What A Day - The Podcast The NYPD Doesn't Want You To Hear

Episode Date: September 12, 2024

It’s been about a week since federal agents seized the phones of New York Police Commissioner Edward Caban and other top NYPD officials. Caban is one of a few top deputies in Mayor Eric Adams’ administration who are currently under investigation by federal authorities, though details are so far scant. But it’s yet another potential stain on the oldest, largest, and arguably most scandal-prone police department in the country. Chenjerai Kumanyika, host of Crooked and Wondery’s new podcast ‘Empire City,’ talks about the ‘untold origin story’ of the NYPD.And in headlines: Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson delayed a vote on a six-month government spending bill, federal inspectors warned of an “imminent threat” to food safety at a Boar’s Head plant in Virginia, and an Ohio man begged former President Donald Trump and other Republicans to stop politicizing the death of his son. Show Notes:Check Out Empire City – crooked.com/podcast-series/empirecity/Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/3kk4nyz8What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcastFollow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

It's Thursday, September 12th. I'm Jane Koston. And I'm Josie Duffy Rice. And this is What A Day, the show that may not have known all the people at the VMAs last night, but is taking solace in the fact that the VMAs are older than us. Happy 40th VMAs. On today's show, House Speaker Mike Johnson delays a budget vote and a government shutdown looms. Yay. And there's a lot of weird stuff Republicans are saying post-debate. We'll get into that. But first, it's been about a week since federal agents seized the phone of New York's police commissioner, Edward Caban, and some other top police officials. Caban is one of a few top deputies in Mayor Eric Adams' administration who are being investigated by federal authorities. And though details about this particular

investigation are scant, it's like not a good thing that the FBI confiscated their phones. And it's yet another brewing scandal for the NYPD, the largest, the oldest, and perhaps the most scandal-prone police department in the country. And that's really saying something. It really is. It's also yet another scandal for Adams, who also had his phone seized by the FBI in another probe. The Adams administration has reportedly encouraged Caban to step down, though they have yet to say anything publicly. Earlier this week at a press conference, Adams tried to sidestep questions about Caban's future and whether he was guaranteed to keep his job. I don't think anything in life is guaranteed. I would say this. When I chose Eddie, I chose him for his experience and what he brought after 30-something years of service. And so, you know, rumors are always out there.

You know, rumors aren't always out there about everybody, I will just say. Nothing in life is guaranteed. Very true. But so far, Caban isn't budging, though the pressure is growing as the public waits for more details about why the FBI seized his phone. And while the New York City Police Department's mission is to, quote, enhance the quality of life in New York City, something you may not have known or suspected, we know that throughout most of the NYPD's history, that mission has certainly not been a priority for

all New York residents. That history is the subject of a new podcast from Crooked Media in Wondery called Empire City, the Untold Story of the NYPD. It's hosted by NYU journalism professor and activist, Chinjerai Komanika. And over the course of eight episodes, he tells the stories that the department would rather you not hear from its roots in slavery to the various corruption scandals. But Komanika also tells the stories of the people who resisted the NYPD at every turn. I spoke with him to learn more about the podcast, and here's our conversation. Ginger, I thank you so much for joining us on What A Day. Thank you for having me. Excited to be here.

So your history of the NYPD starts with your dad, who was a civil rights leader in New York, and he was surveilled by the NYPD and arrested during a protest. So can you tell us how his experience with the department has shaped your own perceptions of police and of the NYPD? I think like a lot of, you know, Black folks growing up in America, you realize that there's some kind of uncomfortability sometimes with your parents around the police, right? Like even parents, I think, who really are sort of pro-police or believe that the police are here to keep us safe, they still know that it could be dangerous.

And so my dad definitely had that. But when I learned about that my dad essentially was targeted by the NYPD over different points in the year of 1964, it was really interesting to me because most of the conversations we have about police are around these horrific incidents of police brutality and killing. That allows, I think, police departments to kind of cast those incidents as this was bad training or this person deserved it. But my dad was actually the Bronx chairman of CORE, and he was protesting for things like to stop racial discrimination, you know, and he was working with other people to stop housing discrimination and to fight for, you know, equal schools. Right. And those are things that all of us, I think, believe in right now. And yet the NYPD literally had a whole unit that targeted not just black people, but targeted various activists for doing that kind of work, which to me, that's democracy work. Right. These are people who are trying to make America a democracy. And the NYPD had a whole unit funded by taxpayers dedicated to stop them. So for me, that was on one level, like really personal, but it was also a way I thought,

I think, to really start the conversation about what is this institution actually? Right. And so you focus specifically on the NYPD. So talk to me about how that police department is unique or similar, right, to others across the country. I mean, I feel like the NYPD is the police department that we kind of identify when we think of police. So what do you see in the similarities and differences compared to the rest of the country? For one thing, you know, the NYPD can be called the first modern police department, meaning that, you know, around 1845 when the NYPD started, there weren't really that many police departments that had really set themselves up as like, quote unquote, professional organizations. People are getting paid. They didn't have uniforms back then, but they had badges and they were kind of like official. The first organizations, honestly, to do that stuff, they were like down in places like

Charleston and New Orleans and Virginia, and they were almost fully dedicated to like slave patrolling. But really, you know, when we talk about modern police, New York was first. A lot of people think Boston was first. And looking at the first, and they're certainly the largest, that's definitely not in dispute. And in a way, they're the most notorious. You know, I mean, you can go to Times Square and buy NYPD gear. But I think that looking at the first and largest allows you to really look at what was kind of in

the DNA of policing, right? What were the things that got this department started? What were the priorities? How did they develop? The NYPD was a good way to see all those things, and I'd love to talk about them. But I would also say that the NYPD was a good way to see all those things, and I'd love to talk about them. But I would also say that the NYPD was influential. Other places looked to the NYPD as a model of leadership. And so some of the things that came out of the NYPD spread other places as well. Absolutely. So this first episode features Miriam Caba talking about the origins of the NYPD.

For those who don't know, she's a very famous abolitionist and has talked a lot about the origins of the NYPD. For those who don't know, she's a very famous abolitionist and has talked a lot about the history of policing and how it is relevant today. So you talk about this former officer named Tobias Boudinot and a network of officers who made money by kidnapping free and emancipated Black residents and selling them back into slavery, right? So talk to us about why it's important when you begin this conversation of the NYPD to talk about its connection to slavery. For one, I think it's important for people to understand that slavery and the whole idea of slave patrolling

wasn't just something that had happened in the South. For a lot of people, at least in my world, the idea that police had something to do with slave patrols is sort of not surprising, although I'm sure for much of the country that may come as a surprise. But, you know, New York was supposed to be a free state, you know, by 1827. So that's one thing. And the other thing is that I think sometimes when people talk about problems with the police, they're cast as racial problems. And, you know, in this country, because the idea of systemic racism has not really settled in as the

dominant way of understanding racism, people just think, oh, it's just like racist or bigoted people, right? People who just have these prejudices. And what we wanted to show in Empire City is that there's actually economic priorities, right, at the heart of this. And that, you know, in a way, I mean, Tobias Boudinot was like a horrible person, right? I mean, he's somebody, I have no problem calling this dude an asshole. He was definitely an asshole. He was racist. He was all those things. But he was also incentivized, right?

He was broke. And there was an economic incentive built into the NYPD. And he also lived right before the NYPD made a turn into becoming a professional department. So we start right before. What Boudinot's story also allows us to see is resistance. You know, when you're going to tell a story that has to do with slavery, I mean, I was like, when I was making the show, I was like, yo, I know there's a lot of black folks got what you call slavery fatigue.

Right. Other folks sometimes love that, I got to say. They're like, oh, we're telling the truth. We're speaking truth to power, and we're going to show the real. And I realized, people want to see resistance. People want to be able to look to folks like David Ruggles and today, like Miriam Kaba and to Elizabeth Jennings Graham and all these people and say, what strategies did these folks use when they were clear? The police are not on our side.

What strategies did they use to actually survive and make their community safe? Well, that's something I really found fascinating about the podcast, right? Which is that the podcast kind of debunks this myth that conversations around abolition or police reform are new. It basically says that as long as there's been policing in America, this concept of abolition has also existed in America, right? There's been resistance to policing in America for as long as policing has existed. So tell us a little bit about Ruggles, who his story is told so well on the podcast, and talk to us about how he pushed back against this kind of

scheme that Boudinot and the other kidnapping crew had. When you think about that period of time, which we're talking about the late 1820s or 1830s, you know, I think that sometimes there's a way where people just look back and they're like, yeah, that was just slavery times. And it's kind of in black and white in a way that although we talk about slavery, people can't really feel it. But now I want you to imagine coming home and realizing that your child has been kidnapped, which happened to a kid named Henry Scott, or that your wife or husband is missing and you don't even know where they are. You actually don't know that they're kidnapped. And then you come to find out that not only have they been kidnapped, but it's a gang of police officers and people with legal connections to judges. And this is at a time when the vast majority of Black people don't have the right to vote. There's

a few property-owning Black folks who can do that. So what do you do? How do you fight back? And David Ruggles created an organization called the Committee of Vigilance. I don't want to give away all that. Y'all got to listen to hear what happens. But they formed some strategies. They formed legal strategies. Their media strategies are important. We got to talk to Mariam Kaba. Mariam Kaba is such a serious organizer that I kind of felt shy and not silly, but just trying to act like media matters. And she was like, no, she's also, I'm like a librarian. She was like, David Ruggles had a bookstore. This matters. Media matters. You know, library, literature work matters.

And turning up when you have to matters. Doing what you got to do now. So David Ruggles offers us and we're going to get to see in Empire City a Black community who kind of figures out a way to push back. And then we also see, though, what becomes of the police department after that struggle. Mm-hmm. So let's talk about what's happening today in New York or this week. We have these recent raids of New York Mayor Eric Adams' administration. He's a former NYPD captain. His police commissioner,

Edward Caban, is one of a few top officials who's had their phone seized by the FBI. So how do you see this kind of current moment in New York leadership fitting in to the broader picture of the NYPD and into your work laying out the history of this deeply rooted organization? There's a tendency when people cover things like this to sort of ask the default question, what went wrong? Or to say maybe when you see Edward Caban, who we know has buried, I think ProPublica did incredible reporting to find that he was burying cases that the CCRB, which is the Civilian Complaint Review Board, they go through investigations. They have an investigative process. They don't just claim things without evidence, right? I talked to,

for Empire City, one of their investigators, and he laid out the process. But the problem is that this organization answers to the police commissioner, and we're going to talk about that later in the series. But he was bearing these cases. So he's literally stopping the process that would allow us to figure out what actually happened. And of course, before him, I just want to point out that Kishant Sewell threw out more substantiated cases than any previous police commissioner as the first Black woman, for all those people who think that black cops are the answer or cops of color. So I think this current scandal is not actually about that. I think that it might have something to do with his relative who was responsible for policing some nightlife.

There might have been some kind of racket. But who knows? I mean, there's so many scandals at this point. Honestly, what do you think, Josie? I'm curious to see what you think because this is your area of expertise. And by the way, I got it. I'm knows? I mean, there's so many scandals at this point. Honestly, what do you think, Josie? I'm curious to see what you think, because this is your area of expertise. And by the way, I'm sorry to do this, but I got to put some respect on your work. Anybody who hasn't listened to Unreformed, I've been tuned in, listened to it, walking past where I'm supposed to go in New York, getting ready to crash my car because

it's riveting, important, serious work. That means so much to me. Thank you so much, really, because I find Empire City just amazing. So I love to hear that coming from you. Thank you. How do you think we process this moment? To me, it reflects what we know, right? Which is police, when you are kind of part of the top brass, you start to think that the rules don't apply to you. Again, like you said, we don't really know what's happening. And it's not like the FBI is always the beacon of truth and responsibility when it comes to policing either. But it does sort of reflect the pattern we see, right?

Which is elected officials come in and they say, we're going to get this place in order. We're going to be tough. We're going to get this place in order. There is always a correlation, right, between the people saying that and the people who later end up thinking that the rules don't apply to them. I mean, it's so clear to me that there's this conflation of power and responsibility with so many of these elected officials. And I mean, I got to say to Eric Adams, I thought he was going to get in trouble with the FBI way before this. So I almost give him credit for making- Surprising to you, he lasted this long. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I think the drop that's about to happen from Empire City on Monday, woo, people, listen. I'm so excited. We're speaking to some of these exact things. And I think that you do see this pattern all the way up from the police commissioner. I think what you're saying is so insightful, right? It's like the tough on crime people, the people who come in wind up being the very people who wind up, you know, drowning in scandals and corruption. And that's a pattern that goes all the way back,

not only to the first 10 years of the NYPD, but later in the series, we're going to talk about one of the largest and first cases where a whole police department is put on trial. And you start to see that not only is this an institution that's essentially for essentially about 180 years has functioned with like scandals and corruption that are happening, not even every 10 years, even more frequently than that. But not only that, but they've never reckoned with this. What other institution could continue to get funding to have their funding grow? And right now, I mean, who, in fact, like, I like the point you made about the federal government, right? Because there's times when I'm like, man, I think the

NYPD needs a consent decree. I mean, the police commissioner is under investigation. The mayor's under investigation. The mayor refuses to hold anybody accountable. And when you look at what's going on with Kaban, I mean, we don look at what's going on with caban i mean we don't know what's happened but one thing we know for sure is that the cop mayor of new york city mayor attica has made it very clear that even when city council said hey you know what could police officers maybe just document we're going to make this thing called the how many stops this is not radical abolitionist work this is like right can you just take notes when you they were like no he like he's foaming at the mouth with these people, calling them socialists.

Right. Right. Just because they want them to document the work. So if you're the police commissioner, if you're a cop and you see your mayor going out, you know, like he's not going to let anybody hold you accountable. Then, of course, you just are like, man, I got carte blanche. Right. Absolutely. Thank you so much.

Empire City is really amazing. So, Ginger, I thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much. Much respect for what y'all doing. What a day. Keep you so much. Empire City is really amazing. So, Chandra, I thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much. Much respect for what y'all doing, what a day. Keep doing your work and everybody go listen to Unreformed too. Thank you. That was my conversation with Chandra Aikomanika, host of the new podcast, Empire City, from Wondery and Crooked Media. We'll get to some headlines in a moment, but if you like our show, make sure to subscribe, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends.

We'll be back after some ads. Now, let's get to some of today's top stories. No vote today because we're in the consensus building business here in Congress with small majorities. That's what you do. That's what I've been doing since I became speaker. We're having thoughtful conversations, family conversations within the Republican conference. And I believe we'll get there. Ah, fall tradition. Threats of a government shutdown no one wants. House Speaker Mike Johnson is leading family conversations with fellow Republicans while a government shutdown looms, less than three weeks away.

Johnson delayed Wednesday's vote on a six-month government spending bill that was already friendly to the Republican agenda. But of course, none other than former President Donald Trump is meddling in the background. The bill includes a bullshit and redundant requirement that voters provide proof of citizenship before registering to vote, an issue Democrats were expected to reject because it's bullshit and redundant, and which Trump said Republicans should force a shutdown over. With the election approaching,

neither party wants to be responsible for a government shutdown, but almost a dozen Republicans have said they plan to vote against the bill. Johnson has pushed the vote to next week, when I'm sure Donald Trump will be a nice, normal partner in getting things done. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Kiev on Wednesday. Blinken traveled to Ukraine with U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lamy to meet with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and other officials. Speaking at a joint press conference,

both Lamy and Blinken indicated plans to change their government's current policies, which right now ban Ukraine from using long-range missiles provided by the U.S. and the U.K. to fire deep into Russia. Here's Blinken. Just speaking for the United States, from day one, as you've heard me say, we have adjusted and adapted as needs have changed, as the battlefield has changed, and I have no doubt that we'll continue to do that as this evolves. Also this week, Blinken commented on the Israel Defense Force's killing of U.S. Turkish citizen Ayshanor Ege.

Last Friday, she was shot and killed by IDF forces during a protest in the occupied West Bank. No one, no one should be shot and killed for attending a protest. No one should have to put their life at risk just for freely expressing their views. In our judgment, Israeli security forces need to make some fundamental changes in the way that they operate in the West Bank, including changes to their rules of engagement. Ege's family has criticized U.S. officials for not launching an independent investigation into her killing. Federal inspectors warned of a, quote, imminent threat to food safety at a Boar's Head plant in Virginia

nearly two years before the deadly Listeria outbreak there this summer, according to reports released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Inspectors found rust, standing water, live insects, mold, and thick buildup of waste product and equipment, among other even more disgusting food safety violations, and I do not of waste product and equipment, among other, even more disgusting food safety violations, and I do not want to know what those are. Despite these findings, the USDA did not take any measures to enforce penalties for these violations. The plant continued to operate until July of this year, when it became the epicenter for a listeria outbreak,

which killed nine people and hospitalized dozens more, making it the largest since 2011. Regulation of the pork processing industry was relaxed by the Trump administration in 2019. Shocking news. Letting companies rely more heavily on their own workers rather than USDA inspectors to address violations. I wish that my son, Aiden Clark, was killed by a 60-year-old white man. I bet you never thought anyone would ever say something so blunt. But if that guy killed my 11-year-old son, the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone.

That was Nathan Clark speaking at a Springfield, Ohio City Commission meeting just about an hour before Tuesday's presidential debate, begging Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, Ohio Republican Senate nominee Bernie Moreno, and Texas Representative Chip Roy to stop using the death of his son to denigrate Haitian immigrants. Aiden was killed last August after a minivan driven by a Haitian immigrant veered into oncoming traffic and struck a school bus, injuring 20 other students. Over the last few weeks, however, a host of people, including the Trump campaign, particularly online, have used the accident to attack Haitian immigrants in Springfield.

I will listen to them one more time to hear their apologies. To clear the air, my son, Aiden Clark, was not murdered. He was accidentally killed by an immigrant from Haiti. This tragedy is felt all over this community, the state, and even the nation. But don't spin this towards hate. And that's the news. So Josie, a thing of mine that I think about all the time is how just absolutely batshit online the right is right now. I don't mean online as in on the internet, but online as in believing that online ephemera matters a lot offline.

This was something you'll remember got hurled at the left a lot in like 2016. But over the last five years, the American right wing has gotten itself locked into a cocoon of its own weirdness. And when that cocoon gets exposed to normal everyday Americans, as we saw in the debate, because if there's anyone locked in a weirdo online cocoon, it's Donald Trump. It sounds, well, nuts. In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating the pets of the people that live there. Honestly, you remember, like, when the internet first started

and there was one boomer that sent out a lot of like email forwards yeah forward forward forward reply forward forward yeah exactly like that's his entire truth social account yeah it's dark it's dark in there but like even after the debate the weirdest people on the internet decided to just keep going take elon musk who manages to allegedly be one of the smartest people around while also being the strangest and most gullible person to ever live. There is not a baffling right-wing conspiracy theory around that he will not tweet exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point at. And after Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris on Instagram, he tweeted the following.

Fine, Taylor, you win. I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life. See, just to be absolutely clear, that's fucking gross. If a dude said that to you at a bar, you would heave a vodka tonic in his face and walk away. But right-wing influencer, former classical liberal, and noted taker of Russian money, Dave Rubin thought he made a good point, I guess. So as we referenced before, Taylor Swift endorses Kamala Harris on Instagram. After the debate on ABC proudly calls herself a childish cat lady, Elon Musk, who they hate, he saw that and he wrote this. So he's mocking, he's exposing the ridiculousness, right? It's like Taylor Swift, you are a young, pretty girl.

Do you know what the gang members from venezuela do to young pretty girls it ain't pretty every single thing that these people say reminds me of the charlie day meme from it's always sunny it's just a wall of string of unrelated things that they're trying to connect to regular people so i used to have this test for like online weirdness i called it the mom test but maybe. So I used to have this test for like online weirdness. I called it the mom test, but maybe you could call it to like partner test or if you heard it at a bar test.

If you called your mom and told her, hey, Elon Musk, the Tesla guy, just offered to impregnate Taylor Swift on the internet, would she think that was super cool and normal? She would not. No. And if you heard some guy tell a woman at the bar that she was real young and pretty and Venezuelans would probably love to do horrible things to her, would you think

that guy seems very cool and fun? I would literally try to get him kicked out of the bar. I would try to have him removed. Yeah, you would find a bouncer and say, hey, that guy's a fucking creep. Yeah, no, he's not properly socialized. No, the online right is full of absolute dorks who are deeply committed to telling one another they are not dorks, that they are right and legion and just one step away from taking power. They are not. They are dorks who hate women, who hate immigrants, who hate football and pop music and everyday Americans who are not as deeply engrossed in the project of being hateful dorks as they are. I refuse to be like afraid of them, but god dang, they are so fucking weird.

And Russia, maybe try to get a refund for all that money you set Dave Rubin. You did not get your money's worth. One more thing before we go. A new episode of Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams just dropped. Stacey dives into how journalists and news outlets are navigating a rapidly shifting media landscape. Joining her are journalist Paola Ramos and Washington Post TikTok host Joseph Ferguson. If you are looking for insights on today's biggest challenges and practical steps towards solutions, you have to

check out Assembly Required on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, don't be gross on Twitter, and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just the latest indictment to rock New York City Hall like me, What A Day is also a nightly newsletter, so check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Josie Duffy Rice. I'm Jane Koston. Thanks for listening and check us out on YouTube.

And don't be creepy. Don't be creepy. Josie, I just need people to be less creepy. Just like run it by someone before you tweet it. Like someone. Literally find someone on the street and be like, hey, should I tweet about how I want to impregnate Taylor Swift? They may call the cops. Right.

But they will probably tell you to not do that. Get off the internet. You've got to go. It's true. It's true. What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded by Jarek Centeno and mixed by Bill Lance. Our associate producer is Raven Yamamoto.

Our producer is Michelle Alloy. We had production help today from Ethan Oberman, Tyler Hill, Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters, and Julia Clare. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our executive producer is Adrienne Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka.