The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - What's Right (and Wrong) with the Police with Ed Obayashi

Episode Date: April 19, 2024

Ed Obayashi is the Deputy Sheriff and Policy Advisor for the Modoc County Sheriff's Office. He also serves as a law enforcement advisor for numerous law enforcement agencies, joint powers authorities for law enforcement (insurance funds), and law enforcement advisory organizations. As a licensed attorney, he also serves as the Legal Advisor, General Counsel, and official training advisor related to Use of Force and Police Practices for these entities. He is recognized as a foremost legal and training expert in California, nationally, and internationally in law enforcement matters, particularly in Use of Force and Internal Affairs Investigations issues. He is one of the most in demand legal lecturers in Use of Force and Police Practices for law enforcement legal associations, including the State BAR of California.

This is Live from the Table, the official podcast of the world-famous comedy cellar coming at you on SiriusXM 99 Raw Comedy. And wherever you get your podcasts, we're also available on YouTube. If you want a visual experience, you get to see our pretty faces. Some more pretty than others. This is Dan Natterman, co-host, comedy cellar regular. Maybe not as regular as I would prefer, but that's not my call i'm here with gnome dorman owner of the comedy cellar present uh and the new comedy cellar location

on sixth avenue and west third street is scheduled to be open sometime in 2025 let's hope so uh but meanwhile gnome is making a killing selling ads to Kylie Jenner. Oh, is that who's in the- Well, whatever, Kylie or I don't know. There's advertising in the building. So Noam is making money. Yes. Obviously, I would assume he would make more running the comedy club.

It defrays costs, okay? It costs money to carry an empty piece of real estate in New York City. Okay. Are you Jewish or not? Well, no, that's great, though, but not everybody can defray costs. Yes, okay, go ahead.

So you have that option. Yes. And you have, you know, so anyway. It's like a write-off. What do you think? It's a write-off. You don't have to pay for it because it's a write-off?

Go ahead. That is what I thought. You don't know what a write-off is. I know what it is. What's a write-off? A write-off is a tax deduction. A write-off is when the government pays for whatever you want. Anyway, we have a guest coming in in a bit.

When's he coming? At 5.30? Can I tell you what I did last night? Yeah, I guess. I was a guest. First of all, the war in Israel is just killing me. I tell you, I can't take the pressure. This fucking accusation of genocide.

I just, I am second to none in terms of being able to be charitable and calm around people I disagree with. And actually. Yeah, I mean, even Aaron Monta can't get under your skin, so I don't know who can. And actually, mean it. Like, I actually. You're not like that with me.

No, well, I like, like if Aaron Monta came in today for a drink, I'd be, actually, I swear to God, I'd be, oh, good, Aaron's here. I'd argue with him. And I've no, because to me, Aaron, first of all, he's a nice guy. But second of all. No.

All right, stop. But second of all, there's nothing phony about how he presents himself. He's like, this is what I believe. And I'm not backing down, and I'll be happy to tell you how I believe, and I know where he stands. And actually, he'll even play by the rules in the sense that if we have a disagreement and we send each other an article, that's where he'll say, oh, yeah, you're right. But then, of course, he'll just find something else to back up his point, but he won't. Whatever. I don't have anything bad to say about Aaron Mate. I really don't. What drives me up a wall are the people who claim to be on the other side but then are cowards and bend to peer pressure and start saying things to meet the people who hate the jews halfway or go out of their way to make all these disclaimers not not that disclaimers shouldn't be made but so much so that it just it basically just guts their point. For instance, I don't want to use names, but-

Why? Name names. Stop, stop. What if I name a name? No. And you blink. So for instance, so this charge of genocide. Now, I don't want to get into it. We'll do another episode about it.

But it's like, to me, I use the analogy, it's like acid rain on the Jewish psyche. And it's corroding the psychology of my children. And there's nothing we can do about it. What they're doing is that they are canceling the Holocaust in a way, in the sense that if they had their way, the history of the 20th century would be talking about,

what was the genocides in the 20th century? Oh, well, the Nazis did it to the Jews, and the Hutus did it to the Tutsis, and the Pol Pot, and then the Jews did it to the Palestinians. So, you know, like algebra, you have one X on this side, one on the other. Like I said, you put a line through both of them. It all evens out. And in some sick way,

this relieves the pressure that the Holocaust just puts on the world in the same way that Tucker Carlson was always looking to find out that the black people in south africa were uh taking the property or killing you know he's he's desperate to find that the black people in south africa are turning the tables on the white people because in some way i believe this relieves the pressure of the terrible thing that the white people did well you see the black people did something terrible too. I'm happy that's off the list, right? By the way, I know Noam is very serious about this topic

because when he mentioned algebra, he didn't say, I know Perry, you didn't take algebra. That's something he would normally say. But if you were in a more lighthearted mood. So now, I was thinking, again, we had to do a whole episode about it, but in the old days, if, for instance,

Benny Morris chronicled all the, not all, a number of massacres. The Jews in 48 during the war, there were some massacres of towns where they killed, I don't know, hundreds, maybe people, thousands. What were they called? They were called massacres. They weren't called genocide because nobody thought there was genocide. We know what genocide is. Genocide is a plan

to eradicate a people. For instance, the Hutus, do you know what the Hutus did? They went on the radio. They urged all their citizens to end the Tutsi problem. In 100 days, they killed, I think, something like 700,000 people with machetes, blunt objects, rocks. Can you imagine the Ridley Scott epic of that battle? Or whatever, not battle, that atrocity. 700,000 people in three months with machetes. Israel has the firepower, I mean, I don't know, but to eliminate a million people, I'm just presuming in days, I mean, certainly they have a nuclear bomb, but short of that, I mean, they could just go, like, you know, there's no pushback, really,

if Israel decided they wanted to commit a genocide. And yet they dropped 45,000 bombs, and there's 33,000 dead, including fighters, if we just, you know, let's just assume the numbers. Fewer than one person per bomb. That's their genocide, right? So, but it's so satisfying for people to call it genocide and concentration camp,

and every word that you can take from the Jewish history and neutralize it well not to mention suck all the energy out of it by making it mundane quotidian as Abigail Schreier is and I would add and I don't know if this is a coincidence but the word knock by is Arabic for disaster. And the word Shoah. Catastrophe, I think. Catastrophe. Well, those are synonyms. And the word Shoah is a, which is the word that is used in Israel to denote the Holocaust, the word Shoah.

And Shoah means in Hebrew disaster or catastrophe. Is that a coincidence or is that another example of paganism? I think that may be coincidence. I throw it out there. I don't know but um again it doesn't bother me when the aaron mate does it it doesn't bother me when uh the arabs do it because though i think they're wrong that you know they're no more slaves to their upbringing than Hasidic Jews are, or, I mean, these are not, you know,

or any hyper-theological, hyper-ideological people that's raised from birth with a particular kind of, you know, marination of thought. I can't excuse it. What they're doing. But I don't imagine. That if I were in their shoes. I think I'd be different. As if I would imagine myself.

If I was born in the deep south. I would have known not to have slaves. I know that's not true. That's an arrogant thing to say. But. The everyday liberal. Sec, secular Jews that I know who just blow like the wind, depending on what the current view in the Democratic Party is

about what Israel is doing or what it isn't doing, oh, Chuck Schumer, they make me fucking sick. And they are the problem. And you know, I've been feeling this way for years already, because back when the Jews weren't allowed to march and the women's march and the Jews weren't allowed here, and I used to argue with everybody, and I'd argue and I'd be writing emails to people and say,

what are you talking about Trump for? What are you worried about Trump? And Trump said the Jews need to pay more attention to Israel, calling upon a classic anti-Semitic trope of dual loyalty. Like this is such nonsense. And I remember saying at the time with enemies like Trump, we don't need friends. And this is not an endorsement of Trump. It was just a saying like, no, Trump is not our enemy.

Trump may be a disaster for the country, but Trump is not the guy who was breathing fire to the anti-Semite. It was always the left. It was intersectionality. And now every, there's not a college campus in the country where Jews are hanging their heads high, holding their heads high. I got an email from a girl,

a customer in the Olive Tree. She's in Columbia Journalism School. are hanging their heads high, holding their heads high. I got an email from a girl, a customer in the Olive Tree. She's in Columbia Journalism School. She's a young girl, young woman. And she told me that her friends, and she's not religious, but she heard her friends whispering that they want to invite somebody to Shabbat dinner. And they were afraid to have it overheard because it was provocative to be heard

talking about Shabbat dinner. This can make me cry. This is a fucking tragedy. This is a tragedy. I mean, there's no doubt. And so from this, I hear an echo now. I mean, there's no doubt. And so from this... I hear an echo now. From this,

we want to introduce into this already very dangerous dynamic, the notion of genocide. Now, every Jew either is a Nazi sympathizer,

or he has to publicly disavow himself from these people. All right, whatever. So this is how I'm feeling. No, no, no. Not whatever. To be continued. Yeah. So I'm very upset about it.

So here we have with us. Hello, sir. Can you see us? Hey. Can you hear me? Yeah, yeah. I got you. We have with us.

Turn him up, Max. you see us hey I got you we have with us about max via the miracle of teleconferencing attorney Edward Oh by a she deputy sheriff and legal advisor for the plumas County Sheriff's Office and a licensed attorney in the state of California his law office specializes in providing law enforcement legal services to California law enforcement agencies and he also serves as a legal advisor and legal consultant to numerous law enforcement agencies welcome ed obayashi via teleconferencing to our podcast thank you and just a uh um correction my fault um it's just been updated but i am now with the modoc county sheriff's office here in california so but thank you for that, so we're very happy to have you. I first, your name first came across my radar when I was doing some research about this whole Derek

Chauvin thing. And I want to talk to you about that because you're an expert on that stuff and on the Minnesota policies of neck restraints and how that culture might have led to what happened with Derek Chauvin. But since then, you sent us some interesting other stories that you're involved in that maybe you wanted to talk about. And maybe we'll start with that, because one of them has actually touched a nerve with me because it's something that's close to my heart with a personal experience that I'll tell you about.

Maybe I'll start by playing that news report that you sent me, the Channel 10 news report. Is that okay? Sure, of course. So play that, Max, to introduce the subject, and then Mr. Obayashi can tell us about it. Go ahead. Disturbing new video showing the moments leading up

to a man's death in Rio Linda. ABC 10's Luke Clary explains why the family is now considering taking legal action. Chris, the family of Christopher Gilmore said that he was suicidal, not out to hurt anyone else. They called 911 to get him help. And minutes later, he was dead, shot several times by a sheriff's deputy. A warning, this video is difficult to watch. Saturday, March 23rd. Sacramento Sheriff's deputies responding to an 8.15 a.m. call

for a suicidal man who'd been cutting himself in the bathroom of his Rio Linda home. They call him outside. Christopher Gilmore emerges naked and bleeding, stumbling through a barrage of less lethal rounds before a deputy opens fire with his service weapon all of this happening right in front of his sister bobby gilmore who called 9-1-1 in the first place and now regrets that she did i called the ambulance not the car that's that's good max imagine how terrible it is to say. That's good, Max.

So let me just describe to the people who are listening and not watching on YouTube that what you see is a driveway and a naked, portly, kind of a chubby guy who looks almost from his gate to be mentally ill, right? Something not about, right? And he's obviously not having any concealed weapons and he and he walks out kind of stumbling out and they just shoot him was he would he have a knife

on him or something no i don't well i don't we'll ask we'll ask the guest i don't think so and they say he had a kind of a razor type um device of some sort oh because he was cutting himself like like like yes okay so well tell us now now what's your what's your what do you want us to know about that and what should we learn from that well um i don't know if you're going to play the rest of the um you know my interview no i figured you would tell us lives yeah yeah that's fine yeah so the issue of whether or not the shooting was justified is a separate issue from the one that caused a certain amount of, say, controversy that that story caused. What I mentioned is that the bigger, more important issue here is whether or not law enforcement should respond to these types of situations. In other words, responding to a suicidal subject. I've been, you might have

seen from the LA Times article that I sent to supplement that story about maybe three years ago, four years ago, that was a front page article on the Los Angeles Times about my department, the first department in California to adopt a formal policy, which I created for non-response, police non-response to these types of situations, given certain circumstances. And the reason for that one is for years and years, we have responded to these calls. We want to do the right thing. That's why I became a cop. I know it sounds altruistic, but that really is the motivation.

At least when I started being a cop almost 25 years ago. Things have changed significantly since then. But how have things changed? Well, in terms of what what is the motivation these days now for young the younger generation for becoming cops, you know, is it really altruistic or is it another reason? Is it money? You know, we just don't have any. Is it similar to like the reason people enlist in the army now is because it's a good paycheck rather than at a patriotic duty?

Well, when you've got departments offering $100,000 bonuses to sign up, along withfigure incomes annually just to start out, you start wondering what the motivation is. Of course, we try to ascertain that through the background process. But again, look at what's happening across the United States in terms of the quality of some of the officers. And you may be aware that was one of the, in my opinion, one of the underlying problems with the Tyree Nichols murder, where those officers were, according to the media sources, were completely unqualified to be in those law enforcement positions. Which one was that? Was that where they kicked the guy in the head?

That was one where they basically stood, a number of cops stood this individual up and were taking free shots at him. Yeah. What state was that in? That was, I believe, Tennessee. Yeah.

I believe. Yes, yes. And in the end, one guy kicked him in the head, I think, right? They were hitting him with batons. your opinion, I agree with it. That's what I told the press. I said, I lived through the Rodney King beating. I was in LA at LAPD headquarters, you know, when the officers were acquitted and then the riots took place. But that changed, that was a, I don't want to say, it was a quantum shift in how we all perceived use of force in the United States. And the reason I bring this up is because, in my opinion, as I told the press, Tyree Nichols was much worse than Rodney King, because I can understand the circumstances of Rodney

King beating. In other words, you know, what, you know, all the background circumstances, et cetera. But the Tyree Nichols issue, that was just pure sadistic. Yep. You mentioned the six figure incomes and signing bonuses. Isn't sort of the conventional wisdom that you pay more, you get better quality, you attract better people? Yes. No, that's true. Very much so. But the problem is in today's atmosphere, we're having a hard time recruiting good candidates in spite of those significantly high, you know, salaries that are being offered. So what happens, unfortunately, is that since we can't attract the candidates that we normally, maybe in the past, that we were able to hire and attract, we're having to deal with a, say, a lesser qualified pool of applicants.

They may be as qualified or what we're looking for, but the pool that we're dealing with is much, much smaller. I want to let... We're having to reach out to... In my experience, I've been through situations where departments are hiring marginal candidates. So we put you on a detour. I want to get back to the mental health issue, but just one last question about this quickly. Is this a result of the total of the demoralization of police forces around the country, starting with Ferguson and all the defund the police stuff?

Are people just who would who would want to be a policeman now? You're just the object of ridicule. Is that the reason or am I reading too much into it? No, no, no, you're correct. That is one of the primary reasons and is often cited in surveys. all right get back to the mental health thing if you don't mind yeah so um the um and i've been on these types of calls um countless times they're as you can appreciate that they are routine calls everywhere in the united states my son is in the bathroom. He's threatening to kill himself. He's got a knife. He won't come out. And so we've always regularly responded

ever since I've been a cop and before that. But over the years, what we have seen is that with the effects of, and I'm not a trained psychologist, and this is only from observations, is that we see more and more of these troubled individuals, more and more in today's society. I've seen it grow significantly over my career as a cop. What is it? You know, drug use, alcoholism, who knows? But it's just, it's prevalent throughout society. The issue of suicide is

well publicized. A lot of efforts to address it, there have been been a lot of criticisms about whether or not these programs and responses are effective. But here's the thing. We as officers are not equipped to deal with these types of subjects. I'm talking about the subject who is suicidal, but is only a threat to himself or herself and not others and just wants to end it all. Can I can I go ahead, finish if you finish this one? I'm sorry. And what happens is, unfortunately, in a lot of these instances, and it's not just California, obviously. We respond and bad things happen. And the courts over the years have recognized that the solution, in other words, the solution, the police solution is often worse than the problem. And it is. And in this particular incident, the one that you showed the news clip from, is a perfect example.

It's the ideal example. I hate to use that term in this context, in this backdrop. But the individual, the family called and said the individual was suicidal, but was only a threat to himself. He was in the bathroom. And the family was outside the residence. So he wasn't threatening anybody, and no one was in danger. Plus, he was schizophrenic, according to the family. Excuse me.

And he had threatened, not threatened, but he had actually committed a felony assault on a police officer, I believe a couple of weeks prior. And he was out of jail. And most importantly, that the information also given to the cops, according to what I was advised, is that the individual said, I am going to commit suicide by cop.

So you have all those indicators and warnings to the cops that this is going to end in a bad way. Yet they responded. And experience and data have shown that if we don't respond to these situations under these types of circumstances, they work themselves out. They resolve themselves much more often than not. Well, so a few things first of all just as to the shooting it seems very hard for me to understand why they shot him because they could just stay out of his way i mean i i don't i don't know enough about it but you know he just i just can't believe it.

It didn't look like they had to kill that guy. It looked like murder to me. It looked like, but that's, you know, just stay out of his way. No, and I understand that. It looks bad. They all look bad. And in this case, there's going to be a lot of criticism of the officers. And there usually is, obviously, when there's any type of use of force.

But, yeah, there are going to be, I can assure you, there are questions and there's going to be, the investigation is going to delve into why did you feel that this individual was an immediate threat to your safety? The body cam videos will be very revealing. We don't have those yet. Yeah. very revealing. We don't have those yet. But about three years ago, I was brought in to advise the California Department of Justice to how to investigate these shootings of individuals who are not armed with a firearm. But part of that training also to law enforcement throughout California, which I've done for years and continue to do so, is what better tactics can we use in response to these situations?

Was there a taser used initially? No, they deployed a beanbag. Okay. And multiple beanbag rounds hit the individual, but as is not uncommon against individuals who are schizophrenic or under the influence of drugs, often tasers and beanbags really are ineffective. So my second thought is that it seems to me that if there's a

report where somebody has a weapon even if they claim they're it's suicidal sooner or later somebody with the weapon is gonna kill somebody who tried to stop them from committing suicide or something like that it seems difficult for the cops not to respond. But let me tell you my personal story and why I have this tremendous sympathy for this. I had a friend, I must have told this story years ago, a couple years ago when it happened. I have a friend who's one of my really, really few,

really intimate, close friends in my life. And he developed manic depressive symptoms well into our friendship. And when he was having a manic episode, he was totally crazy. No less crazy than somebody you would describe as paranoid schizophrenic. Just totally out of his mind, hearing voices, crazy.

He one time held a bottle over my head and threatened to kill me, which, so he never actually hurt anybody, but he looked like he could hurt somebody. So he was at his mother's house, his mother's elderly, and he was having an episode and he was getting uh physical didn't hurt

anybody but they were scared of him so they called the cops and the cops came and the cops uh began to arrest him and the mother and the sister pleaded with the cops to take him to uh bellevue the mental hospital they said don't put him in jail it's terrible for him take him to Bellevue, the mental hospital. He said, don't put him in jail. It's terrible for him. Take him to the mental. He has, look up his records. You'll see he's, he's a mental patient. He's not on his medication. Take him to, and the cops didn't want to hear it. They brought him in front of the judge. The judge, what the judge did was order was give an order of protection that nobody asked for so that now he couldn't go home. But didn't take him to the mental hospital. He walked the streets and then jumped off the 59th Street Bridge, I forget which bridge, and killed himself.

That's it. Done. Exactly a cousin of what it is that you're describing where this time the cops didn't kill him but a total a combination of a lack of training and a lack of concern institutional lack of concern took somebody who was a was a a beloved person who was having an episode his episodes were few and far between and now he's dead you know so so this is this is one of the most difficult things i've experienced so that's why what the issue that you're describing means a lot to me if i if maybe i can't see it actually working in this particular scenario that you describe i think you're very much on the right side of wanting.

I'm sure there's many, many people that are that could be helped with this. Yes. And I will tell you this. I know because I have not encountered any cases because I keep I keep being informed of these types of incidents throughout California. And I can pretty much say with 100% confidence that anytime officers in California encounter an individual such as the one that got shot and your friend, if we're able to take them into custody they are automatically by law we are taking them to the mental health facility for observation and that is the protocol and to a t i know i say i know i don't know any situations where officers in California would, as you describe it, take an individual and just drop them off at a bus station somewhere and say, have a nice day. We're certainly not going to take him in front of a judge. The judge would have a few words with the chief if we did that. Well, I actually convened lawyers and wanted actually to sue the city on his behalf with his family because exactly the kind of protocols that you're describing I think are similar to what goes on in New York.

But I'm sure this will be no surprise to you. When I spoke to the lawyers who are expert in this, they told me that it's very difficult to fight City Hall and you can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars with a meager chance of success. And of course, it's not going to bring him back. So you do it because you want to bring attention to it, to do something good for society. But at some point, his family just decided it was more than they wanted to go through. I think also part of it is because then you have to relive the incident every day for the next five years that you're involved in this lawsuit. And that's a tremendous psychological toll.

I agree. I can only speak for California, but I can tell you California has a, if I can use this term, a very robust police liability legal industry. Yeah. All right. Well, the other incident that you sent was this very disturbing headline, Los Angeles Times, does racism make you, quote quote too stupid to be a cop

a california law said yes and what it describes here i'll just read a few weeks ago the contra costa county district attorney released the result of an investigation that found up to 40 percent of police offers in antioch a bay area enclave with a majority of non-white residents, were linked to a racist text message chain. Calling black people monkeys and gorillas wasn't the worst of it. There's a link to it. I looked at the actual text messages. There's memes comparing black people to apes. There's N-word jokes. I mean, if you can, we were talking before you came on about anti-Semitism. If you could imagine being Jewish and knowing that you were being policed by policemen who were trading these kind of memes about Jewish people, it boggles the mind that this could go on in America. So what, and not in Mississippi, right?

What do you want to talk about that? What's your take on that? And did you see my comment? No, I didn't. I didn't. That headline regarding stupid, where that came from? No, go ahead. Go ahead and tell us. I must have missed that. Go ahead. No.

I told them that if you do this, you're too stupid to be a cop. And I mean that. Not to, you know, excuse me for the upset, but that's... If you need to get some water or something, If you need to get some water or something, you're not going to hold us up. We can just cut out the little space or something

if it would help you. No, no, I'm okay. Okay, go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah. Another department, and again, I don't have... My PowerPoint isn't big enough.

I don't have my PowerPoint isn't big enough. I don't have enough gigabytes to document all the all these types of social media, stupid acts by cops. Just so you know, like I say, one of my slides covers another department where and you're were talking about Jewish, you know, anti-Semitism. I've got cops texting each other about Auschwitz strokes. This is on department time. Funny ones? What's concerning here, really, this is, in my opinion, it's a much worse problem. I don't really consider use of force a, what I'd say, a, well, it is a problem. But it really is, it's an everyday occurrence. I can understand, especially in my position, when cops have to use force. The biggest difference between use of force and social media misconduct by cops is the fact that there is no justification for these types of, this type of activity.

There just isn't there. You know, it's not like your life is in danger. You're trying to protect someone. There's just no reason for it yeah and in the you know for years and years and years use of force was my primary area of concern study and investigation uh for all many departments of california and it still does, obviously. But over the past several years, social misconduct by police officers, in my opinion, has become much more of a problem. And it's a much more of a serious danger to society than any other perception of police misconduct, other types of police misconduct. I never thought I would see it or understand it, or I mean, even encounter in my life, but officers across the country have become radicalized. And to me, that's the scariest situation. Radicalized how? Becoming involved with white supremacist groups groups um perfect example like the ones you just

mentioned um the texts uh you know associating themselves with uh certain uh fringe radical groups uh etc um you know i mean think about it how stupid do you have to be to memorialize forever these types of comments which are going to get out in the public you're a cop i mean really are you that stupid so i mean it's come to come to that point for me in my my professional opinion i don't care what it is, why you did it. It doesn't matter. You do this, you're too stupid to wear that uniform. Yeah, you know, what you're describing is horrible. And it's so widespread. Like I said, these are not isolated incidents.

You know, I have documents. I have incidents where chiefs, the heads of department have participated in this type of misconduct. I mean, it is really scary. You know, in response to that, I have developed, for request law enforcement, i have the only uh state certified law enforcement training class on social media misconduct the do's and don'ts and how to address it now the only thing that i i don't want to argue because i don't know anything about it but when i hear this kind of racist back and forth as disgusting as I find it, I don't assume these people are white supremacists in terms of ready to start attending meetings and pursue a political agenda of white people. What I see is run-of-the-mill, just, you know, vulgar bigotry, which I assume has always been there, but the technology didn't allow for it to come out,

as you say, memorialized, as it has for so many people, including teenagers say stupid things. All of society is learning to live with the fact that digital records are forever. So we're learning about each other. And I would think that we're learning about how people have always interacted.

But if you have evidence that these people are also, you know, white supremacists in terms of pursuing their agenda, that's a whole other level of horrifying to me. In other words, let me finish. I'm sorry to tell you, I have all of that evidence. So I want you to give the evidence for one second. So to make the analogy, like, if I know that a bunch of Jews are anti-Semites,

I don't really assume that if my business calls one of these cops that they're going to take the side against me because people are complex that way. They can hate the Jews but still defend the Jewish citizen in some way. But if they're Nazis, then it's a whole other level of animus. Then they are actually motivated politically with an agenda against the Jews. So some people might be rolling their eyes at me even trying to split those hairs, but I think there actually are distinctions there. But you're about to tell us why these are actually members of a political organization. So go ahead.

I do these investigations across California into social media misconduct allegations. I hear about them. Chiefs will call me, say, Ed, this is what the cop my cop did etc uh no uh the they're they're unfortunately a lot of these cops and i don't have numbers but too many of them are directly associated with hate groups uh the anti-defamation league and the southern poverty law center have identified these groups have identified officers you know you know the southern poverty law center is is has a lot of knocks on their record in terms of being you know a fair arbiter but that doesn't mean that they're not right here but i just want to point that out but no no i take that on account. But those are those two organizations are are referred to and listed as resources in the California Post website for officers, for chiefs

and managers to use as a resource for identifying hate groups. And, you know, when, when you, and also again, whether or not you really are as, and I get the distinction, the nuance, whether you as a cop really are racist or you're just blown off scene or just et cetera, et cetera, you're engaged in fantasy chat. It doesn't matter. Just the mere appearance is fatal to your career. It's fatal to the country. It's fatal to the country. It's fatal to the country. It's fatal to the country. It's fatal to the country.

It doesn't even matter what these cops, it doesn't matter if these particular cops ever do anything but treat every citizen the same way. It's a cancer. I agree. It's a cancer to America. I stress to them all the time. I said, it doesn't matter. You have one post that goes, we find that one post. You're done as a cop, period. End of story. It's a mere appearance. And that's why district attorneys in the law has made it very clear. and it's discovered you've posted anything resembling the type of comments that you and I have been talking about it,

you are banned from testifying the rest of your career. You're done. You're useless as a cop. What attorney, what prosecutor is going to put a cop on the, who's going to get crucified by the defense. So are you saying OJ was innocent? No, I'm kidding. I'm sorry. I'm kidding. No.

Well, you know, the thing is about the OJ trial is that we in non-Black America could not understand when we saw Black America cheering when OJ got off it was so foreign to us but now i realize not that oj was innocent but that we in non-black america could not understand their experience of the police and what their experience of the police. And what their experience of the police was, was worse than we could have, were ready to believe.

It was fantastic. You know why O.J. was found not guilty? Because they hated the cops. Why? Why? Yeah. And it's because you had Mark Furman testify. Remember that? What did he testify to? He used the N-word. First, he lied about it.

I've never used the N-word. F. Lee Bailey. And then, of course, then they brought in a radio announcer, I believe it was a radio announcer, who had taped an interview with him years before. And he's clearly on tape using the N-word. He was using it in like a, to be fair to Mark Furman, he was using it as playing a character, I think, like a narrative of a racist cop.

But it was that. It was that he lied about it. It was the fact that the cops, you know know the the there was they one of the cops took the evidence home with them one night whatever it is and and this was all seen through the prism of people who i think with justification did not trust a fucking thing excuse me that any cop would say and we we didn't i i didn't understand that at the time I was watching the trial. On the other hand, not to let them off the hook, it's obvious and was always obvious he was guilty.

So I can't excuse the jury for that kind of nullification. But- All it takes, that is something I teach. I said, you know what? If you're sitting in the jury box and they hear you using that word that you do every they forget about everything else it's just it it doesn't matter they it's um it's just obscure obscure the merits of the case that's all they hear well right

but but you would hope and then we'll get off OJ. You would hope that that jurors would understand that, OK, this cop is racist. So I will now discount any part of this case that I have to take his word for anything. However, there's two innocent people dead here and I have plenty of evidence that is, you know, enough to know. And I happen to remember all the evidence. We can do a whole nother thing, but let's get off OJ. So now, funny that we're going to now talk about the Chauvin case. Now, the Chauvin case has always bothered me. Not always.

At first when I saw it, I reacted like everybody else. I thought I was seeing basically an execution that's what it looked like but then as the information began to drip out as I saw the video where the cops were had he was

in the back of the car, he was complaining he couldn't breathe, they said how about this, we'll open the window that he wanted to get out he says okay lay on the ground they didn't rough him up open the window that he wanted to get out. He says, okay, lay on the ground. They didn't rough him up. Then I saw that he was, and at that time he was saying, I can't breathe.

I can't breathe before they were touching him. And then when I saw the training manuals, which showed up at choke holds as non-lethal and showed, had a picture of a guy with his, a cop with his knee on between the shoulder blades or the bottom of the neck, you know, pretty almost indistinguishable from the Chauvin thing. And then I began to hear about how they were taught about to be wary of excited delirium. And I heard that they were taught that if you're breathing, if you're speaking, you're breathing and there's more.

This is without getting into the elements of the fair trial. I began to have this horrible feeling that this cop was a victim of the culture that he was trained in. And then right after this killing, right after Floyd died, Minnesota began to change some of its regulations. They removed some parts of the manual. They changed the training about excited delirium, almost telegraphing inadvertently that we should take these things out because we kind of do understand that this was part of the reason Chauvin did all this. And I came away with this feeling that the state was the villain here. That if only the state had told him, never do that and never use a chokehold and don't worry about excited delirium. And if they told him all the things that we wished he had done, if they had simply

told him to do those things, rather than if they told him just because somebody's talking, don't assume they can breathe. Somebody can suffocate. Somebody can run out of oxygen, even though they're talking like just then none of the things he did, he would have done. Because if you hear the recordings, he's actually referring to his training as he's explaining why he's doing what he's doing. And I have this very uneasy feeling that that this man maybe there's some crime there is does not have the heart of a murderer but what what's your feeling you you probably know the case backwards and forwards no i i actually don't uh i only have what um

i think the rest of us have um i was asked to review the policy, the one you're referring to, you know, for my viewpoints on it for your colleagues. But I agree. When I looked at the policy and compared it to the actions of Officer Chauvin, it appeared to me that he followed training and the policy. And when you look at an officer's mannerisms or any subject's mannerisms, that tells you a lot. And in this case, as I told your colleagues, I said, does this look like someone who has a guilty conscience? It's broad daylight. You've got all these pedestrians they're cell phoning him video wise uh and you know this is something that happens hundreds of times across the united states yeah um you know there was no intent to murder uh or much less even kill or injure Mr. Floyd. Unfortunately, it resulted in that unfortunate

result. But I agree. My viewpoint was that this was not a malice-based killing. With anything, it was an accident. I see that in many compression asphyxia, what we call dogpile incidents across the United States. I'm investigating a couple of those right now as we speak. So you don't see that as a gnome. No mention that there might have been some lesser crime committed by Chauvin. You don't even see any crime or maybe some negligent homicide. It could be negligence. But again, based on, you know, when I read the manual, the policy manual on these types of holes, restraint. I looked at it and said, well, where does it say that you cannot apply the type of force restraint that Officer Chauvin applied? Now, did he apply

it in an unreasonable manner? Of course, we know how the juries felt about that. But again, did it rise to the level of, you know, murder? I don't think so. You know, I have a situation very similar to that right now that I'm investigating. And, you know, the officer, you know, he didn't mean to, you know, you've got to look into, you know, does this officer have a bad heart? Did he have malice in his heart, in his mind when he committed this act? Or was it based on his reasonable perception or was it based on his training and experience, as Noam was saying. And, you know, California also reacted accordingly. When I say California, the legislature banned the use of a carotid restraint. You know, after the George, I'm sorry, after Mr. Floyd's death. And, but the, you know, there's a misconception about whether that,

the carotid strength really is prohibited. And that's another story altogether. Well, to make matters more complicated with the Floyd case, the autopsy didn't even find asphyxiation. There were conflicting and mutually exclusive theories of causation. There was enough fentanyl in him, apparently, to have killed a certain percentage of people. Not everybody, it wasn't like a no-brainer dosage, but he certainly could have died from the fentanyl. There's so much to the case, but the most significant kind of, this is a non-legal, but just idea of justice is that the guy, the cop, was filled with inaccurate information that had come down to him through the municipality, through his training manual, through the verbalizations of other police, through the way other policemen behave,

the culture of the force. The guy who was ready to roll down the window and rather than just shove the guy in the back of the car, and there was no reason they had to let him out of the back of the car, and then let him lay down and call EMS. Of course, EMS takes a wrong turn or something and gets there in nine or 11 minutes as opposed to two minutes, which would have also would have been there in time. There's so many weird things here. But I have likened it to and I did research at the time.

There are outrageous cases of medical malpractice where doctors actually dismiss the warnings of nurses and say, don't make a mistake or the dosage is wrong or you're getting it backwards and that lead to the death of patients.

The verdict. Almost never are these doctors charged with homicide they are sued they're they lose their licenses they pay through the nose whatever it is but somehow when somebody makes these terrible mistakes in the profession where they're trying to to do good with cops in the profession where they're trying to do good with cops, in the profession where they're risking their lives, in the profession where they're forced into these split-second decisions,

and a certain number of them we know statistically will make these decisions wrong, there's just something not satisfying, not fair about putting these people in jail, as opposed to the earlier case we talked about where these cops just murdered somebody. Like we see it. They just they're taking turns kicking the shit out of him until finally somebody develops the lethal blow. There's no there's nothing to be said there. Right. And I feel like Chauvin, it was not that case. My friend Coleman Hughes is, I think, preparing a rather long article for the Free Press, which is going to be a rebuttal to Rodney Balco, who's a rebuttal to the article that Coleman had already written. So there'll be much more about this and maybe you'll want to come back to comment on it. We're just about out Go ahead. Just to get back to the initial video we saw of the naked man that was shot by the cops, is there no technological solution to this? Aren't there like net guns or something?

It would seem almost impossible that there's not some technological solution to a case like that, where a guy's running around with a small blade, you know? Yeah, you know, I'm glad you asked that. And it's a good question. And I, believe me, I understand the sentiment. But the plain answer is no. There are other devices out there, but not every department or officer is equipped with it. Like we have what's known as wraps, you know, where you can, it's kind of a bolo device. You may have seen it, you know, on YouTube or on news where basically you shoot this, you know, literally a bolo. And it wraps around the individual's torso or legs and supposed, you know, supposed to immobilize the individual.

Or there's, like I said, tasers, there's 40 millimeter launchers, heavy foam bullets, you name it. But many of those typically may not be effective. I'm not being facetious here. I've said this numerous times the only only device uh that will put an end to police shootings and use of force uh it'll come sooner or later uh is this is a star trek phaser yeah but we're not there yet

all right well well look sir because again what we're left with keep. All right. Well, look, sir. Because, again, what we're left with, keep in mind, all we have, I say we as God, all we have are the tools on our belt, a taser, a baton, pepper spray, our handgun, and sheer brutal strength. Unfortunately, that is force. And it's hard force. And it's hard force. It's going to result in injuries or death. It's just, unfortunately, part of... I have a quick question. Hi, how are you? We've been talking online.

So you know how in the 70s when they figured out that serial killers were a real thing in the FBI and they created a behavioral science unit, which before that did not exist, and they have things like Major Case or SVU, why wouldn't it be the case that the police departments across America would put together a mental health department that were specifically designed, trained, the officers would, of course, be educated and trained to

deal with situations that are exactly like the one you've been describing, and of course, Noam's friend situation? No, good question. I can speak primarily for California and many of the departments that follow the response protocol. Officers from day one in the academy are trained. They are trained in behavioral health issues. There are departments that do have the resources to partner up with

social services, trained clinical technicians, those individuals that, you know, with social services that are much more professionally trained in these areas, and they ride together. What I always try to point out though is that, number one, it's a luxury that 99% of departments can't afford to begin with. Number two, those types of response units are not designed and are not intended to respond to a situation like one who is armed, one who is just hell-bent on either killing someone, killing himself, or others who interfere.

We are not going to put a civilian clinician in harm's way for obvious reasons. Those types of units, response units, are really designed to address nonviolent or semi-compliant individuals in situations. But you can imagine, you know, we're not going to have a civilian go up to someone with a knife and start talking to them. It's just not going to happen. So again, yes. by you because as opposed to almost everybody else you don't seem to have a dog in this fight you seem to be ready to call the police out

when the police deserve it and you seem to be ready to defend the police when the police deserve to be defended and that's not a usual type of person so I don't know you that well maybe I'll find out that that's are you usual type of person. So I don't know you that well. Maybe I'll find out that that's,

are you crazy, this guy? But from the little interaction I have with you, that's the vibe I get. And I find that very, very impressive. So as there, unfortunately, will certainly be future nationally interesting events that concern the police, I would love it if you could be someone we could come back to to discuss

these things in the future. Be more than glad to. Thanks for having me on. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Ed Obayashi signing off. Thank you, Ed.

Thank you. At podcast at comedy seller.com podcast at comedy seller.com. Okay. No, you, you said something very far reaching you said basically you're saying that that Chauvin is a sacrificial lamb and almost a hero a

tragic hero not a hero well insofar as you know you can oh yeah yeah we're just having we're just doing post post post check thank you yeah well in a sense that are we still on air are we still recording okay great okay in the sense that he he basically died for the sins of the country like jesus well you know for our racial sins he was sacrificed and in that sense

it you know what you seem to be saying is well i don't know, hero may be too strong a word, but... Hero is not what you're describing, but you're saying that he was sacrificed? Sacrificed. Yeah, there is some evidence to that because there's much more to that case in terms of the fact that there was a juror who had a T-shirt saying, get your knee off my neck or get your knees, get your knee off our necks? Could you, like before the trial, this is what the guy was wearing a t-shirt, pretty much indicating what his take was on the guilt of the defendant. That's not the way it's supposed to be. That doesn't make him innocent, but it certainly doesn't, certainly would seem to make the trial unfair. And there were other things like that. They didn't ask for change of venue.

They didn't sequester the jury. None of the things that we've seen on similarly, or there's never been a bigger case, right? But other things we've seen in smaller cases that got attention, many things were done. Okay, we have to go. See you later, everybody. Good night.