Factually! with Adam Conover - The Cult of Policing and What Defunding Means with Larry Smith

Episode Date: July 1, 2020

Former Baltimore City police officer Larry Smith joins Adam to dig deep on the causes of police violence and racism, what stops fellow cops from speaking up about it and what needs to change about policing in America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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So if all of that sounds good, if you want a big box of delicious snacks like this for yourself, use the code factually for $15 off your first order at Bokksu.com. That's code factually for $15 off your first order on Bokksu.com. I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's all right. Yeah, but okay. I don't know anything. Hello, welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. And look, we're having a national conversation about policing right now. And the main content of the conversation is this question. What are the police for? Like, seriously, what the fuck are they actually for? Let me tell you a quick story from my own experience to sort of break down how I think about the issue. breakdown, how I think about the issue. Back in the before times when I was still a stand-up comedian instead of a full-time Zoom user, I finished a set and I was walking back home from

Hollywood at around 11 p.m. And I passed a woman who was walking around barefoot with a blanket over her shoulder. She appeared to be unhoused and she was yelling, help, help on the sidewalk. And I was a little alarmed. I stopped and I said, ma'am, what kind of help do you need? And her answer wasn't quite lucid. She was clearly mentally ill and in need of services. And I'm just some guy walking home. I don't have the training or the resources to help her out. But so I keep walking. And about half a block later, I reach a subway station in front of the subway station. Thankfully, our two police officers, I think, this is amazing. I found the exact people I needed to find to help this situation. Surely they can help. I tell them, officers, there's a woman just up the block and she's shouting for help.

And their response was a little bit troubling. They laughed in my face and replied, oh no, we can't help her. She's just crazy. As though that were a reason to not help rather than the exact reason she needed help. Also, you know, it was January in LA. She was barefoot and she was also the only fucking thing happening on the block. There were not any jewel thieves trying to knock over a diamond distillery or whatever. That was all that was happening. Why could the cops not help her? And if they can't help her, why were they there? What is the point of them? Why don't we have, by contrast, say a network of social workers and mental health intake workers patrolling the streets, talking to people who need that kind of help? Because people in LA do need that kind of help. On my average walk to work,

well, well, back when I used to walk to work, I would see an average of a person a day who needed care like this. And the stats back this up. An article in the Journal of Health Affairs puts it like this. Los Angeles might be more affected by the twin crises of homelessness and mental health neglect than any other U.S. city. 30% of those on the streets here have a substance abuse or mental health disorder. Yet we use the cops to manage them. In fact,

a huge number of our police incidents involve unhoused people or people with mental illness. But guess what? Those are problems you can't police away. You can't tase them. You can't zip tie them and send them to the drunk tank. Those are problems that cannot be solved with force. They require care. So why are we spending so much money on force rather than care? L.A. spends three billion dollars out of its ten point five billion dollar a year budget on police. Police are the single largest item, despite the fact that crime is at a 30 year low. So surely there is a better allocation of resources to address the problems that we actually have. But here's a follow up question. What are cops thinking? Like what is

going through their minds when they're not helping that woman screaming for help on the streets of Hollywood? Or what is going through their mind when they are brutalizing protesters or kneeling on the neck of a person of color? What causes them to behave this way rather than helping us in the ways that we need help? And what stops them from speaking up about it? I mean, you can find 5000 op ed posts about why people left their publishing jobs. Why is it so rare to hear a police officer say anything bad about the police force to expose any of the ills in our broken policing system? Well, to answer that question, I wanted to go right to the source. I wanted to find a police officer, a former police officer who could speak with us honestly and openly about what it is like

to be an officer in America and why he left the force. And we have the perfect guest to talk about that with us today. You might have seen him if you saw our episode, Adam Ruins the Cops, which, by the way, if you haven't seen it and you want to learn something about policing in America and what is so wrong about it, check it out. You can find it on demand or on Amazon. If you don't have access to either of those things, I don't know, you can probably also find it on BitTorrent. You have my blessing. Go BitTorrent it, okay? He's a former Baltimore City police officer, and he is here today to share his story and to tell us what really goes through the minds of police officers on the beat

and what we need to do to reform policing in America. Without further ado, please welcome Larry Smith. Larry, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. It's been a little while since I've seen you on the set of our episode, Adam Ruins Cops, we did together. Yeah, like a year and a half, I guess, by now. The topic has only gotten more relevant in time since. Unfortunately.

You're a former Baltimore police officer. And Baltimore, of course, has had its own, let's say, struggles in this area. But how do you think about what we've seen going on across the country in recent weeks about both the protests in Minneapolis and around the country and the police response to them? Well, I think the protests themselves are much different. And I mean, they're spread out not just across the country but across the world i mean you're seeing huge protests in london and

paris and and just in in cities across america that that you know haven't even had maybe like national press coverage for for specific incidents but it's just an outpouring of support all over the country and they're they're sustained i mean they don't seem to be going away at all press coverage for for specific incidents but it's just an outpouring of support all over the country and they're they're sustained i mean they don't seem to be going away at all yeah um the police response is is deplorable i mean it's it's you see cops that are shooting reporters with with pepper balls with rubber bullets um i've seen at least three or four photojournalists who have lost an eye because they've been shot with projectiles um and you just see peaceful protesters being um subjected to you know brutal force and and the use of chemical weapons and and it's it's clear that the police

have like dug their heels in even more. And I think it just goes to show you that they have no intention or interest in reforming policing. Do you have any insight into when you're watching that footage? I mean, this is one of the incredible things about these protests is that they've created video evidence of the exact thing that the protesters are protesting against, or at least a very similar thing. When you watch those cops, do you have any insight into like, hey, here's what they're thinking or here's the dynamic that creates this? Because to a lot of other folks watching, it's shocking. Hey, why the hell would they respond this way?

Well, sure. I went through it in 2015 after the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore. So in 2015, you know, you had, you've got Eric Garner, like at the end, I think it's at the end of 2014. And then you have Michael Brown and Freddie Gray in 2015. So you have three real high profile cases, you know, back to back. And in Baltimore, you know, the protests had been building even before Freddie Gray was killed. So after he died and after his funeral, you know, we were already in sort of this, this mindset of everyone is against us, us being the police. And I know all these cops go to roll call. I know they're all tired. I know they've all had days off canceled, vacation canceled. You know, every cop would, I'm sure, rather be at home than be out for 14 or 16 hours a day.

But I think the most important point is that when cops go to roll calls or they prepare for these protest details, there's a commander. There's an FOP president who is literally brainwashing you to think that everyone out there is there to hurt you, to harm you in some way. So, you know, cops are going into these protests with a mindset of, you know, they don't like us. They want to hurt us. And it's almost like, well, we're not going to we're not going to I mean as cops we're taught we you know we don't we don't sit and wait to be hurt so they're they're using force i mean they're they're literally you know throwing the first punch and i can't help but think it has something to do with what the protests are about i mean i was at the women's march in uh you know early 2017

and there weren't pepper balls out you know what i mean it was it was a different event in different contexts but also like there's it seems like part of it must be because of the protests are about policing well right of course and i think that is made obvious when just what like two weeks prior you have armed militia members who will you know storm into a state house in michigan because they can't go sit at the olive garden or get haircuts and the cops just sit there and let them yell and scream and protest and there's no tear gas there's no pepper balls there's no baton strikes and these guys have assault weapons but as soon as the protests turn to you know quote

unquote anti-police sentiment then yeah it's it's like no holds barred tell me a little bit about uh your story uh why did you uh initially become a cop and what led you to finally leave uh you know like the the why did i become a cop question? I get a lot, usually because people are like surprised to learn I was a cop. And I have no like really great answer. Like there was nobody in my family was a cop. So I wasn't like, you know, following in anybody's footsteps. My dad wasn't exactly law abiding. So it's not like I was like, oh, let me let me, you know, go be a cop. But. I mean, the reality is I was 24 years old. I hadn't gone to college. I was working in a bookstore and I was like, I got to do something and a job. Yeah. And it's like, you know, civil service tests like, you know, cops, firefighters, stuff like that. You can you can take you can take a test. You can get hired.

They pay well. They have a retirement. They have benefits. And you don't really, honestly, you don't need much more than a high school diploma. I mean, that's got to be why so many people sign up for it. I mean, it's one of the only jobs in America today that still has a pension. Yeah, I mean, some departments are actually, I guess, phasing out like the classic pension. But yeah, they all have some form of retirement.

You know, as far as why I left, I mean, I've been there for 18 years. Baltimore City is a city that has been plagued by poverty and addiction and violence for decades. And I mean, I lived a fairly sheltered middle class life before I came to work in Baltimore City. I had never seen or experienced anything like it. And 18 years of, I mean, seeing just the worst things you can imagine, it adds up. And there was also just, you know, the stress of, I spent three years in internal affairs. So I was investigating dirty cops. Wow.

And I had a couple run-ins with some of those cops. And some of them actually wound up being federally indicted in 2017. So there was, yeah, just a lot of stress, a lot of things going on. I had really kind of had a hard time reckoning with the job that I had been a part of. And I just, I mean, I had some serious mental health issues. I ended up in a psychiatric facility for 10 days. I had a couple suicide attempts. So mental health is really stigmatized in policing as well,

which I think is another huge problem. A lot of untreated mental illness. And I just, I was, I had to get out of it. I mean, I was going to kill me one way or the other, so I had to get out of it. What kind of, like, I'd love to dwell on this for a second, if you're comfortable with it, because the. You know, when I when I look at the the footage and when I think about these officers, I think about like, you know, people have this this conversation about, you know, bad apples, good apples. Is that a proper way to look at it?

And I look at the situation. I'm like, I think if you put me in there in the same situation, I think I would start reacting that way, too. Like, I think that I look at the behavior. I'm like, this looks like something that's like done to you. It looks like it changes your your frame of mind, your way of interacting with the world. And that's why, you know, we need not just reform, but like systemic change. That's what it looks like to me on the outside.

I'm wondering if you have insight on that. Well, the bad apples, you know, no one ever really finishes it. It's a few bad apples ruins the whole bunch or something like that. Right. And it is. It's really, the mindset in a police department is really contagious. It's almost like a cult. indoctrinated into believing a lot of things. And especially now, like post 9-11, there are a lot of ex-military who come back and become cops. I mean, it's sort of like a natural career progression, I think, for a lot of guys. So again, I think mental illness also factors into that because you may have a lot of guys coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq who have untreated PTSD,

from Afghanistan and Iraq who have untreated PTSD, undiagnosed PTSD, and now they're becoming cops. You know, I saw a lot of guys who came from the military who patrolled the streets of Baltimore like they were patrolling in Iraq or Afghanistan. Like they were on the lookout for, you know, whatever, insurgents or people were the enemy. Like everyone was a potential enemy. And add that to, we're pretty much already taught that. We're already taught to be on our guard with everyone. So the combination of that is, that's just the perfect recipe for violence.

that's just the perfect recipe for violence. Especially when people challenge you and your, you know, your mindset is I don't want to be challenged or I should not be challenged. So, yeah. And again, it's just, it's definitely contagious. Like if you're a part of that, if you stay for a long time, you know, you become numb to a lot of things. So when you see other cops doing stuff they for a long time you know you become numb to a lot of things so when you see other cops doing stuff they shouldn't do you know you while you may not actively participate in it just your silence makes you as guilty as what they're doing are there like you know when you

look back at your time are there do you ever think wow, I can't believe I was in that headspace. Like what a, what a strange way to think that was. Oh, I mean, I, I still, I, I left the department in 2017, July of 2017. So not even three full years yet, but I think about that literally every day. Like I, like I cannot, I just, I have the hardest time coming to terms with the fact that I did it, and I did it for 18 years. Like, no one forced me to stay. I could have left at any point. But yeah, I mean, there are specific incidents.

There are things I saw, things I participated in, things I did that I definitely am like, you know, why, like, who, I don't even know who it was. Like, and I know that kind of sounds like maybe like a, like, I'm trying to make excuses for myself. But, you know, I really don't even know who it was like and I know that kind of sounds like maybe like a like I'm trying to make excuses for myself but you know I really don't like I can't believe I was that person well you were there for for 18 years that's as good enough a reason to leave any job frankly but you unlike most cops who retire became a critic of policing and how we police America. You write about this issue. You're very vocal about it, about your personal experience. That is so incredibly rare. When we had you on our episode, Adam Ruins Cops, I was like, I want to find I told our staff,

I was like, we need to find a police officer who is able to talk about this because that's the like sort of the strongest perspective. And you're the only one in America who we found at any rate. Why why do you think that's so rare? And what caused you to take that step? Well, why I think it's rare is, again, like I compared it to a cult. I mean, imagine people who leave. I don't want to name any specific. But there's more former Scientologists who have written books about Scientology than there are cops who are denouncing policing.

Right. Okay. But Scientology is a perfect example because, I mean, you see examples of, you know, people who do speak out are harassed. You know, they're harassed, they're excommunicated, right? So, now, use that scenario with cops who have guns, the ability to take your freedom away, to put you in jail, to frame you for God knows what. I mean, you know, I worked with a whistleblower. you for god knows what i mean i you know i worked with a whistleblower i saw firsthand a cop who spoke out against brutality and wouldn't get back up on calls had a dead rat left on his car you know who was harassed who who was basically run out of the department and it's a very lonely

island to be on um you know there's a there's a case in New York City where, I think it was about 10 or 12 years ago, an officer tried to blow the whistle on his commanders giving quotas for stats. And he had his apartment raided, and he was forcibly removed and taken to a

mental hospital, where he stayed for like four or five days. So, I mean, that's the retribution. I mean, that's what you risk when you speak out and and they rate him as retribution yeah wow what so so well that leads me uh to the other part of the question which is what what makes you what made you do it because i was just tired of it. I mean, I, you know, I left and I mean, yeah, like I was definitely bitter, you know, I, I had to, I have, I would have had to have stayed for 25 years to earn my pension. I stayed 18. So I missed it by seven years. So it's not like I was like, Oh, I'm, you know, like whatever cop movie, like, Oh, only two days away from retirement. But

at the same time, I was like, you know, I put 18 years into this and it, it, it completely, it, it made me miserable. Like I, you know, from April, 2016 until June of 2017, I literally thought about killing myself every single day. Wow. And that is a, that is that, that like, that is a, that takes a toll on you, man. So, I mean, I was pissed. And I've been accused of having an ax to grind, of being bitter.

And yeah, all of that, sure. And I'm tired of any time the police do something wrong, mainstream media, politicians, cop apologists, cops themselves, police unions, they automatically run to defend the cop. I mean, mainstream media will play such word salad when it comes to police killing somebody. You know, police involve shooting. Oh, they discharge their weapons. It's like they go, they will go, they will drive 10 miles to tell you the cops killed somebody. Right.

So I just got tired of it. I mean, that's plain and simple. And it started on Twitter. I mean, it started on social media. And then somebody contacted me and asked me if I wanted to write something. And I had never written. I was like, oh, okay, sure. I, you know, that's how I learned the beauty of having an editor who can actually make me

sound somewhat coherent. So yeah, so that's just kind of took off from there. Have you experienced like retribution of the, of the kind that you mentioned since? I mean, I've definitely been trolled on social media um i i haven't had any visits to my house um no i mean i haven't had anybody visit me or call me or anything like that but uh i definitely i mean i'll say it's definitely always in the back of my mind like if i say the wrong thing or if i i'm very careful about criticizing someone specifically um like cops i knew in the balt Department who were still working, who are dirty, that I know from my time in internal affairs. And I'm very careful not to, I guess, out them.

But I know they're there. But at the same time, I don't have the courage to – I mean mean i really don't even know what to do about it quite honestly i mean i i could i could name them but where does that where does that put me i mean yeah can you say like in terms of in terms of dirty can you say the type of dirty that you mean or you can even extend it to other police departments like like what sort of what are the sort of forms of corruption i assume you're talking about uh that that occur uh excessive force um stealing planning evidence um lying in search warrants lying in um statements of probable cause and and and you know i've i've hooked up with a couple public defenders in the area. I've talked to activists.

So, you know, like these guys, it's not exactly a secret who these guys are. I mean, some of them have been taken to court over their internal affairs records, which are protected not just in Maryland, but in many states and jurisdictions. Personnel files are protected. jurisdictions um personnel files are protected so you lawyers have to fight to gain access to a cop's personnel record um so there are definitely cops that are you know it's like an open secret that they're dirty um it's unfortunately it's just like you sit around and wait for them to get caught but in the meantime how many lives are they are they ruining yeah were you able to make any progress on that in internal affairs was that an effective system at all for for stopping that kind of behavior no not at all internal i mean i think and again i can only speak specifically

for my department because that's where i have the experience. But just in general terms, police investigating other police is just a bad idea. I think it's just set up to fail from the beginning. You know, I had cases where I investigated people I knew, people I worked with. I watched other people investigate their friends. You know, I saw cases that were pretty much a slam dunk. The cop did it. The cop committed the allegation or was guilty of the allegation he was accused of, but they had their friend investigating them

and it just went away. You would see upper-level command interfere with investigations. So no, the system itself is just completely flawed all over i don't think you know the and you're seeing it right now with especially with cops who are who for whatever reason are deciding that their food orders being tainted is like the new urban legend that we're going to go with um so all these cases have been debunked by journalists and by everyone who's looked into them.

Yeah, like almost immediately. But you always see the same reaction from the police departments themselves. Like, well, we're going to conduct an investigation. It's like, okay, well, the police are going to investigate the other cop. So great. Yeah.

And you see, by the way, in those cases, the same exact thing with the media, where the media reports two cops poisoned at a shake shack like over and over again when this is a completely false claim that's based in nothing at all right well i mean and unfortunately i think that's that's a product of the immediate news cycle especially with you know twitter and facebook where you know media outlets don't want to be the last to report something. But in the process, you know, they don't vet things properly.

And so they just get them out there and it becomes fact before it's even actually investigated. Or, you know, like you said, they're debunked pretty much right away. Well, and so let's talk about the issue at hand, racism in policing and systemic racism. What of that did you see in your time? I mean, certainly Baltimore has had its fair share of that over the years. How does that look in practice? Did you have that sense firsthand when you were working there? Oh, yeah, definitely.

You know, I patrolled predominantly black neighborhoods. You know, I patrolled predominantly black neighborhoods, and Baltimore has quite a few areas like Roland Park, Guilford, Canton, and Fells Point that are upper, we're already being told that these neighborhoods are the bad neighborhoods. And so what are the bad neighborhoods? Well, they're sending us where only people of color live. So we basically end up being like an occupying force in these communities. The community doesn't have any say in it. They can't ask us to leave. They can, but no one's going to listen to them.

So, you know, imagine as like a middle class white person what your perception of the police is. Like, do you walk outside your door and see the police every day? Like, literally every hour? No. Now, if you're a person of color in Baltimore, in New York City, in Chicago, Los Angeles, you know, there are communities where people walk outside their doors and they see the cops on foot, they see them in cars, they see them on bikes, and they see them 24-7. foot, they see them in cars, they see them on bikes, and they see them 24-7.

And they know they're going to be stopped for, I mean, anything or nothing. If the police want to stop you, they're going to stop you. Yeah. So, you know, who are we keeping safe? Like, are we keeping the white neighborhoods safe because we're containing the, you know, the quote unquote bad neighborhoods? So, yeah, I mean, that's obviously a racist system. Like, if we're being utilized only in neighborhoods that are predominantly black and brown citizens, and the white citizens never see us,

but yet they somehow feel safe. How is that not a racist system? I mean, why do you think we have that system? There's a decision being made on some policy level. Where do you think that comes from well i i think it comes from politicians and police commanders and police officials who think that the way to fight crime is to patrol again what I refer to as high crime neighborhoods. But if your only answer is to address high crime with the police,

it's never going to get any better. If your only answer to every societal problem is the police, it's not going to get better. Yeah. So, yes, where I worked, the primary job was the drug trade. OK, well, but why are why are guys getting into the drug trade? Because there's no opportunity. Yeah. Because you're interacting. I mean, we have school police in Baltimore City. So it's like, you know, there are there are citizens who are interacting with the police from from like the minute they're born basically yeah so at some point they get arrested now they have a record so it's like you know everything's already stacked against a lot of people yeah so if you don't have a lot of opportunity if if the city is, if your neighborhood is impoverished,

the schools are bad, you know, you don't have access to clean water and healthy food or you know, there's no job opportunity, there's untreated addiction and mental health issues, you know, what are you supposed to do? We're in a capitalist society. You have to live. you supposed to do? We're in a capitalist society. You have to live. You have to feed yourself. So the drug trade, you know, I don't think guys are lined up like, yeah, I want to sell drugs. Yeah.

But it's just, that's the opportunity. But again, if the only way to combat that is to criminalize everything and to keep treating the problem with the police, we don't improve anybody's life. Yeah, it's also clearly not working. I mean, like we have these neighborhoods that are called high crime neighborhoods and that's where all the police are. So you would think that eventually there would not be crime there anymore. If the police were actually effective to stop crime, it's not like you have, you know, the law abiding citizens in those neighborhoods saying, yes,

I'm so happy. All the police are here because now there's no crime. Like if we had, if we send all the garbage men to one neighborhood that we were calling the, the, the high garbage area, we would expect the garbage. We would say that to eventually be able to send them somewhere else.

Cause they, cause it would have been cleaned up. But that's not what's happening. No. And it's because, like I did, most police spend their days doing and enforcing really arbitrary laws. You know, I was in units where our goal was to arrest as many people as possible. So we're looking for things like people drinking in public, smoking weed, you know, urinating in public, loitering, trespassing. Okay. Really basic broken windows, zero tolerance style policing. And that does not work. And, you know, we're not attacking violent crime. We're not being proactive. Cops are reactive.

Yeah. You know, Baltimore had 348 homicides last year. Population is only 600,000. You know, New York City had less hom homicides and they're a city of 8 million. Wow. So, you see there's some sort of huge disconnect there in terms of like how communities are policed, how they're funded.

You know, it's just, you know, it's amazing to me that in Baltimore the the, the, the way we police, the style we used and we're in, we're in our fifth, we've had five straight years of over 300 murders. So the police aren't stopping violence. You know, they react to it, but again, you know, I was there, I did it. I know how they react to violence. They if there's a shooting or a homicide in any particular neighborhood, that area is flooded with police. And we were instructed to to make as many arrests as possible.

So once again, we're just right back to making really petty arrests. And after the homicide, not exactly after the homicide. the homicide not exactly after the homicide how does that how does that solve anything related to the homicide to arrest people for for drinking on us on a stoop after a homicide the the theory behind it is if you arrest people if you arrest enough people you're eventually going to arrest somebody who knows something about the homicide and is willing to talk about it but i mean let's be honest it's not like we're hanging a felony charge over a lot of these guys' heads. So if I lock you up for

drinking alcohol in public and you know you're going to walk through jail and you'll be out in 12 or 24 hours, why would you risk your life to cooperate with the police? Because people who cooperate with the police aren, you know, people who cooperate with the police

aren't really welcomed back into the neighborhood. So that's a very, again, that's a very dangerous position for somebody to put themselves into. So, but yeah, but that's the theory behind it. You make as many arrests as possible. Eventually you'll arrest somebody. They'll give us information. We can solve the homicide. Well, it doesn't work.

And really, all you do is just piss off the neighborhood. Because they see us coming and they know, like, oh, here they come. They're going to lock us all up. Talking to you really puts it into clear perspective to me. Because I remember when I remember living in New York in my 20s, white guy in my mid 20s, when I first started thinking about this and realizing how much just neighborhoods like a couple of miles away in Brooklyn were policed so differently than mine. And I remember what was it? It was it was hearing stories about people, you know, being arrested for drinking in public, for, you know, drinking out of a paper bag.

And I remember thinking, hold on a second. I went to like Herald Square to the park and drank in public with my friends on a blanket in the park like the other week. And nobody stopped us. We were doing it in Manhattan on like a Sunday afternoon. And wait, that's illegal. And and if you think about like, OK, what if what if i every single time i had ever you know had an open container outside a police officer came up and like you know frisked me and and maybe i went to jail a couple times and then every other minor infraction like that that i could you know every

time i fucking jaywalk you know i'm shoved up against a wall. Right. Yeah. I would feel differently about the police. I would I would have a different relationship with them and it would really change my reality and the way I moved around the city in a really powerful way. Right, exactly. And and and that goes to my point where, you know, we were patrolling these neighborhoods who didn't who didn't want us there. I mean, not that they didn't want the police there for protection, but they don't want the police there because we're harassing them. We're brutalizing them. And how is that a way to live your life every day? And I didn't live in that community. Most of the cops I work with didn't even didn't even live in the city itself.

So why should we be invested? Why should we care how we treat people in any any given community? If at the end of the day, we're leaving. This is your problem. We don't have to deal with it. Something you also hear is that folks in those communities, you know, even the even the little old ladies, right, don't believe that when they call the cops, the cops will help. Like here again, in my, you know, largely white neighborhood in L.A., people are like, oh, I'll call the cops because I have a problem and they'll come help me,

you know, and they'll they'll deal with whatever my situation is. But that that just doesn't happen in these communities no and and again the the problem is that 9-1-1 has become such a default for everyone because there's no other option so many other services are are so underfunded that when when you need help your option is the police you know you call 9-1-1 what do they ask you? They usually ask you police or fire. So those are your options. So if you're in some sort of crisis or you're having some kind of problem and you don't know who to reach out to, you call 911.

And more than likely, you're going to get a cop, a cop who's not qualified to help with most problems, a cop who only knows how to, well, my solution to everything is arrest. Yeah. If I can't arrest my way out of it, I guess I'll have to tackle it. You know, I mean, that's, I mean, basically that's how I was trained to deal with people with mental health issues. You know, we didn't receive any specific training and how to deal with people in crisis.

We would try to talk them into going to the hospital voluntarily. If they didn't listen, it usually ended with us forcibly taking somebody to the ground, putting them in handcuffs, putting them to a police wagon or an ambulance, and forcing them into the hospital. And who does that help? And we're taking them to emergency rooms that may or may not have a psychiatrist on, on staff. And then once, once they're, you know, the, the,

the hospital's like, well, okay. Oh, they don't have, especially if they don't have insurance time to discharge them. What help did they get? They're going to come right. They're going to come right back home and go through the same problem tomorrow or the next day or the next week. And then here come the police again. Yeah. Well, I want to ask you more about how we can change the police, change how we police in America. But we have to take a really quick break. We'll be right back with more Larry Smith. I don't know anything Okay, we're back with Larry Smith.

I want to ask you about this. I have read a theory or a way of looking at the police that made a lot of sense to me, especially as regards police shootings, like say the Philando Castile shooting, incidents like that. And the analysis was that police officers in America are fundamentally scared. One of the reasons being because there are so many guns in America that, for example, the number of guns on the street

is part of what creates like a psychology of always being under threat. I remember reading a story by like an Australian who was in under threat. I remember reading a story by like an Australian who was in the U S and got pulled over for a traffic stop. And in Australia, when there's a traffic stop, you get out of your car to talk to the police officer and this Australian guy. So he gets pulled over and he gets out of his car and the cops are immediately like down on the ground, you know, pull their guns. And he's like, finds himself face down because he didn't realize he didn't know that the norm in the U S of like, you keep perfectly still and keep your hands on the steering wheel. Right. Um, and, and he said, I didn't realize how much police officers

feel that like the citizens are, uh, are a threat to them. Um, and, uh, when I learned that I went back and looked at the Philando Castile shooting, that made sense to me. Oh my God, that officer was frightened for his life of just a guy who he pulled overile shooting, that made sense to me. Oh my God, that officer was frightened for his life of just a guy who he pulled over. That's not a justification in my mind. That's like a systemic wound that is causing this. Does that make sense to you? Does that jive with your experience at all

or does that sound totally off base? No, I think it's correct because all the training I went through is fear based training. The cop who killed Philando Castile actually went through a program called Bulletproof Warrior. I've heard of these are, again, fear based training classes that treat everyone as a threat to you. So you were saying that because there's there's so many guns well okay but we have a gun as cops so we bring a gun to every incident like we bring a gun so car stop call whatever there's always a gun there and it's yours so so a lot of the training

i went through was you know weapon, people trying to take your weapon. So like you learn how to maybe like press your forearm down on it or keep your gun turned away from somebody so they can't lunge for to grab for it. Again, there are a lot of police and there are a lot of police involved killings where the oh, he went for my gun. He tried to take my gun. I mean, Rashard Brooks is another example because he took one of their tasers. So, again, you have cops who were disarmed. It was a less lethal weapon, but they were still disarmed. So that's the fear-based training that we receive, is that everyone at all times is plotting to hurt us, to take our weapon, to kill us.

You know, so there are trainings that, you know, de-escalation training was something that came out of, like, the last round of reform. Post-2015, de-escalation training was something that was emphasized. Well, instead of escalating force, we're going to learn how to de-escalate situations but we see that that's not happening and and it's hard it's hard to to teach a cop de-escalation while at the same time you're still teaching them that people want to hurt you yeah so it's so the it's not just the guns it's the it's like the overall mindset and the culture

and the training that is like training cops to to react in this constant it's the constant us versus them mentality that's being driven into the cops heads that that that everyone is is potentially harmful to you. And how do police unions play into this? I mean, look, I'm a union guy. I'm in two unions. I think everyone deserves to be in a union, right? I certainly believe that, like, hey, there's no reason police officers shouldn't be allowed to collectively bargain on principle,

but police unions seem to be something different, and there's been a lot of conversation about that. What's your perspective having, I assume, been in one? Yeah, I was in one. I mean, you actually have the choice. You don't have to be in it. Most cops are, primarily because if something goes wrong, they'll provide you a lawyer to represent you.

You can call them if you have a grievance or something. But I think police unions are poisonous. I don't think cops are workers. York, Kroll out in Minneapolis, you know, they're like showmen. They're like carnival barkers. They get in front of a camera and they put on an act. And again, but, you know, and they emphasize the us first against them, you know, especially Pat Lynch in New York City. Everyone's against the police, the governor, the mayor, the citizens, everyone's against the police, the poor police of the victims. So that's what they do. They go out and they, they, they get cops, you know, really fired up. Um, union, and then, but the other, the other really kind of evil aspect of the police union is the way they can hold governments hostage. You know, if, if, yeah, if the police union is against you, they, again, they did it in Baltimore.

They're doing it. They did it in New York once. They're threatening to do it again. If the police union is against you as, as a mayor or a politician, they, they, well, the police are going to stop working. You know, you've, you've lost, you've lost the respect of the police are going to stop working. You've lost the respect of the police. You're not backing us. We're going to stop. And that's what the police want. They want to see violent crime soar.

They want to see crime rates go up. And I mean, they're literally holding somebody hostage. They're willing to sacrifice the safety of citizens to whatever to get back at a politician they think has wronged them somehow yeah to me it like again the question of whether police are workers is a really interesting one and i'm curious to hear more about why you think they aren't to me. I mean, look, a strike is that that's the resort of any union,

right. As to, as to withhold labor, but there's, it does seem to be something special about how police like wield the threat of force in those, you know, quote unquote negotiations like that.

You'll see like, Oh, okay. Maybe someone's not going to come to your house, Mr. Mayor, next time there's a break in or maybe we'll start to see like there's the fact that, you know, the people who are making these threats have have guns and there seems to be a veiled, a veiled reference to the use of force behind those statements that they make. Well, I mean, you look at it in terms of like,

if sanitation workers went on strike, what's going to happen? The garbage is going to get picked up. So it's going to be, it's not going to look good. It's going to stink. But there's another option. They can hire scabs. They can have somebody,

they can have another department come out and pick up the trash. If cops stop working, who do you replace them with? What's your answer? There is none right now. And the police know that. And if another union goes on strike, you don't see cops out there arm in arm with them, supporting them. What police union, what union has ever been supported by an FOP when they go on strike?

And even occasionally, you see companies call the police because there's picketers or there there's there's protesters outside and the police come and push them away how could they be part of the how do they how are they workers how is there any solidarity between those kinds of unions yeah i joined the picket line for the teachers of la last year no cops on the picket line i was there as a, as a fucking member of the writers union. I was supporting teachers. You don't see cops in uniform coming out and walking around holding a sign supporting teachers. Or even honking their horns as they go by.

Especially because in a job like teaching, if teachers get more money, that may mean less money for cops. Come on. They don't support workers. Those unions aren't there for workers' rights. And I remember being in New York when

there's this moment where, you know, Bill de Blasio ran and, you know, talking about like, hey, when he ran, he was like, hey, I have a black son and I have to tell my son, you know, here's what to happen. And if you get stopped, here's what to do if you get stopped by the police. And that's a conversation, you know, parents of black kids have to have. And, you know, that's something that we should change in the city.

Um, and our, and one of the reasons I voted for him, I was like, Oh yeah, Hey, finally someone's talking about this. And then a couple of years later, uh the relationship between him and the police got so bad that the police turned their backs on him at the funeral for a few police officers, I believe. And I remember that moment and thinking, that is incredibly fucked up because what if like our military

did that to the president, any president, and said, you know, this is how little we respect you. We're not going to we're not going to look at you. Right. We're not going to do what you tell us to do. Right. We're not going to obey orders. Well, you're halfway to a coup if the military does that. Right. You're like, oh, oh, shit. Our government's going to get overthrown. And that's sort of what what is happening in our in our cities to a certain extent look what they did they just did to his daughter during the protests she was arrested and they they basically doxed her

yeah they they said uh that like the police union put out a statement that was like oh the mayor's the mayor's you's saying stuff on TV while his own daughter is like a thug throwing rocks or something like that and posted her arrest report, an image of it. And I mean, like you just, what other union would do that to somebody? You know, it's like the Plumbers 101

gonna post de Blasio's invoice from a toilet he had fixed or something? I'm he stiffed us yeah um but it still seems like like the core of why police unions are so bad as has to do with like the institution that like we as cities like our politicians have created again a police union will fight that all they do is fight against transparency reform anything again if like i said earlier if you want a cop's personnel file those things are protected a lot of states have what are referred to as law enforcement officers bill of rights which is basically just a second set of laws for cops to protect cops if they get in trouble anytime a state or a city tries to to weaken one of those or get rid of it the police union is there to fight it so the police

union will always fight for the cops when it comes to transparency, accountability, reform. They never want to give anything up. And so what they're doing is they're out there protecting a violent, racist institution. That's why I say they're poisonous. You know, Pat Lynch loves to be on television and carry on. I mean, he loves a camera. You know, you can look at any union president and they're just, they're like,

I mean, they're just the worst. They're just the worst example of cops. But at the same time, they're also the perfect example of cops. Yeah. They also are always incredibly involved in local politics. Like they funnel tons of money into,

at least here in LA, into city council campaigns. They're like one of the major players. Right, and that's why city councils across the country will rubber stamp police budgets because they don't want to be on the wrong side of the FOP. The FOP donates, they endorse politicians. So no one wants to be on the wrong side of that. Yeah, that's how we end up with like here in L.A., half of our

discretionary budget, more than half is going towards the police as opposed to anything else, which is why we're getting these calls to defund the police. But do you feel there's something deeper like, you know, obviously, police unions are putting a lot of pressure on politicians to have those budgets go up every single year to increase overtime to, you know, in L.A., they have all these crazy ways where the cops can keep working and get their like pensions early. So they end up like making millions like while they're still still working, all of these sorts of things. But is there something cultural in American society, in American cities as well, that

has caused us to create this state of affairs. We've created, we've created a world where, like I said, our only option is the police. And, and when all you have is the police and that's the, that's what's constantly thrown out there as a solution to everything. That's the mindset. I'll go back to a white middle class person in the suburbs. Their mindset is the police keep me safe. But how are they keeping you safe? So people are hardwired to believe that the police are good the police protect us the police keep us safe and right i taught that as a little kid

you know it's in it's in the fucking richard scary books here's the police and he keeps you safe as police budgets grew and all the other budgets shrank, you know, it's, we, we created this monster and, and now it's here. And now the object is how do we reverse it? And that's what defunding the police is all about. And, and, you know, the, a lot, a lot of media has picked up on defund the police and a lot of people have picked up on it because they didn't, a lot of people don't read past a tweet. So if an abolitionist tweets an article, read the article, like actually read what defund the police means, because defunding the police is the first, it's not a slogan, it's a demand. And it's the first demand into abolishing the police as we know it. You know, as you strip their budgets down and take

those hundreds of millions of dollars away, in some cities it's billions of dollars, and reinvest it in the communities that need it. You know, fund proper social services, addiction, mental health treatment, schools, access to food, health care. you know, and you start to treat the causes of crime and violence, as you take some of the responsibilities away from the police, it's important to also shrink the police. Because most of a budget, most of the police department budget goes towards office for salaries. So you've got departments like New York City with 30,000 cops. I think Los Angeles has 14,000 or 15,000 cops. These are armies.

These are literal armies. So as you defund them, as you take responsibilities away from them, you need to shrink them. And eventually, you shrink them into, oh, look, there's no more police. Los Angeles is taking the first step. I think San Francisco has announced it, too, where they're going to they want to start having mental health professionals and counselors respond to certain calls, neighbor disputes, people in crisis, things like that, non-emergency calls, remove the police from the scenario. And that's a great first step. But like I said, as you remove the police from those scenarios and you take those responsibilities away from them, it's important to shrink the departments so you can keep defunding them. Because if you just take the responsibilities away from them, you're going to have a lot of cops with a lot of free time on their hands. And they're going to just look for things to do. And we know that never ends well,

because that's going to be, oh, more car stops or more stop and frisks or more, you know, enforcement of quality of life crimes and things like that. In fact, they'll do that in order to prove their own worth to say, hey, look at how many look at how many arrests we're making. We must really be right again. And I've said this in other places, you know, the police will manipulate anything. and other places, you know, police will manipulate anything. If the crime rates drop, cops will say, well, we need more money, the same or more money to keep it down. If the crime rate goes up, well, we need more money.

We need more cops. We need more cops. If we have more cops and more money, we could get it down. And then if we get it down, well, we need the same to keep it down. So they're constantly asking for more. They always want more. And it's it's, you know, governments can't keep giving them more. They just can't. We're going to we're going to bankrupt cities to fund the police.

It's also it's not the 80s. Crime is at a 30 year low. You know, in the 80s, there was, you know, there was actually a large amount of crime or late 70s. You know, crime rates were actually much higher than they are today. As a point of fact, we have extremely low crime rates. Right. And again, you know, a lot of people when they hear abolish the police, defund the police, they say, what about who? You know, what about rape?

What about murder? And again, police don't prevent a lot of that now. And they're and they're reactionary. So they come after the fact so that's why i say you need to you need to address these problems beforehand and not afterwards with the police because you know here in baltimore the the clearance rate for homicides is like 32 percent i mean so you're talking more than 60 percent of the people who commit a murder get away with it it's not it's not going to be cleared and that 32 those are those are just the number of people who are what charges they just

charge somebody or or they've named the suspect that's not a that's not a trial a conviction and it's not always an arrest either because uh here in baltimore they also have a habit of um pinning murders on other dead guys like oh this this guy was killed and he had he had a gun in his pocket and we treat that gun was used in this other murder so he did that murder so we just cleared that murder so it's it's called it's called bodies on bodies it's an it's an actual practice that they use here to clear homicides wow well yeah because i mean that's their goal right the the homicide detectives uh have a goal of of clearing as many as possible so they'll do

it by any means necessary and of course they're obviously i'm sure charging some number of people who did not right actually do it right so so some amount of those 32 are also right and again you know clearance doesn't mean that that's resulting in a conviction in court. It could be an acquittal. The case could be dropped. Or like you said, even 10 or 15 years down the road, how many exonerations are there

where people have been in jail for decades for things they didn't do? Yeah. Because homicide cops were like, well, he did it and we'll make the evidence fit. And it just stuns me to think about how, you know, we had Chris Fabricant from the Innocence Project on the show. And, you know, we talked about how there's this huge apparatus of police officers, DAs, whose job it is to make those charges, to charge anybody they can. Right. In order to make the in order to clear those cases.

And we don't hire anybody systemically in our justice system who's there to make sure that people aren't erroneously charged. There's like public defenders who barely have any resources. But it's just something that that still strikes me that like we have no system built in to make sure that you have to be like an ombudsman to be like a checker and like, oh, wait, this person actually do it, you know. But so do you do you consider yourself an abolitionist? Is that a phrase you use?

Yeah, I mean, I think we need to create a world where the police aren't a part of it. We have to radically change the way that we address societal issues. We need to stop the criminals. I mean, we criminalize everything. And I know that the argument can be made well especially with marijuana you know it's being decriminalized it's being legalized in states it still uses a pretext for a lot of stops the cops still use it yeah to search people to search cars you still see um people going to jail for it so you know we need to things like you know non-violent drug offenses um homelessness sex work there's so many things that are that are stigmatized and criminalized and that the police you know the the answer is arrest and then jail time well jail time doesn't help an addict you know jail time doesn't

help a homeless person who may be i don't know in baltimore homeless people break into vacant houses because they need shelter and and they get arrested for trespassing yeah we don't we have vacant houses that we could create housing, but instead we arrest them for breaking the vacant houses and put them in jail. So, yeah, I'm definitely an abolitionist. I mean, I think there are so many ways that we can reinvest in communities and really address the root causes of crime and violence to where you know you don't need a cop to investigate a murder you don't i mean where is it written that it has to be a cop who investigates a murder who would investigate it like what what's what's the role you have in mind you can hire and train civilians i mean you can give you can you can give someone actual training instead of having a cop go through you know junk science classes like like ballistics and and arson and i mean there's there's so many there are so many yeah there's so many things that turned out

especially when you look at false convictions there are so many, there are so many, yeah, there's so many things that have turned out, especially when you look at false convictions, there are so many things the police have used to put people in jail that just turned out to be just complete junk. So you can, you know, you can train professionals to investigate crime. They don't have to be cops with a badge and a gun. in a gun. I mean, they can have the power through a state's attorney or through local government, you know, to seek out arrest warrants or summonses or things like that to, you know, charge people. But you don't need the police to do it. And if you look at a lot of these incidents, a lot of these killings aren't spawned out of anything violent their car stops eric garner was selling loose cigarettes freddy gray was just standing there minding his own business so so it's not like the cops were in this great fight against violence when they

killed these people you know the police are causing more harm to our society than they're they're doing any good and and it's just it's time to look for another, there has to be an alternative. There has to be. Yeah. Well, it sounds like a lot of what you're talking about when you're saying we don't need cops to do this is like we don't need people who are wielding force to do this.

And I absolutely agree with that, that like when you have, I mean, excuse me. I mean, you know, I told when you have I mean, excuse me. I mean, you know, I told a story in the intro of this show about, you know, me seeing a homeless woman, an unhoused woman on the street who was who was mentally ill. She was shouting for help and seeing some cops, you know, a block away. And I say, hey, that lady is shouting for help. And they were like, oh, yeah, no, she's just crazy. We can't do anything.

And that was really heartbreaking to me because i'm like she does need help right like we could have where are the people who are where the social workers right who are who are covering the street saying this woman's literally she's walking around barefoot with a blanket at 11 p.m on the hollywood sidewalk right um the only people we're paying to be on that sidewalk are these cops with guns and they say we can't do anything because all we do is we force against people, right? So I completely understand. Cut those two cops budgets, spend that money on eight

social workers who are canvassing the streets, have them out at 11pm driving around, right? And we can do that with so many different of our social ills, right? That would solve them. I'm curious though, like if at the end of the day, once you've mopped up 90% of the causes of, you know, civil strife on the streets,

do you believe that at the end of the day, there's any role for someone employed by the city to wield force in some vanishingly small fraction of cases or no uh no i don't because again what i'm talking about is and and i i know i'll probably be called a nut or whatever but i i'm trying to create a you know perfect utopian society here where we we we treat problems we we treat the the causes of of uh of crime and violence and homelessness and things like that to where we can eradicate it. You know, if you remove the need for somebody to, like, you know, somebody who's addicted to drugs, who maybe commits, you know, a property crime like theft they break into houses maybe they even rob a store because they're so desperate for money if if we can if we can treat their issue before it

becomes you know uh an emergency for them like i i need i need to to i need drugs or you know i'm gonna like i feel like i'm physically to die if I don't have drugs. Right. If we can, if we can, if we can treat the issue before it gets, that person gets to that, that point of desperation, then we don't, we don't need the cops. You know, if we remove, if we remove the causes of why did they rob the store? You know, if we take that away, I mean, look, an obvious problem in our country is the gun culture.

So unfortunately, you know, but even if you look at some of the school shootings, specifically Parkland, there was a school resource officer there. He hid behind a concrete pillar. So his presence didn't stop that. His presence didn't save anybody. He hid.

He cowered. Yeah. While Nicholas Cruz went in and killed students. So, again, there are so many issues in our society that we have to address that you know where we don't rely on force to solve problems when they do when they do occur well let me uh i agree with you on principle i want to push on you just a little bit um because you know i think there are maybe some folks listening who would say well hey you want I agree with you on principle. I want to push on you just a little bit. Because, you know, I think there are maybe some folks listening who would say, well, hey, you want to create a utopia, but we're not going to live in one. You're always going to have you're going to have some folks who behave.

You know, let's let's eliminate everybody who who there's an underlying cause poverty, drug addiction. Right. Of of what we're classifying as a criminal behavior. of what we're classifying as a criminal behavior. Are there, are there not at least a few folks who are, you know, themselves violent or let's talk about, say,

you know, let's talk about sexual assault, right? That's something where I, I have trouble seeing. I'm, I'm less likely to believe that there's an underlying cause right um that like there's just folks out there who are going to take advantage of other people and those people need to be protected by somebody okay um is there like how do we

account for that but when you when you bring up sexual assault there are numerous instances of police committing sexual assault. Police rape people on duty. They, they victimize people all over again. Um, a lot of sexual assault is not reported. There's a lot of sexual assault that occurs between people who already know each other.

So again, you know, you can have, you can have, uh, people who respond to reports of sexual assault who aren't cops. There's things like the house of Ruth. You, you, you have, there's advocates and counselors and safe nurses, you know, people can respond and properly address a victim of sexual assault instead of having a cop come in and either do victim blaming. Chances are they'll be victimized all over again. If an arrest is even made and they go to trial, you constantly see prosecutors who shame the victims of sexual assault. Cops are notorious for domestic violence.

So, again, it doesn't have to be a cop. There are other answers to what about sexual assault. And I'm not suggesting that we can cure somebody who is going to commit a sexual assault. That's not what I'm suggesting. I'm suggesting that the police aren't preventing it now. And a lot of times when they respond to calls for sexual assault, they can traumatize or victimize that person all over again so it doesn't have to be the police it doesn't it can be somebody else

yeah it sounds like there's almost based on what you're the more you talk about it the more it makes me think that like there's almost nothing that the police do currently that we wouldn't be better off radically rethinking who does this and finding someone else to now who's who's empowered in a different way look i'm on board i'm just trying to i'm trying to like you know map out the edges of the argument here right and talk about i've talked to folks on on my shows before about prison abolition right um and then you know we're talking about prison abolition which i which i believe in there's still the you know there's still a question looming of yeah but there's some there's some folks who who can't play well with society you know there's some folks who are so uh uh you know injured uh that you know we we need a uh there's it's it's a more difficult question right um and so that's what i'm interested in in mapping out

here because i think those are the questions that often come up for people when they think about when the you know average middle class american is not thinking about these things white american who's not thinking about these things here's police abolition they have a but what about they have a lot they have a but what about reaction but if you if you look at prison populations you know it's it's not like a batman movie and and you crack open the doors and and thousands of violent criminals come out when you look at prison populations who is in them there are a lot of people in there for nonviolent crimes, the people in there for, for property crimes, for, for, you know, drug violations, for things like that. There are also people with,

you know, untreated mental illness. And the sad reality is some of the largest treatment centers for mental illness are actually prisons yeah so how does that help anybody oh we're gonna send you to prison to get mental health treatment great sign me up yeah yeah and the more the more i think about it the more this focus on like again the cases i'm talking about in in both policing and prisons is is like it's like a it's like a point one percent it's like you're taught like we're we're imagining that every single person that every single situation needs to be treated with maximal force and maximal suspicion and and you know that we need to be kept safe from everybody. And it's just not true. I mean, if you look at a case like Elijah McClain

in Aurora, Colorado, he's a 23-year-old kid who's walking home and his offense was he was wearing a ski mask and somebody called him in as being suspicious. He was minding his own business. And the officers tackled him, choked him, had an EMS respond and inject him with ketamine. And he died. He had heart attacks and he vomited and he died.

Who were they protecting? Who was being protected then? Who was Elijah McClain? Elijah McClain played the violin for cats. He would go into animal shelters and play the violin to stray cats. Who needed protection from him? Yeah. Do you have, as someone who's written about this for many years and talked about this,

as someone who's a former police officer, are you given any optimism by the movement that we're seeing today? I mean, and how politicians are starting to respond to it in some way when you look at, say, what's happening in Minneapolis? Does that give you any any? I would say I'm cautiously optimistic i i think that politicians are are i think politicians are definitely worried about their own careers and they see that there's a definite shift and and what's going on in this country um when you have politicians who are willing to discuss taking money away from the police department. I think that's a great first step.

It's important, though, that they don't turn around and give it back the following year. I also think that in terms of like in Minneapolis, when they talk about disbanding their police department. Well, but what do you replace it with? Because they're going to replace it with something. Well, but what do you replace it with? Because they're going to replace it with something. You know, Camden, New Jersey is constantly used as this sort of like the prime example of a town that was, the police department was rampant with corruption. It was a horribly violent city.

And they decided to disband their police department. Well, but they still have the police. They just replaced it with a different police department. A lot of the police. It's the county. Yeah, it's the county police department now. They abolish the city. It's referred to as the Camden County Police, but it's a lot of the same officers remained. And what they gave up was there's a lot of federal enforcement in Camden.

There's a ton of surveillance. There's a ton of electronic surveillance, like shot spotters, citywide cameras. They have these, like, sometimes they're referred to as war rooms. They're basically like command centers where all this information is fed into. So the citizens of Camden

are under constant surveillance by the police. So they may have a smaller police department, but the police are still very much a part of their lives. So it's, you know, that's why I'm cautiously optimistic, because if you dismantle or disband the Minneapolis Police Department, you have to be really careful what it gets replaced with. Because if you're just going to replace it with the same cops and just give them a different name you're not solving the problem i mean the more i think about this this comes does this come down to race in america at the end of the day like when we're uh saying okay we're just you know we we're devoting this massive amount of money to occupying black and brown neighborhoods that, you know, white citizens are like, oh, yeah, the police, I like them. I like those guys. They don't give me any trouble. And I think they keep me safe. But actually, what those forces are doing

are harassing black and brown communities over and over again and uh you know the cities which are you know often have predominantly white voting populations are voting again and again to increase the budgets of those departments um like it's hard to look at it just from what you're describing and think that there's anything other than like a project of racial suppression going on yeah it obviously is especially because you could take the money from that police department and instead of flooding a community with cops you could flood it with money you could repair the infrastructure you can provide better public transportation um better access to clean water and healthy food and um you know parks rec, things like that.

All of these things are disappearing, but the cops are there. You know, there are departments that have police athletic leagues, and that's where the kids go after school. That's what the kids interact with. Again, why does it have to be cops? Why can't it be a rec center or an athletic league that's not cops? Why can't it be a rec center or athletic league that's not cops? But when you ask like, hey, we, you know, white neighborhoods have parks.

They've got nice streets. They've got, you know, money invested in the infrastructure. They've got community development, et cetera. Black and brown neighborhoods don't have those things. Instead, they have cops there. Why is that? Why are city governments not able, not willing to give nice things to the black and brown neighborhoods but instead i have punitive police forces there it's really hard to not just conclude yeah this is this is racism on the part of our

cities and the people who vote for them because the police are there to contain those citizens it's i can't put it any simpler than that. That's what the police do. They are an occupying force. They're a containment unit. They want to make sure that people who are comfortable out in the suburbs don't see the problems down in the city. And I went through this with the opioid epidemic. I started as a cop in 1999, and I saw a lot of people who were affected by opioid addiction. And I didn't see the media attention that's being given to the problem. Now I didn't see money being thrown at the problem. I didn't see, uh, you know, we didn't, we didn't carry naloxone back then for, for overdose victims. We called a medic and we waited. But as soon as white

kids from the suburbs started coming in and buying drugs and going home and overdosing or they were getting into, you know, pills that were being sold or they were taking their parents' pills or whatever, then it became an epidemic. And then we had, oh, well, now we got to treat it. It's a national emergency.

I mean, it's literally been deemed a national emergency. Well, it wasn't a national emergency in 1999. Yeah. When I was watching people drop dead in Baltimore. So it's things like that where it's like, obviously this is an issue of white and black. It can't be anything else. It can't be.

Well, let's find, let's find a note to, we should wrap up at some point and and uh i want to see if i can get us to a slightly more hopeful place here um so when we're facing this stark reality and i really hope that folks listening to this are staring at it head on at this point after hearing this conversation um what do you advise the average person listening to this to do? Whether, you know, is it how they look at the cops differently or how they pressure their local governments?

Or what do you hope to take away that, you know, John and J&Q Public, who haven't been thinking about these things for the last couple decades decades take away from it? Well, I think the main thing is I really want specifically young white people to really challenge their perception of the police and what they think the police do and how they think the police keep them safe. I also think it's important for people to really read. I'm not saying you have to become an abolitionist, but at the very least, we need to take money away from police departments. So at least look into what it means to defund the police, to take money away and other places it can be

spent. Don't just scroll down, don't just doom scroll down Twitter, like actually do some reading, do some research. And yeah, challenge your politicians. When you do the research, and if you think that the police deserve less money, call, email, go to a protest, you know, make your voice heard. Larry, thank you so much for coming on and talk to us about this and and for your thank you for

speaking up about this at all when when so few do uh your your voice is really invaluable here and and I can't thank you enough all right well I appreciate you having me on thank you well I want to thank Larry one more time for coming on the show. I hope you got as much out of that conversation as I did. Hey, if you like this episode, please leave us a rating wherever you subscribe. It really does help us out and help other people find the show. And that is it for us this week on Factually. I want to thank our producers, Dana Wickens and Sam Roudman, our engineers, Ryan Connor and Brett Morris, Andrew WK for our theme song.

You can find me at Adam Conover wherever you get your social media or Adam Conover dot net. And until next time, we'll see you next week on Factually. That was a hate gun podcast.