WEBVTT - How Police Unions Made Cops Even Deadlier 0:00:03.200 --> 0:00:06.760 Welcome to Behind the Police, a production of I Heart Radio. 0:00:10.360 --> 0:00:14.400 Now I Am Become Pod the Destroyer of Casts. Welcome 0:00:14.400 --> 0:00:17.840 back to Behind the Bastards. This is Robert Evans trying 0:00:17.840 --> 0:00:20.840 to trying a new style of introduction. This is actually 0:00:20.880 --> 0:00:23.400 Behind the Police, our special mini series and Behind the 0:00:23.400 --> 0:00:29.400 Bastards we talk about history's greatest bastards, American Police. Back 0:00:29.560 --> 0:00:33.320 with me for part five of this six part series 0:00:34.080 --> 0:00:36.680 is my co host Jason Petty, better known as the 0:00:36.760 --> 0:00:39.720 hip hop artist Propaganda. Jason, How you doing man? So 0:00:39.960 --> 0:00:43.599 man even dried mangoes and listening to old DJ Scratch 0:00:44.720 --> 0:00:46.920 and I hope that like I hope, I'm sorry, guys, 0:00:46.920 --> 0:00:53.400 I'm back man, I'm here again. Thanks God all the variants. Yeah, 0:00:53.520 --> 0:00:55.840 you're the first guests we've had for three straight weeks 0:00:56.080 --> 0:00:59.279 or for two straight weeks. I think, man, I like 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:02.680 I'm getting in my hitting like Billy Wayne like like 0:01:02.680 --> 0:01:06.760 like I mean you're hitting, you're hitting Propaganda zone. I 0:01:06.840 --> 0:01:11.760 like that, man, my own zone like zone. Yeah, like 0:01:11.800 --> 0:01:14.800 those like those like those cow zone things that they 0:01:14.880 --> 0:01:16.320 used to make a pizza I think it was pizza 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:20.280 Hut the zone Yeah yeah, yeah, those were good. Yeah, Yo, 0:01:20.360 --> 0:01:23.399 can I quick joke about quick joke, not quick Joe, 0:01:23.480 --> 0:01:27.160 quick story about cow zones. Absolutely, and we can move 0:01:27.200 --> 0:01:30.080 on there. So my homeboy Jose with Solomon. He's probably 0:01:30.080 --> 0:01:32.479 one of the most gorgeous men I've ever met. And 0:01:32.640 --> 0:01:38.600 uh he's a carmel six ft six like soul singer, poet. 0:01:38.720 --> 0:01:41.200 It's ridiculous. It's not fair. You know, you never meet 0:01:41.200 --> 0:01:42.800 the guy where it's like, it's just not fair. You 0:01:42.840 --> 0:01:45.440 shouldn't be No one should be this beautiful. So that's 0:01:45.440 --> 0:01:48.920 a Joe, right. Um, Joe lives in Atlanta. He was 0:01:49.000 --> 0:01:51.560 ordering this pizza or he went to the spot, you know, 0:01:51.760 --> 0:01:54.800 during the quarantine, wanted a cow zone. And you know, 0:01:55.320 --> 0:01:58.280 first of all, it's it's Atlanta, you know this, let's 0:01:58.280 --> 0:02:01.480 be real, it's chocolate. Say these black people, right, and 0:02:01.560 --> 0:02:04.360 the whole shop with black people. And he tries to 0:02:04.360 --> 0:02:06.960 get a cow zone and he could tell, based on 0:02:07.000 --> 0:02:09.200 the way that the lady was looking at him that 0:02:09.280 --> 0:02:12.880 she didn't know what the cow zone was, right, So 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:16.160 so he but she still was like pressed a few 0:02:16.160 --> 0:02:18.200 buttons on the screen and then you could see her 0:02:18.600 --> 0:02:22.120 look back at the home. He's like, hey, hey, what's right, 0:02:22.120 --> 0:02:23.720 and they kind of whispered back and forth. You could 0:02:23.720 --> 0:02:26.240 tell somebody must to google the cow zone, and then 0:02:26.240 --> 0:02:29.840 he finally gets it, and then stupid him didn't open 0:02:29.880 --> 0:02:32.240 the box till he got home, and he opened the 0:02:32.280 --> 0:02:34.560 box and it was just a pizza folded in half. 0:02:36.639 --> 0:02:40.160 I mean that is essentially that's the body part. I 0:02:40.200 --> 0:02:42.520 was like, that is a cow zone. But that he 0:02:42.600 --> 0:02:44.880 was like, you just folded a small pizza and half. 0:02:45.560 --> 0:02:47.920 What else do you want? I mean, really, you know 0:02:48.000 --> 0:02:56.240 what isn't like a cow zone? Prop the American policing, Yes, 0:02:56.320 --> 0:03:01.600 the evolution of American policing in the nineteen hundreds is 0:03:01.639 --> 0:03:07.239 not very much like a folded pizza. Uh, thanks, unfortunate, 0:03:07.440 --> 0:03:10.280 Thank the Lord above. What if that's how we handled 0:03:10.560 --> 0:03:12.880 law enforcement. What if when you had two feuding gangs, 0:03:12.919 --> 0:03:16.160 the government just sent cow zones over and we're like, hey, guys, yo, 0:03:16.440 --> 0:03:20.440 if you zones some cow zones, a little bit of barbecue, 0:03:20.440 --> 0:03:23.040 a couple of you know what I'm saying. It's like, everybody, 0:03:23.080 --> 0:03:26.200 just sit down, let's just have some cow zones, some 0:03:26.280 --> 0:03:29.320 high links. I think a good of the problems of 0:03:29.400 --> 0:03:32.960 law enforcement, Like, instead of tear gassing a bunch of protesters, 0:03:33.480 --> 0:03:38.320 what if the state provided cow zones, I'd bewitted. Yeah, 0:03:38.360 --> 0:03:40.160 and it's cheaper too. I bet we'd save money on 0:03:40.240 --> 0:03:43.000 tear gas and such because you can buy you can 0:03:43.040 --> 0:03:45.160 feed a lot of people cow zones cal zones for 0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:47.720 the price of hundreds of tear gas canisters. Let me 0:03:47.760 --> 0:03:50.000 tell you something. And you know, it's less to clean up, 0:03:50.560 --> 0:03:52.520 you know what I mean, It's easier on the environment, 0:03:53.560 --> 0:03:57.839 create more jobs, creates more jobs. Look, we just pods over. 0:03:57.880 --> 0:04:02.000 Thanks very much, guys. You know, look forward to our 0:04:02.040 --> 0:04:05.600 new behind the cow Zone series. Behind this idea of 0:04:05.600 --> 0:04:10.080 ours goes horribly wrong in a year. Yeah, the cow 0:04:10.160 --> 0:04:13.920 zone shot a kid. No one had ever seen anything 0:04:13.960 --> 0:04:17.839 like it, Helton with a cow zone from a cow zone, 0:04:18.640 --> 0:04:21.120 and we'd have to deal. Okay. So yeah, last week 0:04:21.160 --> 0:04:23.400 we dug into the really the very racist roots of 0:04:23.520 --> 0:04:26.760 US policing, the KKK, Jim Crow lynching and the death penalty, 0:04:26.800 --> 0:04:28.360 and in doing so, we kind of took a break 0:04:28.400 --> 0:04:30.800 from the broader history of how police have evolved in 0:04:30.800 --> 0:04:34.320 this country and focused on like the enabling of white 0:04:34.320 --> 0:04:36.520 supremacy in the suppression of black people as an integral 0:04:36.560 --> 0:04:38.840 part of the justice system. And today we're going to 0:04:38.960 --> 0:04:41.160 kind of peel back out again to discuss how the 0:04:41.200 --> 0:04:43.840 broader system of police evolved in the US over the 0:04:43.880 --> 0:04:46.320 last century to bring us to where we are now, 0:04:46.960 --> 0:04:49.960 which is, you know, police stopping random people for no reason, 0:04:50.160 --> 0:04:53.280 doing horrific violence to them, uh, and then being shielded 0:04:53.279 --> 0:04:55.880 from consequences by police unions. So that's what we're going 0:04:55.960 --> 0:05:01.440 to explain today. Okay, who yeah, there it is. This 0:05:01.480 --> 0:05:03.119 will be fun. We're gonna talk a lot about police 0:05:03.160 --> 0:05:04.960 unions and a lot about a stop and frisk and 0:05:05.000 --> 0:05:09.440 broken windows. Okay, yeah, so those two stopping frisk gets 0:05:09.440 --> 0:05:13.880 to like my life. Yeah yeah. So to get to 0:05:13.960 --> 0:05:16.000 that point, we have to, you know, zoom back a 0:05:16.040 --> 0:05:18.320 bit to the start of the twentieth century. By the 0:05:18.320 --> 0:05:20.800 time this nation started entering you know what most people 0:05:20.839 --> 0:05:24.359 would call the modern era, most police departments were de 0:05:24.600 --> 0:05:28.119 facto the enforcement arm of organized crime, in the words 0:05:28.120 --> 0:05:30.520 of one scholar, So cops existed. We talked about this 0:05:30.560 --> 0:05:33.800 in the episode two. Cops existed as muscle for for 0:05:33.839 --> 0:05:37.440 criminal for like gang leaders and stuff. Police departments engaged 0:05:37.440 --> 0:05:40.440 in constant election fraud because their jobs were generally tied 0:05:40.480 --> 0:05:43.800 to the position of local political bosses who are also gangsters. 0:05:44.360 --> 0:05:46.520 And during this period. This is like Tammany Hall and Ship. 0:05:46.920 --> 0:05:49.240 And during this period police drew salaries, but there was 0:05:49.279 --> 0:05:52.360 no such thing as overtime, and their salaries were generally shipped, 0:05:52.400 --> 0:05:55.479 so instead they took a lot of bribes. Dr. Gary Potter, 0:05:55.520 --> 0:05:58.239 who's a historian of law enforcement, insists that it's actually 0:05:58.240 --> 0:06:01.760 wrong to call the police in this period corrupt. He writes, quote, 0:06:01.960 --> 0:06:05.080 they were in fact primary instruments for the creation of 0:06:05.120 --> 0:06:08.480 corruption in the first place. So like the police aren't corrupt, 0:06:08.520 --> 0:06:12.600 the police create corruption in this period, which is an 0:06:12.640 --> 0:06:16.880 interesting but I think really important distinction to make. Actually 0:06:16.880 --> 0:06:20.159 took a second, like yeah, dang, yeah, I need to 0:06:20.200 --> 0:06:22.720 lean back from that one for a little bit like that. 0:06:22.720 --> 0:06:27.000 That is profound. Yeah, yeah, Garry Potter doesn't mince fucking 0:06:27.000 --> 0:06:30.719 words at all. Yeah. So, in the early nineteen hundreds, 0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:34.440 police departments in major major cities, particularly in the Eastern Seaboard, 0:06:34.440 --> 0:06:37.120 but also Chicago, because Chicago is a Midwestern city, but 0:06:37.160 --> 0:06:38.839 we all kind of lump it in with the East Coast. 0:06:38.839 --> 0:06:41.920 We all do it, even Chicago does sometimes when they're lazy, 0:06:42.400 --> 0:06:44.520 like deal with the Chicago. You should have moved further 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:46.160 east if you wanted to, not was like, do you 0:06:46.160 --> 0:06:48.560 have do you get snowed in from a tunja? You're 0:06:48.560 --> 0:06:52.000 on the East coast, bro, Yeah, yeah, thank you so 0:06:52.160 --> 0:06:54.119 uh yeah, police apartments in major cities in the Eastern 0:06:54.120 --> 0:06:56.520 Seaboard in the early nineteen hundred, uh did a bit 0:06:56.560 --> 0:06:58.840 more than just provide muscle for gangsters and crack the 0:06:58.839 --> 0:07:01.599 heads of labor organizers. UM. They also got into the 0:07:01.600 --> 0:07:03.840 business because no one else was going to do it, 0:07:04.240 --> 0:07:07.880 of what we'd call social welfare. UM. It was kind 0:07:07.880 --> 0:07:09.600 of their job to take care of the homeless and 0:07:09.600 --> 0:07:11.840 the critically ill. And they weren't good at this. But 0:07:11.920 --> 0:07:14.600 police in Boston, New York and other cities sheltered homeless 0:07:14.640 --> 0:07:17.720 people in precincts, They emptied public toilets, and they kept 0:07:17.720 --> 0:07:20.520 track of the infected during epidemics. Now, since again these 0:07:20.560 --> 0:07:22.880 men were at the time hired gangsters, they were not 0:07:22.920 --> 0:07:24.880 renowned for taking to these tasks with a great deal 0:07:24.920 --> 0:07:27.520 of empathy. But nobody else really gave a ship. They 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:29.800 didn't give a sh it either, but they were kind 0:07:29.840 --> 0:07:32.640 of the people you gave the bad jobs to. Again, 0:07:32.880 --> 0:07:35.240 not a lot of respect for law enforcement in this period, 0:07:35.240 --> 0:07:37.160 so they're like, we need somebody to like pull the 0:07:37.200 --> 0:07:39.200 homeless people off the streets. They don't freeze to death. 0:07:39.200 --> 0:07:41.920 Half the cops do it. Yeah, So it was prohibition 0:07:41.960 --> 0:07:45.400 that finally tipped law enforcement over the edge, uh like, 0:07:45.480 --> 0:07:48.160 over the edge of of of creators of corruption to 0:07:48.600 --> 0:07:53.440 um so outwardly criminal that the state had to like 0:07:53.520 --> 0:07:55.720 that the federal government had to do something about. The 0:07:56.240 --> 0:07:59.720 sheer scale of corruption unleashed by prohibition, and like the 0:07:59.800 --> 0:08:03.440 error of speakeasies and gangsters turned police departments into, you know, 0:08:04.240 --> 0:08:06.480 whatever they had been before, a complete mockery of law 0:08:06.480 --> 0:08:10.320 and order, and federal authorities pushed reform and investigatory commissions 0:08:10.360 --> 0:08:12.840 that had to look into a variety of different scandals. 0:08:13.160 --> 0:08:15.360 Dr Potter lays out just a few examples of police 0:08:15.400 --> 0:08:18.320 crime that inspired the creation of commissions. Quote number one, 0:08:18.520 --> 0:08:21.480 the formation of a prostitution syndicate by Los Angeles Mayor 0:08:21.600 --> 0:08:24.440 Arthur Harper, police Chief Edward Kerns and a local organized 0:08:24.480 --> 0:08:27.360 crime figure, combined with subsequent instructions to the police to 0:08:27.440 --> 0:08:31.000 harass the syndicates competitors in the prostitution industry. Number two 0:08:31.320 --> 0:08:34.400 the assassination of organized crime figure Arthur Rothstein by police 0:08:34.400 --> 0:08:37.320 Lieutenant Charles Becker, head of the NYPD's vice Squad and 0:08:37.600 --> 0:08:40.080 number three a dispute between the Mayor and District Attorney 0:08:40.080 --> 0:08:43.040 of Philadelphia, each of whom controlled rival gambling syndicates, and 0:08:43.040 --> 0:08:45.320 each of whom used loyal factions of police to harass 0:08:45.400 --> 0:08:47.760 the other. So, like, these are just a couple of 0:08:47.760 --> 0:08:50.400 examples of the sort of behavior police departments are engaging 0:08:50.400 --> 0:08:52.840 in at the time where they're they're they're just they're 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:59.079 even like more criminal than a lot of the criminal syndicates. Um. Yeah, yeah. 0:08:59.160 --> 0:09:01.440 And another stigative commission that was said up during this 0:09:01.440 --> 0:09:03.559 period was the Linux Committee, which was formed to look 0:09:03.559 --> 0:09:05.880 into the charges of police extortion in New York. It 0:09:05.960 --> 0:09:08.400 found that promotion within the NYPD in the early nineteen 0:09:08.440 --> 0:09:11.720 hundreds was based entirely on direct bribes paid by officers 0:09:11.760 --> 0:09:15.079 to the Department of Promotion to sergeant cost six a 0:09:15.120 --> 0:09:18.320 promotion to captain it cost fifteen thousand dollars. All of 0:09:18.320 --> 0:09:20.640 these scampers and many Yeah. Yeah, he would just pay 0:09:20.720 --> 0:09:24.800 to get promoted in the police. Yeah. It's just it's 0:09:24.840 --> 0:09:28.920 just so crazy that, like, I mean, as much as 0:09:28.920 --> 0:09:31.920 you want to believe that like, throughout the course of 0:09:32.040 --> 0:09:38.200 time we have gotten somehow, in some way better at 0:09:38.360 --> 0:09:42.080 being the species we are. It's just I just the 0:09:42.160 --> 0:09:43.920 more you know of history, the more you're like, no, 0:09:44.120 --> 0:09:46.720 we've kind of been a plateaued. We've kind of just 0:09:47.240 --> 0:09:50.800 always been like this, you know. And that's the part 0:09:50.840 --> 0:09:56.480 that just like no. But because because I'm thinking about like, 0:09:57.800 --> 0:10:00.360 I'm still hanging on the word on the on the 0:10:00.400 --> 0:10:05.440 phrase of like it created the collection, because I'm going, well, 0:10:05.920 --> 0:10:08.920 I mean, you don't pay them a lot, You're I 0:10:08.960 --> 0:10:13.520 am incynivized. You're like, like, you're just hoping these people 0:10:14.559 --> 0:10:20.560 would somehow not have the same corrupted soul as the 0:10:20.600 --> 0:10:24.720 rest of the people. But they just people, and they're 0:10:24.720 --> 0:10:28.040 gonna find the path of least resistance, the quickest way 0:10:28.080 --> 0:10:30.600 to get a buck, and the best way to like 0:10:30.760 --> 0:10:33.360 push other people down for their own success. I don't 0:10:33.360 --> 0:10:35.280 know why you think putting a badge on a chest 0:10:35.320 --> 0:10:37.880 gonna make them any different. So when you hear this 0:10:37.920 --> 0:10:40.319 stuff like this, I'm just like, God, dog, it was it? 0:10:40.440 --> 0:10:46.480 Were we ever have we ever done good things? Well? Yeah, yeah, 0:10:46.600 --> 0:10:48.920 you know, there's there's a I forget who the name 0:10:48.960 --> 0:10:51.120 of the individual who it was, but there I believe 0:10:51.160 --> 0:10:53.440 it was a Holocaust survivor and he wrote something to 0:10:53.559 --> 0:10:55.960 the He had a quote that was something along lines 0:10:56.040 --> 0:10:58.840 of and like any given period of time, like ten 0:10:58.880 --> 0:11:01.720 percent of people are genuinely good, ten percent of people 0:11:01.800 --> 0:11:05.280 are total monsters, and about could kind of go either 0:11:05.320 --> 0:11:07.439 way depending on where it's seeing how it seems the 0:11:07.480 --> 0:11:11.200 wind is blowing, um and like if the wind is 0:11:11.720 --> 0:11:14.160 you know, blowing in the way that like if if 0:11:14.240 --> 0:11:18.160 everyone in charge is literally running a criminal syndicate of 0:11:18.200 --> 0:11:21.640 like prostitution and and like and probably a lot of 0:11:21.679 --> 0:11:24.520 forced prostitution and like gambling and like murder for higher 0:11:24.559 --> 0:11:27.000 and all this stuff, if that's everybody, then yeah, that's 0:11:27.040 --> 0:11:29.240 what you get involved with. Like then like okay, we'll 0:11:29.280 --> 0:11:31.640 all find some way to make money within the system. 0:11:31.720 --> 0:11:34.800 It's the ocean. It's still so you just kind of 0:11:34.840 --> 0:11:38.440 like do it because that's I mean, you gotta swim, Yeah, 0:11:38.480 --> 0:11:42.679 you gotta swim. Yeah. So uh. The current Committee of 0:11:43.080 --> 0:11:48.480 nineteen investigated in YPD collusion and gambling in prostitution. The 0:11:48.559 --> 0:11:51.720 Seabury Committee in nineteen thirty one also looked into the NYPD, 0:11:51.840 --> 0:11:54.440 this time into the broader system of bosses and bribery 0:11:54.440 --> 0:11:56.920 for political positions. That was the core of why New 0:11:57.040 --> 0:12:00.360 York law enforcement sucked. Each of these commissions made changes, 0:12:00.400 --> 0:12:02.320 but right up unto the nineteen fifties, there were still 0:12:02.320 --> 0:12:06.280 regular inquiries into police involvement with gambling, prostitution, and organized crime. 0:12:06.480 --> 0:12:09.120 And I cannot exaggerate how many of these committees were 0:12:09.160 --> 0:12:12.640 focused on the NYPD. Like, one way to look at 0:12:12.679 --> 0:12:15.760 the twentieth century is the federal government fighting tooth and 0:12:15.840 --> 0:12:18.640 nail to stop New York Police from being just a 0:12:18.640 --> 0:12:24.840 criminal enterprise. Like that took decades of battling. Yeah, not metaphorically, 0:12:25.160 --> 0:12:28.000 not as a way to understand what's happening. No, seriously, 0:12:28.000 --> 0:12:31.080 they're just no, they're pimps with badges. Yeah, that's just 0:12:31.120 --> 0:12:35.280 what they actually are. And while I was googling around, 0:12:35.280 --> 0:12:37.360 I wanted to kind of come up with another example 0:12:37.440 --> 0:12:39.800 or two, like a direct one of the NYPD, you know, 0:12:40.280 --> 0:12:43.320 being pimps or whatnot in the early nineteen hundreds. And 0:12:43.320 --> 0:12:45.560 it was actually hard because there were so many cases 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:47.520 of them in the twenty first century doing the exact 0:12:47.600 --> 0:12:50.200 same thing. For example, I was googling around on this, 0:12:50.280 --> 0:12:52.360 I came across the two thousand eighteen story about a 0:12:52.400 --> 0:12:55.800 retired NYPD detective who ran a two million dollar broadle 0:12:55.880 --> 0:12:58.680 ring using active copses muscle and his inside knowledge of 0:12:58.679 --> 0:13:01.600 how department undercovers did prostitution stings in order to avoid 0:13:01.600 --> 0:13:04.400 getting busted. He knew that like undercovers weren't allowed to 0:13:04.400 --> 0:13:06.520 show their genitals to prostitutes, so he would make all 0:13:06.559 --> 0:13:09.559 of the johns strip naked and like let themselves get 0:13:09.600 --> 0:13:13.199 fondled before starting the transaction. Um, because that helped him 0:13:13.200 --> 0:13:17.760 avoid getting busted by the NYPD. UM. Yeah, there were 0:13:17.800 --> 0:13:22.080 seven active duty officers who worked for his prostitution ring. Um. 0:13:22.200 --> 0:13:24.440 One of them was actually willing to work for free 0:13:24.440 --> 0:13:27.160 in exchange for discounts with his favorite prostitutes. So again, 0:13:27.800 --> 0:13:37.200 two eighteen is when that gets busted. Regular scumbag. It's awesome, 0:13:37.320 --> 0:13:45.000 regular dudes just being normal scumbags. Yeah, it's like someone decided, like, okay, 0:13:45.040 --> 0:13:48.240 let's take ten percent of the normal scumbag population and 0:13:48.280 --> 0:13:51.920 make them immune to being punished if they shoot someone. Yes, 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:58.640 uh so yeah, Well, the federal government was fighting to 0:13:58.679 --> 0:14:02.240 make the NYPD a modestly less criminal enterprise. A major 0:14:02.280 --> 0:14:05.319 revolution had started to overtake law enforcement nationwide, and it 0:14:05.400 --> 0:14:08.480 started on the West Coast. Luminaries in you know that 0:14:08.559 --> 0:14:10.960 part of the country began to wonder if perhaps police 0:14:10.960 --> 0:14:15.319 officers ought not be trained professionals instead of drunken gangsters. 0:14:15.400 --> 0:14:18.360 And the the first real apostle of this gospel was 0:14:18.400 --> 0:14:21.520 a dude named August Volmer. He was the very first 0:14:21.520 --> 0:14:24.280 police chief of Berkeley, California, and he served from nineteen 0:14:24.280 --> 0:14:27.720 o nine to nineteen thirty one. Um. And this, this 0:14:27.760 --> 0:14:30.840 guy is about the best cop you're gonna find in 0:14:31.000 --> 0:14:33.920 US history. Um. From yeah, from every he did have, 0:14:34.000 --> 0:14:35.920 Like his early history, he was in part of like 0:14:35.960 --> 0:14:38.120 the U. S occupation of the Philippines, but he was 0:14:38.160 --> 0:14:40.040 like a like a gun boat he worked on like 0:14:40.040 --> 0:14:42.080 a gunboat. Like I'm sure he like he was part of, 0:14:42.120 --> 0:14:44.600 you know, the US crimes in the Philippines, but he wasn't. 0:14:44.880 --> 0:14:46.880 It's not like a case with John Burge, Like I 0:14:46.920 --> 0:14:49.240 have no evidence that he was like running secret prisons 0:14:49.280 --> 0:14:51.720 and torturing people. Like he was just a soldier who 0:14:51.720 --> 0:14:54.280 fought in a bad war. Um. And then he became 0:14:54.320 --> 0:14:56.880 the police chief in Berkeley. And when he took the job, 0:14:56.960 --> 0:14:59.360 Berkeley police were just as corrupt as New York police. 0:14:59.600 --> 0:15:02.400 August only had a sixth grade education, but he knew 0:15:02.480 --> 0:15:05.400 enough to immediately ban the receipt of gifts and bribes 0:15:05.440 --> 0:15:07.400 for his officers, Like that was the first thing he did. 0:15:07.440 --> 0:15:12.760 Was like, obviously you can't take bribes that anymore. Yeah, yeah, 0:15:12.840 --> 0:15:15.680 yeah again sixth grade education said oh yeah, well, we 0:15:15.720 --> 0:15:19.320 gotta stop doing this that. Huh what if what if 0:15:19.360 --> 0:15:24.760 we weren't just gangsters? Yeah, I tried to do the job, guys. Yeah, 0:15:24.760 --> 0:15:28.400 what if we treated it like a job? Yeah? And 0:15:28.480 --> 0:15:30.800 he was He's really it's baffling the number of first 0:15:30.880 --> 0:15:33.120 this guy is responsible for in law enforcement. He was 0:15:33.160 --> 0:15:35.560 the first police chief to put cops on bicycles in 0:15:35.640 --> 0:15:38.440 nineteen ten. He was the first police chief to put 0:15:38.480 --> 0:15:42.240 cops on motorcycles in nineteen eleven. His officers received the 0:15:42.360 --> 0:15:45.800 very first radios and their squad cars. Vulmer's apartment created 0:15:45.800 --> 0:15:48.720 the first centralized police record system, and he was the 0:15:48.720 --> 0:15:51.200 first chief in the United States to push his officers 0:15:51.240 --> 0:15:54.360 to use blood, fiber and soil analysis to solve crimes. 0:15:54.600 --> 0:15:56.800 He was one of the first chiefs to use fingerprinting 0:15:57.120 --> 0:15:59.560 of Valmer was also the first chief to require college 0:15:59.560 --> 0:16:02.400 degrees of his officers. He was one of the first 0:16:02.760 --> 0:16:05.360 police chiefs to hire black cops, although not the first, 0:16:05.560 --> 0:16:07.520 but he was the very first police chief to hire 0:16:07.560 --> 0:16:11.480 female officers in nineteen nineteen. August was also the first 0:16:11.520 --> 0:16:14.120 police chief in the US to explicitly banned the use 0:16:14.160 --> 0:16:17.120 of the third degree, and he was a lifetime opponent 0:16:17.160 --> 0:16:21.520 of capital punishment. Um. He was notorious and fairly unique 0:16:21.520 --> 0:16:23.920 among law men in this period for believing that communists 0:16:23.920 --> 0:16:26.160 had a right to organize and state their views without 0:16:26.160 --> 0:16:29.040 being beaten into bloody pols. This guy, yeah, he's the 0:16:29.080 --> 0:16:34.960 best cop we're going to talk about. Like, I am impressed, bro. 0:16:35.200 --> 0:16:37.520 Like you you see him riding by in his little 0:16:37.560 --> 0:16:41.520 like big big front wheel, little chilly, silly police car, 0:16:41.600 --> 0:16:43.960 silly bike, you know what I'm saying, Like the old school, 0:16:43.960 --> 0:16:46.960 old timey victorian bike. But he's a cop. And that 0:16:47.000 --> 0:16:50.240 guy you salute, like, hey, what's up, officer? You know, yeah, 0:16:51.080 --> 0:16:55.760 he was trying, yeah, at least trying. Yeah. And now 0:16:55.960 --> 0:16:58.560 he was also one of the very first, like people 0:16:58.680 --> 0:17:01.800 anywhere to teach class as in criminal justice, essentially like 0:17:01.880 --> 0:17:04.320 helping to invent that field of higher education. Like, he 0:17:04.359 --> 0:17:06.040 was one of the first people to be like, we 0:17:06.040 --> 0:17:09.359 should probably have college classes that help people do do 0:17:09.400 --> 0:17:12.159 this thing. That's the job. Um. And one of his 0:17:12.200 --> 0:17:14.920 students was a dude named O. W. Wilson, and O. W. 0:17:14.960 --> 0:17:17.119 Wilson went on to become the police chief of Fullerton. 0:17:17.400 --> 0:17:20.040 He was also the police chief of Jesus somewhere in 0:17:20.080 --> 0:17:22.040 the Midwest. I forget where where else he was the 0:17:22.040 --> 0:17:26.040 police chief, and he was in California, California. Um And 0:17:26.080 --> 0:17:28.200 he was also the superintendent of the Chicago p D 0:17:28.280 --> 0:17:30.040 at one point, so he was a very influential like 0:17:30.320 --> 0:17:33.679 running police departments, Guy um And he wrote a book 0:17:33.760 --> 0:17:37.720 called Police Administration in nineteen forty three, and this was 0:17:37.760 --> 0:17:40.440 sort of a reaction to how most cops in big 0:17:40.480 --> 0:17:44.480 cities were drunken gangsters. Um And it basically O. W. Wilson, 0:17:44.760 --> 0:17:46.719 you know, who is the protege of Valmer is like, 0:17:47.080 --> 0:17:51.440 we need to professionalize police departments nationwide. Um and Wilson 0:17:51.480 --> 0:17:55.400 wanted police departments to be centralized and reformed along military 0:17:55.480 --> 0:17:58.840 style lines. This helped departments to keep a closer eye 0:17:58.840 --> 0:18:00.879 in their officers and stop them from, you know, just 0:18:00.920 --> 0:18:04.520 selling bootleg liquor or whatever. So you can see the 0:18:04.560 --> 0:18:06.760 logic and what Wilson was trying to do, right, it 0:18:06.760 --> 0:18:10.040 makes it makes sense, It makes sense, but it didn't work. 0:18:10.240 --> 0:18:13.720 Um Or it didn't work well, yeah, For one thing, 0:18:13.840 --> 0:18:19.080 his drive towards centralization created powerful, unaccountable, authoritarian police bureaucracies 0:18:19.080 --> 0:18:21.199 that were both unaccountable to the public and to the 0:18:21.240 --> 0:18:25.040 officers that worked there. Racist and sexist hiring practices were 0:18:25.040 --> 0:18:28.520 never reformed, and so these dictatorial police bureaucrats were basically 0:18:28.560 --> 0:18:32.080 just white dudes. Um. Samuel Walker, a professor of criminal 0:18:32.200 --> 0:18:34.919 justice in Nebraska, notes that quote a half century of 0:18:34.960 --> 0:18:39.160 professionalization had created police departments that were vast bureaucracies, inward 0:18:39.200 --> 0:18:41.600 looking and isolated from the public and defensive in the 0:18:41.640 --> 0:18:46.800 face of any criticism, which does not sound familiar at all. Um. Yeah, 0:18:47.080 --> 0:18:50.520 I can't win with these guys, like yeah, every time 0:18:50.560 --> 0:18:52.400 you wanted like I want to be like, oh yeah, 0:18:52.600 --> 0:18:55.560 what's good? Oh well, there it is. It never quite 0:18:55.600 --> 0:18:58.840 works out right, like they always seem to keep sucking, 0:18:59.320 --> 0:19:01.440 even when you deal with what you think are the 0:19:01.440 --> 0:19:03.920 the the problems, which maybe hints that the problem is 0:19:03.960 --> 0:19:07.040 at the root of what we have police for, um, 0:19:07.080 --> 0:19:12.119 as opposed to them neeting bicycles, which when not that Yeah, yeah, my, 0:19:12.119 --> 0:19:14.480 my my, I remember one of my my elementary school 0:19:14.480 --> 0:19:16.640 teacher used to say, hey, if every place you touch 0:19:16.720 --> 0:19:21.600 on your body, hurts. Your finger is probably broken. So 0:19:22.480 --> 0:19:24.240 that's why I just think about I'm just like, maybe 0:19:24.280 --> 0:19:27.560 your fingers broken, guys, maybe the finger is broken. Yeah, good, good, 0:19:27.800 --> 0:19:31.000 good way to describe that. Never forgot that, Ms Deirfield. 0:19:31.760 --> 0:19:35.280 So um, what's worse is that Wilson, like his mentor 0:19:35.640 --> 0:19:38.440 mentor volmer Um, both of whom I think had good intentions, 0:19:38.720 --> 0:19:41.199 had seized upon the idea that police should focus on 0:19:41.280 --> 0:19:44.520 crime prevention rather than just investigation. Now this was not 0:19:44.600 --> 0:19:46.679 a new idea, and again you can see the logic 0:19:46.760 --> 0:19:49.159 and trying to prevent crime, but the way that it 0:19:49.200 --> 0:19:51.679 worked out in the real world is that these new professional, 0:19:51.720 --> 0:19:54.840 centralized police departments suddenly started devoting a lot more time 0:19:54.880 --> 0:19:57.600 to sending cops out on patrol to stop and search 0:19:57.640 --> 0:20:00.600 people at random. Most of these people are members of 0:20:00.640 --> 0:20:03.720 the dangerous classes, which at that point were mostly racial 0:20:03.720 --> 0:20:06.000 minorities in the United States. You know, the Irish weren't 0:20:06.000 --> 0:20:09.560 really being oppressed no more. But bring that back. Yeah, 0:20:09.600 --> 0:20:11.760 as we've discussed, police had always worked to corral and 0:20:11.760 --> 0:20:14.520 control the movement and freedom of non white people. Wilson's 0:20:14.560 --> 0:20:17.480 reforms helped to dress that up as crime prevention. So 0:20:17.560 --> 0:20:19.800 now the cops aren't out there to keep you know, 0:20:19.920 --> 0:20:23.480 black people in line. They're there to patrol for criminal behavior, 0:20:23.560 --> 0:20:25.680 which in which they do the same thing. But it's 0:20:25.680 --> 0:20:29.680 harder to complain about if you're a white liberal. We's 0:20:29.720 --> 0:20:33.439 got some better codes, yeah, exactly, better codes. Yeah, And 0:20:33.480 --> 0:20:36.960 I don't think that was Wilson's intent, but that's what happened. Um. Now, 0:20:37.040 --> 0:20:40.240 actual police officers weren't much happier than the general public 0:20:40.240 --> 0:20:43.200 with these reforms. Their resentment at their unaccountable, distant, and 0:20:43.240 --> 0:20:46.080 all powerful bosses helped to inspire a growing movement to 0:20:46.200 --> 0:20:50.520 unionize police departments. Now, police in many cities had long 0:20:50.560 --> 0:20:52.959 sought the benefits of unionization, but since a huge part 0:20:53.000 --> 0:20:56.480 of their literal job was busting unions and murdering union organizers, 0:20:56.640 --> 0:20:59.359 this was a tough needle to thread. It's a little 0:20:59.480 --> 0:21:03.399 a little con lifted here. Yeah, are we are we 0:21:03.480 --> 0:21:05.560 killing these people for the same thing we think is 0:21:05.600 --> 0:21:08.439 a good idea for Oh yeah, well fuck it. Yeah. 0:21:08.560 --> 0:21:12.400 So cops in some cities started to form fraternal associations 0:21:12.400 --> 0:21:14.080 in order to try to gain some of the same 0:21:14.119 --> 0:21:18.879 benefits of unions while also not feeling like complete hypocrites. 0:21:18.920 --> 0:21:23.160 For the unions. Yeah, this did not work out well forever. 0:21:23.200 --> 0:21:26.919 These fraternal organizations just didn't associations just didn't do what 0:21:27.040 --> 0:21:30.760 unions do. The first department to seek straight up unionization 0:21:30.840 --> 0:21:33.879