Some More News - SMN: The Horrifying Results of Defunding The Police?

Episode Date: August 2, 2023

Hi. In today's episode, we look at the false narrative surrounding police "defunding" and crime, and investigate what cops have really been up to since the summer of 2020. SOURCES: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1knT0jSiGi6JOf2oOe9Ax7mUp3QJoLN-iZioIXtXjLwM/edit?usp=sharing Check out our MERCH STORE: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh Subscribe to the Some More News and Even More News audio podcasts: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA?si=5keGjCe5SxejFN1XkQlZ3w&dl_branch=1 Follow us on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomeMoreNews/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@somemorenews

Interior. Precinct nine interrogation room, night. Lieutenant Mazzelli, 40s, muscular but grizzled. Gazing across the cold steel table, a cigarette dangling from his muscular but grizzled lips, locking eyes with silk suited and also grizzled Polly Lorenzo. M suited, and it also grizzled Pauly Lorenzo. Mazzelli.

You didn't think those bodies would ever be found, did you? Well, Chipotle just bought half a battery park to plant cilantro fields, and look who they found. Johnny Nelflasso. He's getting an autopsy by the medical examiner right now, but I think they can skip the autopsy, Pauly. Because I'll bet dollars to dick holes the thing that killed Johnny

was the 17 bullets in his brain. So how about it? Those your bullets? Pauly. You better hope you keep your nuts clean, Lieutenant. My lawyer's gonna have so much fun shredding your badge. You'll think he's Tony Hawk

at a badge factory, damn it. Okay, I really thought I knew where I was going there. Hey, y'all, just doing another pass on Precinct 9, the Whiskey Sour Chronicles, which has interest from several Tribeca adjacent producers. No, not that one. That's the one, the bread company. But they have a lot of bread influence,

a lot of dough, so to speak, and have attended the other Tribeca, I think. Or was it Triscuit? It was like, it was a try word. I wasn't really paying attention on the call. Anyway, just doing another pass and a bit more research, specifically into modern policing, because here's some news.

I think that may have changed recently. Maybe? Wasn't there some kind of national discussion we had about the police and crime at some point? Politicians were successful in moving away critical funds to police stations. And now what we are seeing across the country is violence surging. In many cases, city officials put defund the police into practice

by voting to cut funding to its respective police departments. What followed was a significant nationwide rise in violent crime. So cities across the country are seeing a major spike in violent crime now, a scary scene earlier this week in New York City. So to shoot out in the middle of the street during broad daylight. If you make it impossible for cops to do their jobs, then they can't. That emboldens criminals. If you release criminals before the cops are done with their paperwork,

that emboldens criminals. If you only focus on law-abiding gun owners, not the illegal handguns that are being used, you embolden criminals. Jesus H. Crime, really? We cut a ton of police funding which resulted in a huge spike in violent crime? Seems like something I'd remember, but I don't remember it. But in fairness, I have been squarely balls deep in those whiskey sour chronicles. So I guess, I guess we really screwed the pooch, specifically McGruff the crime dog,

who has sadly died from exposure to fentanyl. Just look at this Fox News headline. Burlington, Vermont, reeling from highest number of homicides in decades after defunding police. Checkmate, Antifa! Presuming you ignore that the subhead reads, "'Burlington' voted to defund police "'before reversing course the following year."

And that there were never actually any layoffs. But ignoring that aforementioned checkmate, the entire story here is that the number of homicides in Burlington, population 45,000, rose from one in 2020 to five in 2022. But in 2021, the year of the supposed defunding and cops quitting in droves, Burlington had zero homicides. All five of the city's 2022 homicides took place

after the department was undefunded. So strange how this article cites data suggesting the opposite of its thesis. Odd, oh so odd. Maybe this one example is indicative of an entire narrative we have been fed over the last three years, which might be as fictitious as the gritty sex-fueled adventures

of Lieutenant Hieronymus Mazzelli. Come, detective. Maybe the idea that big liberal cities cut police funding, leading to catastrophic increases in violent crime, cities burning down, and offended cops fleeing the profession with pearls clenched in their meaty fists wasn't true. If only there was a way to confirm this theory,

perhaps through the magic of storytelling. What's really been going on with cops? Interior, studio, Cody, muscular, but grizzled sits in a way to obscure his lack of pants. We will now journey through the recent history of police in America, the narrative of defunding and lawlessness, and perhaps what has actually happened in the years until today. And to see how this narrative developed, we have to go back in time at least 30 years.

For a second night, demonstrations broke out over the death of George Floyd, and again there was violence. Amid the chaos, one man was shot dead. This afternoon, the National Guard was activated to respond to the unrest. We've just had to run about a block as police moved in. We've been fired at with rubber bullets. My cameraman has been hit. We've also seen tear gas being used.

Here we go, they're moving through again. This is exactly what it looks like. Exactly what it looks like. We're just staying safely. There we go! Sorry, I meant 30 today years, where every year feels like a decade. Remember those days?

Remember summer of 2020? My goodness, Trump hadn't even had COVID yet. But months before what would become known as the one fun day, there were a whole lot of not so fun days. In May, 2020, the nation was stunned by footage depicting a Minneapolis police officer kneeling on the neck of George Floyd

for nearly 10 minutes, ultimately killing him. This resulted in a months long protest movement, arguably the largest in US history, with demands to rethink policing entirely. Specifically, there were conversations around what police are there for, what amount of physical force they should be allowed to use, and how policing could be changed to stop them

from terrorizing communities and leaving people, disproportionately black and Latino people, dead. Policy proposals to reallocate funding from police departments back to community services were grouped under the banner, defund the police. And advocates made a pretty compelling argument. Police are unquestionably biased against black people regardless of the race of the officers themselves.

And cities spend an absurd amount of money on police. A collective $100 billion a year and 80 billion more on incarceration. Research has shown that crime in a community is largely a product of poverty and that adding more cops doesn't really do anything to reduce it. In fact, the best way to reduce crime, research suggests,

is giving people healthcare, access to drug treatment facilities, education, and afterschool programs. You know, basic standard of living type stuff. Now we could just give people these things anyway, independent of police budgets, given the fact that money is fake and we made it up according to our nation's 45th president, Donald, John, Trump.

Great point, comrade Trump. But if we are pretending that there's a finite amount of money to spend on stuff, the idea was to take some of that ridiculous amount of money away from the police and put it toward the things which we know actually reduce crime. Seems like a neat idea. Unfortunately, defund the police

became a controversial slogan, though the policies the movement espoused were always far more popular than the phrase itself. Kind of how universal healthcare varies in popularity depending on what you call it. Or how there's widespread support for reducing government spending, but nobody actually wants to cut anything specific.

Or how when I call massages buddy rubbies, nobody seems to want one. But this is America, all right? We contain multitudes, multitudes of toxic chemicals and microplastics, but multitudes nonetheless. So back in 2020, you heard some officials essentially advocating for defunding the police,

even if they didn't use that phrasing. City council members met with activists from Black Lives Matter to discuss reassessing police budgets, and some prominent US mayors committed to the concept. And so I have instructed and committed to, in public to that group, that our city, through our city administrative officer, identify $250 million in cuts so we could invest in jobs, in health, in education, and in healing. Healing! Just like my buddy rubbies, and yet still no takers.

That's Eric Garcetti, Los Angeles' nepo baby mayor in 2020, basically the Kendall Roy of running a city, saying that LA would slash $250 million from the LAPD's budget. And to be fair, the city did at first slash the police budget by $150 million, which you might notice is $100 million less than Garcetti said, and only 8% of the total LAPD budget. But still, an attempt to make good on a promise to reallocate police funds to city services.

Except what happened next played out in a similar fashion around the country. The LAPD requested a budget increase that November and Garcetti responded by increasing their budget. Incidentally, on the same goddamn day, Derek Chauvin was found guilty in Minneapolis of murdering George Floyd. Those two events aren't technically connected,

but you know, they also kind of extremely are. Then in 2021, the police commission again asked for a 12% increase in funding for cops, which Garcetti gave them most of. And so in just two years, Los Angeles went from defunding the police a teeny tiny bitty bit to giving the department its teeny tiny highest budget ever. But don't worry, that mayor fucked off

to barely become Joe Biden's ambassador to India. And he was replaced by Democratic Congresswoman Karen Bass. So maybe more of a Con Connor Roy with the ambassador thing. He's one of the Roys, okay? We know that. Anyway, Bass's campaign was supported by Bernie Sanders. So, you know, there's no way she wants me to keep reading. Yeah, oops, okay.

So it says here, she would further increase the police budget despite crime going down while pledging to hire 400 more cops. And this is the real story of the last three years around the United States. Local officials planned to reallocate money from police departments before immediately backtracking

once protesters weren't screaming outside their offices and homes anymore. In fact, since 2020, more than 80% of major cities and counties increased their police budgets by at least 2%. In nearly half of the cities, police budgets were up more than 10%. It seems like a major impact of defund the police

was not an actual defunding of police, but of politicians claiming that that's what happened and then blaming that made up thing on a crime wave, which also only sort of happened, but kind of didn't happen at all. It's outrageous that you think that you can defund the police and have safer streets. We've seen how chaotic and catastrophic this has been in communities across the United States of America. And the same thing happened in Austin, Texas. Austin, Texas defunded their police by more than $100 million. And the result

was predictable. The result was last year, Austin set an all time record for the number of murders. Hey, neat Cody fact. Austin, Texas absolutely did not defund the police for any significant length of time. And Abbott knows this because he signed a law in 2021 banning cities from doing so. 2021 is the year of record crime he's referring to, which coincidentally also held a record for highest funding of the police that year. Their homicide rate has been steadily increasing for the last five years and continued to increase

well after the police were defunded and then refunded. In other words, there's no correlation between defunded and then refunded. In other words, there's no correlation between defunding and crime in Austin. This has been my neat Cody fact, plural, facts, facts. Okay, so cut back to that clip. Why do I recognize the guy in the right? Could it be Texas Department of Public Safety Director Stephen McCraw, who just a month after this clip would be asked to resign

after a gunman walked into a Uvalde elementary school and killed a lot of children while the police sat outside and did nothing? Hmm, that feels relevant and depressing, which was actually the original name of this show, but we went another way. And despite all the stuff Abbott said being lies, it's been repeated so often by politicians and the media

that people are actually starting to believe it. In a poll from late 2021, 75% of respondents cited defunding the police as at least a partial reason that quote, some say that violent crime is on the rise. Some say, even the poll question made it clear that the perceived rise of crime is in fact not happening because it wasn't. Every article about the rise of crime,

including the one I showed about Austin, always notes that it's still not nearly as high as it once was, or at most, it's a mixed bag of data where some crimes were up and some were down, owing to many factors, notably the 22 million guns that were sold in the first year of the fucking pandemic. But okay, even if the police weren't specifically defunded, the way those disgusting, sexy leftists treated them

must have resulted in more crime, all right? You know, because it made cops so pathetically sad that they're quitting in droves, which would be apropos as the word drove is, and this is true. What you call a group of pigs, another Cody fact for you. Anyway, the pigs got their itty bitty feelings hurt. The executive director of the think tank police executive

research forum or perf said perf, that's what you're gonna go with. Okay, so the perfert said that a national conversation that questions the authority of police, quote, "'takes a toll' and is behind an increase in police resignations. You must be nicer to the cops you see. Otherwise, they might not show up to shoot your dog

and then give you a ticket for having a dead dog on your lawn. But also, they didn't quit in droves. That's not what happened. The police workforce dropped 1% by summer 2021, compared to 6% for all other industries. Fewer new recruits have been joining police departments, leading to some staffing shortages.

That's true. But many of the departing cops are actually just trying to transfer to the suburbs. Though the number of United States police officers dropped over the last three years, it actually dropped less than employment in other local government sectors, like bus drivers and firefighters,

suggesting that people are simply opting to take jobs in the private sector or start their own business. And so none of that seems to have anything to do with how mean people are being to cops. Much like with crime, it's just taking complicated data and vaguely reinterpreting it to push a blatantly false narrative. So if the broad goal of defunding the police

didn't really happen, and cops weren't hiding in their feelings, were there any actual reforms that made it through? I'm so glad I asked. Today is about pursuing common sense and fighting. Fighting for a cause like we seldom get the chance to fight for. Under the executive order I'm signing today, we will prioritize federal grants from the Department of Justice to police departments that seek independent credentialing, certifying that they meet high standards,

and in fact, in certain cases, the highest standard. That's where they do the best, on the use of force and deescalation training. Thanks for the good words, very highest standard of words. That's where they do the best, you see. So in June of 2020, Trump signed an executive order meant to appease social justice activists, which did not, for good reason, do that.

First off, the order instructed the Justice Department to create a database of cops who had been convicted of violent offenses on duty so that they couldn't bounce between departments, which is a real thing that happens for some reason. It also created incentives for police departments to pursue reforms. For example, bringing mental health and addiction experts

as co-responders on certain calls. Seems good, right? Too bad the fake news media conspired to thwart this good worded man, except wait, could it be that this is not actually good and perhaps bad? It turns out that those reforms would only happen if local departments opted in and they would only do so because they might get a discretionary federal grant.

So the order ended up being pretty toothless in that most local departments simply didn't comply. And those that did barely had to change anything to do so. The national cop database still hasn't been created. It got stalled under Trump and then Biden placed it on pause for an unknown reason. It's a real mystery. And while we can't confirm this

because he isn't really returning our calls anymore, we think maybe the pause had something to do with this next clip. Watch closely or you'll miss it. We should all agree, the answer is not to defund the police, it's to fund the police. Fund them. Fund them. Fund them.

Did you catch it? It's subtle, but I think that Biden perhaps doesn't give two thirds of a turd about reforming the police in any way, shape or form. And perhaps uses inaction as a way to routinely show support for stuff he knows we won't be happy about. Or he's just tired, doesn't wanna. Whatever the case, he is now encouraging states

to use billions of dollars in federal stimulus money to fund police, pushing to hire 100,000 more cops and allowing Republicans to block changes to Washington DC's criminal code, which would have eliminated most mandatory minimum sentences. Now, to be both fair and balanced, and a third equally compelling adjective, Biden and the Democrats did push

to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which would have banned choke holds, ended qualified immunity for cops, and banned no-knock warrants in federal drug cases, alongside other reforms. It never came to a vote in the Senate, and in the years since, he's only mentioned it to say that he's still vaguely fighting for it.

But he at least strictly limited chokeholds and no-knock warrants for federal officers, which isn't nothing. Trump can rest easy the next time they search his home, you see. So Biden's stance is that jurisdiction for the majority of law enforcement falls to state and local officials,

and he's correct-ish, and at least there are some reforms that have gotten through on that level. For example, we have seen a number of states and cities ban or limit the use of chokeholds and no-knock warrants, the latter of which even police departments themselves have started to give up trying to defend. Other laws around the country required intervention

if a fellow officer is seen using excessive force or took measures to end qualified immunity. These are real reforms that are obviously better than nothing. But it's often felt like one step forward and 12 steps back as the subject fades from public discourse. For example, many federal agents still aren't wearing body cameras even after Biden mandated them.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams revived a controversial anti-crime unit and criticized New Yorkers for filming police, a constitutionally protected right that you should absolutely utilize. Even freaking Portland, Oregon has increased its police budget. And I'm pretty sure they switched their official currency to leftover crack albums.

So yeah, that's how it's been going. The prevailing narrative that Democrat cities defunded all police departments, resulting in a World War Z and or rain of fire scenario is total cop wash. Didn't happen, objectively so. And after the break, we're going to take a look at what police officers have really been up to

over the last three years, given all that funding they're being given by very undark Brandon. Right after we get some much needed funding in the form of you letting these ads play in the background while you grab a Sierra Mist or a Starry. Fuck is Starry? Go grab a gross Starry, I guess.

Starry? Beepity beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep. Oh, this just in. Hello, some more newsters with your some more shirts and some more caps doing the some more jig on a Friday night at the dance social. The kids can't get enough of some more news and we're pretty tolerant of the kids, I guess, and covet their blood.

Bah! I'm talking of and covet their blood. Bah! I'm talking of course about baby goats. Bah! And also the Some More News Patreon. Bah! That's where all the cool baby goats hang out and do their goat dances around the ceremonial fire. Just go to patreon.com slash some more news

to get these episodes, as well as even more news episodes, totally ad free. Satyrs! That's the word I was looking for. Not kids, satyrs. Satyrs love us. But that's not all we offer on our patreon.com slash some more news. We also have our own discord community,

a producer tier, and even a special hangout with a Some More News crew. Come join us and you can bathe in the bestial pool of our divine presence. But we mainly, we just talk about like Minecraft and stuff like that. Again, that's patreon.com slash some more news. One more time.

Patreon.com slash some more news. You know what? One more time. Patreon.com slash some more news. Because you love us. We're incredibly back from the ads. How was your starry? Did it hit different?

If you've had Sierra Mist, then the answer should be no. This completes our starry takedown segment. Take that, beverage. Now to talk more about cops. We just went over how half the country thinks police defunding caused a sharp uptick in violent crime during the pandemic and how in reality, that was a hot load of soppy bisquick.

So how have police officers actually grown and evolved during this tumultuous time? What have they really been up to the last few years? I'm sure it's all good stuff. Let's check, okay? Probably should have checked before writing the episode, but okay, all right. So we wanna find out what cops are doing

in the United States. So that would be domestically. So I can search police officer domestic. Oh, wow. Okay, not what I was searching for, but good information to have, 40%, Jesus. Okay, so it turns out that, along with disproportionately causing domestic violence,

police officers frequently bungle domestic violence calls when they receive them. And in fact, cops accused of domestic violence often get treated far differently than other suspects, regularly keeping their jobs or even ascending to police chief. Okay, I'm getting sidetracked. Police must have instituted some reforms during lockdown.

So I can search for police officer lock. Oh God. Okay. It says that a West Virginia state trooper hit a camera in the women's locker room at the state police training academy, illegally recording dozens of women, including at least 10 minors. Good pedophile gravy. Oh my God, I'm not good at Googling this. Okay, one more try. And I expect this one to go better than the others since it's the third time I'm doing it. There must have been some success stories, right?

Perhaps involving the police busting up a drug smuggling ring. You know how fentanyl is a big priority for them since even thinking about the drug causes them and only them to pass out. So let me just Google police drug smuggler and holy hell, okay, the head of a police union allegedly spent nearly a decade smuggling massive shipments

of fentanyl into the United States. Seems pretty damning considering how we talk about cops and border safety. Anyway, the Google bit is over, all right? And I want to emphasize that all of these incidents took place since 2020 after the supposed public reckoning in regard to policing. Is that the worst of it?

Or could this be another bit? Major developments in the prosecution of those rioters involved in the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. Tonight, a judge has issued the longest sentence yet. This went to a former New York City police officer who assaulted another police officer. But former NYPD officer Thomas Webster,

seen here holding a flagpole, will now serve 10 years behind bars for injuring a D.C. officer. But former NYPD officer Thomas Webster, seen here holding a flagpole, will now serve 10 years behind bars for injuring a D.C. officer. Oh yeah, that whole thing. It turns out that a not insignificant percentage of January 6th rioters were cops. By May 2022, 19 current or former officers had been charged in connection to the funny insurrection, with charges being filed against several others since then. I believe the old phrase is twice a coincidence, three times a pattern, more than 19 a big fucking problem. A growing body of research has uncovered

that white supremacy is even more pervasive in US law enforcement than previously thought, including among police trainers, whose instructions to cops are often explicitly racist and just generally un-freaking-real. So when Joe Biden says the police need better training, hopefully that includes teaching them not to be so comfortably aligned

with right-wing militia groups, them Proud Boys, and other white supremacist hate groups. Yeah, that seems like a thing that you can train your way out of, right? Maybe some kind of a PowerPoint or like a modestly budgeted video. Three hours on a Saturday, maybe some sandwiches. No, no, no, no, no.

Definitely some sandwiches. Better train the Nazis too, so they know not to try and recruit cops either. So it's a good plan. It's a good plan. We'll implement it. And then racism solved. Phew.

So now that we have solved racism forever, we next have to take a look at police brutality. After all, while the murder of George Floyd re-sparked outrage over police violence, there have been countless instances before and after that one event. For a lot of people, the outrage never really goes away, but rather smolders steadily over decades, like George Clooney.

But of course, 2020 flared up that outrage for most of America. So did police officers in the ensuing years find themselves de-escalating situations that previously would have ended in violence? Well, it appears they did not. Police killings were at their highest level in at least a decade in 2022, with more than 1,200 people killed over the course of the year,

according to the Mapping Police Violence Database. This data only goes back to 2013, and there is some evidence that police killings decades ago in major cities used to be even worse. But it's hard to pat ourselves on the back when more than three people are still being killed by police every day in the United States. And those people are still disproportionately black.

And this is all happening after we ostensibly passed a bunch of laws to prevent it from happening. Even the data we do have about police killings is unreliable since local police departments are still not required to report incidents with deaths involving police officers to the federal government. And that's, that is wild, right? Considering everything that happened after 2020,

that we still don't require police to report incidents to the government. According to an investigation by the Washington Post, fatal police shootings are undercounted by more than half. And that's only the government. According to an investigation by the Washington Post, fatal police shootings are undercounted by more than half. And that's only the shootings. We're not counting people who were killed by police without being shot. Kenan Anderson, Tyree Nichols, Akeem Terrell, Renardo Green, Jermaine Saunier, James Holland Sr., Jermaine Jones, Jim Rogers, Calvin Wilkes Jr., Terrence Caffey, Herman Whitfield, Brett Rosenau, Genesis Hicks, Keith Muriel, Daryl Williams, and Ivo Otieno were all unarmed black men murdered

by police in non-shooting incidents. And all of them were killed after George Floyd in May 2020. Three years later, there are typically only one or two days every month where a cop doesn't kill somebody somewhere in America. Not to mention that even when these killings are reported, they often take forever to actually investigate. For more than three years, this has been what Jimmy Hill does every week. Hey, buddy. Walking the same downtown Atlanta Street, spreading the word about his son's death. In 2019, Hill's son, Jimmy Atchison, was shot and killed by an Atlanta police officer. The DA's office, under Willis' predecessor, conducted an investigation into the deadly shooting and recommended the officer be charged with felony murder. In an April letter to Griggs,

Willis indicated there was a backlog of 11,000 cases when she took office, with an additional 50,000 cases she claimed that were not properly closed by the previous administration. Who knows how many cops are walking around simply because the city hasn't gotten around to investigating them yet. And that's just one city. Other places literally have a backlog because of how often incidents happen. have a backlog because of how often incidents happen. California, for example, passed a law in 2020 requiring the state's Department of Justice to investigate any police shooting

that results in the death of an unarmed civilian. But that happens so often that the department is simply unable to keep up, though it doesn't help that the state legislature cut its investigative budget in half. Defund the investigation budget. In some cases, they haven't even kept track of all the police killings

they're supposed to investigate and have resorted to occasionally rejecting cases where the unarmed person was in a car, since the car could theoretically be used as a weapon. Therefore, anytime a cop kills you while you're in a car, it's self-defense. I guess if it's the Batmobile or a Tesla, that makes sense. But hey, at least they are cracking down

on public scrutiny toward cops. A number of police departments have come under fire for disabling comments on social media, shielding them from such damaging questions like, how was the officer involved in the officer involved shooting? The city of Woodland Park, Colorado even had to pay one resident $65,000

after the city's police department blocked him on Facebook for calling them punk ass pigs and dirty ass cops. Wow, that is an easy way to make $65,000. But even though they had to pay the guy, a court ruled the police are still allowed to remove public comments they don't like based on obscenity. Sounds like something a punk ass pig would do, but to each their own.

And that attempt to avoid scrutiny goes past cyberspace and into, says here something called the real world. Is it like a Twitter clone? Sounds terrible. Whatever. City attorneys and judges have continued to help cops by refusing to release body cam footage of violent incidents

and internal decision-making regarding departments continues to be done in secret. For example, the city of Knoxville paid that Perfee group from earlier $43,000 to help it find a new police chief, but in a way that would prevent taxpayers from being able to see the list of potential candidates. This practice and others like it are common. City attorneys and other cop allies in the government

often try to weaken public records laws. And when they can't, police frequently use exemptions in those laws to keep documents about brutality or corruption out of the hands of journalists. It remains far too easy for them to do this, since all they have to do is say that whatever the records request is about

is part of an ongoing investigation. A cop shit in a kid's baseball cap? Better keep that investigation open through 2055. That shit cap could help solve a cold case one day. We may finally bring to justice the Pudiak Killer. The good news is that since 2020, a few states have managed to pass laws removing some exemptions,

and you can see why police are upset about that. In Holyoke, Massachusetts, newly accessible public records revealed that a decade's worth of civilian complaints about officer misconduct had nearly all been dismissed, including one case where a man was assaulted and his genitals grabbed. And in the cases where they weren't dismissed,

officers received only verbal warnings or additional training. This is the kind of treatment police are used to, being handled with kid gloves or given a verbal slap on the wrist, not even a Zachary Quinto slap. At least in 2020, when public interest in police activities was peaking,

we were treated to, oh, so beautiful takedowns of police chiefs who could do nothing but take it like a poop to the hat. Hello, can you hear me? Yes. Black Lives Matter defund the police. I find it disgusting that the LAPD is slaughtering peaceful protesters on the street. I had two friends go to the protest in Beverly Hills a couple of days ago, and the protest was peaceful.

So the police showed up with their excessive violent force shooting rubber bullets and throwing tear gas is this what you think of protecting and serving because i think it's bullshit fuck you michael moore i refuse to call you an officer or a chief because you don't deserve those titles you are a disgrace suck my dick and choke on it i yield my time fuck you very good points all around man that was fun why we stopped doing that? I mean, I guess the Tender Bar came out and we all got distracted with the Tender Bar, which really pulled attention away

from the grassroots movement against racial and social injustice, but we can't change the past. The Tender Bar sucked up all the attention and we just have to live with it, you know? That Los Angeles Police Commission meeting lasted eight hours, just a marathon Zoom meeting of police officials being told to get every species of fucked.

And they reacted to this backlash, which was basically a lot of folks telling them not to kill people or stop beating those protesting you killing people by throwing a years long hissy fit. 57 Buffalo officers resigned from their civil unrest unit in protest of the suspension of two cops who shoved a 75 year old man to the ground at a protest against police brutality in June, 2020.

Cops who ultimately faced no consequences, by the way. After an Atlanta cop was charged with murder for shooting a black man in the back, also in June, 2020, a number of officers called in sick in what was called a blue flu, something they probably wouldn't have believed was real had it been an actual disease. Incidentally, charges were dropped against the murdering cop. By the way, again, of course, incidentally, any attempt at supervising police power is also met with loud, indignant backlash from police unions,

who are quick to paint cops as the real victims. In Austin earlier this year, voters approved a measure to give the city's oversight board more power to discipline officers and greater access to cops' personnel files. Austin's police union freaked out, called the provision illegal,

and threatened to walk away from contract negotiations. They tweeted, "'The Austin Police Association simply will not stand by "'while this city and anti-police activists operate "'with blatant disregard for state law "'and the rights and protections afforded "'to our hardworking men and women, oink, oink. And by anti-police activists,

I guess they mean the 79% of voters who supported the oversight proposition. Over and over again, police unions have casually dismissed violent acts committed by cops and painted themselves as victims, as New York police union head Mike O'Meara did two weeks after the murder of George Floyd. 375 million interactions with the public every year. I am not Derek Chavon. They are not him. He killed someone. We didn't. We are restrained. Stop treating us like animals and thugs and start treating us with some respect.

We are restrained, said the man who can barely restrain his anger. But hey, you know, he is right. They technically aren't Derek Chauvin. Two people can't be the same person. That's the rules. But I wonder if he'd be this defensive to the family of Eric Garner or Ronald Singleton

or Cesar Robinson or Raul de la Cruz. And of course I could go on. Absolutely wild to watch the head of the New York Police Union try to act outraged over brutality accusations. While O'Meara did condemn the murder of George Floyd, congratulations, good job that one time, it always seems like these guys are way more offended

by the harsh language directed at police than the literal murder they inflict. And as far as treating people like animals and thugs, we know very well who's been behind that kind of rhetoric for a long time. I would argue that it makes the police kind of maybe potentially a bunch of bully snowflakes who can't take it nearly as well as they dish it out.

Except what they can't take is scrutiny and what they dish out, it's bullets. They faced skepticism and questions about their integrity on a massive scale for the first time in decades. And they responded by wailing like a toddler who fell down at the park. You can't prove I tripped that, let's be honest, very loud child, by the way, you can't prove it.

So where does all this leave us? I would argue it leaves us very far from a final draft of Precinct 9, the Whiskey Sour Chronicles, and its extended franchise, Precinct 9, the Orpheum Cycle. But also, if cops are still committing crimes with impunity and not really solving crimes themselves and aligning themselves with white supremacists and killing people at record rates

and successfully avoiding public backlash, what is America's response to that? What are we as a society currently doing and where does the movement to reform or even better defund or even better, I don't know, completely abolish the police go from here? We will get to that after these ads, which we can't abolish. Not yet, at least. Hello to our viewers and to the many ghosts standing behind our viewers are you naked

right now perhaps you're holding your morning coffee cupped in your hands oh i can see you now nude hands trembling from the scalding liquid why i think you maybe need a shirt and a mug. So put down your coffee and go to teepublic.com slash stores slash some more news to get our merch. That's short for merchandise. No longer will you be forced to stay indoors to hide your many hand burns and exposed genitals. Our merch store has all the t-shirts and mugs you'll ever need you can even purchase multiple shirts and then wash the shirts on the days that you're not

wearing that one specific shirt and it'll be fine because you've got other shirts and you know what because it's the future and you do not have to be naked anymore. We got Warmbo shirts. We got some more news logo shirts. A defund the police shirt. And other shirts too. And also all of the things on those shirts can go on a mug. Or even a tote bag. That's right.

No more carrying your groceries around in your arms while walking naked down the street for you. So once again, go to tpublic.com slash stores slash some more news to get shirts and mugs and bags and phone cases and laptop cases and stickers and magnets and oh my gosh, even shirts. tpublic.com slash stores slash some more news. Sorry, ghosts. Not for you. Not yet anyway. Down with ads. I mean, done with ads. We're done with ads. Enter promo code back from ads for 10% off being back from ads. W dot the website slash back from ads dotthe news show you're watching. Okay, so we talked about how the cops spent the last three years whining about being defunded, even though US cities are largely funding them

even more than before. We also mentioned how they've been pretty successful at winning people back by simply yelling, crime. What does the movement for racial and social justice, as it pertains to police, do to combat this pro-cop resurgence? What is our return of the Jedi to counter their empire strikes back?

Do I have to cut off my hand? Cause I will. In fact, I'm gonna later on anyway. So as usual, the solution lies not in waiting for federal legislation that's unlikely to pass, but in local efforts to push back against the blue tide, which coincidentally is the name of a milk bar in the Star Wars universe. That's exactly what the city of Atlanta has been doing for the past year.

Pushing back, not the Star Wars stuff, obviously, come on. Though the city of Atlanta is continuing its push to build a training facility southeast of Atlanta, protesters pushing back are complicating the effort. We love our trees. Protesters confronted police with slogans today, some 24 hours after police, state and federal agents swept through the site and arrested five protesters who had allegedly occupied space in the forest. Not everyone went back to brunch it seems, or I mean, maybe they got brunch and then went from brunch to protest the cops. Not sure why you can't do both.

It's actually important to eat meals. And they're protesting a planned public safety training center, better known as Cop City, which was actually the working title for Precinct 9, but I'm not mad, or I'm not mad. Maybe I'll go with Copland instead. I'm sure that's not taken. Anyway, the facility is set to include a shooting range, a driving course for practicing high-speed chases, and a mock city for cops to rehearse raids. And you can probably see why people are mad about that. In addition to destroying a crucial area of urban woodland,

the city's proposal emphasizes things like chases and raids for which police departments are unnecessarily militarizing. Police chases have for a long time been responsible for many unnecessary deaths. According to one study, they kill more Americans every year than floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, and lightning put together. And while you might argue that more training

would prevent those deaths, there's really no way to safely engage in a high-speed chase. High speed is literally two thirds of the phrase. We've known that for a while. Here's a report from 1985 saying that not only is there no safe way to chase a suspect, but most of the people chased aren't even violent offenders.

In 2020, there were 144 Los Angeles police chases over fucking vehicle violations like tinted windows. I would argue, perhaps, don't chase those people. Just record their plates and let them go, you know? And in fact, a lot of police departments would agree with me. So why devote an entire police fun land training park to something they shouldn't be doing?

It has already been a long fight just over this one complex and it's not getting any easier. The cops and local prosecutors are pushing back hard. In January, an environmental activist protest in Cop City, who went by the name Tortugita, was shot 57 times in their tent by police. While law enforcement says the protesters shot first and wounded a Georgia state trooper,

body camera footage at least suggests that incident was the result of friendly fire. And an autopsy revealed that the protesters hands were raised when they were shot. Hey, it sounds like they might've just murdered that person. Sounds like they murdered the person. Nobody, okay. Less than two months later,

23 protesters were arrested in the forest. Cops say they threw rocks and flaming bottles, so prosecutors are charging them with domestic terrorism. Gee whiz, that sounds like bullshit to me. Even the January 6th defendants aren't being charged with domestic terrorism, and they literally terrorized people domestically. Those cop city protester charges have already inspired

one Atlanta prosecutor to step down, suggesting that maybe they are in fact bullshit. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is getting in on the fun too. And by fun, I mean fundamental violation of civil rights by arresting activists who run the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, which provides bail and legal support for detained protesters.

You may recall that bail funds raised millions of dollars in the months after George Floyd was murdered, and the cops do not like that one bit. But I guess that is at least a sign that the anti-cop city movement is doing something right. As they say, you can't make an omelet without being systematically terrorized by the authorities. The early bird catches the massive police corruption.

Pigtown, sorry, Cop City, is also being largely funded by something called the Atlanta Police Foundation, a nonprofit that exists specifically to provide funds to the Atlanta Police Department. These types of groups have become very popular for cops as they're controlled by boards of directors instead of government officials, and as a result, can avoid public oversight.

They've been on the rise for years and are still taking in serious money, often from some of the same corporations that made commitments to racial justice in 2020. I think that might be irony, but hey, thanks for the fucking anti-racist memo, Delta. You really made a difference. These groups stayed under the radar for years,

but are finally starting to be exposed because there definitely shouldn't be private funds that can pay for massive urban warfare playgrounds or be used to give cops $500 bonuses because they're being protested. Like of course there shouldn't be. This all sounds like the opening scroll to a John Carpenter film.

And as you've probably already realized, Cop City is going to be mirrored across the country if police departments get their way. That's why these protests are so important. The militarization of police forces has been traced back to 9-11, and despite the fact that even cops themselves find it questionable,

departments are still increasingly militarizing. Not to mention dabbling in becoming a Black Mirror episode. Can't wait to hear about the first person killed by a fucking robot dog. Super fun stuff. He chuckles sadly to himself. God. It's understandably disheartening. It seems like we're still protesting the same brutality

and racism from the 90s. Plus all these new and exciting ways the police got worse. But there are at least some positive developments from the last three years. A number of cities successfully experimented with sending trained social workers or other crisis response teams instead of police on some calls.

The model for this is a program which has existed in Eugene and Springfield, Oregon since 1989. It's called CAHOOTS, which stands for Counselors Aiding Horny Owl-Owl-Toe Salad, or I just check it for real. Oh, okay. Stands for crisis assistance helping out on the streets. That makes much more sense and is better.

Pretty much everybody we see is for one reason or another in a state of crisis. Manning Walker is a medic and Laurel Lasovskis is a mental health crisis manager. The pair are members of CAHOOTS, crisis assistants helping out on the streets. They answer calls like suicide interventions and overdoses. They're unarmed and most of the time without police backup. Though the program receives funding from the Eugene Police Department, as you can see, CAHOOTS teams are not cops.

And perhaps because of that, they've also been remarkably successful over the past three decades. In 2019, CAHOOTS received 24,000 calls and only requested police backup on 1.3% of those calls. In the history of the program, no responder has ever suffered a serious injury. Since 2020, other cities have started experimenting

with this model, including Denver, which has the STAR program, and Durham, North Carolina, which launched HEART, AKA, Hey Everyone Affords Rational Turducken. Denver's STAR program reduced low-level criminal offenses across the city, resulted in zero arrests in its first six months and cost four times less than a police call to the same event.

That program is now set to expand, possibly because it's been successful. Durham's Holistic Empathetic Assistance Response Team, mine's better, has also been a resounding success, responding to more than 6,000 calls in its first year with 0.01% of calls requiring police backup as of the time we are recording this. That program is also set to expand

and get a budget increase. More US cities are exploring similar programs. So this is a bonafide trend or a turducken. I already used turducken, I used that. Fucking Cody, don't, you're just bad at acronyms actually. Just bad at it. You say you wanna get better at acronyms, but you don't practice.

And so then when you try to do in front of people, you fuck it up, you suck at it. Just know your limits and like work towards goals, but don't, just like, don't push yourself. Just like get better at acronyms, get better at acronyms. Anyway, the only limit to how effective Cahoots style teams can be appears to be funding and staffing.

For example, New York City's Be Heard program is seeing success, though it is struggling to find staff for overnight shifts. And the city has thus far given it less funding than promised. But the trend overall is promising. It's almost as if, stick with me, stick with me on this. It's almost as if very slowly reallocating resources

from armored police to more targeted social needs is something a majority of Americans consistently support and works and is good. It's almost like that. If only there was like a catchy phrase we could use that really boiled down what Americans want in terms of public safety efforts. Reallocate resources of the police? Yeah, we'll get there.

But regardless, perhaps the one thing that has changed the most about policing in America since 2020 is Americans' relationship to it. While it's true that most Americans still have a favorable opinion of their local police and sheriff's departments, confidence in the police as an institution is at a new low. According to an ABC News Washington Post poll,

only 39% of Americans believe cops are adequately trained to avoid excessive force, and only 41% believe cops treat black and white people equally. Both numbers are significantly lower than they were a decade ago, and even lower than they were three years ago. Another poll from Gallup found that half of Americans want major changes to policing in the United States, and only 11% say that no changes are needed. But maybe the most telling poll result they got was from black adults asked about their interactions with police. They found that 25% had an interaction with police in the previous year, down from 42% in June, 2020. And what's low key interesting there is the word interaction

and how a lower interaction with police is seen as a good thing. And that's pretty fucked up when you think about it. The same way cops would rather call in sick than be told not to beat protesters. It's pretty telling that the best we can hope for is simply not interacting with cops, as opposed to a country where interacting with a cop

is safe to do for everyone. Imagine any other job existing like that. Imagine if your mail carrier pissed on your driveway one out of every 10 times, and if you tried to stop them, they'd threaten to burn all your mail. These people that were paying to patrol our cities and towns who we would rather avoid completely

instead of try to reform, because when we do try, they throw a fucking fit, seems pretty unreformable to me. Seems like we should replace them, replace the police. And none of this helps me with my script, which I now remember was the whole point of this whole thing actually. So back to it, I guess.

Oh, I did not remember to hit save. Oh no. Oh, oh, that's 240 pages gone. Oh my. Oh well. Not gonna lie, it was a pretty bad script. I named a lot of characters John. A lot of them.

I tried to challenge myself and not use the letter E at all. And there are E's everywhere. I'm just bad at it. Damn it. Interior. And there are E's everywhere. I'm just bad at it. Damn it. Interior, Cody's sorrow and regret. Hey folks, thanks for watching the video. Make sure to like it with your click button and make sure to subscribe to the channel the video's on

with your click button. We've got a podcast called Even More News. You can listen to it and check it out where the podcasts live. We've got this show called Even More News. You can listen to it and check it out where the podcasts live. We've got this show called Some More News as a podcast, where all the podcasts live. We've got a patreon.com slash some more news where that URL leads you.

And we also have merch at a merch store. Some of the stuff on stuff is obnoxious. Some of it's cute. Some of it's both. Some of it stuff on stuff is obnoxious. Some of it's cute. Some of it's both. Some of it's other stuff. So check all those out online with your click button. And exit. Cody.

That's me.