The Daily Beast Podcast - Nothing Has Changed Since Sandy Hook and That’s a Damn Shame

Episode Date: January 27, 2023

On this week’s episode of The New Abnormal, Gloria Pan, the Senior Vice President at Mom's Rising, talks about the recent mass shootings and what comes next. Then Radley Balko, an expert on police militarization in America, talks about the danger of no knock warrants. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What an excellent show we have today.

First, we're going to talk to the watch is Radley Balco, who's the expert on police militarization in America, and he'll talk to us about the danger of no-knock warrants. Then we'll talk to Gloria Pan, the senior vice president at Moms Rising, about the recent mass shootings at Half Moon Bay and Monterey Park. But first, let's have some fun. Well, apparently it's time for gas stoves to move over, Andy, because we have a new idiot rant from the conservative riot in this time. It is about Xboxes, which apparently, you know, they are going to try and remove from your cold dead hands because they're becoming too woke. Okay, so, you know, I first heard this story. It was bubbling up. And, you know, I'm a bit of a gamer, but I'm a, I'm a PS5 guy, so I sort of laugh at Xbox.

But this is just insane. They're going to update the operating systems on the Xbox so that they're more energy efficient. So this has a couple of effects. A, it's good for the environment. And B, it, guess what? It saves people money because you pay electric bills, most people do. The right has already destroyed the word woke for the most part because everything that they don't like now, they just derisively refer to as woke.

This is beyond anything I could even imagine. predictably Fox News was absolutely outraged. Jimmy Falla, who I knew when I worked at Fox and I swear was not like this, he is out there saying they're trying to recruit your kids into climate politics at an early age. By making something more energy efficient, what the fuck is wrong with you? Like you want to pay higher electric bills to own the libs? Is that how sad these people are now, Daniel? Yes, they want their constituents, their base to die, right?

you know, don't get vaccinated. Don't take care of your health. You know, remember when Michelle Obama wanted your kids to not have pink slime in their meat lunch and Republicans lost their shit? They're like, no, they should have the ability to poison their own kids. Look, anything that is going to resemble any type of progress, even how small or incremental, that actually saves people money. The right doesn't want.

They want people to be as stupid, as sick. as broke as they can possibly be because you know why, Andy? Because it makes people easier to control. And I want people to understand that at the end of all of their bullshit like faux outrage around Eminem's one day, gas stoves the next and now it's the Xbox is that all of this has to do with control. One of the things that I wish as a pushback would be is their whole, you know, wokeness and anti-wokeness is about wanting people to remain asleep. Yeah. Right? Wanting people to remain asleep and unconscious and unaware to their manipulative tactics of control. That's what this is about.

It's stupid. And I can't believe we have to talk about it. But it's just like the whole core of it is manipulation and control of their very, very naive, very naive base. Yeah, it's just unbelievable. And if you look at Xbox, when they announced this, Microsoft, they put out a blog post and said, hey, this is what we're doing. If you look at the things they're doing, it's like you can't, you literally can't be opposed to any of them and be a sane person. They're going to roll out updates to the systems and to the games during times of the night when renewable energy sources make up a higher proportion of the electricity being used on local grids.

They're going to put their older models into an energy saving mode, which the newer models are already on by default. And I don't know anyone who doesn't have their system. on energy saving because it costs you nothing. What they're doing are these tiny things, and it's not like propaganda even. They're not even out there saying anything, like, you kids need to save electricity, which would be fine, by the way,

but they're not even doing that. These are literally behind-the-scenes updates that most users won't even notice. But something like this, the Blaze then accuses Microsoft of trying to force gamers to power down to fight climate change, according to the Washington Post.

I don't know if these people listen to themselves, but they sound insane. A lot of them are insane, and a lot of them are not, and they're doing a bit, unfortunately. But I don't, I just, I don't know how you go home at night and look in the mirror and say,

yeah, I really took on Xbox making some under the hood changes today. I did good. I don't think vampires can see their reflection. Fair point. So there's that. But, you know, at the end of the day, too, I think that what is scaring the hell out of the far right as well is that you know that one of the top issues for Generation Z and younger is climate change because they're looking around and they're seeing the earth either underwater, on fire, frozen in a tundra and realizing that a holy shit, by the time that we're actually eligible to vote, by the time that we're eligible to be running for office, like there'll be no planet left.

Yep. So they're actually more attuned with wanting things to be energy efficient, with not buying cars, with doing things that are about trying to minimize the damage that previous generations have done just unabashedly to the planet. So, I mean, let them continue to run away from a constituency that is actually interested in preserving the planet who is not going to be a part of the Republican cult. Yeah, it's a Fox News at this point. And he says, it's goop for boomers. Oh, shit. I mean, that's what it is. Like, you've got, you know, Tucker Carlson out there talking about tanning your nether regions.

It's just every day that they're hyping medications that don't work and cures that don't work. And it's just, they literally are goop for boomers. And it's just, it's pathetic. They're like one big infomercial. Yeah. For like chia seeds and testicle tanning. They're an infomercial for shit. And my pillow.

Yes. My pillow, testicle tanning, and Dr. Oz's recommended chia seeds. All right. Let's, I guess, move on to something a lot more serious, which is Mike Pompeo. I seem to remember him being part of the Trump administration. Am I right about that? He's out there selling a book. As part of that, this is how he has described what happened on January 6th.

Former Secretary of State was the former director of the CIA, and he said about January 6th. The left exploited it. That day, quote, ended in glory. And Americans should be proud. Are we talking about the same January 6th, 2021? Was he at like a hockey game on that day or something? I'm confused about what we should be proud about. Was it the feces being spread around the halls of the Capitol building? Was it police officers being beaten with the American flag and bludgeoned? Was it the Q&ON shaman running around stealing property? Like, what part of that day should Americans be proud of? You got me.

I guess the only thing, the only part of that I'm even the tiniest bit proud of is that at least a bunch of those people are in prison now. But beyond that, this guy was the head of the CIA, which is absolutely frightening. He is, I guess, considering a presidential role. run for 2024. And I know we bash the media a lot on this podcast, but why is this dude getting airtime to say this shit, Danielle? I don't understand. We bashed the media because they are complicit in why we are living in such terrifying political times and why there seems to be

this desire to both sides and offer up airtime and platforms to people that we know. are insurrectionists, to people that we know are treasonous. Mike Pompeo does not give a fuck about America, the values and the constitution that America was built on. He looks at those insurrectionists and much in the same way that Marjorie Taylor Green apparently goes to the prisons to support them and make those insurrectionists feel like they aren't alone. Mike Pompeo is out there talking about the fact that these are the people we should be proud of. The ones that, that built a gallows on the steps of the Capitol building to hang Mike Pence. CBS this morning, you're just sitting down and, oh, Mike Pompeo.

So what do you think about the state of democracy in America? You know, the thing that you helped to try and overthrow? We never learn. Like, the same reason that Henry Kissinger has been used throughout the decades as sort of, you know, an elder statesman and someone, I mean, this guy literally responsible. for more deaths than almost anyone in the 20th century. Let me qualify that in the second half of the 20th century. And we just keep doing this is my point.

And Mike Pompeo in an actual society would be a pariah. You know, if people want to get mad at me and say, oh, this cancel culture, I don't give a fuck. This is a guy who should be canceled. This is a guy who should not be able to be employed for the rest of his life. This is a guy that nobody should take seriously. this is a guy who should be forced to walk down the street wearing a t-shirt that says, I'm Mike Pompeo and I'm a fucking asshole. Like, I'm fine with all of that.

This is not a comedian being yelled at for a joke. This is a guy who is legitimately an awful, awful human being. In addition to the January 6th stuff, in his book, he sort of goes after Jamal Khashoggi, who I guess had the absolute temerity to be dismembered and murdered by the Saudi royal family. And the Washington Post, where Khashoggi was employed as a journalist, as a columnist, I guess, sort of issued a statement saying, well, this is bullshit about all the stuff in the book. And then Pompeo, instead of having a moment of self-reflection, because again, vampire, he gets out there and he tweets, Americans are safer because we didn't label Saudi Arabia a pariah state.

I never let the media bully me. Just because someone is a part-time stringer for the Washington Post doesn't make their life more important than our military. serving in dangerous places protecting us all. I never forgot that. Fuck off. I don't often play the former military card, but as a veteran, fuck you. Don't talk about the safety of our military and how important it is that our military serve in dangerous places as an excuse for cozying up to a regime that butchered a journalist. An American journalist. And then, and don't denigrate him by referring to him as a part-time stringer. As if, first of all, that doesn't fucking matter.

If you want to say he wasn't a journalist, fine. He still didn't deserve what happened to him. All of this is just Mike Pompeo is one of the worst people on planet Earth, and he absolutely should not be welcome in a civilized society. No, just the ability for the CBSes for these legacy media outlets to normalize his fuckery. Because essentially, there was a time in our political discourse when the murder of an American citizen by a foreign entity was problematic across the board. There was a time when that shouldn't have been the way. And you wouldn't have a former secretary of state get on television, get on social media,

and say anything to the contrary, other than like, we stand with all American citizens and we will fight and look for justice. But this is what has been normalized. This is why he can go on a fucking book tour and spout his bullshit and then celebrate people that try to overthrow a free and fair election because of media outlets saying that like, oh, but we need to give both sides. I don't think that you need to talk to both sides when we're talking about, oh, the Ku Klux Klan and then those that were lynched. Right. I wonder how the clan feels about it.

The fuck out of here. That's absolutely right. There are a number of issues where there are not both sides. And the media just in its, you know, and again, this is something we've talked about a lot. In its quest for fake objectivity has decided that everything has to have a both-size component to it. And it's absolute bullshit. And just quickly to go back to the Saudi Arabia thing, I do want to point out that at least by not making the Saudis a pariah state and by continuing our good relations with them, they didn't team up with Russia to raise the price of oil. Oh, wait.

Yes, they did. But I guess on the other hand, we do still get to be complicit in their atrocities in Yemen because they're using a lot of our equipment. So that's what we get out of this. Yeah. Speaking of money. Speaking vaguely of how we are just, you know, in bed with bad people and doing bad things. The president, Joe Biden, is going to be giving a, quote, major economic speech to push back against what Republicans always do. when they are in power, which is destroy our economy.

And there was something that I heard recently, Andy, that was talking about how many trillions of dollars of debt that Donald Trump added in his four years as president was more debt than Obama and Bush combined that Trump was able to do in four years. And so it's so amazing to me that Republicans are able to run on the economy ever. And we can't have this debt limit.

run away and like that they are the frugal ones when every single time that Republicans are in power, they like literally bury us in debt that will never come out of and now are threatening to default on the debt that America has so that they can own Biden. So he's going to give this speech that is going to lay out all of the ways in which he has been able to add more jobs to the economy, that he's been able to bring gas prices back down, which a pretty much, Apparently the Republicans don't want, so they don't want us to be able to tap into our federal gas reserve as a way to temper gas prices moving forward because why should we? Why should you do anything to help the American people out? I don't understand how we don't own the messaging

and the narrative around what Democrats do not only for the American people, but for our economy as a whole. Yeah, it's interesting. If you talk to historians, everything you said is 100% accurate and it's basically the economic history of the 20th century and the 21st century in America. Like every time a Republican is in office, we end up with an economy that tanks. And then every time there's a Democrat in office, we end up with an economy that rebounds. But it doesn't matter. As you said, in the minds of people, and I apologize for using, actually, I don't apologize for it because I'm not the one doing it. It's what's being done. In the minds of people, the Democrats are the mommy figure. They spoil the kids and they're constantly buying stuff.

And the Republicans are the stern patriarchal daddy figure who say, no, we can't afford this. And let alone the fact that those gender stereotypes are insanely outdated, they're not even true with regard to the parties. And, you know, the Republicans always talk a good game about cutting spending and doing this. And then they, you know, they, do things, you know, like triple the defense budget. They don't cut spending. What they do is they cut social services. And then they take the money and they allocate it to defense or they allocate it. You know, back to the rich. Yeah. Right. Exactly. And they, you know, they cut, they cut taxes to the, to the ultra wealthy. Like, it is amazing that they've been able to pull off this con for, you know,

decades and decades and decades of being the party of fiscal responsibility because they are anything but that. But it does seem to be one of those things that it's like it's ingrained in a lot of folks' minds that it's true. And I don't know if it's just one of those things where, you know, if you just repeat the lie often enough, it becomes the truth to a lot of people or what? Or if it's that, you know, their rhetoric often is more about cutting budgets and doing all of this. But the reality never matches their rhetoric, except of course, when it comes to social services. But in general, the reality never matches their rhetoric, but they've been able to get away with it because people only listen to the rhetoric and they don't listen to the results. Yeah, which is why Democrats need to

change their rhetoric and say exactly what it is that you said, which is like they're not trying to, you know, be fiscally responsible. They're the most fiscally irresponsible and they're doing so on your backs. They're not balancing the budget. What they're going to do is cut social services that you need, that you are paying into every time you have federal and state taxes is taken out of your paycheck. It is to support you later in life and support others. And they want to get rid of that. So that's the conversation that needs to be had.

And they need something short and pithy because I'm just tired of Republicans being able to run on their bullshit when they run our economy into the ground every fucking opportunity that they have. It sounds to me like they need to hire us. You know you're right. Radley Balco has been out there sounding the alarm on the militarization of the police in America, long before it became a hot topic. And in fact, he literally wrote the book on it.

It's called Rise of the Warrior Cop. And in my opinion, it should be required reading for all politicians and in all American civics classes. And after a stint at the Washington Post, Balco now has a great substack called The Watch. Radley, thank you so much for joining us. My pleasure. Thanks for having me on. So I want to start with Pichy Road at the Watch

just the other day. And it was about no-knock and quick-knock raids by the police. Just briefly to start with the term. No knock is exactly how it sounds. The cops basically break down your door with no warning. And quick knock is when they announce themselves as the police, but then bust in within seconds, which, as you point out, feels virtually no different.

Yeah, so what's happened is over the years, the US Supreme Court has recognized this knock and announce requirement, and it's rooted in this centuries old doctrine called the Castle Doctrine, and the idea is that your home should be a place of peace and sanctuary, and the the government shouldn't be able to send, you know, armed agents busting through your door unless it has a really good reason. But even as the court recognized that, it first, in the very same decision, carved out some pretty huge loopholes in the law. And then about 10 years later, it decided that, you know what, even when police do violate this rule, we're not going to enforce the exclusionary rule, which is basically the only way you can enforce it.

So that's the rule that says that the police committed an illegal search. they can't use any evidence they find against you. And so basically what the court said in this 2006 ruling is, yeah, the knock and announce requirement is still there. It's, you know, it's part of this long history of the Fourth Amendment, but we're going to take away the only real way to enforce it. And a lot of us at the time said, this is, you know, a horse shit. This is going to be basically, you know, you have a right, but no way to enforce it. And so the police are going to violate this rule left and right. And what we've seen in the 15 years since, 16 years, 17 years now, is that's what's happened.

You know, that's what's happened. That was what happened in the Breonna Taylor case. That was an illegal no-knock raid. They did knock, but they didn't announce themselves or their presence. I've written about it in Little Rock. They were just routinely, habitually committing illegal no-knock raids. There's a Myrtle Beach, one of these multi-jurisdictional task forces where you have cops from federal, state, and local to do drug raids.

They admitted under oath they were doing these illegal raids routinely. And then most recently, This is what prompted the post is there is an academic study in North Carolina looking at no-knock grades in North Carolina. What they found, what this researcher found was that basically they weren't doing no-knocks in North Carolina. They were doing these quick knocks that you described. And I'm meandering a little, but I'll get to the point here. The point is that the whole purpose of the no-knock rate is to give people inside a house the opportunity to come to the door and let the police in peacefully, right, to prevent violence and destruction of property. If you are announcing that you're the police as you're breaking down the door, there is no opportunity to come and let them in peacefully.

So you're basically subjecting these people to violence and destruction from the outset. And let's be clear, I mean, these raids are extremely traumatic. They're volatile. There's a very thin margin for error. There's been lots of people killed mistakenly and intentionally. And they're being waged primarily against people who are still merely suspected of nonviolent, consensual crimes. Most of these raids are against people who are suspected of low-level drug crimes. Is there a difference legally constitutionally between a no-knock and a quick-knock raid?

Does the quick-knock raid satisfy the legal requirements, even though, as you say, there's functionally no difference between that in a no-knock raid? So it's tricky. Supreme Court has said that police have to, they have to present evidence to a judge that the person they're raiding meets one of these loopholes that they carved out. And loopholes are things like, if the police knock announced the person is a threat to, you know, use violence against the police, the person is a threat to try to flee or the person is a threat to dispose of the evidence, basically flushing drugs down the toilet. And these are exceptions that are really easy to meet. I mean, it's not that difficult at all. And yet, these police departments still can't manage to meet them.

And what they instead do is just sort of cut and paste this boilerplate language in their warrants that says all drug dealers are potentially violent. all drug dealers might have guns. All drug dealers are a threat to dispose of evidence. And the Supreme Court specifically said, and one of the better rulings, they specifically said, you can't do that. You have to have specific evidence about this specific suspect. The problem is that ruling came about eight years before this other ruling where they took away the only means to enforce it, the rule. And so the cops break that rule all the time, but because there's no punishment for it, the rule really only exists on paper. And so, you know, this is kind of esoteric in the way.

weeds kind of legal stuff, but the reality of it is is it means that there's almost no judicial scrutiny on police who carry out these raids. There's no effort to make sure that they're verifying the dirty information they get from a confidential informant. There's no way to make, you know, there's no one's making sure that they, you know, get the address right every time. Nobody's making sure that they're not lying on these warrants, which happens pretty often, actually. What the court's rulings have done is basically taken away any judicial scrutiny from this. And, you know, When I reported on those cases in Little Rock, I mean, there's no question that those raids were illegal, that every rate, every single drug raid in Little Rock for about a seven or eight year period is being done with a no knock. Some of them with these explosives that they attached to the doors that were blowing the doors across the room, you know, in cases where there were kids in the house.

I mean, they were all illegal. And yet when I called the judges who signed those warrants, they were just sort of, they were ignorant. They just said, no, those aren't illegal, you know. And one actually said, well, you don't know what information the police told me. that's not in the warrant affidavit. Well, that's illegal, too. Anything the police used to justify a search

has to be in the warrant. You can't have side conversations with the judge. That's got to be in the record. So it's just this, it's this sort of weird kind of Alice in Wonderland kind of situation where it's like those of us who, you know, I've been working on this issue for a long time,

are trying to say, scream and wave our arms and say, wait, this is all illegal. And sort of the judges, the prosecutors, the police departments are all just kind of like, meh, you know, I mean, it's really frustrating. You point out that eliminating the exclusionary rule from this stuff pretty much lets the cop, gives the cops carte blanche. Is there any other way to hold them accountable for this? It seems to me, if someone conducts an illegal raid on your home, you should be able to, I don't know, sue them? Here's the problem. You can sue them. It's called a 1983 lawsuit. If it's a local police agency,

you can sue them. The problem is, you know, most of the time these people don't have, the people who are getting rated don't have the means to hire a lawyer. Those suits are extremely difficult to win. They're extremely expensive. A lot of lawyers don't want to bring them because you also have to show damages. And so in a lot of these cases, you know, the damages are a lot of trauma in a broken door, but it's not going to be a huge payout. The only time when we see lawsuits that are actually, you know, bring a substantial award are when somebody is. killed, right? And it shouldn't have to come to that. The other problem, so in this Hudson case,

where they threw out the exclusionary rule, Scalia wrote the majority opinion. By the way, interesting little factoid about that. The original vote among the justices was five to four to apply the exclusionary rule. And then Sandra Day O'Connor retired, was replaced by Alito, and they took another vote and it was five to four to throw out the exclusionary rule. So that, I mean, you could argue that Sondreda O'Connor retiring when she did is basically why Brianna Taylor was killed. because it removed this kind of judicial scrutiny. But getting back to that, so in the, and so in Sclea's majority opinion in this case, where they throw out the exclusionary rule, he talks about all these other remedies.

And one of them is these lawsuits. Well, as you may know, these police officers are protected by qualified immunity. So you have to show that the mistakes that they made were not only a violation of your rights, but that, you know, a court has previously determined that they're a violation of your rights, so that these cops were on notice. The scrutiny that they apply that, I mean, you basically, have to find somebody who has your same name who was raided. If there's any difference at all between the two cases, the courts are not going to let you even get in front of a jury. The other way

Scalia says that we could apply this, and this is really fascinating, is that, you know, he says, the police are in a new era of professionalism in law enforcement. And, you know, we're in this, basically that internal affairs investigations and internal discipline are the way to stop them from conducting these raids. If you pay anything to all these issues, you know that's bullshit and that it's been proven bullshit in the 15 or 16 years since. But the really fascinating thing is he cites this criminologist named Sam Walker, who's sort of the dean of criminologist in academia, and cites his work.

And, you know, Walker does say that we're in a new era of police professionalism. He also says the reason why we are is because of judicial oversight. And it's, you know, we still haven't gone nearly far enough. And Walker was so pissed off when this decision came down that he wrote a in the LA Times called Thanks a Lot, Nino, where he talks about the horror of sort of opening the paper and reading that you've been quoted in this monumental Supreme Court case, and they've gotten your work entirely wrong. Wow. Well, I'm sure that gave Scalia absolutely no pause at all. Oh, I'm sure he loved it. Yeah. So you mentioned Brianna Taylor a couple times, and obviously

that's a, you know, very infamous example of this and, you know, her senseless death. It was an absolute with tragedy. So did her death change anything in Louisville, he asked naively? I'll say this. You know, I'm extremely cynical about this stuff, and I've been covering it for about 20 years now. And I think that the backlash and reaction to the Brianna Taylor case and George Floyd, I think, has inspired more substantive reforms, I think, than we've ever seen, at least since I've been covering this issue. And so, yeah, Louisville did pass a ban on no-knox. You know, it's not the law I would have written. I think it's a little bit too easy to get around.

But the idea, you know, if you told me five years ago that we would be talking about 30 cities in five or six states passing bans on no-knock raids because of the overwhelming public support for that position, I would have told you were out of your mind. So, you know, I do think there's been a noticeable shift in public opinion on these issues. And there has been some substantive reform at the state and local level, nothing from Congress because they're always about 30 years behind the time. But there has been good reform or some substantive reform. You know, I still think we have a long ways to go. But, you know, for the first time, probably in my career, I'm not, you know, completely 100% cynical about the prospects of things changing. Okay. Well, that's something.

You mentioned public opinion on this. And it feels like at least there were some conservatives who would generally, you would think of as quote unquote law and order types, who maybe recently discovered somewhere deep inside them that they don't like these raids because they happen to. someone like Paul Manafort. Yeah, I mean, that's, you know, that's, it was Manafort. It was Roger Stone, a couple of other people. So the Manafort rate actually wasn't a no knock raid. It was a very sort of courteous and professional raid where he was given the opportunity

to avoid this kind of, you know, door busting rate. Roger Stone was also not a no knock raid. It was a little bit more aggressive, but also Stone had, you know, put videos on social media where he's surrounded by guns, you know, telling the government to come get him. So you can understand why they've been. might have been a little more cautious when they... Right. And, you know, the most fascinating was the reaction to the FBI raids on Mara Lago, where, you know,

the conservatives were out of their mind about, you know, how militaristic these raids are. I mean, for God's sakes, they called Trump's security, which happened to be the Secret Service and gave them a heads up. And they also did the raid while he was out of town. So he wouldn't be subject to embarrassment and ridicule the average, you know, suspected illegal pot smoker in this country, gets treated, you know, 100 times worse than any of those. guys did. So, you know, I mean, there are conservatives, some conservatives who have been good on this issue. Most of them have not, at least since the 90s. In the 90s, we did see a lot of people

on the right up in arms about police militarization because the ATF was conducting raids on people suspected of gun crimes. And you saw G. Gordon Liddy talking about jackbooted thugs and headshots, you know, telling his listeners to make sure to use headshots, you kill the agents and don't wound them. But then, you know, once the Bush administration took over, and these tactics were basically used against black pot smokers and pot dealers instead of white gun owners, you know, that outrage dissipated pretty quickly. Yeah, it's weird how that happens. I don't know if there are stats on this, but in terms of these no-knock and even the quick-knock

rates, do we know how often the cops are at the wrong address? Well, we know sort of piecemeal. There have been surveys like this one in North Carolina done across the country. There was actually a survey done in Raleigh, Durham, and in the late 90s it found about a quarter of the raids, didn't turn up any contraband. I've seen other ones where it's high as 40 or 50% of them don't turn up any contraband or sometimes they turn up a little. I mean, it's hard to say what it means when they get the wrong address because, you know, at this day and age, you can get the wrong address and still find some pot probably. So it's, you know, the police will claim anytime they find anything illegal, then the raid was justified.

But I would argue we all have illegal stuff in our house. But, you know, like when I've reviewed the raids in LOROP, we found lots of cases with the police that they were to find a massive heroin supply or a meth lab, you know, and they end up finding a few ounces of. pot and they say that the raid, you know, that justified the raid and they didn't do anything wrong. So it's difficult to say we do know, you know, we can cite percentages in some areas where there's been a survey where they can find, you know, they didn't find enough drugs to make an arrest. We've got data from Utah for about five years and from Maryland. And what we know from those is the percentage of these raids that resulted in felony charges, which I think is a pretty good measure of whether or not those tactics were justified.

it's usually less than 20%. So, you know, most of the time they are not finding enough stuff to actually merit a felony charge. Amazing. I do want to state for the record that I have nothing illegal in my apartment. I can't speak. I won't speak for our producers. In fact, I would doubt if it's true for them. But I have absolutely nothing illegal in my house.

One of the things you mentioned in this North Carolina study done by Jeffrey Welty at UNC, see, he says that actual no-knock warrant seemed to be pretty rare, but he says the quick-knock entries may be widespread. And you point out that the two things, one that since they're functionally no-difference, it doesn't matter that the actual no-knock warrants seem pretty rare. But the other thing is the only evidence you can sort of gather is on the quick-knock raids is from sort of police testimony that there's no actual record of that. Right. And this is, I mean, this is another area where I think the Supreme Court has really dropped the ball. So in that same decision where they said police can't just use this boilerplate language,

you know, that you have to have specific evidence that this specific suspect meets one of these loopholes. They also said that the police can apply for a no-knock warrant, get turned down by a judge, which incidentally never happens, and then decide when they get to the scene that circumstances still merit a no-knock and they could still conduct it and still be right to do so. Now, you know, that means they're going to get some judicial scrutiny, at least in theory, after the fact, but it's pretty rare, you know, that a judge is going to say, hey, you know, you shouldn't abuse these tactics. So it's, you know, from their perspective, it's like, why bother to even apply for a no knock if you think there's any chance that judge is going to turn you down, just apply for a regular warrant and get there, decide that the conditions, you know, you just have to know the magic language to say after the fact. And, you know, the problem is they often do get the wrong address or they get the right address, but there are, you know, children in some. or elderly people or disabled people or, you know, a neighbor's visiting. Any innocent person happens to be in there.

And these tactics are designed to injure people, to punish people. They set off these flash grenades, which are intended to temporarily deafen and blind you. You know, you're thrown to the floor. You have a gun in your face. You're handcuffed. They are a form of punishment before conviction. And, you know, it's bad enough when they're used on people who aren't suspected of serious crimes. It's worse when it's used against people.

who aren't even suspected of any crime. Yeah, and in addition to all those circumstances you mentioned, also they could be at the right address but have gotten a bad tip. Yeah, and look, the other thing is that they're extremely volatile. They are, courts have ruled over and over and over again that when police mess up and shoot somebody in one of these raids because they mistook a gun, you know, mistook the glint off a wristwatch or a t-shirt or a blue cup for a gun,

all of which have happened, by the way. You know, the courts forgive the cops because they say, the volatility of the situation and, you know, who are we to second guess somebody whose life is at risk. But when you mistake the cops who are breaking into your house for a criminal and you shoot at them, you are expected to, you know, be woken up in the middle of the night to show perfect, you know, judgment and collect your consciousness and be able to assess the situation and know that these are raiding cops despite the fact that the whole reason the cops use these tactics is to confuse and bewilder you because they want to get in and seize the area as quickly as possible.

And so if you make the same mistake the cops get forgiven for, you know, first you're going to be lucky to survive the next four or five seconds, but after that, you know, you're going to be facing criminal charges yourself in most cases. Yeah, it's unreal. Hey, before I let you go, I want to ask you a question about a documentary that's currently on Hulu called Riotsville USA. It's directed by Sierra Pettingale. You wrote a piece about it for The Daily Beast, which piqued my interest,

so I watched it, and I thought it was an utterly fascinating look at how, this country sort of unfortunately decided that the way to address civil unrest in the 1960s wasn't to deal with the underlying systemic faults in America, but instead to begin militarizing cops. And I thought you made a really interesting point in your piece. In the movie, we see footage of these riots vills. These were mock-ups of cities on military bases. And many of the people putting down these fake riots were military. They were MPs, etc. But you note that with some exceptions, we didn't really go that way using the military, and instead we decided to sort of turn the cops into the military. So I was thinking, is that for you? Is that sort of the genesis of the

warrior cop in America for you? Yeah, it really is. This country, and I think, you know, sort of Western countries in general have long had an aversion to using the military for domestic policing. And there's, you know, there's a lot of history why that's the case. You can go back to the Roman Empire and the Vittorian Guard, right? When the military starts sort of becoming the day-to-day police, that's how you very quickly get a kind of totalitarian society. And so we've always guarded against that. I mean, there have been some exceptions, but I think for the most part, we've done a good job of that.

Where we've dropped the ball is that we've let the police, we've basically turned the police into soldiers. And, you know, if your argument is that soldiers are not, don't have the right mindset and approach to be trusted to do daily policing because their job is basically to kill people and rape things, whereas the job of the cop is to protect our rights. You know, it doesn't matter if it's an actual. soldier that's doing the day-to-day policing, or if it's a cop who we've armed like a soldier and dressed like a soldier and trained like a soldier and then told he's fighting a war,

whether it's, you know, war on drugs or crime or terrorism or whatever the war of the week is, you know, it's no different. They're going to approach that job as a soldier would on a battlefield instead of a cop whose job is sort of protect and serve and, you know, be at the sort of service of the community that he patrols. Yeah, it was, again, the documentary is completely fascinating, but that definitely struck me in reading your piece that it was like, wow, this really is where it all started. Radley, thank you so much for coming on to our listeners. If you have even the slightest interest

in issues concerning the police and civil liberties, and I mean, duh, you should, definitely check out the watch at Radley-Balco.com. It's excellent reading, and Radley is the dean of this subject, and I just can't thank you enough for coming on. Radley, appreciate it. My pleasure, Andy. Thanks for having me. Folks, I'm very happy to welcome to the new abnormal. Gloria Pan, who is the senior vice president, member engagement and campaign innovations, gun control strategists at Moms Rising, an organization that looks at a myriad of issues that are affecting families, women, and mothers, particularly around gun control, as we have seen lately. I don't even know what to call it, Gloria, when you

are in the midst of one mass shooting and getting the names together of those people whose lives were lost and then another one happens a few days later. I just want to give you the opportunity as we open up today to talk about how we have or are becoming desensitized to what is a national pandemic and travesty. Thank you. I'm very glad to be with you today, Danielle. So I have been working on gun safety over the last decade since the Sandy Hook shootings. And unfortunately, I agree with you that to a certain extent, many of us have become desensitized because there just have been so many tragedies. They have taken over our headlines. But I will say that over this last week, the shootings in Monterey Park and have Boone Bay, which have been from Asian Americans,

our community is not desensitized. The fact that these mass shootings happened during the lunar holiday festivities, which is cherished and, you know, widely observed by millions of Asian Americans across the country. It's really been a shock. It's really been an intrusion on something that's very dear to us. So our community is extremely upset about it. We are not desensitized and we are still struggling to figure out how to deal with this. It is not lost. I don't think on any of us that these last two shootings, as you have mentioned, have been targeted towards the Asian community and done so at the hands of other people from within the community. The majority of mass shootings have been at the hands of white men within a particular age block.

That's what we know. Those are the statistics, not just my opinion. And we have also seen targeted attacks. We've seen stop Asian hate. We've seen increased violence, particularly as the former twice impeached president of the United States began to put the COVID pandemic on the Asian population in the United States and say, oh, this is the reason. And we've seen this rise in this scourge of violence. How do you reconcile what we know, which is that there have been more shootings in this country to date in this new year than there have been days? That there is increased violence,

particularly towards the AAPI community in this country. and that everyone just seems to be on incredible edge. Wow, Daniel, that's a lot to unpack. Let's talk about the recent shootings. I won't lie. You know, every time there is a mass shooting, the news breaks, and, you know, the headline is however many people in this particular community or that particular community

have died or injured from a mass shooting, and we know that those people are from a particular community. I hold my breath. to find out more about who the actual shooter is because all too often, you know, that person is a white person. And we've seen that that person too often has been motivated by racial ideology. And it was no different this time around. When the news broke about the Monterey Park shooting, I was like, oh, no, who is this person who is targeting my community? It turned out that it was somebody from within our community.

We don't know a great deal about the background of the shooters in my. Monterey Park and have been yet. You know, just at first glance, they seem that they were immigrants. I do want to underline the fact that actually among all immigrant groups, we have the lowest rate. I was born here, but immigrants in general have the lowest crime rates. Okay. The fact that my own thoughts about why this has happened is that they learn gun violence here. You know, they come to this country and they are bombarded by the news of gun violence and they hear about mass shootings. and then they hear from the NRA and the gun industry that everyone should buy a gun. If you get a gun, you feel powerful.

You can feel important. And by the way, it's so easy. Go ahead and do it. They learn it here. So that's my initial thoughts about that. What else did you ask me about? You asked a lot. You touched on a lot of things.

No, I know. Because there's just so much. I mean, I'm talking about the anxiety, right? About the fear, about the rise in violence, particularly pointed at the AAPI community in this country and how it has risen since COVID-19, since the former president was directing all of this hate and animus, you know, referring to COVID-19 as something other, I won't repeat it, than COVID-19, and placing a target on the backs of the community. And so I just wanted you to have the opportunity to talk a bit about

that and how we understand and connect the dots between what's been happening. happening. Unfortunately, the former president takes the opportunity to target all sorts of communities. And I think that in different ways, different communities have been targeted by him because it was his MO to be divisive. In this particular case for Asian Americans, I can't say that anyone was surprised because Asian Americans throughout our history have always been scapegoated whenever there's been a national emergency. We're scapegoated and blamed because we don't fit what people perceive as being American, when in fact, what is American, but a people filled with immigrants, where immigrants from Europe originally, mostly. And then we are now immigrants from all over

the world and increasingly from Asia. We are a rapidly diversifying population here in the United States. However, the idea of what is American continues to be rooted in white supremacy. And the Native Americans were here first and they basically said, well, this is a white country. and many people continue to believe that is so. And I think, too, that we're just in a very tragic place. You brought up the fact that you have been working on gun safety and gun violence prevention since Sandy Hook. And we just recently had the anniversary of Sandy Hook. It's been a decade since this country watched as classrooms of kindergartners and first graders were gunned down.

And I thought in that moment, Gloria, that we're going to be. going to do something now. We have to. You can't look away from elementary school children playing in their classrooms and talking to each other. And then an armed gunman comes in and just wipes them out, six, seven years old. And yet in that moment, all we did was come together for collective prayer. That was it. And so, Gloria, how do you reconcile your decades of work in this space? And there have been so many tragedies since Sandy Hook. So many. And in my opinion, nothing has really changed.

There is a much longer history that reaches back before the Sandy Hook shooting. There are Second Amendment proponents and, you know, pro-gun people who all this time have been talking about and have really cherished the ability to be armed in this country. And that goes back before Sandy Hook. And they basically had a clear field. And there was definitely a cynical and yet very effective strategy to basically push forth gun rights. And that goes all the way back to the 1980s, even 1979 when the NRA decided to transform itself from a sporting organization, sport safety organization, in fact, to one that was

about gun rights. Okay. So they had a clear strategy. They've executed it. The point of this strategy is basically to some were firearms. Okay. And perhaps they also really believe in the right to own guns. Right.

So all of this was happening already. And then Sandy Hook happened. And it was shocking and it was horrible. And people were so broken up about it. I will say that the Sandy Hook event jumped started the opposition to the NRA and their plans. Up until then, there wasn't really an effective gun safety movement. But because of Sandy Hook, you know, we now have. have every town and, you know, a revitalized Brady campaign. We've got Giffords, we've got

March for Our Lives, and so many other new groups and actually new advocates that are really, really pushing for comprehensive gun policy reform. But what I have learned in my time working on this issue is that this issue is not just about gun policy reform. Can fight all we can, we can, we can fight as hard as we can, and it's heartbreaking. I am in awe of the many survivors of gun violence who've lost loved ones, who re-traumatize themselves over and over again, begging our elected leaders to do something about gun violence. I really am in awe of them. But we can keep doing this. We can be as loud as possible. We can bring our heartbreak. We can bring our stories to Washington. And we can demand this change. But it's just not going to

happen because the opposition to any kind of reform is just so strong. And the opposition to it is rooted in somewhere else. It's rooted in what they perceive as constitutional rights and stories about what America is about going all the way back to our founding, which, you know, I think deserves a second look, right? What are our real rights? I mean, you know, the Constitution at the end of the day was created by a group of men and there were political realities at the time, right? And there were things that were put in there that shouldn't have been put in there that fly in the face of the language of freedom and justice for all, right? The two-thirds plods, ridiculous. And that was put into the Constitution. So there were definitely things about the Constitution and how it was put together.

Also was around the fact that the Second Amendment was included in the Constitution. So this history is really not well understood. And we need our historians to go and look at it again so that we really, really understand what that's all about. But in the meantime, we have the reality of today, the political reality of today, that the opposition is deeply, deeply, entrenched and immovable. And so as a result, you know, we've got this gun culture. The gun culture just basically needs to be changed. We need to soften it so that there is actually room for and, you know, and to be clear, that gun culture is, you know, tells you that everybody should have a gun, tells you that everybody has the right to a gun. And it doesn't matter if you're trained. It doesn't

matter if you store it safely. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if maybe you wouldn't be safer for the gun. It just doesn't matter. Everyone should have a gun. And that has to be challenged. We need to change it. What messaging, what narrative shift needs to happen? I agree with every single thing that you have said. And I know that the history of how we got here is much goes much further back than Sandy Hook. But Sandy Hook in this country was in many ways a turning point. Because if you can sit by and watch elementary school children be gunned down and say that your hands are tied and there's nothing that you can do about that, then we just adapt, right? We just have to live like this, which is why after every mass shooting, gun sales actually go up because people begin to

feed into this fear. Well, if everyone has one, then I need one too. And to your point, then we look at states like Texas and others that have gun laws that basically are done. about safety, are not about registering, or not about a waiting period, or not about safety training. None of those things, because anything flies in the face of what it is that they believe the founding fathers want it, which is just for us to live in a consistent place of the Wild Wild West. And so, you know, I ask, because the shaming doesn't work. The we shouldn't have to live like this. The consistent tears are not shifting the politicians who, you know, we're going to be who are the only ones that can truly change this system.

Instead, they're posing with weapons of mass destruction. So what does need to change in our narrative? So most Americans, the vast majority of Americans, do want stronger gun laws. It's just about how you talk about it. 90% of Americans support universal background checks to make sure that, you know, people who really would not be responsible gun owners don't get their hands. on it. However, the people who have the power to vote for stronger gun laws, you know, they're answering to a different, more subset of constituents. I think that there is a civil rights

movement in this country for a reason. Civil rights arguably can be seen as basically defending, you know, our communities, different communities, marginalized communities from violence in many, many different forms. And I think that defending our communities from gun violence is a part of the civil rights fight because at the end of the day, gun homicides disproportionately impact communities of color and other marginalized communities. So I think that the narrative shift should be the understanding that gun violence is a civil rights issue. And we should put it into that context and that at the end of the day, just as we fight for economic opportunity, just as we fight for respect, all of these other things, we need to fight for safety. And that includes safety from

gun violence. Gloria Pan, thank you so much for making the time to join the new abnormal and for the work that you do and so many do with Moms Rising. We really appreciate you. Thank you for this opportunity. Anytime. Andy Levy. Danielle Moody. Who is your beloved? Fuck that guy today. So my fuck that guy for today is someone who,

and I don't say this lightly because there's a lot of bad ones, might be the worst team owner in sports, in American sports anyway. And it's James Dolan who owns both the New York Rangers and the New York Knicks. And also, more importantly, owns Madison Square Garden and all of MSG property. and stuff like that. A couple weeks ago we talked about, I think I might have made him my fuck

that guy then at Radio City Music Hall, which is owned by MSG, they used facial recognition to not allow a woman in who was there with her daughter and a Girl Scout troop because she worked in a law firm that was engaged in litigation against MSG. She wasn't even in the same office. She was like from a totally different office in a different state, wasn't involved in that suit at all, but because they somehow recognized her as being part of that firm, they denied her entrance. So he was my fuck that guy for that. So in response to that, the New York State Liquor Authority is saying they are considering revoking Dolan's liquor license from all his MSG properties, which would include Madison Square Garden, which obviously hosts both the

Rangers and the Knicks and a ton of concerts and liquor sales are a big deal there. And he is upset about that. And he doesn't do a lot of interviews, which after, watching the one he did on Thursday morning. He should go back to not doing those interviews. He talked to Rosanna Scotto on a show called Good Day, New York here. And he said that he is mad at the liquor authority for saying they might do this. And he said, oh, they're just looking for publicity. So we're going to give them publicity. And he said, we're going to pick a night, possibly at a ranger's game, and we're going to shut down all the liquor and the alcohol in the building. And instead, they're going to hand out flyers to all the people who come to the game with the picture

and contact information of the head of the Liquor Authority. So he also went on some bizarre rants about bail reform and migrants. He's not a fan of migrants. He's just a straight up god-awful person. And I thank my lucky stars that I'm an Islanders fan and not a Rangers fan. I hate the fact that I'm a Knicks fan, but I guess sort of thankfully they've been mostly terrible since the 90s, so I've lost interest.

But he is just one of the absolute worst owners in sports, And that really is saying something because it includes people like Daniel Snyder who owns the Washington commanders who is also a truly god-awful person. But I think Dolan might be even worse. And for that, he gets a hell and hearty fuck that guy for me. I love it. And I don't follow sports like that, but he sounds like a dick. So I will go long. Perfectly summed up with your recommendation for that fuck that guy.

So who is your fuck that guy for him? Well, you know, once again, moving. away from just a single person, I'm making it a state, which is once again, the good old sunny state of Florida. Tell me why it would make sense for the state of Florida to be requesting optionally on a form female student athletes menstrual histories. So there is a lot of pushback that is happening right now from Florida physicians, as well as parents, who are criticizing Florida school district from putting this optional question on student athlete forms.

And they say that this is to, you know, make sure that if the athlete is injured, that they have all of this information, which, by the way, is collected and digitally stored and has been for the past several years. But what parents and physicians in the state are saying is that in a post-Rovie Wade error, that this is now putting students at risk. And we know how Ron Deathsantis, the Satan of Florida, has decided that he is going to weaponize information, whether it be to target the LGBTQ community, whether it be to target the migrant populations.

And so what would stop a man who just introduced a 15-week ban on abortions in the state to then use said information in some way to weaponize against women in the state. Right? Now, it starts out as young high school girls, but guess what? They grow up. And what is being done with their information that is being digitally stored by the state?

Who the fuck has access to it? So it is, it's just, I mean, you want to talk about 1984 big brother type shit? This is really insane. Again, this is likening to what Texas, what Greg Abbott was doing in Texas, which was wanting to introduce legislation that would monitor the mental cycles of women and people with uteruses in that state so that you would know if they were traveling to another state potentially to get an abortion, which they have criminalized. What the fuck are we doing?

And I want people to pay attention and have all eyes on Florida and not think to yourself, whoof, I'm glad I don't live there. Because what they are workshopping in Florida and in tech. are going to be things that will be nationalized if Republicans are able to take back the Senate and the White House. So for all of those reasons and so many fucking more, my fuck that guy is the state of Florida, Ron DeSantis, and the Florida School District. Yeah, this is absolutely unbelievable. When I saw this story, it's interesting, I guess because I'm a guy, I didn't even think of the abortion aspect. I assumed this was another attack on.

on trans people. It checks all boxes. It's both. No, oh, it's absolutely both. And I just assumed because of DeSantis's history and Florida's history that this was just a straight up attack on a way to sort of out trans people in sports. But you're absolutely right. Obviously, this is at least as much, you know, could be used about abortion. And the worst part of this is that you can digitally submit these forms. And it's a software company called Activate. And under their, and under their their policies and under federal law, they could be required to turn over that data to the state. Yeah, law enforcement. Yeah, law enforcement. And it's just, it's absolutely unbelievable. I guess the saving grace is that it is optional so people can choose not to, but you know what? You're asking a lot of high

school students, you know, 15 year olds or whatever, to know enough to not answer those questions and to to think about potential ramifications of that. You're asking a child to think about those ramifications. And so that's just doesn't make me feel much better. I mean, it makes me feel a little better. But I guess kudos to this school district that is actually trying to get this form changed because the form is Florida wide. It's the Florida High School Athletic Association. I guess the district got some pushback from some people who live there. And now they're like, oh, you know, we're going to ask them to take those questions out. So I hope they succeed in that. But The fact that those questions are even asked is just, how the fuck is that anybody's business?

It's not. And yes, it is the Palm Beach County School District that is asking the Florida High School Athletic Association to remove these optional questions from the form. But, I mean, again, it's an overreach on top of overreach, on top of overreach in this state that, again, folks, they are workshopping what they want to nationalize in this country. and so it matters to all of us, regardless of if we are residents of the state or not. They sound like dicks too, so fuck them too. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of The New Abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday.

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