Tangle - Suspension of the rules. - Isaac, Ari and Kmele chat about law enforcement encounters, Kanye West and then Isaac interviews Elliot Williams about his new book Five Bullets.

Episode Date: January 30, 2026

On todays episode of Suspension of the Rules, Isaac, Ari and Kmele talk about how you should actually handle interactions about law enforcement, a little bit about Kanye West and then a heated grievance section about 5k worth of podcasting gear being stolen from Isaac's office. Isaac then wraps up the episode with a great interview with Elliot Williams, about of his new book Five Bullets, the story of Bernie Goetz and the shooting that tore New York City and the country apart.Ad-free podcasts are here!To listen to this podcast ad-free, and to enjoy our subscriber only premium content, go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was hosted by: Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Jon Lall.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Coming up, we talk about how you should actually handle interactions with law enforcement, some grievances about things being stolen from my office, and a little bit of Kanye West, because why not? It's a good one. Good morning. Good afternoon and good evening. And welcome to the suspension of the rules podcast. It's suspension of the laws in my office. Somebody stole all my shit, and I'm pissed about it. So that is where my day is right now. Hey, well, you're hiding it well. Yeah, I'm here in the technical studio,

and I want the guy who stole $5,000 worth of equipment to know that I'm coming for you and we are going to find you. I am going to go to the end of the earth to discover who did this just because of the pure inconvenience of what my last two hours have been like. There's cameras here. We're going to find you. If you're listening, I want you to know I am going to find you. And I can't wait.

to update the show about what happened. So here I am. Backup camera. Actually, this is my main microphone. So I wish I could say it was my backup. Somebody stole a bunch of stuff from my studio. They unscrewed the mic from the mic stand and just left the mic stand

neatly placed in the corner. Which something about that made me extra mad. Like I wish it was like the place was trash. It was like they like neatly put it in the corner. corner, which just, yeah, that part just really angered me. I can't quite say why. Yeah, that kind of feels like when I was moving when I was in San Francisco from one apartment to another, and we had all of our stuff in the back of our car, and we moved all of these bags in. And it's our last trip in, and we have our hands are just full, and there's one trash bag

in the back trunk that you can see through the trunk because it's a station wagon. And Katie and I look at each other, and we're like, we should probably grab that. And we're like, it's literally trash, though. It's trash. It's okay if somebody steals trash. So we brought the stuff in, we're exhausted. We fell asleep the next morning. Somebody had broken in, like broke, it shattered the back window, opened the trunk, rooted through everything,

and just left it. It was so frustrating. They're like, I want to see if anything's no, not worth my time. We're good. I kind of wish you would have just taken it at this point. Similar to you. San Francisco, man, right? That's what they call it. It's the hellscape, the liberal hellscape of San

San Francisco. You can't leave trash in the back of a That was 2018. It was a bad time for that, too, especially. A lot of petty theft at that time. Yeah. Well, all right. I'm in, like I said, a sufficiently sour mood, so I'm really excited for the show.

No holds bar. We're going to get into it. There's a lot going on. But we have a couple interesting prompts this episode that I'm excited to get into that we've sort of been talking about offline. And I think, you know, there's all this political stuff happening with ICE in Minneapolis, obviously. And we've been talking about some of the imaginations of the Trump administration, where this is going.

It seems like Trump is paying lip service to de-escalation Tom Homan at his press conference this morning where he was very specific. There's going to be a drawdown. Reuters reporting that ICE in Minneapolis is now going to no longer engage, quote-unquote, quote agitators. Some might call them protesters, some might call them radical leftists, whatever. Agitators, I guess, is almost a fairish word, not quite in my view, but agitators, sure. Others are not going to be, other ICE agents will not be targeting people without criminal records anymore. So they're saying they're going to narrow the focus of their operations to people who have convictions or are currently on trial or been accused of crimes.

And then Susan Collins in Maine, Senator Susan Collins said that she's been informed that ICE is going to be pulling back and ending their operations there. So something has shifted clearly. You know, I think positive direction, if you've been listening to the show, obviously I have not been thrilled about what we've been seeing. I guess to just put a little bit of a flag in the ground to start. I'd be curious to hear from the two of you before we get into some of this. a larger conversation about how we should be interacting with people like ICE agents. If you think this drawdown feels organic, legitimate, if you expect it to hold. I think that's kind of the big debate is, is Trump just saying this stuff and they're going

to keep doing what they're doing? Or does this feel like a real shift has happened? And we're actually going to see what's happening on the ground change in a meaningful way. So I wanted to open up with that and kind of get some thoughts. Again, we're recording this Thursday afternoon, so a lot can happen between now and Thursday evening in this administration. But that's kind of where we are right now. I guess can we think of a time that Trump has bluffed in the direction of saying,

no, I'm actually going to consider a poll down here. And one of his lieutenants, in this case, Tom Homan, has said, no, there's going to be fewer troops than what we saw and then reiterated that. Like I said, there will be fewer. And then it's gone the other way. Like normally when we've thought of Trump bluffing, it's been bluffing action and then pullback. So I don't know that there's a precedent for that happening. So I think there's not a lot of reason to disbelieve it.

I don't know about that specific precedent. I would say like in Iran, we had strikes on nuclear facilities and Trump come out and say, we're withdrawing our troops, we're done. Like, we did what we came to do. And then like a few weeks later, now we're back in a position where, We're sending Armadas there, and he's threatening to, you know, new strikes. I think, like, we maybe not as specific we're drawing down, but actually we're ramping back up type bluff. But it does seem like things can oscillate pretty quickly on, you know, the timescale of weeks.

Yeah. That's an interesting counter for two reasons. One is that that was in response to a change of events. So the fact that there are protests and then the regime cracking down in Iran based on protests meant situation change. change, so response changes. So of course, that could happen here too. The other implication there is like we're searching for an analog and we are thinking about an analogy where Trump is sending troops to an area as like to fight an enemy and this is the U.S. city. I know it's an immigration enforcement effort looking for people who work the law or overstayed their visa to deport, but

that sort of militarization analogy is just like a little, a little too on the news for me, but that's a regression. I guess I'd say I would believe that we'd see a drawdown in Minnesota. I mean, this feels very different than a lot of other things that we've seen so far. I think the fact is that it just seems like a situation where the president didn't have his hand on the stick on this particular situation. Kristy Knoem and Corey Lewandowski were over at Homeland running this particular operation exactly the way that they shot it should.

They had their minted. Commander at large on the ground there, you know, doing all the photo ops and his best kind of Hugo boss looking fits. And the circumstance has for a while felt as though it was kind of on the purview of what Trump was paying attention to. And as things got bad worse and worse out there, it seems like he's really locked in now. I think the fact that he sent the commander home, the fact that he had that two-hour meeting with Christyneome, the fact that Christyneome is seemingly doing some messaging behind the scenes. They're telling the folks at Axios that everything I've said, and I've done at the direction of the president.

And Stephen Miller. I think all of that suggests that this is a very real pivot for the administration. And the fact that you've got so much pressure from conservatives here, and when it comes to the Senate in particular, especially at a time when they're trying to avoid any kind of shutdown scares, I think that Republicans are actually applying sufficient pressure here to get some sort of action. But even more than Republicans, Democrats seem to be in the kind of have the whip hand now and are meaningfully, Schumer is involved in some negotiations now, trying to exact some compromises from the administration

to actually obtain some real meaningful reforms here, maybe requiring everyone to wear body cameras, perhaps having them actually do what they said they would do, focus on folks who had actually committed crimes. I think this is a real pivot, and the administration wants to make it. And the president would very much like to have people focus on other things, as opposed to the debacle that these blue state crackdowns, these surges of immigration enforcement officials,

have just not gone nearly the way that I think they hoped it would. Yeah, on top of the reforms you mentioned, I mean, they're saying removing the mass from all agents, which would obviously be a really big deal. And then holding them to the same use of force standards that other state and local law enforcement officers have, which, you know, when I read that, I was like, oh, wow. Democrats are actually, yeah, like, Democrats are actually extracting, like, real meaningful change. And then I paused and was like, how is this not how it is already? what? Like it's so crazy that they've been operating for the last year under different, you know, use of force laws than a typical police officer might when they're trying to do police work in the community. I mean, it really, it is jarring to me that that it takes reform and

threatening to tank a DHS funding bill and all this stuff. But I'm glad they're doing it. I mean, this is a case where, like, I'll be explicitly rooting for Democrats to get. what they want out of these negotiations. Trump seems like he's going to play ball, which I think is really notable and important. So, okay, we had this, you know, this sort of drawdown stuff happening, the conversation from, you know,

the top of the administration with the American public that sort of was like, our bad, we are going to try and fix this. We're trying to make some changes. Tom Homan comes out. He's like being very specific about it. In the midst of all this,

this second video of Alex Preddy comes out, which, you know, everybody's going to have different reactions to. I mean, people on the left, I've seen claiming that it was AI, which it very clearly is not. I thought that was like, oh my God, this is huge cope.

People on the right saying that this justifies, you know, 11 days later, a group of separate agents unloading 10 rounds into the guy's back, which like, no, definitely not. But it does add a little bit of, colored the picture about who this guy was and that he was at least active in the protest community. And in this video, I mean, it was sort of these two things I wrote about this today, these kind of competing things where on the one hand, Pruddy looks bad. He spits at an officer.

He breaks the tail light kicking the car as they're driving away. He seems a little unhinged. Like he's screaming at them. He's being really, really aggressive. He seems out of control of his emotions. On the other hand, the ICE agents look better, or CBP agents, whatever they were. They kind of wrestle them on the ground and this crowd starts forming. And I think they realize, like, this isn't a great situation. And they sort of like back off and let him go. And then you see some agents coming to the frame who are like standing between Preddy and some of the DHS officers and they're kind of talking to them. And they're like, hands are up, like, dude, chill. It just looks like they're trying to de-escalate. And watching it, I'm like,

Yeah, good. This is like, you know, it's not an ideal interaction, but it's a good example of how the DHS officers who killed Freddie could have acted to stop a really bad situation. And instead they did the total opposite. But as this whole, you know, this new video was coming out, the drawback was being talked about. Ari dropped this prompt into our, you know, we have this little document that we work out of for the podcast, a little, I'll pull back the curtain a bit. You know, we all share ideas about what we want to talk about in the show. And obviously, this is a very unscripted show. But we sort of just like flesh out questions we might want to tackle and link to articles we suggest each other read and things we want to do a deep dive on. And I thought Ari introduced a really interesting topic to discuss on today's show. And it seems super relevant, especially now that this other videos come out of Alex Prattie,

which was how we would talk to our kids about. engaging with law enforcement or engaging with, you know, ICE or police or whatever. And it's a simple prompt, but I think it's interesting. And I'm really curious to hear it everybody says about it. I mean, I know I have my own personal answers, but, you know, I've spent a lot of time on the show emphasizing the agency that the law enforcement agents have. they are the guys with the guns. They're supposed to be the trained professionals. I think we should spend a lot more time than we do talking about their actions,

their conduct, their decisions than about like, you know, Renee Good trying to drive away or Alex Pretti not sitting still while he gets pepper sprayed and punched in the ribs. That being said, there is an open question here about like how people should be interacting with law enforcement and what the appropriate approach is. So maybe I'll put it to you first. Camille will start with you and I'm curious here, Ari's thoughts and so now I'll certainly share mine. But yeah, you have kids, obviously. I mean, I don't know if people who listen to this show

know that or not, but Camille has two children. Like, they're going to grow into teenagers and adults. I mean, how are you going to talk to them about this question? Like, what happens when you get pulled over? What happens when you're at a party and law enforcement crash it? You know, what happens if you're in a town like Minneapolis and an ICE agent pulls you over, tries to arrest or detain you for something. How do you think you'll navigate that situation? I think it's a great question to think about it. It reminds me of times in fairly recent years

when folks have talked openly about the talk that a lot of people imagine one has to have with their kids. And I'll say growing up, I don't know that my parents ever had a talk with me. I think in general, the expectation was always that you will have a certain amount of situational awareness and that you will kind of carry yourself in a respectable way and that you'll give respect to people who are given respect to you. I don't know that my feelings about things have changed much

and even watching this situation with the stepped-up ice enforcement and all the tensions that it's created in various local communities. Being outside of one of those areas now, I think if I were giving advice to my, say, 16-year-old son and 18-year-old daughter, I think the advice would probably be a lot like what I got growing up. Maybe I would go a bit further and talk specifically about what to do when you're in a situation

where you feel there's a kind of hostility coming from the law enforcement officer that you're dealing with because that, as you pointed out, Isaac, is a kind of uniquely difficult challenge to navigate as a civilian. I mean, they do have all of the power in that circumstance. They could, to the extent things aren't being recorded, represent things in one way versus how you represent them, and I could have real meaningful consequences for you. So, you know, in general, being thoughtful, being aware of one's

rights all seem like really good pieces of advice. And I think to the extent we're focusing on that, kids ought to be able to exit most situations just fine. I think it's still the case that most law enforcement interactions, even if they are high stress, like tend to end with everyone going home safely, and we should probably keep that in mind. But when things go badly, there are often certain things that happen that are pretty normal. And the things that civilians do, that kind of create tension for themselves, are permitting themselves to get hysterical in circumstances where they're dealing with an officer who's perhaps a little bit more intimidating. Doing your best to document things, as opposed to try to argue and have a fight right there on the corner of the street

to imagine that your car can be the courtroom, it's probably to your disadvantage. So I think that's the advice I'd give. I'd be shocked if it was dramatically different from what you guys might say. Well, I'm curious, have you ever had a situation where you felt like you were engaging a member of law enforcement

who was not giving you that respect? Is this, have I talked to you about this before? No. Because it feels like you're asking in a way where you have expectations. You haven't. That's not a weird question. I think Isaac and I might.

both have experiences in that way. I'm going to talk about mine. I definitely do. The answer is yes. The answer is yes. I can remember once getting pulled over in Manhattan fairly late at night. And I don't know what happened exactly.

It was probably some sort of minor traffic infraction, the sort of thing that happens in Manhattan all the time. And the officer came and asked me a question. And I think I answered it. He asked me, where are you going? And I said, I'm not sure that's any of your business. I wasn't in a great mood. And at some point he just says, he opens my car door.

And he says, let's step out of the car. And I looked at him. And I just, I looked him straight in the eye from my seat, didn't move. And I said, you are going to try that with me. And he closed the door promptly and then went back to his car for a moment and then came back and told me to have a nice day. And that is perhaps the most kind of intense situation. There's one other story that involved guns, but that is a different circumstance. and that was totally my fault, and it was just a complete misunderstanding.

I'd like to hear that story. That's very peeking. Yeah. Who's guns? Who misunderstood. Do you really want me to tell that story? Yeah, of course. Well, this is a very long time ago.

Me and my now wife were driving on a major, major thoroughfare in our neighborhood or community. and a police officer came up behind me and had their lights on. And I'm maybe 17 years old and I just did not stop right away. I kept rolling. And I kept rolling for a while until I found somewhere that seemed convenient to turn into. And at that point, you know, the officers, like, they'd gotten on the loudspeaker, I think. It's like, pull over now, that sort of thing. And I'm like, well, you know, I will as soon as I find a convenient place to do it.

I just, I hadn't thought about it. And by the time I stop at the gas station, I see both officers get out of their cars from their, from their respective sides. And another cruiser starts to pull up. And they've got like their hands on firearms. And I think one maybe even had it out of the holster. And they were coming around the sides of the car. And I just said to Tracy, who has been my girlfriend, don't move.

Like stay perfectly still. Something is going on here. And he comes up to the car, wind the window down. I said, hi, what's going on? And he said, why didn't he? she stopped? And I explained, and he said, oh, and apparently it was just because I didn't have a light on or something like that was the reason for the stop, which they would have told me promptly had I just stopped. But they didn't even ask for ID in that instance. They didn't search the car or anything.

It was just, dude, if we start to pull you over, you see the lights pull over right away. I was like, yeah, I'll do that next time. Thank you. And that was, that was it. I don't know. Because the guidance that I've received, that I remember, very clearly in both driving training and from talking with my father, who is a military policeman, was that the law is that when you are told to pull over, you pull over as soon as it is safe to do so. That's like the cop is behind you and you're like safe and convenient or different things. This is, yeah, that's the thing. There was a shoulder. I could have pulled into the shoulder. I drove like until there was a gas

station I could enter and I entered it into the gas station. I went, I went to pull over one because I need to get more gas. So you guys. So you guys can make sense. I don't know what they want. I mean, it was one of those situations where I know I didn't do anything wrong. So to the extent you're stopping me, I guess I'll just kind of take some liberties. But it is very hard to imagine what my 17-year-old self was thinking at the time. But at least I didn't bark at the officers in that instance.

Because that probably could have made things worse for me. I think the fact that I could have was embarrassed more than anything else. I guess, how does your you're going to try. this with me. That doesn't seem to fit into like the... That's not the advice I received. Yeah, not the advice you received or the advice you would give. Well, I didn't have a bunch of cameras stolen from me that day, but for some reason I was

not in a great mood. And I think I was probably more shocked than anything else that the officer decided he would just open my car door, just felt wrong. Granted, I know now that he can totally do that sort of thing and he can ask me to get out of the car. And when someone asks, you're supposed to get out. You can exit that car right then because they have the authority to rip you out if you don't exit. But probably lock your car door as you're getting out. Just lock it, close it behind you, get out, and have your conversation with the officer. All right. Ari, how are you going to talk about this issue with your children,

do you think? So the advice that I remember receiving that I've practiced, that's practical every time. And predominantly most people's interactions with the police are usually through traffic stops or in cars. Like that's most people's stories are that's their interactions. Then the advice that I gave or received and would give is make sure they can see your hands and don't move suddenly. Like that's the most important thing. And when you imagine, so every time you pull over, you pull over, you put your hands on the wheel and you just sit still. And you do that until they see you and then you can start moving. But the way that it was put to me was just imagine you're this police officer.

So you have a version of this conversation dozens of times a day. And when you have what feels like the same conversation again and again, and you come up to somebody and you're like, show me your hands. I just want to see your hands. It gets frustrating when you pull up and somebody's hands are in their pockets or they're sitting on their hands and you're like already defensive because you're like, how many times do I have to give this command? and I'm afraid for my safety

because I don't know who you are. So you can immediately just set the tone very well by knowing what kind of thing most officers want from that interaction, which is just like predictability, safety, and calmness. And you provide that, it helps set a good tone. That said, I haven't always modeled that behavior as a younger man myself.

I'm sure that we've all had. Our stories, Camille, has a couple. I think the ones that I would share of like this is something that I do differently. We're both with CPD. I went to school in Chicago. I had a couple interactions with the University of Chicago Police, which is the answer to the trivia question,

what is the largest private police force of the world, is the University of Chicago police, which is weird. But they were very easy to get along with their purview. It was just like, don't let the students get hurt. And the students, they were very meek for the most part. So it was easy. I just got rides to and from class when I injured my knee. But CPD, Chicago Police Department, different story entirely.

One interaction that I remember being somewhat confrontational with because I was right and I knew it was I was waiting at the train station downtown to go to the north part of Illinois, like just near the border of Illinois and Wisconsin, because I was farming that summer. And I was wearing my farming clothing, which is like dirty and doesn't live. look good. And I'd woken up early to go to the train station. So I was, I looked ragged. I had longer hair at the time. I had any hair at the time. And I looked disheveled and I was like taking a nap in a corner of the police station, or police station, corner of the train station with my phone alarm on. And cops came by and they're like, all right, bud, time to go. Let's go. Get out of here. I'm like, all right, I'll go wait for the train. They're like, no, you're out of the station. We don't want any vagrants here. And I was like, I'm, okay, I'm getting a train. So I'm going to stay.

I'm going to go catch my train. And they're like, you are not getting a train. Let me see your driver's license. I was like, right away, I was like, I don't have to, what if I don't have a driver's license? So I wanted to be. I was like, I don't think you need to ask me that. But I was like, okay, sure. So I showed him my ID.

And he's like, this is a Pennsylvania license. Do you have an Illinois license? And I remember that very clearly that he said Illinois. So I corrected him because I'm a smart ass. It's like, an Illinois license. I'm out of state. So I don't think I need to have that. And he's like, well, this, I don't believe that this.

This is real. I'm like, okay. Here's my train ticket. He's like, okay, well, go directly to the gate and you stay there and you wait and you don't move. And I was like, sure. And then I walked to the gate and immediately I walked away and then they got very pissed in me. I think like it is tough when you're a younger person who like knows their right to want to take orders

from somebody who is bossing you around. But it was very easy to de-escalate. And knowing that police officers, you know, they have stressful jobs and they interact with people who they can't predict all the time, you just like, just nod and be calm. And you say, okay, here's the answer. And then if they tell you something, you just say, okay, and then you do it. And even if you don't want to or even if you think it's illegal, you know, or sorry, not illegal, even if you think that you don't need legally to comply, if it's going to take like 20 seconds for your convenience, I don't know. I think it's probably worth it. There have been times when I've wanted to. you know, prove it, pick a fight, and say you don't need to ask me that. But over time, finding that, like, just a little bit of cooperation, even though you don't have to, if you have nothing, you know, that you need to defend yourself against, you don't have to. Pick a fight.

You can just be calm. You're always... You're always... You're always... ...it's like... I always think of those guys, like, YouTube and Twitter videos of the guys who are like, I'm a sovereign citizen. I don't need that.

You're like, oh, my God. Like, wait. And I never, I'm like, I don't want to be a degree of separation from those guys, but also a little bit like, you know, I don't want to put my window all the way down. Sometimes. They're right. Maybe I don't want to let you in the house. Yeah.

It's sort of, there is this weird line that you kind of have to walk. But I'm pretty sure you do have to let the window down. You just kind of do. There's a legitimate officer safety concern there. But you don't have to let them search your car if they don't have a warrant. Exactly. That's Fourth Amendment protection. Don't do that.

I, yeah. I mean, I think my advice to my son would be do exactly what you're told. And if you feel like unsafe, then record. Or like if you get pulled over and you don't feel like you're in an area where there's people around or witnesses and you don't love the vibe or you don't know why you got pulled over, like it doesn't hurt. like doesn't hurt to just like turn your phone camera on and press record and even have that audio or have that video. But I think Camille, what you said is like you're never going to win in the courtroom of this car, which I think is a really good attitude. And to the degree that you can be, I mean, you know, I have my, I'll knock on wood, but I've never gotten a speeding ticket. I've been pulled over a couple times for speeding, but I found that.

you know, like just a little bit of honest apology being nice, whatever, and maybe I've just gotten lucky can get you out of it. My brother does this thing where I was in the car with him once and he got pulled over for speeding and he turned the car off and then he put his keys on the hood of the car. And I was like, what are you doing? He's like, I don't know, it's just something somebody taught me that's like it's like a sign to the stateies that like you're not bailing and whatever. And then the cop came over and was like super duper nice to us.

And he was going like 20 miles power over the speed limit and just let us go with the warning. And I was like, did that work? The keys thing? Is that that I was that you there? So I don't know where he picked that up from, but I thought it was interesting. I, you know, I have plenty of interactions with police. I'm not ashamed to say. You know, I was a rough, rowdy boy in my teens and 20s.

So I occasionally got into some trouble. I think like the, I would have. Two, like, stories or insights that I've shared. One was, one time when I was in New York, I was, like, 24 and I, I got to the train, and I was trying to get my metro card to work. And there was a train, like, in the station, and it wasn't working. And I was just, like, whatever. And I jumped the turn style and then got on the train.

And I got on. And then there was this dude, like, standing across to me on the train just, like, grilling me. And we were for, like, the whole stop. And I was just like, you know, would look away and look back and he was still kind of looking at me. And then I'm like just staring back at him. Like, I'm going to find, I'll just make eye contact with him.

And then he like holds eye contact for 30 seconds. And I'm like, what is going on, dude? Like, look, getting kind of like, you know, my blood's getting a little hot. And then we pull into the, as we're like pulling into the next train station, he just like pulls a badge out from underneath his shirt and like motions for me to get off the train. And he was just some undercover NYPD guy. And I did.

I mean, I'd be lying. I had this, like, fleeting thought of just like, I could totally get away if I wanted to right now. Like, I am, you know, is it worth like the $150 ticket to bail? And, like, he was kind of short and looked overweight. And I'm like, 24 and young and fit. I'm just like, I could definitely get out of this. But obviously, I didn't because I'm not an idiot. And it was a fleeting thought.

And it's like, what are you going to run from like a, you know? And that ended up being like a $90 ticket or something for jumping the term. And so I wish sucked and I was late for work and that sucks. But it was like, I did it. So I wasn't going to lie about it. I ate it. But it's like you have this moment. And I was like just young enough, you know, like cerebral cortex in its last year of evolving and, you know, finishing its growth.

Where I was like, I couldn't, if I was in a different mood or maybe it had a couple of drinks or, you know, who knows? Like I slide off the subway station, like off the subway car right past him and just like jump the table. turn style and get out and hit the street and I'm gone. That thought could have easily occurred to me. I'm very glad it didn't. And the other thing is like I've had a lot of interactions with Border Patrol actually relevant to this conversation because I have this property in West Texas and the property that I own is so far south that we are in between the port of entry and a Border Patrol stop. So if you were to leave my house down there and try and go to the high. The high, highway in any direction, eventually you're going to run in to a border patrol stop where they'll

ask you, you know, where you're going. If everybody in the car is a U.S. citizen, they'll run the dogs in the car. If everybody in the car is an American citizen, that sort of thing. And I've had a couple weird interactions there where like I was always told, the advice I always got about Border Patrol was don't say more than you have to. If they ask you a question, answer the question, but don't go go. beyond that. So if they're like, where are you going? You say, I'm going to El Paso, not, I'm going to El Paso because I have a one o'clock flight. I got a catch back to Philadelphia or whatever. It just like invites more questions and more scrutiny. And they are really fundamentally

different than local police. Like they're looking for something. They're looking for indications of something. And I had one experience, I had one really, really bad experience with Border Patrol at this border stop near my house where they're going to be. I was with two friends and my now wife also, actually. So a similar story that you had, Camille. And they said that it seemed like somebody in the car, one of my buddies who's with us was stoned, which was really funny because we all make fun of him

for looking like he's high all the time, even though he's not. And so we were like, yeah, like he just kind of looks like that. But it's cool. But they were like, you know, then they're kind of just like, you know, you guys, if one of you guys, like, smoked weed earlier or something, you can just tell us. Like, don't. We're like, no. Nobody smoked.

All right. Well, it's just like, it's not a big deal. Like, the dog sign, you know, signaled on the car. So, like, if you guys have weed in your bag or something, like, better just like let us know now up front. We're just like, no. Like, nobody's, we're like, we do this trip all the time. We're not going to, like, bring drugs through the border patrol stop. We're not idiots, you know?

And, yeah, they ended up. searching the entire car, they emptied the whole car, they like, you know, take off certain panels, they open the glove box, they pull everything out, they open all our bags, you know, put all our shit on the ground. And then 45 minutes after they spend searching the car, they don't find anything. They're like, all right, you guys can go.

And we're like, are you going to like pack this stuff back up? And they're like, no. Yeah. Just like, pack your shit up and get out of here. And we're like, what? So we were like super late. for this flight, ended up having a rush, and it was like this whole thing. And it was just like, that sucks, you know? And it was like, it gave me this really negative impression. And I've heard

stories about other friends of mine who like, they've unscrewed the door panels on the cars and like remove tires and done stuff where they're like convinced that somebody's smuggling drugs in or something like that. And then they get done and they're just like hand you the screwdriver and like, all right, you can go. And you're just stuck with what they've done. And you're just stuck with what they've done. So, you know, in that situation, too, I just did what I was told and, like, my blood boiled a little bit, but I let it go. And now I can tell the story and be angry about it. But, yeah, I do think, generally speaking, it's just like, record if you feel uncomfortable, do what you're asked to do and probably don't do some of the things that you guys talked about. be a smart ass. I am, despite my maybe just as extreme or even more extreme

feelings about like wanting the state out of my business, I think I've always just deferred to like, I want this situation to go as well as possible. So I'm going to put on a smile and do what's being asked of me. And if like I'm offended, I won't say anything about it.

I actually, I got an underage when I was 16. This is another good story. right now to think about it. And the cop looked at my license and read it. And my middle name is Mozier, which is kind of an odd middle name. And he said, Isaac, Mosier's soul. Damn, son, you must be one hell of a Jew. And I was like, yeah, I guess.

And I told my mom and she was so pissed. She, like, reported it to the community board and tried to get the guy in trouble, which didn't work. But, like, you know, you have stuff like that. Sometimes it happens where, like, I could have made a big. fuss and got all agro and whatever, but it's just like, what's the end game, I guess, is the question. So none of this is the discount civil disobedience in the name of getting, you know, armed, masked, anonymous agents off the streets.

I understand that is like a different ballgame, but it does seem relevant to some of these conversations that like there's a common sense through line here of just typically if you do what you're asked to do, you show your hands, you don't make any sudden movements, and you don't, you know, get all testy and agro, the odds of you getting into a bad confrontation obviously go down a lot. And sometimes it doesn't matter what you do. There are bad eggs out there, of course. Sure. Sure. Yeah, in my experience, I've only ever invited trouble by kind of, you know, pressing buttons I knew I was pressing, I guess. I don't know if you guys feel like that's a fair assessment, but it's certainly how I feel.

It's the case that there's assholes in any line of work. I think I harbor this opinion that I don't think is too radical, but I think maybe it's a little confrontational that a lot of people in my hometown where I'm from, not from a big town, just like a suburb of Pittsburgh, that like the guys who weren't in the smarty classes and weren't on the football team and felt like they had something to prove, a lot of them came up turned out to be local cops. I know that that's like a bit of a stereotype,

but I think you have a pretty good chance of running into a person who has something to prove and has a bit of a complex for wanting to prove it when that person's in uniform. Not saying that's everybody. And of course, a lot of my interactions with police have been civil and good and respectful,

and I think you can control that to a degree or have an effect on it as a person interacting with the police. But I think, you know, it can also go better if you come into those situations expecting that you might have one of those assholes on the other end. That happens. There are people like that in the force. I think we know that. And if you're just like, maybe this is one of those guys and you come and try to calm yourself, you try to be like super compliant. And they say something like that to you.

I had a Chicago Police Department officer tell me to my face that I was lucky I'm not black. And I had a hard time not reacting to. that. What is that thing? Are you asking, are you asking what is black name? Both questions, actually. I don't even know what that's supposed to imply.

The implication was, as I was sitting on the curb with my hands cuffed and the person I was with, like, same thing. Coughed behind our backs for like they, because we were trespassing in an abandoned church, which was fun to do at the time. And that abandoned church was asking for it. But that was, like, we're sitting there on the curb and they're like grilling us, telling us that we'd been drinking us. and we hadn't, even though we were both 21.

And they then, because they were annoyed that they didn't have, like, a thing to catch us on, told us that we were lucky we weren't black. The implication being that they were going to take us in otherwise. They're like, that obviously would have been enough. Dude, that sucks. I don't even know what that. I don't even know how that works. I don't know what that means.

Like, why bringing random kids who were trespassing in changes because of their complexion? Now you're motivated. What I love is that both of you, it seems like, have had more serious interactions with law enforcement than me. I've never been cuffed. I've never been in the back of a cruiser. I've been pulled over. I've certainly gotten my share of speeding tickets, although I don't think I'm an above-average speeder. And most of the time, I haven't always followed the advice that I'm giving and that I'm saying that in general people ought to follow because, no, Isaac, I'm definitely the one who is.

most reactive to the prospect of the state telling me to do anything. And even listening to your stories, like my blood starts to boil a bit. And I'm thinking to myself, like coaching myself as we have this conversation, you know, you really need to take this advice. Like, just focus on the kid, take the phone out of your pocket. Start recording. Just be cool. It is better not to have this go, you know, nuclear. But sometimes it's hard. The temptation in those circumstances is very, very real. given my political priors. Yeah, I think there's something about, like, if you feel like you've not committed a real crime.

Oh, it's so empowering to feel more like a dick, isn't it? Like, you're like, no, I know I'm right. I think there's actually, there's this behavior. I'm sure this is coached that I've actually started to take from police, which is like the way that they say, okay. I don't know if you guys have noticed it, like the cop, okay, where they're like, okay. They ask you something and you're like, okay.

And you say, do you know, like, where you were speeding? We clocked you going 75 and a 60 and you're like, well, I looked and I thought I was going 67. Okay. Well, we said this. Like that canons of saying okay, I'm like, this is pretty effective. I'm like, I'm going to start doing that. Oh, that's good. Yeah, that is, that is good.

I think you should just do it right when they tell you with the current, like, so you just walked out of the store without paying for it. Okay. Okay. Keep doing it back to each other. Yeah. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, well, we've got a few minutes left. As you guys know, I'm excited to be sitting down with Elliot Williams from CNN to talk about his new book.

Speaking of interactions with police and racial stuff and whatever, he wrote this awesome book about the Bernard Getts shooting in New York City that I wrote. read and I got a hot to talk to him in a bit. And that'll be on our podcast feed, so keep an eye out for it. But we do have a few minutes left. And I did want to talk a little bit about this Kanye West stuff, which we're going to be writing about tomorrow. I'm going to be writing about. Mostly because my good friend Camille Foster, I think, has some opinions and views here

that I wanted to at least air and dissect a little bit. But for those of you who don't know, the artist's formal. known as Kanye West. Yay. He has come out with an apology to the Jewish community that he published in the Wall Street Journal, which I did think was funny. I will have to admit, it's like somebody in Kanye's team was like, all the Jews read the Wall Street Journal.

So, you know. No. No. That's definitely not what happened. Maybe. I loved, I really truly love the apology. It has been received very negatively, I would say, on the whole. I mean, I have yet to see anybody respond to it in like a wholehearted, positive way.

I will be doing that in Tangle, probably by the time you guys have listened to this episode. I'm going to bat for Kanye because I like the apology. And I didn't just like the apology, but I like the fact that he's been apologizing for months, actually. and I think we need to accept it and welcome them back to the real world because that's a good thing to do. And I'm going to make that case soon. But I shared this piece with Camille,

a draft of the piece that I was writing for tomorrow. And he sort of had a little bit of pushback about whether even actually Kanye West needed to apologize in the first place, which was even a hotter take than the one that I was cooking up in the kitchen. Well, you put it that way. Well, I wouldn't say that's the thrust of your point, but I think there is a, there is a,

I mean, I think you made an interesting argument to me, which was like if we're accepting what Kanye said, which for those of you who didn't see the apology, this is good context, is that he did attribute much of his actions, if not all of them, to being bipolar and to being in a manic episode and just said that he basically lost touch with reality and he knows he did a lot of damage. and he wants to take accountability for that

and apologize for it, which I think if you're accepting his version of events that he was sick and that a lot of this happened because of his illness, maybe there is a different implication there. So I'm going to be writing about this and on the podcast talking about it, but Camille, I mean, maybe I'll pass it to you

for an articulation of how you're thinking about this. And I'll preface all this by saying Camille is not a neutral observer here. He's a die-hard Kanye West fan. So everything he says is completely polluted by that perspective. Yeah. Don't listen to a word of it. He still wears his shoes.

He never actually canceled him. I would like, you know, sometimes I'd walk into Camille's studio and he's just hail hitlering in the corner. That has never happened. I'm like, whoa, dude. And I think it's Hile Hitler to be. Yeah, Heil Hitlering. Not hail. Yeah.

Interesting. You would know. All right. So is a particular about that. Oh, my gosh. Well, I mean, and I'll go even further. You see this thing? over my shoulder here.

Jeez, put your hand down, Camille. No. The poster on the wall, this abstract, those are all of the albums, like up through... Well, you can't see Donda there. All of Yie's albums. Yeah, all of Ye's albums. Up to Donda.

You're a diehard, man. It doesn't include the other thing. I am. I've even got a Kanye Bobblehead, but we don't need to talk about that. That's not the point. What I'm thinking... What I'm thinking about in the context of this apology isn't so much, like, whether or not Kanye did something wrong. I mean, he did.

It's just the strangeness of a dynamic where everyone broadly recognizes that Kanye West was having some sort of severe mental health issues. And we've known this for a very long time. And I was particularly struck by it because I had a conversation with Nico Bellisteros, I believe is his last name, who's a filmmaker who made in whose name this really, I think, phenomenal documentary. At least if you're a Kanye fan, you'll appreciate this documentary that I didn't want to watch

and that eventually did watch. And what I really came away from the documentary thinking was, like, I've just watched a sequence of footage taken of Kanye West over the course of five years and the clearest things that I understand are he was on a severe mental decline and was losing control. He was destroying his family.

His circle was polluted with people who were either yes men or hangers-on of various kinds, but weren't really in a position to kind of get him help, despite the fact that Kim really, really tried. And there's something strange about us recognizing that someone is neurodivergent or is severely ill, and then kind of having this expectation that there will be kind of a moment where they realized that all the bad things that they were doing as a downstream of this illness

were happening. And if by chance they managed to get better and they apologize, my instinct is to just hope that this is sincere, that they really are better and to try to move along and to be helpful to them in some way, shape, or form. But I think with celebrities in particular, perhaps,

there's a tendency to insist, well, no, no, there's more that you need to do here. Like, that's insufficient. That even when we accept that the mental health issues had something to do with their behavior, there's almost a, we're kind of waiting at the foot of their bed, hands on hips. Like, well, isn't there something you'd like to say for all the things that you did when you were not fully in control of your faculties, when you were not fully yourself? I don't know that the apology is inappropriate. I suppose I'm perhaps doing my not so much best Tom Wolfe impression

because I think I can get better. I'm just kind of, I'm interested in the strangeness of the circumstance that if someone were physically unwell and couldn't run a marathon as a result, we wouldn't hold that against them. But when someone has a pretty severe mental impairment that makes them act in socially unacceptable ways, there isn't really a lot of grace on offer in those circumstances. Instead, there's a sense that we can kind of hold them accountable in the way that we would anyone else.

And I just, I wonder about that. I mean, isn't it something that proves that that's what happens when somebody says, okay, yes, I acknowledge that these were things that were hurtful and they were downstream of these mental health episodes. But that's really kind of just an a theory or perspective until you get that statement. So the difference between a mental health episode and a physical health episode is that nobody broke their leg and then screed it about the Jews because of it. So you don't have to apologize for behaviors that are downstream of that. I mean, it's nice when you break your leg and then people help you and you say,

and you express gratitude for that. And no one expects it, but it's nice to. But that's gratitude. That's kind of the other side of the coin to apology. And I think that it's probably, you know, I'm not going to say it's required. I don't think it's required to apologize. Phoebe Bridgers, who's an artist who's very different than Kanye West, said something in an interview, which I loved, which was forgiveness is overrated,

apology is underrated. Like, we seem to think it's about us, like when we receive apology. And this is a lot of what you're saying, that we, want to feel better and somebody apologizes. You know, like, I still don't feel better. That's your fault, too. You need to make this happen. And like, this isn't about you. This is about them. And if that person is making an apology,

it's saying they're owning that. And that's what happened. I mean, I think we both agree that or all three seem to be saying that should be sufficient here in the situation, regardless of whether, like, we can ask questions about the sincerity. But I think that if you don't have that moment,

if you don't have that step, you don't really know if some, if that's true or not, if somebody's like, okay, this was a manic health episode versus I said those things, I was angry, but also I do have questions about the Jews. Like, you don't really know if that's happening until you get the statement. So I do think it's important that it was made. Yeah. I'm, you know, I, I really personally, I think even if he wasn't, you know, claiming this mental illness or citing this mental illness as part of it, I'm very inclined to forgive and try and welcome back someone like him who has the kind of

influence he has, who I think is in a sincere way sort of coming forward and, you know, repenting, quote unquote. But yeah, I mean, it did kind of stop me in my tracks when you like poked at this, Camille, because I didn't really know. yeah, I didn't really know where to draw the line, you know? Like, I've had these, I mean, we've talked a little bit about this off off camera, I think, but I've had these sort of like personal relationships that have been impacted by people with mental illness and you're like,

yeah, right, I know that. And it's like, where do you, yeah, where do you draw that line where you're like, this isn't the person that I know who I'm talking to? And so I accept what they're doing now because, but then it's like, it is them. I'm looking right at them and they're speaking at me, you know. And it's a really hard line to draw and to like sort of extrapolate that to this weird parasocial relationship we have with these celebrities. I think it gets even more complicated because, yeah, there's this added element where we like

expect them to be subservient to us in some weird way that I don't totally understand. It's like, yeah. it's like almost like they're treated subhuman because they're famous and well-known, which is like an odd, like wrinkle to the whole equation, I guess. I think the expense of fame is something that is profoundly underappreciated. It can be deranging. It can be isolating. I think a lot of Kanye's mental health issues were almost certainly exacerbated or have been

and perhaps will continue to be exacerbated by the fact that he was. so prominent. And I suspect most of my discomfort with this isn't so much about the fact that he apologized because feeling some sense of shame, even about things that you did and didn't really realize you were doing, that makes some sense to me. And finding a way to live with that makes some sense to me. But I think it's that I saw the same thing you did, Isaac, that a lot of people like, eh, he just wants to make money. He just wants to, you know, it wants us to forget about what he did. And I can't help but think that when people are in the throes of these kind of paranoid manic disorders, even when someone truly believes, so has a bigoted worldview,

there's something, it's uniquely harmful to them, even more than it might be to almost anyone else that they are kind of directing their feelings at. This is really, really bad for them. And in Kanye's case, we saw in very real time just how expensive this indulgence was for him. And I hope he's okay. And for me, it's not a matter of, and a forgiveness or not forgiveness,

and I don't exempt myself from being able to offer forgiveness on account of not being a member of the slighted community because I don't play those games. But I just hope he's okay. And if it turns out that he has some sort of relapse and perhaps isn't as okay, I hope he gets okay eventually. because that's what's important to me.

And I'm kind of heartbroken for him as a guy. And I suppose for myself as a fan on some level. But I hope I would extend the same grace to just about anyone who was in crisis and kind of suffering as a result of it. Well, I think that's about as good of a place to end as any. We're going to have to do a speed round of our grievances because I've got to get out of here. So, John, you can hit the music.

The airing of grievances. Between you and me, I think your country is placing a lot of importance on shoe removal. Gentlemen, I mean, my grievance is very obvious. Someone stole one of my shit. I will say really quickly, good Border Patrol story, because I didn't do this. We just talked trash about law enforcement. So I'll reverse my grievance to say, my last time I went through that Border Patrol stop, my baby was sleeping in the back, and I really needed him to be.

taking a good nap. And I rolled in the Border Patrol stop and I rolled down the window and he said, are you a U.S. a citizen? And I said, yeah. He said, who else in the car? I said, I got a sleeping baby in the back. And he was like, oh, okay, go ahead.

And just like, let me through. So that was really nice. And I guess also if you want to smuggle somebody into the United States, that's a good way. Sleep a baby. Yeah. All right. 30 seconds each. Let's see what we can do.

Damn. Okay. I had one that was over 30 seconds. Take a time. I'm going to just replay a different one then, which has a little bit of an episodic feel in my life, which is this ticket that I got in New York four months ago, sort of on theme here.

I talked about this. I'm pretty sure about how I got this ticket for going 80 to 65, even though I was going like 68 behind another car that was going the same speed as me. I just got passed by this vehicle that was speeding, and the cop pulled the wrong person over. Like quite clearly, that's what happened. and the, like, he pulled me over, and then he's like, he asked for my license and registration,

and I was about to, like, when he says, this is the reason I pull you over, I was going to respond, but he just then left, and then he came back with the ticket, and it's like, this is what I got. I'm like, well, hold on, because this happened. And then he said, have a nice day, and then left, and I kept the ticket. So I have to, I've been having this exchange of conversations through email, through phone, and through mail with this town. court in New York, which is a state I do not live in and cannot appear in court very easily. And we're trying to come up with a negotiation to not have me get a four-point speeding

taken on my license for something that I didn't do. And that's kind of tough. So that is an ongoing legal discussion that I'm having with this jurisdiction. And it's annoying. Right now, we're at compromise me and this lawyer over email where he's offering a two-point reduction. So it's a two-point moving violation. And I don't feel like I need to accept that. So I'm like, no, let's keep talking. And he hasn't responded yet. And it's been days. So I'm aggrieved about that. Well, Godspeed. That's a good one. Can you all? Under 30 seconds. I'm grieved that someone stole all of the gear out of the Philly office as well, mostly because I wanted to complain about the fact that my tripod broke as I was trying to get

set up here. And I've got a whole janky set up in my California location. And I wanted to complain about that. But now that feels, it pales in comparison. Trivial. To all of your gear being stolen. And I don't like being one-uped that way. Complaining that you can't complain more. I love it. I just realized that like half the Tangle team is going to be here, including John next week. And we were supposed to work in our studio and set up all these different camera angles, which I now can't do because my camera's been stolen. So I'm even more pissed now than it was before. All right. Well, I've got to get out of here.

Elliot Williams is going to be in the feed. Keep an eye out for that. I'm going to go do my interview with him right now. Gentlemen, it was good seeing you and we'll catch you guys soon. We'll be right back after this quick break. To wrap up today's episode of suspension of the rules, I am thrilled to bring to the show Elliot Williams. Elliot is the author of a new book called Five Bullets about Bernard Gets and the shooting that tore New York City and the country apart. It's a fantastic book. I'm really thrilled to have them here. Elliot, welcome. to the show. Are you doing, Isaac? Great to talk to you. I'm doing well, man. So, listen, I, first of all, I love the book. I'm so glad that we set this up. I think I realized there is like

this major cultural, political flashpoint event that I knew nothing about. I mean, I knew, like I thought I knew, but I think your book made me realize, like, unless you live through the time period, you really couldn't get your hands around what happened. I mean, I was born in 1991. I lived in New York for 10 years, but I only ever knew this story through old newspaper clippings and it being referenced through today's political lens. And yeah, it was fascinating. It was fun to be transported to, you know, 1970s, 1980s, New York and to relive some of that through your eyes and the eyes of all these people who are alive still who witnessed it. So I guess to maybe start, I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about why you decided to write this book. I mean,

how did you come across this topic and pick this as something to go deep on? But sorry, sorry I'm having a hard time thinking clearly right now, Isaac, because I think I heard you say that you were born in 1990. What? Dude, I have garments that are older than you are. I'm sorry to break it to me. Oh, God, God, God. But, okay, I'll let it pass. So, okay, so real quick, how the, here's what we know about the sort of how it all played out. And December 22nd, 1984, Bernard gets shoots and seriously wounds for black teenagers in the New York City subway, unarmed teenagers, 18 and 19 year olds. He claims they tried to mug him.

They claim that all they did was simply ask him for $5. Needless to say, he has. an unlicensed firearm in his pocket or in a holster, pulls it out, shoots all four of them, one of them possibly twice after telling him, you don't look so bad, here's another, and shoots him again. He then ran up to New Hampshire and ultimately turned himself in nine days later. But it became a bit of a cause-seleb and really polarizing case all across the country, sort of what it takes to keep people safe in cities. and, you know, are vigilantes welcome?

Now, just why I came to you and really wanted to talk to Tangle and the audience at Tangle, this is exactly the kind of story that is ripe for the kinds of folks who seek out Tangle because there's just a lot of different angles to it. It was very polarizing, and the case was kind of a roar shock test at the time. Was this sort of racist vigilante violence or just self-default? fence and people have been debating that about this case since, literally since it happened. Yeah, it's so funny. I mean, I was, it's impossible, first of all, it's impossible to ignore

the similarities to the Daniel Penny stuff, which I know, you know, you talk about in the introduction of the book and it sort of comes up, but it is, it is exactly the kind of story that we would have, you know, had to dedicate multiple additions to entangle because you had the actual shooting in the event and what we, you know, there's this sort of news about it trickles out. And then you get the trial and the competing narratives and all that stuff. And it's like, I think, I think it is the sort of thing we would have been all over because it really did divide the city and the country in this really profound way. Yeah. I want to talk about the Daniel Penny of it all. Of course. You know, for people who are maybe not as plugged into the news in the last few years, the name maybe sounds

familiar. If you don't remember, Daniel Penny is the guy who put this, you know, homeless person, Michael Jackson impersonator depending on whose description you're reading about him into a chokehold on the New York City subway and ultimately killed him on the subway, though he was absolved of, you know, actual manslaughter or murder in court. And that, too, was this sort of New York City subway vigilante type story. It was, had the race element, white versus black, and it divided the country. Like this, you know, some people felt this guy was threatening people on the subway and there were subway passengers.

You said they felt threatened. Other people saw this guy doing something they didn't think he would have done if the person in question was white instead of black and that, you know, you don't get the right to choke somebody out because you feel a little bit threatened. Talk to me a little bit about how you viewed the similarities and also the differences in the two cases. I mean, how does that play out in your eyes? Sure.

So there's the literal similarity in that, obviously, it's the subway, but the case law that governed the Daniel Penny case, I'll give you one guess as to what the name of the case was that came up in trial. State versus Gets, the Bernie Gets case law that got established in this trial ultimately ended up setting the standard in New York law for what constitutes acceptable self-defense. or acceptable, reasonable was the word self-defense in the face of a threat.

Now, where they're similar is that someone perceived a threat in the moment, right? And you took what was lethal force, at least in Bernard Gets's case, attempted lethal force. So the question is, when is that reasonable? Now, you've got to look at 1980s, New York, and how rough and how gritty and how tough the city was at the time. Nothing like you or I or anybody else can really comprehend right now. Just by way of comparison, New York City in the year in 1984, the homicide rate was about 1,700 a year, or just shy of 2,000. Now the homicide rate in a city like New York is around 300 a year.

It's just, yeah, it's just in common. With many more people. With many more people, the city has grown, I think, by a million or so in that time, if not more. but just far fewer people are being killed. And homicide is just one metric. Think about the assaults, the sexual assaults, the arsons, the robberies. All of those stats are down compared to the 1980s.

And the subway, when you think of what the New York City subway looks like, if you've been to New York anytime soon, there's silver the trains, they're glassy, there's LEDs everywhere, there's tracking maps, there's a transgender woman who is the voice of the New York City subway, compare that to 1984, where the trains were breaking down all the time. They were on fire. People were literally fires on the tracks. Trains were derailing at a rate faster than certainly anything today. They were all covered in graffiti.

They were all covered in litter. They reeked of urine. And it was just an unsafe, unhappy place, even if everybody in New York relied on the subway as their lifeline to the rest of the city. So it's just a different environment. So at the time, at the time of Gets', you know, of the attempted homicide, think about all of the, just how rough the city was in this pervaded life in New York. And so in many respects, Bernard Getz was embraced as a hero in part because of the world he came from. Daniel Penny, it was a little bit more of a mixed story, even if he got acquitted and short, even if people rallied behind him, many did.

and certainly, like, he got a job offer from Andresen Horowitz, the venture capital firm and was in Donald Trump's box at the Army Navy football game. Still, it's a murkier case only insofar as it just happened in a much safer New York. And it just happened in a much safer America, even if it's all on the subway, even if it's still an attempted homicide, even if it was polarizing on different levels. So it's just hard to compare the two because the worlds in which they happened were, so different. But at their core, they had attempted homicides or homicides completed on a subway for someone who perceived some threat and felt that he had to take some action to defend either himself or other people. I'm curious, you know, in the in the book, you talk a good bit about the race

element that, you know, injects so much of this story and injected it then and injects it now. And, you know, you write about your own experience interacting with Bernard Getz. I think you contacted him for an interview right. You guys had this brief exchange. And for people who are not listening, Elliot is a black man. So there's for people who are not watching but listening. So there's a, there's a personal element I imagine here for you a little bit. I'm curious to hear like how you navigate that as an author.

How do you detach yourself from that a little bit? Or do you sort of let that, like your experience as a black man who's lived in New York come out and as a news anchor? What was it like talking to Bernard Gets? You know, I mean, there must have been a lot of stuff there to try and stay objective. That feels difficult. Yeah, I see it as objective as I could while injecting myself and my experiences and my thoughts where appropriate. You know, I talk about, just in the preface of the book, there's very little first person in the book. But just in the preface, I talk about my upbringing born in Brooklyn into a Jamaican family

that ultimately left New York City for the perceived safety of the New Jersey suburbs, right? And that's ultimately where I ended up growing up. But, you know, I was struck by what Bernard Gets felt willing to say to me on the telephone when we did talk. And he just was unfiltered, certainly not using ethnic slurs or anything like that, but certainly talking about race in a rather uncomfortable way or at least a rather pointed way when he was on the telephone with me. Now, Gets himself had a history, at least on one occasion,

of documented use of ethnic slurs, quite graphic ones, when talking about how he needed to clean his neighborhood up and rid the neighborhood of black people and Hispanic people. He was not shy about that. I even, at one point, used the word bigot to describe him. So it just, the way I wrote the book in sort of the most three-dimensional manner I could, I let him talk, I let the people around him talk, for instance, Curtis Slewa, who ran for mayor in New York City just recently,

had founded sort of a civilian patrol group called The Guardian Angels, also was not shy about talking about race and how, as the defense team, they really wanted to, in effect, stoke the jury's racial biases. He said it to me. He was unabashed about that. So it was an interesting exercise for me, and I really appreciate the question, Isaac, because I think I tried to be as objective as possible, but while inviting people and opening the door to, you know, ask yourself the question, if the races of these folks were reversed, how would you read this case? And I think most people would say, oh, come on, I would, I'd be objective and fine, no matter what was the case. I just don't think that's true. I just think, I don't think it's the case that if, we got news that a white guy, pardon me, if a black guy had shot four white teenagers in the subway, that he'd be heralded as a hero in a way that Bernard Getz was.

And I just think it's okay to admit that we all have those blinders on. And I think in many respects, portions of the book, I mean, it's not all about race, but I just, I do invite people to think about that question. How would really search your heart and how would you perceive? the same facts if you just swap the races. And I just think the New York media in 1984 was very quick to pounce on the narrative here that these guys were super predator thugs

who got what was coming to them by this avenging vigilante that all the New York papers got behind very quickly. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, there's... The book is so thoroughly research. I mean, there's so much detail in it from, you know, the case law

and what happened and these... just like these little interview excerpts from after the crime was committed and these police interviews and stuff. I mean, I even remember at one point you, you talked about how like a certain number of people who called into a San Diego radio station, like 23 out of 25 callers or something like that,

were like supportive of Bernie Gets and expressing, you know, for like this shooting that happened in a city that they don't live in. And I'll take a step further. They weren't even supportive of Bernie Gets. they were just supportive of the shooting. They didn't know at the time that all the, number one,

the police tip line got set up because they didn't know who the shooter was and a number of Colin's shows around the country didn't even know who the guy was. They didn't know what his name was, what his identity was. All they knew was that there's a white guy that shot for rowdy black teenagers on a subway

and people quickly got their heads around the idea that this was completely noble, whatever the act was. they had no information about it. And over time, it became increasingly clear that, wait a second, this isn't as straightforward a story as we all thought. It's not clear. And this isn't me.

I'm not advocating for anyone or anything here. And this comes across in my book. But it was not clear or conclusively proven that any of the guys assaulted, threatened, tried to attack Bernard Gets. It's just not clear whether they either asked him for money or demanded money. Now, Gett says that he felt. like he was about to be mugged or robbed, which under the New York law would have entitled him to use deadly force. But that question remains an open one, what exactly was said to him. And but again, the narrative so quickly took hold that whatever happened on the train,

this guy was threatened and it was okay for him to use lethal force. Yeah. And there's like this, there's this interesting extension of that question of, you know, was he being threatened or were they just asking for money? panhandling, whatever, where you talk a bit about, you know, I think former detectives and witnesses saying, like, if these guy and the men themselves, saying, like, if we wanted to rob this guy right, him, we weren't going to do it in the middle of the day, you know, on like a Tuesday afternoon at 2 o'clock with a subway car full. How would we get out? How would we run away? There'd be all these witnesses, you know, it's like, there is stuff that kind of undermines that narrative.

I mean, I'm curious, what I was going to ask about all this research he did and how. You know, just going like so deep on this one's story is a couple of things that maybe surprise you or you went in with a preconceived notion and your mind was changed after you came across a certain detail. I think the biggest revelation, the thing that struck me, like, again, part of what drew me to the story in writing five bullets was how many big figures came through the case and started as part of their origin stories. Bernie, obviously Bernie gets, but Al Sharpton, Rupert Murdoch, Rudy, Giuliani, Curtis Lewa, who I mentioned before, all their careers all greatly benefited from

this. Sharpton was just sort of a street, sort of activist agitator type, but used the case for his own growth, as did Rudy Giuliani. But the big one, and I had no idea of this, was the National Rifle Association. I didn't realize that prior to about 1977, the NRA was not really focused on Second Amendment advocacy, believe it or not. They were all in on the great outdoors, and they were all in on hunting and camping and Boy Scouts and clay pigeons with Grandpa and not the Second Amendment advocacy that we think of

with the NRA today. The organization literally had a takeover. They called it a coup or the revolt at Cincinnati named after their convention that year was in Cincinnati in 77. And literally the Second Amendment advocates. took the NRA over and they had changes made to the bylaws and made everything different. They insisted on moving the NRA's headquarters not to Colorado Springs, Colorado, but to Washington, D.C., so they could be in the country's power center.

And the Bernie Gets case actually provided a great example, test case for them to push their Second Amendment advocacy, that even if they weren't completely in support of the man, They thought the idea of someone in a blue city, in a blue state, who had been denied a firearms permit and wanted to carry a gun for his own protection, felt like he was threatened, and tried to use a firearm for his own self-defense. They saw this as the perfect test case and did a press conference in New York for the first time ever, sort of in support of reformed gun laws. I have no idea at all, not only of the NRA's role in it, but also of the big shift in the organization. have thought that from their founding they were sort of advocates for the Second Amendment. And that wasn't entirely the case. And it was a big surprise when I came across.

Yeah, that's a really good one. I mean, I had similar reactions reading the book. I just couldn't believe how many names. Yes. And organizations who are relevant today came up over and over again in this story. Or this was like a sort of Genesis moment for them. I mean, someone like Al Sharpton, maybe less relevant now or Rudy Giuliani, very relevant six or seven years ago, maybe a little bit less relevant now. But still, I was like, you know, I had a similar reaction like every page. I'm like, oh, my God, there's another name who is just in this political moment. The one above the fold New Yorker, who literally the only one who doesn't really appear that much in the book, believe it or not, is Donald Trump.

I thought every 1980s New York story had Donald Trump at the center of it. And it really didn't. Now, his name came up a few times. In fact, when I was interviewing the NRA executive, again, guy who was an executive back in the 1970s and 1980s, he told me, he only, he used Donald Trump as an example to say, not many people in New York in 1984 got concealed carry permits. The only folks who got permits were folks like Donald Trump, sort of millionaires who felt they needed them for their protection, but Isaac or Elliott, regular guys who might want to own

firearms back then. That shocked me that Donald Trump was carrying, I mean, was that, like, was it that he had a permit that he's actually carrying a fire on. Who knows how much he carried. He definitely had, at least according to the NRA executive I interviewed, he had a permit. I think Trump has been on the record about having a concealed carry permit, even if he wasn't sort of walking around every day with one. But no, it's, we think about Donald Trump, if you know, many people will recognize the

name, the Central Park Five, the five sort of teenagers who were accused of sexually assaulting a woman and ultimately exonerated for it after some guy's jail. House confession. Everybody knows Donald Trump's row of Matt. He took out a full-page ad after the assault calling for the death penalty for these four teenagers. And people think Donald Trump was all over just every story in New York. Not so. And again, not like I was looking to write about Donald Trump. And quite frankly, as somebody who's on cable news talking about legal issues all the time, I've had plenty of talking about Donald Trump and did not need to write a book about him. But I just would have thought that his name would have come up more. And it really didn't.

And that was interesting, Revelation. Yeah, yeah. That's true. I didn't think about it until just now, but there was this, like, weird absence, especially, like you said, that 70s, 80s, it was such a time where he was so dominant

in the culture there. Yeah. It is pretty interesting that it didn't happen. So, okay, for folks you haven't read the book or maybe aren't as familiar with the case, talk us through a little bit about, you know, the ultimate verdict and how it happened. And, you know,

maybe what the what the public reaction was to it at the end. So again, so Gets is charged with attempted murder of these four teenagers. He's also charged with attempted assault of the four teenagers, also with unlawfully possessing a firearm. And he ultimately got acquitted of all the violent, oh, pardon me, and reckless endangerment because he fired the gun in a subway, right? Yeah. Right? And endangering people in the car, including there was at least one.

infant or toddler in the car. So he's charged with reckless endangerment. He's ultimately acquitted of all the violent crime charges and only was convicted of illegally carrying a firearm. Now, it's interesting. A big part of his acquittal was his own confession. And he, at the time, after he does the shooting, he goes and hides in New Hampshire for a few days, nine days, to be exact. And then ultimately ended up turning himself in up in New Hampshire. he, when he's in the PlayStation and Concord, he sat for, I believe, it's four hours of recorded confessions. He just spills it all out. This is how I did it. The guys, I thought they were trying to mug me, but I wanted to murder them. I wanted to make them suffer. I was so angry. I wanted

to gouge the kid's eyes out with my keys, but I changed my mind because he looked scared. I was an animal. I was vicious. It was, you know, something overtook. He just lays it all out. and lays it all out again. So first he talks to New Hampshire cops, then the NYPD, and just lays it all out and says he confessed to it. His defense team actually thought that that confession helped him, and they ultimately,

they wanted, his confession tapes played for the jury, and the jury saw his confessions. Why, they thought that the confession tape got inside his mind in terms of how frightened he was in the moment. And they thought if they could confess, convinced the jury that he was legitimately scared and out of his mind, then any murder conviction wouldn't really hold up or he couldn't be convicted of murder.

Despite all the things he said, all the admissions he made, and ultimately the strategy worked off. It worked so well. And here's another surprising favorite anecdote. The lawyers actually, one of the lawyers bet his law partner a car if they want. He said this gambit that you, you've cooked up to play this man's confession tape in trial and still win. If this wins, I'm buying you a car.

And his partner says, come on, man. What are you talking about? He says, no, I'm literally going to buy you a car. So they won the trial. And right after the trial, Barry Slotnik, the attorney, bought Mark Baker, his law partner, and Azuzu Trooper SUV SUV SUV. Which is like the most 1980s car ever, like the Azuzu Trooper, right? And he literally bought him this car.

In fact, one quick, fun writing anecdote, Isaac, the, I had, he sent me, Mark Baker, before he died, because he died during the reporting of the book after I'd interviewed him, he sent me a photograph of a two-tone blue and gray, Azuzu Trooper. And I was going to put it in the book. I almost did to put it in the insert section.

Decided to get, because it wasn't the actual one. It was like the one from the ad that he'd seen, but it was literally two-tone blue, a pretty sweet truck, me, but ultimately I just wrote about it, didn't include the photo. And what was the public reaction like to the acquittal? I mean, talk about how it was taken by the public in New York and the country. Because obviously, like with Daniel Penny, I think there was this really strong initial

reaction. And then when he went to trial, I mean, I saw some people who were moved. You know, maybe they were, they really thought Daniel Penny was a murderer. And then they heard the other people on the train car say they were really scared. And Courtney, they're like, their opinions actually change a little bit about it. I'm curious, like, where the public mindset was at the end of this. People were pretty split. I'm not going to say 50-50, but, you know, it's like 46 to 42 or whatever.

In general, depending on who you asked and when, but were pretty split on the case. Now, I will say that the more the public learned about Bernard gets the man, the more skeptical they got about him, even if they thought that New York is unsafe, we are unsafe, if we're under siege in this really rough city and we're just going to look past this attempted homicide, at least, that he committed. The more people got to know about him because he's just weird and odd and quirky

and said those really horrible things on that confession tape, it sort of softened a little bit, but there was still a lot of support for the action in general. He, no, and in fact, even back to the NRA, they were clear, particularly as time went on. They gave him $40,000 toward his legal defense, but still would constantly say, none of this is a vote of support for Bernard gets individually.

What we are paying for is the right of people to defend themselves when they feel threatened, full stop. And it wasn't a sort of too armed embrace of this individual. It came with big caveats. And I think that's generally how people saw Bernard Gets. And I will just say one more thing. I also think the coverage, the news coverage played a big role into how people saw the story. And the New York Post really ran with the narrative that the guys were armed, which they were not,

or that the guys were threatening or whatever else. And I think that helped crystallize for people the fear that they felt in the city. And ultimately, you know, sort of drove some of the support for gets and some of the support for gets and help. One last question before we let you go. I mean, something that always fascinates me about this process of writing a book is you do this deep dive on the topic like this. And then the book comes out or you finish writing.

And I imagine in the space between being done writing and now some source you wanted to talk to comes back to you. What's happened maybe since you finished writing that didn't make it into the book that maybe added some color or contact? or the reactions you're getting now that the book's out? I mean, is there anything there that strikes you as particularly notable? Oh, my gosh, so much. I think, number one, Bernard Getz still emails me.

No way. So let's say this. Yeah, let me say this. The paperback is going to be lit when I update the book in a couple of years. Because now, you know, I'm just getting a lot of emails from him. Pointers about the book, because he has read a copy about it, some of his thoughts, but also just generally musing about crime. safety and so on. So that's a big one. Up until the final minute I was chasing and trying really

hard to get a hold of, if not one of the victims, a member of their families, to comment for the record on the book. And I ultimately got as close as talking individually to two of the sisters of one of the four guys. And just they ultimately thought about it and declined to appear on the record in the book, wished me luck. that would have been great to talk to them. And it's what I, you know, that was the one thing that sort of kept me up at night. Like, is this a hole in the book? Now, I sort of, I wrote around that point saying, look, I tried really hard to get,

to get these folks to participate. Ultimately, they chose not to. And I reconstructed as much of their lives as I could from, from the record, right? And then the last one, the, I wish Rupert Murdoch had talked to me. I reached out, you know, and they formal. politely declined the opportunity to appear in the book, Murdoch, and I reached out to his folks at Fox News. That would have just been interesting only because of how much I focus on the role of the media and his takeover of the New York Post, right? How central that was to the coverage of crime in the city.

I would have loved to sort of talk with him about the direction he took sort of news coverage in the city and with him all of the city's newspapers, which sort of really started following the New York Post's model. But yeah, it's, you know, you write a project this big and stuff keeps coming up. And it's like, oh, why didn't I do that? Or, oh. But, you know, I am content with the final product. Let's say that. I have to ask, I mean, did Bernie gets express any kind of judgment on the book?

Did he tell you you thought it was well done or anything like that or mostly just kind of more musings about where we are now? He said, it's surprisingly not, I think surprisingly not bad was what he said. I think that's the way he put it. And he said, it's better. than a lot of the BS that's out there. And I don't know how to feel about that. Like, I don't know if Bernie Gets was my target audience,

but he at least, you know, in fact, there's a funny, there's a line in there. I end a chapter. I end the chapter in which I interview Bernie Gets with, him saying, I don't care what people think about me. Anybody who thinks otherwise can go fuck themselves, right? So I included that. And that's the way I end the chapter.

A quote from Bernie Gets. And he says, finally someone understands me. Now, my point was, I wasn't putting that favorably about you. Like, you're literally saying, fuck you to the whole world, which I think is a window into his head. And a quote I deliberately put in, but he saw it quite favorably. So needless to say, he didn't hate the book, I think. So, you know. Yeah, no, I mean, look, that's really interesting.

I think, like, you want the subjects you write about to feel like they were treated fairly. So to me, that makes me feel. more confident in, you know, your writing in the book that somebody, that he's not coming out saying this was like totally unfair. But that is a funny sort of backhanded compliment. We had Bill O'Reilly, who reads Tangle occasionally, I take it and listens to the podcast sometimes, had me on his show and said, he writes, he writes Tangle and it's okay. All right, I'll take it. Thanks, Bill. Yeah, no problem. Yeah, okay is good enough for me. So I think that's a kudos to your work.

Elliot, thanks for joining us. The book is five bullets. Highly recommend it. It is, you know, I think before I read it, you told me somebody told you it's kind of like a crime thriller vibe almost. And that is how I felt reading it. I mean, it's a page turner, super interesting historical artifact too. So go out and give it a try. Elliot, thanks so much for the time.

And I appreciate it. No, no problem. And I really do think, you know, crime thriller, certainly for the first 100, 150 pages of it. but crime thriller that makes you think about today, like how much of these issues are relevant to us in terms of how we see the media or politics or crime or safety in cities. And so I wanted to use something that was fun to read,

but sort of expand into why does this matter to us today? And, you know, Bernie Gett seems to think I did an okay job. I'm curious as to what the prosecutor and judge think. But yeah, it was quite a project. Awesome. Thanks so much for the time, Elliot. I appreciate it. Thank you, sir. Great talking to you.

As always, Isaac. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Wohl. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kback and associate editors, Audrey Moorhead, Lindsay Canute, and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at reetangle.com.