The Daily Signal - A Retired Deputy Sheriff's Perspective on the Jacob Blake Shooting

Episode Date: September 17, 2020

Jon Kyle, a retired deputy sheriff from the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department in California, has a lawman's perspective on what happened Aug. 23 when a white police officer shot Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old African American man, in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Kyle joins the podcast to discuss how he views the incident in which police officers confronted Blake. We also cover these stories: An organization run by a co-founder of Black Lives Matter asks for donations to a group with ties to communist China Insurance companies are going to be out at least $1 billion after paying for damage claims resulting from riots following the May 25 death of George Floyd at the hands of police.  The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Robert Redfield, tells a Senate committee that masks are crucial in the fight against COVID-19. “The Daily Signal Podcast” is available on Ricochet, Apple Podcasts, Pippa, Google Play, and Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We'd love to talk, business. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, September 17th. I'm Kate Trinco. And I'm Rachel Del Judas. John Kyle is a retired deputy sheriff from San Bernardino, California Sheriff's Department. As a former law enforcement official, he has a unique perspective on the shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old African-American man who was shot by police on August 23rd. He joins me on today's podcast to discuss.

And if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-stop. our rating on Apple Podcasts and please encourage others to subscribe. Now onto our top news. Is China quietly boosting the unrest affecting American cities this year? Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and author of The Plot to Change America, recently uncovered a surprising fact. An organization run by a co-founder of Black Lives Matter directed people to donate to an organization that has ties to communist China. If you go to the donate page of the Black Futures Lab, which was founded by a co-founder of Black Lives Matter, Alicia Garza, the site directs you to send your money to the Chinese Progressive Association, which the site states

sponsors the Black Futures Lab. The lab, according to color lines, seeks to engage advocacy organizations and legislators to advance local, state, and federal-level policies that make black community stronger. It will also craft strategies that harness black political power to bring those policies to fruition. Gonzalez also notes that Black Lives Matter appears to have played a crucial role in the organizing that led to this summer's protests. You can check out his full report exclusively in the Daily Signal. Insurance companies are going to be out at least $1 billion to $2 billion after paying for claims in damages resulting from riots following the death of George Floyd on May 25th and other police protests. Axios reports that a company called Property Claim Services has tracked insurance damages from riots from civil unrest since 1950

and found that the damage from the riots of May 26 to June 8th will cost the insurance industry significantly more than ever before, with payments of $2 billion expected, if not more. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director, Dr. Robert Redfield, told a Senate committee Wednesday that masks are crucial in the fight against COVID-19. VSE span? Face masks, these face masks are the most important, powerful public health tool we have. And I will continue to appeal for all Americans, all individuals in our country, to embrace these face coverings.

I've said it. If we did it for six, eight, 10, 12 weeks, we'd bring this pandemic under control. These actually, we have clear scientific evidence. They work and they are our best defense. I might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine. Redfield also indicated that while a vaccine might be available at the end of this year, there would not likely be a widely available vaccine until well into 2021. I think there will be vaccine that initially be available sometime between November and December, but very limited supply and will have to be prioritized. If you're asking me, when is it going to be generally available to the American public,

so we can begin to take advantage of vaccine to get back to our regular life. I think we're probably looking at late second quarter, third quarter, 2021. The majority of young adults in the United States under 40 are unaware that six million Jews died in the Holocaust, and more than one out of 10 believe Jews were the perpetrators of the Holocaust. The survey conducted by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany also found that 48% of 18-39-year-olds around the country did not even know the name of even one of the over 40,000 ghettos in concentration camps present in Europe during the 1930s and 40s, per the Hill. Gideon Taylor, the president of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany, said per the Hill that the results of the survey are both shocking and saddening. They underscore why we must act now while Holocaust survivors are still with us to voice their stories, Taylor said. We need to understand why we aren't doing better in educating a younger generation about the Holocaust and the lessons of the past.

This needs to serve as a wake-up call to us all and as a roadmap of where government officials need to act. In Minneapolis, where the City Council voted to cancel the City's Police Department after the death of George Floyd, crime is on the upswing. Reporting on a heated city council meeting, Minnesota Public News wrote, residents are asking, where are the police? said Jamal Osmond, newly elected council member of Ward 6. He said he's already been inundated with complaints from residents that calls for police aren't being answered. The outlet also reported that the number of reported violent crimes like assaults, robberies, and homicides are up compared to 2019. According to Minneapolis, according to Minneapolis, Police Department crime data. More people have been killed in the city in the first nine months of of 2020 than were slain in all of last year. Property crimes like burglaries and auto thefts are also up. Incidents of arson have increased 55% over the total at this point in 2019. Meanwhile, the police department remains in place. The council's move stymied by procedural hurdles in the need to put the initiative on the ballot.

Now stay tuned for my conversation with John Kyle, a retired deputy sheriff who shares his perspective on the shooting of Jacob Blake. This is Virginia Allen, host of the Daily Signal podcast. I don't know about you, but YouTube is certainly one of my guilty pleasures. I really enjoy watching short videos on a variety of topics. So I'm always looking for videos that are actually educational and beneficial to me in some way. And the Daily Signal YouTube channel never disappoints. There is so much big. changeworthy content from policy and news explainers to documentaries. If you're not driving, go ahead and pull out your phone and subscribe to the Daily Signal YouTube channel so you can be in the know on the issues you care about most. You can also search for the channel by going to YouTube.com slash Daily Signal. I'm joined today on the Daily Signal podcast by John Kyle. He's a retired

deputy sheriff. John, thank you for being with us on the Daily Signal podcast. It's my pleasure. Well, thanks for making the time to talk with us. As someone retired in law enforcement, I want to talk a little bit about the situation of Jacob Blake. People know him as the 29-year-old African-American man who was shot by police on August 23rd, and a lot of riots ensued after this shooting. John, can you start off by telling us, as a law enforcement officer, your perspective of what happened? Well, in law enforcement, you're everything you're trying to.

to do is about reducing your risks. You're supposed to protect the public first and yourself. And when someone is refusing to show you their hands or trying to get into a vehicle after you've had an altercation, you have to assume that they're getting into that vehicle because they're either going to try and flee or they're trying to get something out of vehicle to hurt you, gone the knife, whatever, you know, implement happens to be there. It could be a tire iron. even if there's no other weapon in the car, the car itself is a weapon. So when Jacob Blake ran to the car, he basically put himself in a situation where the officers had a legitimate reason to believe it.

He was a lethal threat to them. And so I don't think either of those officers really wanted to be an altercation that day. And I'm absolutely positive neither of them wanted to shoot anybody, especially in the current climate. But when he went into that car, you know, he basically put them in a situation where they really didn't have a whole lot of hobbies. Well, as you mentioned that, so you were not part of the group of law enforcement that went in. We're just talking about your perspective as someone who is in law enforcement who spent years serving. What do we know about what happened leading up to the shooting?

You mentioned the situation with the car, but can you kind of walk us through before shots were fired, everything that transpired. Well, from a variety of different news sources, it's pretty clear. You know, the original report was that he was a good scenario and that was just trying to help break up a fight between two people. And that has been proven to be completely untrue. There was a warrant out for his arrest for sexual assault. And the woman that lived at the residence where they were trying to arrest him

was the victim of that assault. When he came back, she called the police and said, I want you to come help. So she told the police she needed help. She invited them to come into the situation. When they went to arrest Mr. Blake, he physically assaulted the officers, physically fought with them.

They both tried to tasing, first one and then the other. That was unsuccessful. He tried to put one of the officers in a headlock. and then after this I you know I haven't nobody's seen the whole incident they only see that little snippet of it

but you know those fights even if it's only for a minute or two can seem like they're ours you know if you're in a fight where somebody's trying to hurt you it just time seems to

you know it seems like they never end when he started running toward the car I understand that his kids were in the car so they couldn't shoot at him from the front of the vehicle. If I were in that situation and I had options, I wouldn't have run around behind him and grabbed his shirt the way the officer did.

But they really didn't have a lot of options because if they stood to the front of the vehicle and shot toward him, they would have had to worry about hitting the children in the car. So the fact that he was shot in the back had a lot to do with the fact that the officers didn't want to shoot the kids in the car, probably. That's how I would, I see that happening. I see them trying to avoid shooting forward. you know, innocent. A point you had made before we talked is that the narrative that some are talking about is how the officers were wrong, even shooting in the first place. Can you talk a little bit about why this narrative, why you take issue with this narrative and what your perspective is?

The main thing that I was originally brought to you is it's become common to say, well, the officers, police officers need more training. The assumption that's built into that statement is that the officers didn't know what the rules were, that when they shot it was inappropriate. In this particular case, it was completely a justified shooting. Cops get a lot more training than most people think they are, and most of the people that are commenting on a thing that they get, have no idea what they go. When I graduated from the Academy 29 years ago, they were already teaching community involvement and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, you know, and, and. sensitivity to different cultures, you know, how to de-escalate. There was a guy that had a training program, and I have no idea what the department

paid for that training program, but the department that I was a part of literally sent every deputy in the department to see this guy, and at that time it was about $1,200,000. You know, so police agencies invest a great deal of money. and training officers how to manage situations how to do that and so when they start talking about how officers need more training i wonder how much they know about the training the officers received in the first place my death is very little well on that note john what would you say in a conversation i know we've heard a lot of them and probably even some of us have been part of those conversations where people do say oh better training is needed for situations

situations like this, how do you think conservative should respond? Well, I think that the first question we have to ask is what do we know about the training that's already being given? You know, if you're going to comment on something, I generally try and make sure it's something I know about it, and I think most conservatives do that, but it's become a real easy thing to just say, oh, yeah, we'll cut some better things. And that may be true, but that's a separate discussion from whether or not the shooting it with Jacob Blake was a legitimate shooting or not.

You know, most cops are always seeking out more training. The department that I was a part of, we went for eight hours of training three times a year. And it wasn't just shooting. It was different methods of de-escalating law changes. My department and most departments are always trying to make sure that we know what the best way to handle a given situation is. Unfortunately, there's as many different situations that cops run into as there are people that they're running to.

And so it's very difficult to cover every single day. You have to come up with some guidelines for how to handle them. In this particular case, though, there wasn't really a lot of good arguments for this not being legitimate. I mean, he was a violence with a warrant out for his arrest. he was attempting to re-victimized the woman that he was at the warrant without for his arrest over and so it doesn't make a lot of sense to say well you know it's the cops just need more training that's basically saying it's the cops fault has happened it isn't the reality is that every law enforcement encounter it's always the suspect for the subject whichever term you prefer

It's always the person that the cop is interacting with that makes the decision about what kind of violence is going to be involved in that encounter. It's never the cop. If it is a cop, then the cop is probably using excessive force. If he's the initiator of the force, then he's going to probably lose his job, then he could go to jail. So, you know, Jacob Blake decided how he was going to respond to the officers. He made choices that ultimately resulted in him being shot. But officers don't get to make those choices. Something that you had talked about before a conversation was how it's important to remember that in every legitimate law enforcement encounter, it's always the subject that determines the nature of the encounter and the level of violence.

And so how would you explain this perspective in light of the Jacob Blake situation? They went there, and I'm sure that they started out with words. You're first and your best tool. Mr. Blake, you're under, you know, we have a warrant for your arrest. at that point, he decides to either run or fight. I don't know what initiative. I don't know. I haven't read the report, obviously.

It hasn't been published. So I don't know how he initiated the incident. But he decided how he was going to respond. He decided to throw a hunch or try and run from the officers or struggle when they try to put hands up on him. When I went through training, and I don't imagine this has changed a lot, we were that we were allowed to use the minimum amount of force necessary to affect the arrest. So if, you know, they push, to say a level of three, you can go to four.

But you can't go to eight. You've got to always try and temper your response to a reasonable response to what you're facing. So if somebody draws a gun, obviously, that's lethal force. Immediately at that point, you can use lethal force. knives are lethal force. We know now that Jacob Blake had a knife. So he was he was prepared to use a lethal force and he had already demonstrated that before all of this got started before he ever ran for the car. Well looking at your own experience, John, do you have any personal stories, perhaps from your own career or even others where there maybe have been similar situations to what happened

with Jacob Blake? Maybe not, you know, exactly, but at times, in your career or careers that you've observed where something similar has happened and how that's maybe been handled in a better way? Well, I would, most of my career, I worked in corrections. And so it was a fairly contained environment. There are rarely guns and, it does happen, but it's fortunate that's me. But I can tell you one example from my patrol time. And I was, we had done a traffic stop on a.

a car that was kind of waived leaving down the road. And when we pulled it over, the subject in the rear seat kind of bent down and you could see his shoulder swing forward. So my partner and I both thought that he might have a gun. We met up to the car. There was a magazine pouch on the front seat. My partner said gun. We backed up.

We did what's called the felony traffic stop where we got a backing officer, brought them out one by one. And when we went to search the car, I found a gun under the front seat. Now, when I was standing there, looking at the back of this kid's head, it turned out they were all 15. But I was looking down the barrel of my gun and thinking, if he moves, I'm going to shoot him. That's not a situation that you ever want to be it. And, you know, when you're in the thick of it, you're not really thinking about, you know, the greater implications of that. But if that kid had gotten a hitch on his ankle and reached down to scratch him, he might have died back.

Fortunately, that didn't happen. and they were peacefully removed from the car. They were handcuffed. They were taken into custody. The car was towed. The gun was seized. And it ended peacefully. But there was no guarantee of that.

And every day, cops go into situations where they hope it's all going to be people, but nobody knows for sure. Now, there's no way to ever know what's going to happen on any given patrol ship. Well, as you look at the larger implications of this and what's been happening in the country with all the rioting and protests we've seen. What is your perspective of states around the country that have defunded or are scaling back support

for law enforcement? I think it's a very, very foolish thing to do, especially since the foundation for it is not existing. The narrative that is common in the media is that cops are just going around killing people randomly. The reality is that very few people are killed by the police. There's something like 370 or so million encounters between police and 70 every year. And out of those, about 1,000 people are killed by the police.

It's not a big number at all. And then, you know, the amount of black they're shot by the police is a subset of that, so it's even smaller. It's just the narrative is that top of just kill people indiscriminately. The reality is very different from that. I had a friend that was involved in the shooter. You know, when he talks about it to this day, you can tell what an impression it made on him. It's not something you ever forget.

The officer that shot Jacob Blake, I'm sure he's remembering that every way, because it leaves a mark on you. Something that I see as, you know, potentially hopeful is there was this new pool that came out from Monmouth University that says that nearly two-thirds of Americans, which is 65%, say that maintaining law and is a major problem in the country right now. So people do see that there is a problem. Do you think we'll continue to see this as a growing trend? I do, because now people are starting to see what happens when the cops do stand there. Because in a lot of these cities, in Portland and Seattle, the cops were told, just leave them alone, let them do their thing, they'll eventually settle down.

They haven't. No bully ever backed down because you just leave them alone. I think that the increase in guntail, right now. Guns are selling at record pace right now, and it's largely the same reason, because a lot of people are looking at the world we live in and saying, wow, I need to be prepared to defend myself because the cops may or may not be there. So I think it's going to have, in the long run positive effect. It's just, the problem is how long are we going to let the damage be done before we put the spot? And it won't stop until we start sending in, you know, large numbers of officers, have a national guard if necessary, and drawing up. a hard line and saying this is it, we're not doing it anymore. I don't know if you saw that interview with the Detroit Police Chief. They said, why aren't you having these problems? You said, because we don't let it happen.

And basically, when they start acting out, they shut them down right away. They don't let them run. They don't let them gear up or build on themselves. They tend to be self-perpetuating. They just go and they arrest people and they don't let them out. So I think more and more people are starting to look around and say, Yeah, maybe the cops aren't such a bad thing after all. Well, as we look at that, what is your thought on the general attitude of Americans toward law enforcement?

I know it varies with blue states and red states, but as we kind of look at the overall attitude towards law enforcement, as we've seen the events of the past months happen, what is your perspective on where things are at now among Americans, and then what things might look like in the coming weeks and months? Well, I think that most Americans are actually pretty pro-police. I've seen a couple of reports on the survey that was done in the inner city communities, and I believe it was 60% of blacks in the inner city said that they wanted to maintain current levels of police and 22% so they wanted to increase levels of police. So that means that 82% of the people living in these communities want more cops.

The people that are saying they want to defund the police aren't living in the places where they need them the most. And I think that's pretty typical. There's a big disconnect between the liberal elite in California and New York and people that are living out in the middle of the country or in the south. I think most people, the majority of people probably don't support defunding the police, but I think there's also a certain level of fear in saying so. What is your perspective on the importance of law enforcement? And as someone who was formerly in law enforcement, what might happen if they continue to be defunded in cities around the country?

Well, as you take away resources, they're going to do less and less. One of the big problems that we're seeing now, and you've probably heard the term Ferguson effect, when cops don't act proactive, they don't look for trying to prevent things before they happen. Like if they see a guy that obviously got a gun in his waist. You know, if they stop that guy and they take the gun away from them and they arrest him if it's appropriate, that guy can't go out and do a robbery later.

You know, that prevention isn't happening. That was really the genius of Rudy Giuliani and broken windows and all that was they prevented people from committing crimes in the first place. And that eventually brought down crime rates. Now they're kind of, they're systematically dismantling all of that. And I think that if they continue, you're going to get back to what things were, where cops only respond to calls for service. And that's where they show up after the problem.

You really don't want that. We want cops to be proactive and go out and look for people that are, that are misbehaving and they're getting into trouble and stop it before it escalates to something more dangerous. Well, finally, John, we talked about in the beginning how so many people pivot to saying that law enforcement is in need of better training and that would, you know, mitigate situations like what happened with Jacob Blake. If there is any sort of room for reform in law enforcement, is there any area you say,

you know, this particular area needs work? Well, you know, there's always room for improvement. There's always opportunities to learn better ways to do things. In fact, a lot of people don't know this. Local law enforcement agencies typically don't come up with broad programs on their own. The FBI collects a great deal of data, and then they disseminate that data, and then agencies are able to take that data and look and see what works and what does. So with those data sets, they try and continually improve procedures.

They try and find better ways to approach people. They try and make sure that they're mitigating risk. If they can head off a problem in the future by doing some intervention here, I don't think anybody opposes the idea that social workers might be able to help people improve their lives. But you're not going to be able to send social workers. into violent situations and expect that to result in good results. Training always has to be updated.

You always have to be adding new training. You always have to be making sure that what your training is still relevant. But that's an ongoing process. Every agency across the country is doing that every day, every month, and every year. It's not like we wait until there's some disaster that happens, and then all of a sudden we go, oh, let's do this different. That's not how it works. they're always looking for ways to reduce the risk to officers and says,

now, I say as far as major sweeping reforms, I don't really think there's a lot of things that they're talking about that really will make any positive, result in any positive benefits. I think that a lot of what they're saying is basically, we want social workers to fix everything. That's not going to work. You know, if somebody's committed to doing violence, a social worker is not trained to deal with that.

You know, and what will end up happening is they'll send the social worker out. And then the social worker will say, this guy's violent. I want the cops here. But there won't be enough cops to go out and help them. Now they send the cops of the violence. And then after the fact, we look at what's appropriate to try and reduce those problems, get social workers involved and so on. Most of that stuff gets done at the court level.

Well, John, thank you so much for joining us on the Daily Signal podcast and discussing this. We really appreciate having you. Very pleasure. And that will do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal Podcast. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and now on IHeartRadio. Please be sure to leave us a review and a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts, and please encourage others to subscribe. Thanks again for listening, and we'll be back with you all tomorrow.

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