The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Secret Files: Bill De Blasio, The NYPD, and The Broken Promises of Police Reform by Michael Hayes

Episode Date: February 7, 2023

The Secret Files: Bill De Blasio, The NYPD, and The Broken Promises of Police Reform by Michael Hayes An unprecedented breakdown of the NYPD’s powerful network of police unions, pro-police lawyers, and top brass who work relentlessly to shield police officers from any real accountability For readers of long-form, hard-hitting journalistic exposés like We Own This City, a compelling look at how we do—and don't—hold police responsible in America, by an award-winning progressive reporter covering the NYPD police beat In 2018, reporter Michael Hayes uncovered a major story about how the NYPD was not only turning a blind eye to police misconduct, but also allowing hundreds of officers with severe misconduct charges to remain on the force. In the aftermath of that story, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio attempted to reform the department only to abandon his plans. While de Blasio may have suffered a political setback, it’s New Yorkers who are the true victims of this failure to deliver accountability and transparency. The state has a law that specifically prevents the public from learning about concealed police records. New Yorkers are increasingly distrustful of the police after witnessing their loved ones being targeted, brutalized, and murdered with near impunity. Hayes takes readers inside decades of police corruption and controversial laws, chronicling the stories of the families and activists who have had enough. He makes a compelling case for the limits of reform in the aftermath of the major Black Lives Matter rallies following the murder of George Floyd and growing calls to defund the police.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, my friends. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Remember, the Chris Voss Show is the family that loves you but doesn't judge you,

at least not as harshly as your mother-in-law. So go clean your room. Anyway, guys, as always, refer to the show to your family, friends, and relatives. YouTube.com, Fortress Chris Voss. Goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Voss. All the LinkedIn groups and all that great stuff there. We have an amazing journalist and author on the show with us today. He's going to be talking about his newest book called The Secret Files,

Bill de Blasio, the NYPD, and the Broken Promises of Police Reform. Michael Hayes is on the show with us today. It's about his amazing new book. It'll be coming out February 21, 2023. You can preorder it wherever fine books are sold. Stay away from those alleyway bookstores. It's a great way to get mugged when you're trying to buy a book. I'm just kidding. I'm sure they're nice. Anyway, guys, Michael Hayes has reported on the policies and practices

of police departments in America, covering major criminal trials across the country, including the death penalty cases of the Boston bomber and Charleston church shooter, Dylan Roof. He's written about everything from mass shootings to presidential elections. In 2019, he was named a finalist for the prestigious Livingston Award for Young Journalists and Deadline Club Award for his investigative journalist reporting on the NYPD's secret disciplinary files. Michael's work has been appeared in a wide range of outlets, including ProPublica, BuzzFeed News, HuffPost, The Appeal, Gotham, CNN, and WNYC. Michael grew up in New England, went to college at Fordham University in the Bronx, New York. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, Ryan, and their two sons, Caleb and Elliot.

No dog, no cat there. Michael, what's going on? No pets yet. I've got, as you just mentioned, Chris, two young boys who are like puppies I cannot train. Oh, there you go. Well, that's young boys for you. But, yeah, it's funny because some people put their dogs or cats or whatever their animals are in their bio, and sometimes it's kind of interesting.

I think we had an author one time raising a raccoon. Welcome to the show, Michael. Congratulations on the new book, my friend. Thanks so much for having me. Thanks for that incredible intro. That was awesome. Well, it was your bio. It wasn't mine. Anyway, give us your dot coms. We want people to look you up on the interwebs and find out more about you. Sure. So I have a personal website, michaelhays.bio, and you can find me on Twitter, just my name, Michael Hayes. There you go. There you go. So what motivated you to write this book, Michael? We'd like to hear from your words, if you would, please. Sure. So as you mentioned, I did a lot of reporting a couple of years back on the NYPD's secret disciplinary system.

And when I got the opportunity to write this book a couple of years after that initial round reporting, I thought it sounded like a good opportunity to see how they've been doing since we revealed some unkind facts about how they've been running their disciplinary system. And the book is titled The Secret Files, Bill de Blasio, the NYPD and the Broken Promises of Police Reform. And, you know, that really, in a nutshell, describes what I found, broken promises. After Eric Garner was killed in 2014, police accountability in New York City really became the issue for the de Blasio administration. And that happened in no small part because the mayor himself said that he would use this tragedy to transform the NYPD into a department that was more transparent and accountable to New Yorkers. And what I found is that because of politics, the awesome power of the NYPD, the city fell short

and continues to do so when it comes to holding police who commit the most egregious misconduct accountable for their actions. From a 30,000 view, and this is your beat, I mean, you cover this a lot. Why is it we can't get this fixed? I mean, we've just seen the recent, I would call it a murder, in my opinion, of Tyree Nichols of the four Memphis police officers beating him to death. Why can't we get a handle on this? Is it politics? Is it people don't care what happens as long as it's on their backyard?

Or why is it? That's a really good question. One, you know, I get all the time after, you know, the latest tragedy, people like to ask, you know, is anything good going to happen here. And, you know, I've been known to be cynical about it and to say, you know, some of these levers of power, specifically the police unions, are too powerful and really reform needs to start there if we're ever going to have major change. I will say that another thing I found while doing this book, and I hope it comes through when people get a chance to read it, is that there really is a story of hope here

in terms of how activists can coalesce and get something changed. Specifically, in the case of the story of the secret files we had a a lot in new york uh that stood on the books for 40 years that made all police disciplinary records uh completely secret and uh after george floyd was killed in 2020 the new york state legislature repealed that law but it didn't happen overnight it was really really thanks to a decade-long fight by these networks of activists in New York that are mostly led by black and brown women who have had their sons and loved ones killed by the police. to bring politicians of, of different shapes and sizes together to get that law repealed. And so that stands, you know, you asked, when are we going to get this right? I would, I would advocate that that's,

you know, one major example right there. So there is hope. It's just a matter of, of constantly, you know, accountability, you guys being the fourth estate with the journalism, you know, calling it out, doing FISA requests, et cetera, et cetera. So the secret files from the title of the book, is that what it refers to, those 40 years of secret files that are now uncovered by the legislature? So my specific secret files and the secret files that I focus on in the book are these 2,000 secret NYPD police disciplinary records that I got my hands on back in 2018 and really set this whole line of reporting off for me personally. When I was working at BuzzFeed, myself and another reporter were able to obtain records on about 1,800 officers. And this is when they were, before that law I just mentioned was repealed and they were completely hidden from public view.

So those are the specific secret files from the book. But you're not too far off when you say, yeah, 40 years of secret police discipline. There you go. So you start the book out with the murders of the two police officers that were ambushed in New York City. And was there a reason you focused on Bill de Blasio and maybe didn't go back to you know Giuliani's stop first sort of era things that were going on there so so I do flick back to the Giuliani years even more prominently in the in the book flick back to the years of Mayor David Dinkins who was a major mentor mentor for Bill de Blasio.

He worked for Dinkins and he really started his rise in New York City politics during the Dinkins years. But I wanted to to focus on this most recent era because, as I said on the top, I really believe that it was a moment in time where police accountability and police reform was the issue in New York during those years. Yeah. I mean, the issues, I mean, you know, you go back to Serpico and what, the 70s. I mean, it just seems like a clown car never-ending problems uh i know the unions the the power of the unions and of course the voting power you know getting the endorsement to become mayor and stuff that was an issue i remember and you i believe you talk about your book i remember when bill de blasio uh first took office uh him and the him and the police department

turn were at odds in fact wasn't there a one of his first meetings didn't they all turn their back on him or am i thinking of someone else so yeah just to clean that up a bit you're not too far off there chris you you mentioned the murders of officers ramos and lou um those happened in december of uh 2014 so about uh uh five months after eric garner was killed and this all happened in the first year that uh uh de blasio was in office and i really wanted to to write about these early events to convey just how much he had on his plate in terms of uh policing uh from the onset of his administration um so uh uh but to go back to what you were saying about when the officers turned their back on him, that happened on three occasions that week or in the few weeks after those officers were killed. The first time being at the hospital that night as the mayor was showing up with his police commissioner to meet the families, to get an update on the officer's condition, just really the first time that Mayor de Blasio was thrust into the halls of the hallway, several officers led by Officer Ramos' funeral that happened first,

thousands of officers in the street who were watching the mayor speak on a jumbotron inside the church during the services turned their back on the jumbotron and ostensibly turned their back on the mayor. And the same thing happened yet again at the other officer's funeral, which is interesting because between the two funerals, the commissioner of the NYPD, Bill Bratton, came out and said, don't do that again. And again, led by the police unions, the officers decided to send that message for literally a third time in a week.

Wow. And it seems like these police unions and police standards, you hear about these police officers that can be disciplined or do something very heinous. They get fired from a police department. And then they can just go down the block to the next city police department and easily get picked up. I imagine because they have experience in the job, but still the disciplinary measures they got someplace else don't. They just hop from city to city. They're almost kind of like Catholic priests where they just move them around and, oh, he's a pedophile. Okay, we'll put him over there in Philadelphia or something. You know, it's kind of interesting, the laws and the protection that they have. But then again, you know, you have, is a factor the fact that people don't want to actually do something?

They actually just kind of throw to the police to clean up the mess. And they just, as long as it's not in my backyard and I don't have to deal with it, you know, clean up the riffraff or, you know, that's their thinking is that, is that, you know, let them handle the, the, the dirty parts of whatever humanity to clean up, you know, people that are maybe homeless and stuff like that. You know, we've seen all this, we've seen all this stuff going and I'm, I'm not saying that I'm saying there's kind of this attitude of the, as long as it's not my backyard, I don't care what happens sort of thing.

I don't know. That's an interesting point. Another interesting point I think you allude to there is this attitude of throwing things to the police and our expectations of what the police should be left to deal with. And I would argue that a large reason, a big reason that that is such a pervasive attitude in society is that a lot of leaders talk that way. Give you a current example, the current mayor of New York City, Mayor Eric Adams, has been very vocal about the need to be tougher on crime, the need for more police and more tougher police tactics in order to deal with, as he perceives it, just rising rampant crime. So when you have somebody in a position of power talking like that, and not just

in his speeches and press releases, you can go on cable news and promote that message any day of the week, it trickles down through society. And I think in a way, it does a huge disservice to police because it just it puts it makes their job probably harder than it should be. Definitely. I mean, you talk about that in your book, the election of Mayor Adams and his sort of hard line. You know, a lot of these politicians, they love that banging on that thing. We've had a lot of authors on that have talked about, you know, starting with Nixon and through Reagan, the rule of law, quote unquote, sort of attitude. And like I mentioned earlier, you know, there was discussions during, after George Floyd about how, you know, maybe we need to rework the police. Maybe the police shouldn't be showing up for homeless people and other social ills that maybe a psychiatrist should be showing up for. And, you know, it doesn't seem like that got very much traction.

You know, you're seeing the fallout of a very liberal DA in San Francisco and how crazy that's gotten out of hand. I have friends that live in San Francisco. By no means am I on the side of that where I'm like, you know, we need more law and order. There needs to be a balance somewhere. in San Francisco. By no means am I on the side of that where I'm like, you know, we need more law and order. There needs to be a balance somewhere, but I think somewhere that led off just a little too lightly or something. I don't know, but it's out of control out there. Right. So in the secret files that you found,

how are you finding that sort of thing plays out in the rest of nationally with police accountability and accountability and reform. Sure. So my book focuses on what went down in New York in decades long fight that culminated with this law being stricken off the books and things, at least in writing, becoming more transparent. A big part of the last part of the book, I focus on how after that law was repealed in New York, the NYPD still is keeping a lot of stuff secret. But to answer your question about how this reflects nationally, so we've seen a lot of progress nationally in terms of police discipline and transparency. I believe 19 states now have pretty open records, and that's up from almost doubled in the last five or so years, thanks to states like New York, California, changing their laws. At the same time, you know, it's very, it's still very hard to learn about

this stuff. Case in point, we were talking about Tyree Nichols before, Chris, and, you know, in Tennessee, a lot of people, myself included, are interested to know those officers who beat Tyree Nichols to death. What were their misconduct histories at the Memphis Police Department? I tried to put in a public records request myself. As you mentioned, I'm living in New Jersey with my two crazy kids and my wife. And my request was immediately denied for that because I don't live in the state of Tennessee. So that just gives you one example of how these laws are maybe, I would argue, still a little backwards. Why should I have to live in the state of Tennessee to learn about the officers who beat up Tyree Nichols?

That kind of makes sense. Can they refuse some of the big newspapers that are based in other states? Can they refuse those as well? Unless they have somebody who lives in Tennessee, I can tell you, I don't think I'm speaking out of school here to tell you that there are some journalists

in the state of tennis in the city of memphis um folks that work with the commercial appeal the big paper down there as well as the university of memphis who um uh and request for this stuff who who clearly can get at least get over that first hurdle of living, you know, within the state boundaries. So, but we'll see what happens. You know, if you want to drill down a little more in Tennessee, I've also seen stories where they've tried to charge somebody anywhere from $1,700 to $6,000 to obtain police disciplinary files, which is, uh, you know, not money that most, uh, uh,

journalists have lying around to try to, uh, to, uh, learn about stuff for stories. So, uh, yeah, it's going to be interesting, um, uh, to see if we, if we, if we learn anything there. There you go. I mean, this, this seems like a dumb question, but I mean, you're the expert in this field. Um, do you find that most of these find that most of these incidents that we find that rise to the level of national media attention for something extraordinary or horrific, like the Tyrese Nichols case or George Floyd, do you find that, I mean, nine times out of ten or majority of the time that these people, you know, this is a ramp up from someone who's had lots of disciplinary issues and they just finally, they just finally, you know, did the, did the worst thing they possibly could. And, and they were on this trajectory. Yeah, absolutely. I mean to say that it's most,

you know, I, I, I wouldn't argue with you there because you know you bring up that point i immediately can think of a couple right off the top of my head the biggest example being the officer who who killed eric garner uh was never convicted of of murder so we can't say murder here um but he he killed eric garner by putting him in a chokehold, speaking about former NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo. It came out shortly after that that he had a poor disciplinary background at the NYPD, had way more complaints than your average officer and had been disciplined, had been found guilty of misconduct several times. Another famous example, Derek Chauvin, the officer who

murdered George Floyd and was convicted of murder. It was revealed, i i believe within days of that incident thanks to some uh uh good transparent open record laws uh in the state of minnesota it was revealed within days that he had an egregious uh background of um you know over a dozen uh complaints against him of of violating the civil rights of of people in that state so yeah i mean uh where there's smoke there's fire yeah does did does just people need to and what i was kind of referring to earlier is you know people won't convict juries won't convict officers uh unless it's really heinous. I remember watching the body language of the officer, I forget his name, I don't really care, who killed, he can die nameless, who killed George Floyd. I remember watching the body language of him being in shock that he really thought he was going to get off on that one and that they convicted him.

At least that was my interpretation of his body language. He seemed completely in shock that he was not going to get off. And I know a lot of police officers do that are in these situations. You know, you mentioned Garner and others. They get off and they survive

jury trials and juries don't seem to be busy to commit. Do we need, just as do we need as a, just as a people and as a popular say enough with this bullshit? Is that, is that really where it needs to lie? Or does it, I mean, does it need to be more in the politicians we elect to clean up the,

the departments? Well, there is, I mean, there is something if we, if we truly want to decide that, uh, that's our attitude enough with this bullshit want to decide that, uh,

that's our attitude enough with this bullshit, there is a, uh, um, you know, there, there is a mechanism here. Uh, there's this thing called qualified immunity that,

um, without going nuts and bolts of it. And I've spent exactly zero days in law school. So I don't want to, uh, you, you're better off asking a lawyer to give you the 45-minute version. I'll just say that this is a law that really does exactly what it says it does.

It provides immunity for officers when something tragic happens on the job, and it makes it, at the federal level, it's a tremendous hurdle to bring criminal charges against officers. I will say that, and I write about in the book, and this was another big reason I wanted to do this book, the handful of NYPD killings that I write about in the book, I follow the civil cases in every one of those instances. And it's no exaggeration to say that if your loved one is killed by the police, at least in New York City, you're going to spend a decade fighting in a civil case and probably end up with some incomplete justice where A, the officer personally or officers are not held in any way accountable and your only real mechanism for justice is a payment of damages or a settlement,

which could be in the millions of dollars. But that money, that is the taxpayers of New York, in the case of NYPD, are footing the bill there. That's what always strikes me about this whole thing where it seems like Americans just kind of have this dismissive nature of it, you know, out of sight, out of mind, you know, keep the drudges of society away from me. And I don't really want to know how you make the sausage. Just keep the streets clean or, you know, whatever their attitude is.

The economy just makes it dismissive of this. And the only reason anybody cares every now and then is something so horrific and heinous. That's extraordinary. You know, watching George Floyd's was basically a lynching. I had someone come on the show and they're like, that really was a modern day lynching. When you really think about how he was strangled to death. and,

uh, you know, people, people don't seem, you know, they, people care about it for a little while and then it'll move on and there'll be one next week or next month.

And you look at the millions of dollars that these cities put out in settlements and payments, and you would think that after a certain time, either taxpayers or cities would come to the conclusion that, you know, for all the money we pay for this shit, maybe we should get rid of these officers, quit circulating between precincts, quit defending them, quit backing them up. Maybe we need to, uh, maybe we need to, you know, change it up. Yeah. And I mean, in, I think in order for that to happen, there just, there needs to be more transparency. That's why it was such a, uh, a major deal in

New York when, uh, the police secrecy law was repealed and the NYPD came out and said, okay, or I should say the mayor came out and said the NYPD is going to do something historic. They're going to publish all their disciplinary records. And the NYPD agreed to do that. I lost multiple lawsuits driven by their unions. And it looked like it was going to be a really major thing. But as I report in the book, I was able to find a year after that happened, over 100 missing examples of really egregious misconduct. Dozens of officers who had been found guilty of lying within the department. Their records were missing. Officers who beat people up, their records were missing.

Officers who threatened to kill somebody, their records were missing. And I'm not a data scientist. I had a couple of spreadsheets and I had the files I got when I was working at BuzzFeed and I spent a good chunk of time comparing those two. But somebody with much more savvy data analyst skills can probably go in and find the totality of what's missing there. Yeah, that or the stuff that's missing is probably so heinous. Somebody probably ended up in a fireplace maybe. I don't know. I don't know. I have no idea.

So you get into the book. You go deep in the protests in the city after George Floyd was killed and, uh, Bill de Blasio preparing to leave office. Uh, what were some of the things that you found when you looked in that period of summer of 2020? Yeah.

So I, I, I focused there as, as kind of a bookend on the de Blasio administration. He obviously stayed in, in, in, uh,

uh, in power for a little bit after that. But the protests on the surface, they show the failure to rein the police. And we all saw it with our own eyes. Police beating and pepper spraying and falsely arresting people in the street. But one stat that I report in the book that I think kind of puts a nice bow on this is after those protests, you know, numerous lawsuits were filed with dozens and dozens of people, protesters who are claiming that they were beaten, pepper sprayed and falsely arrested. And those lawsuits are ongoing and will be for some time.

You can have me back on in like 2033 and we'll talk about the resolution of the George Floyd protest lawsuits. But but one thing I was able to find in my reporting was that at the very end of the Blasio administration, they settled with more than 200 people, 200 protesters who claimed to have been beaten or had their civil rights violated in other ways at the protest. Did you see several out of court? Yeah, sure. Go ahead. Sorry about that. The honor broke up and i thought you were finished

um did you see you know we've we've we've talked a lot about racism uh since jordy floyd's murder and and had a lot of authors on with books about everything uh and and kind of the you know the whole world of how we got here through the history of this country um did you see if did you see a going through the secret files of uh rampant racism or are these cops that are just they're they're just out of control at every level they don't have any regard for maintaining the integrity that they want to espouse on everyone else uh that's really interesting i mean um uh certainly there have been reports that came out that I do talk about in the book, the big one that comes to mind.

And this kind of speaks to another side of the accountability debate here and whether the oversight is really working. So at one point during late in the de Blasio administration, a report came out on racial and the NYPD. And the city found that there had been thousands of complaints of racially biased profiling against the NYPD. And in not a single case of those over 2,000, I believe, that the NYPD internally investigated, did they find the officers at fault? So, I mean, we can talk in theory. Is the police, is the NYPD racist? Are there racist NYPD officers? Theoretically, there must be. But beyond that, you know, those statistics right there speak for themselves that at least internally, they don't view it as an issue, which is really quite concerning. I don't

see how you could have over 2,000 complaints on the issue of racial profiling and not a single one resulting in do you have any thought do you have any thoughts on does the internal um i forget what they call the internal police that investigate the police we're supposed to investigate the police internal affairs bureau internal affairs bureau it does do they need to make that more citizen based where there's a maybe half and half or citizens give some oversight to that maybe would that help or does that would that make a difference so uh new york in fact has one of the most uh it's probably the most well-funded citizen-based review boards of the police in the country, the CCRB, the Civilian Complaint Review Board. And I believe their funding is well over $20 million annually at this point. And they have

a lot of oversight. Their oversight has been kind of beefed up recently to the types of cases and number of cases that they have purview over. However, it's been longstanding criticism about that organization, that it's a toothless operation that doesn't really have much power. Case in point, in any case that the ccrb investigates um uh the commissioner can come right in and not just overrule them on on discipline uh disciplinary matters like their their uh like penalty conclusions the the commissioner can come in and and straight up take the case away from them at any point, which just speaks to the awesome power of the police brass and the people at the top of the NYPD when it

comes to the oversight there. So, yeah, I mean, it'll be interesting to see if that's something that, that folks want to strengthen more in the years to come. There you go. There's the, there's the, there's the, there's the, I don't know, you called a weapon, I suppose, that the justice department uses to do these to these agreements with cities and counties and I guess states that they have problems. Uh,

I forget what they're called. We had the author writers, the writers come out at night about the Oakland corruption in Oakland is one of the cities who's been, what do they call that thing that the justice department does where it's called a, it's called a consent decree. There you go.

Yeah, there you go. Does New York need his consent decree from what you researched or are they under one? I'd be interested if the Memphis Police Department was under one that killed Tyree Nichols, in my opinion. That was a pretty well-oiled machine at the Justice Department during the Obama years. And when Trump was in office, he pretty much shut it down. And the credit for that goes to, I believe, his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions. They just blanket decided that they weren't going to do that sort of thing. Yeah, concept decrees, there's a lot of debate on both sides. Yeah, I would say Oakland is an interesting example.

An even more interesting example is Baltimore. And if you want to learn very quickly about sort of the challenges that folks inside the Justice Department face when they try to come in and do internal investigations, I would say go watch We Own This City on HBO. Or better yet, read the book. But yeah, it tends to be a long, arduous, bureaucratic path that a lot of departments resist and makes it very hard to enact real change. I'm cynical that anything like that would work with the NYPD, frankly. Yeah, it's kind of interesting how they've been around. Oakland has the longest one, to my understanding, and they don't seem to really bring the reform that you're supposed to.

It almost seems politics when it comes down to it. Do you think that's a good question. Do you think, you think, you know, more about this, just about politics? I mean, mayors have to get, they have to get usually, you know, go after union votes or police votes or union endorsements to get elected and stuff. Is that one of the problems? These unions just have way too much power. They do.

It's an awesome power, but anyone who's listening to this who's shaking their heads and saying the police unions have too much power and feels discouraged by that, I encourage you to check out the book. And like I was saying before, there's a real story of of hope here um when you read about the law that was struck down in new york around police discipline and secret police disciplinary files and um you know the the the group um that led the charge there and and got um

uh the different factions of the of democrats Democrats in New York to align on it. They were going up, not just against a powerful police union, but 40 years of case law and, uh, you know, a union that unlike as, as a lobbying force, unlike a lot of unions has the ear of folks across the aisle, right? It's not like they just have right-wing Republicans or all Republicans supporting them. They have a lot of Democrats that support them, count on support from them, and that's where a lot of their power is derived from. Yeah, it's interesting.

You know, I giggle a little bit because it's so hypocritical, all the stupid stuff we do. I mean, I was talking about the Tyree thing. And I said, you know, you get the government, you get the politicians, you get the police force that you vote in and you support. I mean, until more of these police officers see that, you know, uh, courts are going to uphold, juries are going to, are going to put them in jail, hold these people accountable until they see that there's, there's not going to be much change. And so people have to give a shit. They have to care about what's going on in their backyard.

They can't just be dismissive of like, well, let the police deal with whatever. And as long as I don't have to deal with it, no, this is, this is part of your world and how you make a difference. You know, when you see people, they don't, they don't care about what happens until it happens to them sort of attitude. Isn't there, isn't there a thing for that? I don't care about anything until it happens to me. There's a, there's a, there's a thing there. But it's excellent reporting, man.

And I'm glad you covered the beat because you know, your book and other things like this that bring transparency is really important so that we, we can really understand more of what's going on and, and, and get more opportunities to resolve these issues. Yeah. Thanks so much for saying that, Chris. I don't plan on stopping anytime soon. So it's, uh, it's encouraging to hear that you like what I'm focusing on. Anything more you want to tease out of the book before we go?

No. So the book is called The Secret Files, Bill de Blasio, the NYPD, and the Broken Promises of Police Reform. And I like to say it's one part searing cop drama, one part in education and how police reform politics went down in New York. So if that's something that interests you, you should go out and pick one up. There you go. There you go. The more you know, the more you know. Thank you very much, Michael, for coming on the show.

We really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. There you go. And thanks, my audience, for tuning in. Go order the book wherever fine books are sold. The Secret Files, Bill de Blasio, the New York PD, or the NYPD, I should say, and The Broken Promises of Police Reform. It's available February 21st, 2023 by Michael Hayes.

And pick it up today. Thanks for tuning in. Go to YouTube.com, Fortunes of Chris Voss, Goodreads.com, Fortunes of Chris Voss. I'll bring you some Facebook, LinkedIn, all those crazy places the kids play today. Thank you for being here. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye. And that should have a sound.