Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Civic Cipher. I am your host,
Speaker 1: Ramsy's Jah.
Speaker 2: We're gonna go by the name q Ward, Ramsey's Job.
Speaker 1: What's happening everything in the world. Man, it's good to
Speaker 1: see you, good to talk to always. We should do
Speaker 1: this more often, yeah, man, once a week nearly enough,
Speaker 1: but I'm glad that we get to do this and
Speaker 1: we get to share it with our wonderful, incredibly supportive listeners,
Speaker 1: which you should stick around for. We have a great
Speaker 1: show in store for you. We are going to discuss
Speaker 1: whether or not defunding the police works obviously a very hot,
Speaker 1: very much a hot button issue, and you know, there's
Speaker 1: been some early reports back from different cities around the country,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna examine that, peel back a couple of
Speaker 1: layers and really try to figure out what that means. Also,
Speaker 1: we're going to examine that very common saying I'm not racist,
Speaker 1: I have a black friend. I'm want to feel back
Speaker 1: a few layers of that as well. I think that
Speaker 1: that's necessary and that's timely, and that's kind of right
Speaker 1: up our alleys anyway. So you know, people that hide
Speaker 1: behind that statement, you might know them. It might be
Speaker 1: in your life. It might even be you. But we're
Speaker 1: going to really examine what that means and how if
Speaker 1: you're going to use it, how to use it and
Speaker 1: how not to use it. Also, we're gonna discuss the
Speaker 1: origins of yoga. A lot of people, you know, know
Speaker 1: that yoga comes from you know, Asia, parts like South
Speaker 1: Southeast Asia, but yoga actually has roots in Africa, and
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss that as well. But first and foremost,
Speaker 1: like we always do with his time, we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about some ebony excellence. How about that Q as
Speaker 1: we should always do about this time, Yes, sir, so
Speaker 1: Ebny excellence. Today we're going to talk about Sean puff
Speaker 1: Daddy or p Diddy Combs or Diddy or what he
Speaker 1: changed his name to love or something once upon a time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, puff puff Daddy, uh Diddy, huff post short.
Speaker 1: Brother Love. He gets nicknames on deck. I'm not mad
Speaker 1: at it. Well, today we're talking about him, as you know,
Speaker 1: he is a serial entrepreneur, very successful businessman, somewhere on
Speaker 1: his way toward becoming a billionaire if he's not there already.
Speaker 1: And so, uh, you know, we like to talk about
Speaker 1: people that do great things. But you know, Puffy has
Speaker 1: always been very pro black and very supportive of black
Speaker 1: businesses and black individuals and black culture and so forth
Speaker 1: and so on, and it's funny that we haven't talked
Speaker 1: about him yet, but even though we're late, we do
Speaker 1: get a chance to shout him out. So he actually
Speaker 1: bought back his clothing line, Sean John. So originally he
Speaker 1: sold a majority stake of Sean John in twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: to Global Brands Holding Limited, that's a holding company that
Speaker 1: specializes in celebrity apparel, and they filed for Chapter eleven
Speaker 1: in July of twenty twenty one and they placed Sean
Speaker 1: John along with other assets up for auction. Well, Puff
Speaker 1: Daddy or p Diddy or Diddy went and bought it back.
Speaker 1: So not only did he get a bag up front,
Speaker 1: but then he actually bought back his clothing line that
Speaker 1: carries his name and he got it for seven and
Speaker 1: a half million dollars, So he made money coming and
Speaker 1: going on that one. And of course he's going to
Speaker 1: continue to provide his black owned fashion to the world
Speaker 1: and we love to see it. So shout out to
Speaker 1: Sean P. Diddy Comb's aka Puff Daddy. Now moving on,
Speaker 1: does defunding the police work real quick. Want to shout
Speaker 1: out Forbes magazine because that's where we drew the information
Speaker 1: for Diddy and buying back Shawn John And now our
Speaker 1: sources are the Wall Street Journal and Sean King. You know,
Speaker 1: we are fans of Sean King, you know, not diehard fans,
Speaker 1: but you know, certainly are fans of his work. You know,
Speaker 1: we are critical of everything that comes our way. We
Speaker 1: have to be. We're a separate journalistic institution here on
Speaker 1: Civic Cipher, but we do like his high takes. We
Speaker 1: had appreciate his perspective in the same way with it,
Speaker 1: we appreciate the perspective of you know, other great speakers, comedians,
Speaker 1: people that just haven't an interesting view of the world.
Speaker 1: But defunding the police, that's one of the first questions
Speaker 1: that we were able to ask on this show when
Speaker 1: we had Zara from Black Lives Matter, And that's really
Speaker 1: the reason why we wanted to create Civic Cipher in
Speaker 1: the first place. That's funny because you know, for those
Speaker 1: listening Q and I, we felt like in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: that the people on the streets with the bullhorns that
Speaker 1: were saying defund the police they were talking to just
Speaker 1: the people who were protesting and marching with them, and
Speaker 1: you know, they're reaching you know, a few hundred people
Speaker 1: to a few thousand people, depending on who who could
Speaker 1: hear them, you know, the thousands of people there, but
Speaker 1: not everybody could hear. And you know, when we first
Speaker 1: heard defund the police, it sounded very scary, and you know,
Speaker 1: and I think that was kind of what their intention was.
Speaker 1: But when they explained it, we're like, oh, they've thought
Speaker 1: about this. They want to basically reallocate fiscal resources from
Speaker 1: the police departments to other programs that will actively prevent
Speaker 1: the causes of crimes, like why crimes happened in the
Speaker 1: first place. You know, scarcity is the birthplace of a
Speaker 1: lot of crimes, you know, And so the idea there,
Speaker 1: once it was explained, made the statement defund the police
Speaker 1: a little bit more approachable, so that people could really
Speaker 1: get in there and kind of work with the reality,
Speaker 1: work with the real And we felt like this message
Speaker 1: needed to be on the radio station, not just in
Speaker 1: the streets on the bullhorns. And for those that know
Speaker 1: the story, just bear with me. But we took this
Speaker 1: idea to our old radio station and asked them to
Speaker 1: create a space where we could interview these great thinkers
Speaker 1: and great speakers, that they could come up and really
Speaker 1: explain these concepts. And we were told no, And then
Speaker 1: we stepped away and we created Civic Cipher. And now
Speaker 1: you're hearing us in Chicago, and you're hearing us in Detroit,
Speaker 1: and you're hearing us in Phoenix and San Diego and
Speaker 1: no Vermont and Oregon and all over the country. And
Speaker 1: we appreciate your support. This couldn't have happened without your support,
Speaker 1: just listening to us every week and downloading the show
Speaker 1: and so forth. But I digress does defunding the police work.
Speaker 1: Now we're at a point where we can look back
Speaker 1: and see the results of what some police departments have done.
Speaker 1: And I'll be honest, if you just look at the
Speaker 1: headlines and nothing else, and you don't have your critical
Speaker 1: lens on what you see. The headlines say that communities
Speaker 1: don't want the defunding of their police departments, and that
Speaker 1: you'll see that, you know, crime has increased in certain
Speaker 1: areas when defunding has taken place, and so forth, and
Speaker 1: so the initial response to this doesn't seem very promising,
Speaker 1: you know, But when you peel away a couple of layers,
Speaker 1: you realize that the story, as they tend to, goes
Speaker 1: a little bit deeper. So I'll read back in October
Speaker 1: of last year, Austin tried cutting Austin, Texas tried cutting
Speaker 1: funding to police departments and learned that there was less policing,
Speaker 1: less policing overall, and they only ask for calls to
Speaker 1: law enforcement in response to immediate threats to life or
Speaker 1: property or crimes still in progress. Right, So what you
Speaker 1: end up with is when you look at the headlines,
Speaker 1: you think, well, no, now police won't come out. They'll
Speaker 1: only come out for stuff that really really matters. But
Speaker 1: you know they won't come out for all these other things.
Speaker 1: What's funny because Austin is I believe the city where
Speaker 1: the police chief stated that we the community are asking
Speaker 1: police to do too much. We're asking police to respond
Speaker 1: to everything from my cat stuck in a tree to
Speaker 1: there's an active shooter and everything in between. My car
Speaker 1: is broken in, my boyfriend won't leave, you know, all
Speaker 1: these sorts of things, and not all of these things
Speaker 1: require a man to show up or a woman to
Speaker 1: show up with a gun and a you know, a
Speaker 1: lack of appropriate skills needed to really address every type
Speaker 1: of situation. Right, so they're asking for only for calls
Speaker 1: in response to immediate threats to life for property crime
Speaker 1: still in progress. Sounds approximately like what they wanted. Look,
Speaker 1: we take care of this stuff. This is what we do.
Speaker 1: Call us for these things. The other things. There are
Speaker 1: other departments in theory that you should be able to call,
Speaker 1: right and that's kind of the step one. But when
Speaker 1: you say, well, you know, the police aren't taking as
Speaker 1: many calls and they're asking for less calls to come
Speaker 1: their way, it's alarming to the community. It means it
Speaker 1: makes people think, well, I'll be on hold if I
Speaker 1: call the police, if I call nine one one, or
Speaker 1: they won't take the fact that someone broke into my
Speaker 1: car seriously, you know, and I'm feeling the hurt, you know,
Speaker 1: because someone broke into my car, instole my purse or whatever.
Speaker 1: And they think that by spending more money on the
Speaker 1: police that somehow it will alleviate that stress that they
Speaker 1: endure when they're waiting on an officer to show up.
Speaker 1: Instead of twenty minutes, they have to wait forty minutes
Speaker 1: because those those type of police have not received enough
Speaker 1: funds to hire just extra people to sit around waiting
Speaker 1: to respond to acts of vandalism, are broken in cars
Speaker 1: which they can't do anything. One thing that Zara did
Speaker 1: mention on the show is that the vast majority of
Speaker 1: you know, police responses are to crimes that have already
Speaker 1: taken place, where the person has already dis appeared from
Speaker 1: the scene, and the police show up and they do paperwork,
Speaker 1: and sometimes they investigate and get the guy or woman
Speaker 1: who commits the crime, and sometimes they don't. And that's
Speaker 1: really ninety seven percent of police policing in the country.
Speaker 1: You just show up after the stuff, the bad stuff
Speaker 1: has already happened. So I feel like a lot of
Speaker 1: the media is taking some of the headlines and spinning
Speaker 1: it in such a way to where it makes it
Speaker 1: look like defunding the police doesn't work. But what you're seeing,
Speaker 1: if you're coming across these articles in the way that
Speaker 1: I have, is a half truth. You're seeing a story
Speaker 1: half told, you're seeing an experiment half completed. At least
Speaker 1: that's my initial reaction. What's your initial reaction, que, So.
Speaker 2: It's an interesting way to tell a story where you
Speaker 2: use your confirmation biased and you twist data and statistics
Speaker 2: to fit a narrative that you're trying to get across. Right,
Speaker 2: so you can point to causality versus what is the
Speaker 2: word I'm looking for. Sometimes things just so happened to
Speaker 2: happen in order doesn't mean they were caused by that thing,
Speaker 2: Like if the vaccine, For example, if I take the
Speaker 2: vaccine and then I get hit by a car, an
Speaker 2: anti VAXX person could spin that very easily into see,
Speaker 2: getting the vaccine will get you hit by a car.
Speaker 2: Those things just so happened to happen in that order, right,
Speaker 2: So I think it's causality versus correlation. They don't actually
Speaker 2: have anything to do with one another, right, And lieu
Speaker 2: of there being alternatives? Nine one right, the most well
Speaker 2: marketed phone number in history, because just saying those numbers
Speaker 2: means emergency now, right, there's no alternative to that though.
Speaker 2: So when your cat is stuck in a tree, I'm
Speaker 2: sure there is an animal rescue place you can call,
Speaker 2: but their phone number isn't nine one one. And because
Speaker 2: it's so readily available in your head every time something happens, that's.
Speaker 1: Who you look to call. So with regard to you.
Speaker 2: Know, twisting of statistics to paint a certain story. I
Speaker 2: think the bigger thing is a lack of alternatives. Right
Speaker 2: there are departments that handle a wide battery of things,
Speaker 2: from mental health to you know, spousal abuse, to domestic
Speaker 2: violence to drug abuse. There are resources and agencies in place. However,
Speaker 2: if their number is eight seven seven three five six
Speaker 2: seven nine two three, it's.
Speaker 1: Not It doesn't roll off the ton you the same way.
Speaker 2: I can't even say that same number again right now,
Speaker 2: you get what I'm saying. So as long as they've
Speaker 2: made nine to one one the most successible and easy
Speaker 2: to remember trouble number in history, every time there's any
Speaker 2: type of trouble, people call the cops. The cops, however,
Speaker 2: be a switchboards or by having literal pieces of paper
Speaker 2: with the access to all of those different numbers on them,
Speaker 2: could should and could reroute those phone calls into someone
Speaker 2: who should be handling whatever that specific situation would require,
Speaker 2: instead of, like you said, a man or a woman
Speaker 2: with a gun showing up for something that should not
Speaker 2: escalate into a violent interaction but could just by the
Speaker 2: very presence of the killing machine you have sitting on
Speaker 2: your hip. As rams will call it.
Speaker 1: Exactly, and you know what I think. So I came
Speaker 1: across a story that I think illustrates your point. I
Speaker 1: don't have the notes in front of me because I
Speaker 1: didn't prepare for this episode, but might talk about it
Speaker 1: again in the future, or we're just briefly stayed about
Speaker 1: stated right now. But I saw a video of a
Speaker 1: man whose alarm went off in his house. He's a
Speaker 1: club owner, I believe it might have been in Texas
Speaker 1: or something like that. Owns a nightclub, deals with cash
Speaker 1: quite a bit. And uh, he's a gun owner, right,
Speaker 1: So his alarm went off in his house. Maybe one
Speaker 1: of his roommates or somebody living with him set off
Speaker 1: the alarm. He gets up, goes downstairs, closes the door,
Speaker 1: resets the alarm, calls the alarm company tells him it's
Speaker 1: a false alarm, goes back up and lays down. He's
Speaker 1: in his home in his underwear. Black man, bigger, bigger frame,
Speaker 1: black man, right, brown, brown skin. A few minutes later,
Speaker 1: the police show up. Right, even though he called the
Speaker 1: alarm company as the owner of the property and said, hey,
Speaker 1: everything's on, police still show up right and do a
Speaker 1: welfare check. Right, So the police are his door. I
Speaker 1: guess he didn't lock it. So the off the first
Speaker 1: officer that arrived there kind of I guess, announces himself,
Speaker 1: and no one responds because the guy's upstairs he sleep,
Speaker 1: So the officer opens the door and then yells into
Speaker 1: the house. And then the guy wakes up and he
Speaker 1: comes to the top of the stairs. Now he has
Speaker 1: his gun because someone's in his house yelling he's anyone home,
Speaker 1: So he has his gun and he goes to the
Speaker 1: top of the stairs and the guy says, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: a police officer, and he's like, do are there any weapons.
Speaker 1: He's like, yeah, I have my gun with me and
Speaker 1: he's like, okay, put the gun down. The guy puts
Speaker 1: the gun down. He comes downstairs. He's in his underwear,
Speaker 1: a heavier black man right in his underwear, and he's
Speaker 1: talking to the officer and the officer's like, do me
Speaker 1: a favorite turnaround, you know, and he's like for what,
Speaker 1: you know, I just told you what happened. I called
Speaker 1: the alarm company, Like you know, I'm in my underwear.
Speaker 1: This is my house. You want to see the pictures
Speaker 1: on the wall, Like it was the wildest thing. The
Speaker 1: officers like, no, it's for our protection, blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: And then, as we always see, a million, other officers
Speaker 1: show up and then they take the guy outside because
Speaker 1: he's like, Yo, this is asinine. This is my home.
Speaker 1: When you guys are in my house and do you
Speaker 1: need proofery like, you don't have to put me in
Speaker 1: handcuffs in my home. I was asleep the alarm on
Speaker 1: all I told you what have You can call the
Speaker 1: alarm companies just pleading this case. These guys won't want
Speaker 1: to hear any of it because it's like when they
Speaker 1: show up, they're ready for blood, right, But what you
Speaker 1: see is a thirty minute interaction with six or eight
Speaker 1: officers and they're not all pictured, you know, And then
Speaker 1: there's probably another thirty minutes worth of paperwork in bottle
Speaker 1: and then the guy ended up suing the department. And
Speaker 1: what people don't realize is that those are your tax dollars,
Speaker 1: and those tax dollars could be going to something more effective.
Speaker 1: One thing that I will not deny. I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's true, but I won't deny it based on
Speaker 1: what I know is Sean King when he said, you know,
Speaker 1: police departments are one of the worst run institutions, government
Speaker 1: institutions in the country in terms of how money translates
Speaker 1: into results. You know, and based on what I know
Speaker 1: to be true. You know that checks out, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of checks based on my reality at least. You know,
Speaker 1: spending more money hasn't reduced crime. You know, it's gotten
Speaker 1: more people killed. You know, it's gotten a lot more
Speaker 1: bullies on the streets and so forth. But I don't
Speaker 1: want to be too cruel because we do have and
Speaker 1: our believe or not, are gaining more friends. I will
Speaker 1: call them who are police officers who listen to this
Speaker 1: show and they recognize that they're part of a system
Speaker 1: that is not perfect, and they recognize that we can
Speaker 1: be critical of that system. And it doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: we hate them. We do not hate the humans. There
Speaker 1: is no hate in my heart and there never will be.
Speaker 1: But it's up to us to demand better for our community.
Speaker 1: And if we've chosen for these people to protect us,
Speaker 1: then they also need to remember to protect us. I'll
Speaker 1: move on. Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco also have all
Speaker 1: defunded police and there are reports that correlate with those
Speaker 1: measures that show that there have been increases in property
Speaker 1: crimes and homicides. Right, But again I think that tells
Speaker 1: only part of the story. Right, As you mentioned, there's
Speaker 1: it's not just we defund the police and then the
Speaker 1: crime goes up. You know. Okay, let's look at what
Speaker 1: were the trends of property crimes, what were the trends
Speaker 1: of homicides before this happened. Do we take into account
Speaker 1: that there is a pandemic? Do we take into account
Speaker 1: that there the that the reinvestment into those communities hasn't
Speaker 1: taken place too yet, right, Because defunding the police isn't
Speaker 1: just take money away from the police. It's reallocate police
Speaker 1: funding into resources that will prevent crime, prevent the necessity
Speaker 1: of crime from happening in the first place, and that's
Speaker 1: how we reduce crime. It's a different way of thinking
Speaker 1: about how to fight crime. Right. But if you just
Speaker 1: think defund the police, I mean, Q said it on
Speaker 1: the show, and it's a fair point. When you just
Speaker 1: hear defund the police, and that's your own that's your
Speaker 1: only that's your initial talking point. A lot of people
Speaker 1: tune out initially because they're like, well, that sounds crazy, right,
Speaker 1: But really it's reallocate police funding to uh, crime prevention
Speaker 1: measures that will prevent the necessity of crime from happening
Speaker 1: in the first place, you know, better housing opportunities, work opportunities, education,
Speaker 1: and so forth, and so on. Things that where there's
Speaker 1: a proven correlation between a reduction and crime or a
Speaker 1: life of crime and a specific activity, develop these things
Speaker 1: in the community and crime goes down. Did you want
Speaker 1: to jumping right there when I finished?
Speaker 2: I mean, we spoke to it already, and you bring
Speaker 2: it up again. Causality versus correlation, cause and effect. It's
Speaker 2: not always as straightforward as people want you to think.
Speaker 2: So they can present data without context, without nuance, and
Speaker 2: conclude things that have nothing to do with one another.
Speaker 2: And I hate to keep bringing up the vaccine, but
Speaker 2: there's a you know a lot of misinformation, people saying
Speaker 2: that I'm not taking a vaccine because the vaccine is
Speaker 2: killing people. Right, So, even if every person that has
Speaker 2: died after getting the vaccine, even if that were holistically
Speaker 2: the reason why there have been about four hundred and
Speaker 2: eighty million vaccine shots given out people like people who
Speaker 2: actually received the vaccine. I think it's four hundred and
Speaker 2: seventy million worldwide or something like that. Ten thousand. Those
Speaker 2: people died after vaccine. The study that lists that data
Speaker 2: does not say those people died because of the vaccine,
Speaker 2: but the vaccine being present gives a person on the
Speaker 2: other side of that argument the grounds to stand on. Look,
Speaker 2: this vaccine is killing people. Yeah, so you have a
Speaker 2: million people that have died from contracting COVID, and even
Speaker 2: if every one of the people who have died after
Speaker 2: getting the vaccine were because of the vaccine, the percentages
Speaker 2: are very, very very small. And I hate to say
Speaker 2: it in that way because we've gotten way too comfortable
Speaker 2: with death. I think we've made life cheaper throughout this
Speaker 2: pandemic with a really kind of gross selfishness. But it
Speaker 2: just points to that same thing, like, if we're not
Speaker 2: using the data correctly, you can paint a picture and
Speaker 2: tell the story that just isn't true, even though the
Speaker 2: information that you're using is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it happens all the time. I know exactly what
Speaker 1: you mean. I want to add this too. In researching
Speaker 1: this segment for the show, I could not find any
Speaker 1: articles that pointed to community investment or alternative forms of policing.
Speaker 1: So there's nothing that says that that happened. What the
Speaker 1: initial plan was is that you weren't supposed to defund
Speaker 1: the police all at one time. It was supposed to
Speaker 1: be like gradual, So it's not like you just throw
Speaker 1: a bunch of cops out on the streets. There's supposed
Speaker 1: to be a transfer of the money, but some of
Speaker 1: these cities didn't really take that into account. I want
Speaker 1: to add this, and this is for me. In a
Speaker 1: complex society, crime is always going to be with us.
Speaker 1: The remaining police can deal with crime, Traffic moderators can
Speaker 1: deal with traffic, welfare checks and crimes where the perpetrator
Speaker 1: has left is basically paperwork. Something to remember, and Larry Krassner,
Speaker 1: district attorney in Philadelphia, said something that I think we
Speaker 1: should share. Out of one hundred shootings that happened in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, eighty three of them went unsolved by
Speaker 1: the police. So Sean King pointed out that of the
Speaker 1: eighty three arrests, some were innocent, resulting in a ninety
Speaker 1: percent failure rate by police to find and apprehend the
Speaker 1: correct criminal. The budget is almost a billion dollars, suggesting
Speaker 1: that pouring more money into policing over the years has
Speaker 1: not made anyone safer. Stick around your radios. We're coming
Speaker 1: back with more Civic Cipher right after this