, even when they picked the right bad guys, they wound up murdering an eight year old. Not great. Not great. So later in life, Alan Pinkerton hit upon the brilliant idea of writing semi-fictionalized accounts of the most famous detective cases in Pinkerton history. And these books became some of the very first true crime stories in the history of literature. But while the Agency was famous for tales of

sleuthing and daring due while confronting bandits and bank robbers, the bulk of the Pinkerton Agency's business came from protecting capital by fighting labor. The first Pinkerton strikebreakers were hired in 1866 when miners in Illinois went on strike and the mining company needed protection for their scabs, which are the people like the company brings in to work the mines when the workers refuse. Now, over the years, the Pinkerton's developed a standard set of procedures with armed men escorting scabs into factories and mines while Pinkerton guards and towers aimed machine guns at strikers to keep them away. Alan Pinkerton died in 1884 and his son took over the agency and doubled down on strike breaking. By 1892, the Pinkerton's had helped to break 77 strikes.

Now, after 1892, though, the agency really stopped doing as much over at strike breaking. They shifted more into industrial espionage and infiltrating labor movements rather than confronting them with guns. And the reason for this was because of a vicious battle that took place in the town of Homestead, Pennsylvania. Here we go. Yeah. The Homestead strike. So here we go. Yeah. Homestead was a steel town built around and for a huge steel plant owned by the Carnegie Steel Company. You know, you've all we all here know the Carnegie Foundation. We hear about them and like PBS and shit. Yeah. This is where that money comes from. So in 1890, the price of rolled steel products has started to fall and the manager of the Homestead plant, a dude named Henry Frick,

decided to cut wages. Neither his wages nor his boss are Andrew Carnegie's wages were to be cut, of course. And in fact, to maintain their wages, they had to take the company losses out of their workers' pockets. And they decided the best way to do that was to destroy the amalgamated association of iron and steel workers, which was at the time the nation's largest craft union. Now, here's where it gets interesting because Andrew Carnegie was, you know, one of the good ones if we're talking about millionaires. Like that's how a lot of people would have viewed him at the time. He was vocally pro-labor. Like he made public statements in favor of labor and saying that unions had a reason to exist. And this was in keeping with his reputation as a philanthropist,

you know, a millionaire you could trust. But of course, the instant his profits were threatened, Carnegie had no time for the union anymore and resisted like efforts. Yeah, exactly. So like, he's like, yeah, unions are fine when the money is good. But when his money is threatened, unions got to go. That's Andrew Carnegie. Yeah. Sounds about right. Sounds about right. So in the, in the spring of 1892, Carnegie instructed Frick to push company workers to make as much steel as possible before the union contract expired that June, because the union contract expired and then they were going to have to negotiate a new one. And the union didn't want to make less money, but Carnegie wanted to pay them less. So if the union had failed to accept

the new terms that Carnegie and Frick offered, Andrew was just going to have the plant managers shut the factory down until the laborers were linted. He wrote to Frick, we approve of every anything you do, we are with you to the end. Now Carnegie wasn't physically with Frick, of course, he was off at one of his many palaces. This one was in Scotland, just kind of chilling. So Frick was left to figure out how to confront labor on his own. And I'm going to quote now from a write up on the strike in PBS's American Experience series. With Carnegie's carte blanche support, Frick moved to slash wages, plant workers responded by hanging Frick in effigy, the union fought not just for better wages, but also for a say in America's new industrial order.

Though Carnegie and Frick had brought unions to heal at their other mills, Homestead remained untamed. Workers believed that because they had worked in the mill, they had mixed their labor with the property of the mill, explains historian Paul Krauss. They believed that in some way the property had become theirs. Not that it wasn't Andrew Carnegie's, not that they were the sole proprietors of the mill, but that they had an entitlement to the mill. And I think in a fundamental way, the conflict at Homestead in 1892 was about these two conflicting ideas of property. Now, on June 25th, Frick announced that he would no longer negotiate with the union. Now he would only deal with the workers individually. Leaders and amalgamated were willing to concede on almost

every level, except the dissolution of their union. On June 29th, despite the union's willingness to negotiate, Frick closed down his open hearth and armor plate mills, locking out 3,800 men. So there's a lot that's interesting here. One of them is that like, a lot of these guys, you know, these, these guys aren't super educated. They haven't read, you know, their marks or whatever, but they kind of recognized this idea of like, oh, you know, not that like workers, they weren't like, workers should own the means of production, but they were like, workers should co-own the means of production. At least, right? Yeah, at least. That's kind of the idea these guys kind of come to of their own accord. Now, the union men desperately tried to contact Andrew

Carnegie once Frick closed the plant, because again, they thought he was a good guy. Like, he'd said that unions were okay. They thought that he just didn't understand what was really happening because he was so distant. And if they, if they could let him know how bad things were for them and how bad Frick was treating them, then he would back them. But of course, Andrew Carnegie didn't give a shit about these people. He was on vacation and he had no time for them. He did, however, have time for Frick. He advised Frick that now was their time to destroy the union, believing that his workers would surely give it up if it meant keeping their jobs, even it reduced salary. His workers disagreed. Only 750 homestead men had belonged to the union

before all this happened. But 3000 of the plant's 3,800 workers agreed to strike once Frick closed the doors. Now, to combat them, Frick built a fortress to keep them out, including a 12 foot high, three mile long fence topped with barbed wire. Deputy sheriffs were sworn in to man the fence with rifles. But those sheriffs and their families lived in homestead. And when 3000 of their neighbors marched on Fort Frick, as it was known, all these deputy sheriffs were like, I'm not I'm not going to kill all these people I live with. Like that seems like a bad call. So they laid down their arms and left. Now, workers then occupied the plant and effectively took over the entire town of homestead. For the very first time in American history,

laborers had quite literally seized the means of production. Now, Andrew Carnegie was not a fan of this. He didn't take it lying down. Well, he actually probably was lying down in Scotland. But he hired a bunch of armed Pinkerton's to not take it lying down for him. Yeah. Yeah. So the Pinkerton's 300 and some odd of them got on a bunch, a couple of barges and attempted an aquatic landing at homestead, essentially a sort of capitalist Normandy or more accurately, Gallipoli, the heavily armed Pinkerton's expected this to be like any of the other dozens of strikes they broken, you know, they might have to gun down a few people, but these dirt poor factory serfs surely would not be able to compete with their modern Winchester

rifles. 300 mercenaries with modern guns were sure to be enough to break homestead's resistance. And again, Carnegie and Frick had underestimated the men of homestead. As one later recalled, to be confronted with a gang of loafers and cutthroats from all over the country coming here there as they thought to take their jobs, why they naturally wanted to go down and defend their homes and their property with their lives with force if necessary. Of course. Yeah. And defend their lives the men of homestead did when the Pinkerton's landed. They were warned not to step off their barge when they ignored that warning. People started fucking shooting at them and a huge gun battle began. Yeah. Yeah. Where's that movie? Where's that movie? I know there might

be a movie about it. There probably is. There should be more. So the Pinkerton's used their steel barges as floating bunkers firing out at a crowd of homestead citizenry. The homesteaders had shit for guns, mostly a handful of hunting rifles and old muskets, but they had a lot of those and they also had a 20 pound cannon that they got from somewhere. They had dynamite, which they tossed like grenades. A local hardware merchant donated all of the ammunition in his store to the crowd and for 12 hours the gun battle raged on. By 6 a.m. the next day, more than 5,000 spectators from Pittsburgh had shown up to watch from the riverbanks at 8 a.m. Yeah. It's a live movie. Yeah. We got to go see the war. There's a war going on next all. It's down street, dude.

Let's go. I guess I'll take a look. Yeah. By 8 a.m. the Pinkerton's had tried to land again. Workers fired their cannon and attempted to scuttle the barges by ramming them with both a burning raft and a burning railroad car. None of this quite worked. Yeah. They were really giving it a shot. They committed. Just like, look, look. We're going to hold the line, fellas. Yeah. Yeah. We can't shoot through these barges, but we can throw giant flaming things at the barges and that'll probably fuck them up a bit. Now, none of this sunk the barges, but the sheer rate of fire from the crowd was terrifying to the Pinkerton's who cowered inside. One recalled, the noise that they made on the shore was awful and it made us shake in our boots. We were pinned

in like rats and we went at the fighting like desperate wild men. All of the men were under the beds and bunks crying and trembling. Another Pinkerton recalled, it was a place of torment when men were lying around wounded and bleeding and piteously begging someone to give them a drink of water. But no one dared to get a drop, although water was all around us. It was a wonder we did not all go crazy or commit suicide. The Pinkerton's tried to surrender four times and each white flag they rose up was shot down by a sniper on the board. We're not done shooting at you guys yet. Yeah, friendship. Yeah. Eventually though, the crowd did accept the Pinkerton's surrender. The mercenary cops were led onto the shore, beaten and clubbed and pelted with stones as they were

taken to the local jail and eventually sent out of town by train. Three to eight Pinkerton's were killed along with a similar number of strikers and dozens and dozens of people were wounded. It was a victory for the laboring folks of Homestead, but sadly not one that lasted. Frick next asked the governor to send in the militia. And since the state government basically existed to serve the desires of wealthy mine owners and the like, the government said yes. The strikers knew better than to try to do battle with the militia. Who had machine guns? Yeah. And so they surrendered. Yeah. Yeah. Homestead was put under martial law. Carnegie was able to move in his scab workers. And of course, this is where things get morally complex again, because

the scab workers Carnegie picks were a lot of them were black. And in fact, these were like the very first black steel workers in the state. And this led to a horrible race riot as 2000 white union men assaulted 50 black families and a number of people were badly injured in the resulting gun battle. And this is a regular story throughout the labor movement is like, yeah, our workers are on strike. Black people, we can bring them in, we can pay them less. And like, it'll it'll like they don't like there's not a solidarity between these poor black and these poor white people. Yeah. For obvious reasons, because poor white people would be real shitty to poor black people. But like it provided an opportunity for people like Carnegie. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Desperately

needed work. Yeah. And yeah. Yep. Yep. Not great. It's complicated. Complicated history here. Yes. Yes. By November of 1892, the amalgamated union was finished. Strike leaders were charged with murder and 160 union men were charged with lesser crimes. Now, local juries did refuse to convict them because again, the juries were made up of the people who'd taken part in this uprising. But this was the end of unionization and homestead for a while. Once victory was well and truly achieved, Carnegie cabled Frick life worth living again. First happy morning since July. To celebrate, he immediately cut wages, expanded the work data 12 hours and fired 500 people. Good stuff. Good stuff. But after homestead, the Pinkerton's were never quite the same. And it

would be fair to say that the whole experience made the agency a lot less willing to go engage in physical aggression. But the agency still exists to this day and still works as a private police force for the rich and powerful. In 2018, when workers for frontier communications went on strike in West Virginia and normal Virginia, the company hired the Pinkerton agency. Now part of Securitas, a massive Swedish corporation, Pinkerton basically acts as a rentable FBI for mega corporations dealing with labor disputes. I'm going to quote now from a write up in the New Republic. Okay, wait, before you quote this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Did you say West Virginia and regular Virginia? I sure did. That is I say this as a statement of fact,

I attribute no value good or bad to this statement. But West Virginia is a time warp. I'm like, West Virginia is currently 100 years ago. Yeah, it's certainly not regular Virginia. Yes. So when you said that, and it's something that, you know, I'm in a group text with a bunch of different touring artists, like we're all just homies, but we all talk about like, yo, I feel like West Virginia is back to the future. Like it's the internet hasn't been invented in West Virginia. Like we don't what, why is this state 40 years ago? Yeah. Yeah, it's a trip to me. I anyway. So yeah, West Virginia and regular Virginia just I, I almost feel vindicated that I'm not, I'm not the only person me and my eight friends, the only people that feel like,

yeah, understand what's happening in West Virginia right now. Like, I feel like everyone who is driven from regular Virginia to West Virginia immediately had the realization like, oh, I'm not in regular Virginia anymore. This isn't Virginia anymore. I don't even know why it's both called. Yeah. Y'all should change our name because this is, this is not the same. Yeah. North Carolina, South Carolina, few differences. Yeah. Carolina though. But you're Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia. Nice. That's a different planet. I mean, I'll say there's a big South Dakota, North Dakota split. But also why the two? There's like nine people in both states. Come on, y'all. Poppy seeds is nine people have poppy seeds in in Dakotas. Yes. All right. We've

anyway, I just read the quote. I just had to acknowledge regular Virginia. That's how I feel. That's how I feel. Yeah. So in the modern day, the Pinkerton agency basically and it's just called Pinkerton now acts as a rentable FBI for mega corporations fucking over their workers. And I'm going to quote now from a write up in the New Republic. Pinkerton is hardly the only firm to advertise such services, but its history sets it apart and the company embraces its legacy. With one call to Pinkerton, you gain access to our global network of resources, providing boots on the ground, when and where you need them, it promises. A security aid for the firm lists labor demonstrations as among the risks it can

monitor. Trouble can happen anytime, anywhere, a narrator in tones. Yeah. The tones, your tone is just was so triggered. I got a physical response to that. Like that anyway. Yeah. The Pinkerton promise is attractive to some Silicon Valley firms. The Guardian reported on March 16th that Facebook and Google have both retained Pinkerton to monitor staff for leaks. Among other services, Pinkerton offers to send investigators to coffee shops or restaurants near a company's campus to eavesdrop on employee conversations. Olivia Salon reported. So Pinkerton's still out there, still fucking with labor. Yeah. Just rich boy hall monitors. Yeah. What if he lacks, bro? Yeah. You know how little accountability the FBI has currently?

What if it just had none? Okay guys, stay with me here. FBI that we could pay to do whatever we want. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know how the FBI agent who was doing a back flip at a club and accidentally shot that guy when his gun fell out? You know, he got in trouble. What if there was even less accountability than that? I almost, I almost forgot that happened. Yeah. That happened. Yes. Good Lord. Oh, wow. So, Prop, we're at the end of another episode, another chapter in police history. Yeah. I haven't, as of yet, finished writing the third episode, but we're going to talk some about the KKK. We're going to talk some about lynchings. We're going to talk some about how the police departments stopped lynchings by just deciding to torture black people instead.

It's not going to be good. We're going to talk about LAPD recruiting southern people from Post Jim Crow. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to have to talk about that some. Yeah. We have a lot more to talk about, but for now, what we should talk about is your plugables. Yes. PropHipHop.com. That's all the poetry and the in the music and the art and the coffee paraphernalia and the podcasts. Hood Politics and the Red CouchPod. Red Couch is me and my wife. Hood Politics, exactly what it sounds like. I'm basically taking all that you know about politics and just explaining them in street terms as to a lot of ways. I just, I really just want people to realize your politicians aren't smarter than you. You think you don't belong at the table,

but what I'm trying to tell you is what this whole episode in series is proven. They just people and they just gang bang it. They're just gang bang it. So if you understand, if you accept that your politicians are gang bangers and all this is just gang life, you can understand politics. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing. I like that. Nobody speak video that like it did real well is like, you know, this is like all these people, these are just different gangs. And we decide this gang gets all the respect. This is basically it. You know what when. Okay. So when we all know, I mean, I like really name a Republican politician that actually likes Donald Trump. Like they don't like him, but I get it. He's from your hood. Yeah. So since he's from your

hood, you keep your mouth shut in public. That's just that's why nobody's talk. That's why he told the line. It's like, nah, he from my hood. I can't, I mean, he's from my hood. I get it. Yeah. Don't you sell a shirt that says some yes, you have a shirt that says yes, politics is just gang banging or something like that. Yeah. Politics is gang banging in nice suits. There it is. Yeah. That's the t shirt. Oh, and I actually, I'm going to help your plug. I ordered a worst year ever t shirt. It's not here yet. I ordered a shirt from your store. Look at that. Look at that synergy. I like the one he has a shirt that he sells in a store that says Republican Democrat awake. I was like, okay, I need that. I need that immediately. Check. Yeah.

I do want to, while we're talking about gangs and what they are in reality, I wanted to, have you ever heard of Smedley Butler prop? I want to talk about Smedley Butler for just a second before it goes out. No, put me down. Put me on. Smedley Butler was a major general. He's one of the highest decorated soldiers in US history. Home Dude won two medals of honor for gallantry under fire and became a hardcore anti-capitalist in his later days. I want to quote from like two different speeches of his. I spent 33 years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from second lieutenant to major general. And during that period, I spent

most of my time being a high class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. Sheesh. Yeah. Sheesh. Yeah. Smedley Butler. Smedley Butler, you said, you said the, you said the quiet thing out loud. Yeah. And it's, and it's like, and it's the obvious. That's crazy, man. Yeah. Dang. All right. All right, dudes. We got some Smedley in here. We'll be back to cops on part three. Have a great one, everybody. Thank you again, prop. And I'll see you all next week with more of the police. Not the band. Not the band. Behind the police is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hello, and welcome to our show. I'm Zoey Deschanel, and I'm so excited to be joined by my friends and castmates, Hannah Simone and Lamorne Morris to recap our hit television series, New Girl. Join us every Monday on the welcome to our show podcast, where we'll share behind the scenes stories of your favorite New Girl episodes. Each week, we answer all your burning questions like, is there really a bear in every episode of New Girl? Plus, you'll hear hilarious stories like this. Fun fact. That was one of your things you brought back from Latvia. Yeah, I brought back because it's all professional basketball players. Yeah, it's like a little seven foot poop. Yeah. Listen to the welcome to our show podcast on the iHeart Radio app,

Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tanya Sam, host of the Money Moves podcast powered by Greenwood. This daily podcast will help give you the keys to the kingdom of financial stability, wealth, and abundance. With celebrity guests like Rick Ross, Amanda Seals, Angela Yee, Roland Martin, JB Smooth, and Terrell Owens, tune in to learn how to turn liabilities into assets and make your money move. Subscribe to the Money Moves podcast powered by Greenwood on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts and make sure you leave a review. Rafi is the voice of some of the happiest songs of our generation. So who is the man behind Baby Beluga? Every human being wants to feel respected. When we start with young children, all good things can grow from there.

I'm Chris Garcia, comedian, new dad, and host of Finding Rafi, a new podcast from iHeart Radio and Fatherly. Listen every Tuesday on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. What would you do if the secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup. Back in the 1930s, a marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian trained astronaut that he went through

training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the earth for 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest,

I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.