Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast in which Sophie
Speaker 2: misses the mysterious robot woman who I believe was murdered
Speaker 2: and Sophie believes was never a person but was instead
Speaker 2: just a program that Zoom used to have, and they
Speaker 2: replaced it with a thing that tries to get you
Speaker 2: to use AI whenever you record.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, we don't use Zoom anymore, but I do
Speaker 3: miss the little I forget what we use.
Speaker 1: I know I do miss the lady being like recording
Speaker 1: in progress in progress.
Speaker 3: But I could just say I thought that maybe she
Speaker 3: misses you. Probably everybody missed it.
Speaker 2: I never think that, James, James, You're Joe Joe Kasabian,
Speaker 2: our god today, host of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast,
Speaker 2: Author of numerous works of fiction and at least one
Speaker 2: work of nonfiction, The Hooligans of Candahar. Joe, what else
Speaker 2: do you gotta plug for us?
Speaker 3: Here? Uh, My newest gunpowder fantasy novel, The Highlands Burn,
Speaker 3: comes out May twenty ninth. It will probably be out
Speaker 3: by the time this episode comes out, So yeah, pick
Speaker 3: that up. I will be available ebook, audiobook, paperback wherever
Speaker 3: you get your books.
Speaker 2: Awesome well check that out and check out, you know, Joe,
Speaker 2: you can't have gunpowder fantasy without both gunpowder and people
Speaker 2: who are willing to lie. And you know who always
Speaker 2: has a gun and also lies a lot.
Speaker 3: Uh cops, Yeah, exactly, Joe. It worked.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, okay, it's a better reture that I thought. Great, great,
Speaker 2: and just in the last you know, literally the week
Speaker 2: that we're recording this, it'll have been a couple of
Speaker 2: weeks ago. When you good people on the internet or
Speaker 2: at Netflix, which I guess is also on the internet,
Speaker 2: get to listen to slash watch these episodes. But we
Speaker 2: lost a great man and a great a great law
Speaker 2: enforcement officer, Joe, And you know I can, let's all
Speaker 2: take our hats off at a moment of silence for
Speaker 2: a great man, officer, Mark Furman. You know, we all
Speaker 2: we all miss him.
Speaker 3: We all miss him.
Speaker 2: It's hard. It's hard going off without Mark. You know,
Speaker 2: I have trouble. What's the point of life without Mark Furman,
Speaker 2: Without a really racist detective who's largely responsible for O. J.
Speaker 3: Simpson getting away with murder.
Speaker 1: I think I'm going to like garden this weekend and like,
Speaker 1: you know, go outside, touch some grass and like not
Speaker 1: think about Mark Furman at all, But for the next
Speaker 1: couple hours, I guess we're.
Speaker 2: Gonna be thinking a lot about Mark Furman.
Speaker 3: To be fair, Sophie, that is something you're going to
Speaker 3: have in common with Mark Ferman.
Speaker 2: He's also, Yeah, he is, he is, he is forever
Speaker 2: and ever.
Speaker 3: Fun fact that we're recording.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the original intro that I had written out for
Speaker 2: this started as Leo Tolstoy would have said, all great
Speaker 2: episodes Behind the Bastards are one of two stories. A
Speaker 2: bad person goes on a journey or a famous asshole
Speaker 2: just died. And that's what we're doing this week, right,
Speaker 2: we're doing We're doing our eulogy and the life and
Speaker 2: times of former LAPD detective and OJ Simpson trial star
Speaker 2: Mark Furman.
Speaker 3: And if you're not, if you didn't live.
Speaker 2: Through the OJ trial, like everybody recording the podcast right now,
Speaker 2: or if your memories are just faded. O. J. Simpson
Speaker 2: was really good at football. You're pretty good at being
Speaker 2: in fucking the Naked Guy?
Speaker 3: Was that?
Speaker 2: Nor was it Airplane? He was in a couple of movies.
Speaker 3: Was right. I was born in eighty eight, so this
Speaker 3: is right?
Speaker 2: Say, you know yeah. Uh so he's very famous, beloved
Speaker 2: sports star, transitioning into just general star. And then his
Speaker 2: wife and her partner, his ex wife and her partner
Speaker 2: are found brutally murdered.
Speaker 3: OJ did it.
Speaker 2: We don't need to beat around the bush here, right, Like.
Speaker 3: You read a book.
Speaker 2: Saying if I did it, you know, but he didn't
Speaker 2: get convicted. And if you ask people why didn't he
Speaker 2: get convicted, obviously there's a lot of different reasons.
Speaker 3: Feel love.
Speaker 2: Basically everyone agrees that the reason why OJ ultimately and
Speaker 2: there's a number, but the reason why OG ultimately got
Speaker 2: acquitted is because a police detective named Mark Furman, who
Speaker 2: was you know, part of the one of the first
Speaker 2: guys on scene and one of the guys involved with
Speaker 2: like the finding of that famous black glove, was revealed
Speaker 2: to be a super racist because of a bunch of
Speaker 2: tapes where he had talked about all of his racist
Speaker 2: beliefs and his joy of doing things like planting evidence
Speaker 2: to get black people convicted of crimes that they hadn't committed.
Speaker 2: And this dropped into the OJ Simpson case like a
Speaker 2: bombshell and is said to have played a major role
Speaker 2: on why OJ got off is that Mark Furman really
Speaker 2: muddied the waters because he was such a racist piece
Speaker 2: of shit. It brought into question all of the evidence
Speaker 2: around OJ and all of the police work that had
Speaker 2: been done to gather that evidence, and so it ultimately
Speaker 2: just torpedoed the case. And that's somewhat to batable. But Mark,
Speaker 2: because of how famous the case was, and because of
Speaker 2: how big the story went that this LAPD detective had
Speaker 2: been talking about all these crimes that a ton of
Speaker 2: LAPD cops were implemented in, it caused this huge scandal
Speaker 2: for the department. So it was very influential on the
Speaker 2: history of like law enforcement and very influential for the
Speaker 2: LAPD and just with an American culture. And so that
Speaker 2: is the story we're telling this week, the story of
Speaker 2: Mark Ferman. Are you excited, Joe.
Speaker 3: I will say, for all of the episodes of but
Speaker 3: on this show, this one has the lowest body count,
Speaker 3: no direct debts. Did did you have me on? Because
Speaker 3: Kim Kardashian's dad is involved in this?
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right, it's the Armenian angle.
Speaker 3: Yes, I knew it, Robert.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, all because I needed to have someone who
Speaker 2: was on OJ's side and all Armenians like inherently support A. J.
Speaker 2: Simpson because of Robert Kardashian.
Speaker 3: Yes, we have no choice.
Speaker 1: One of Robert's favorite things to bring up constantly is
Speaker 1: when Ross from Friends, Robert.
Speaker 2: Robert, that was weird, a Belie, It was really not
Speaker 2: It was really weird casting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they kind of put him in brown face in
Speaker 3: a way. It was strange that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I just love the way he kept saying juice. Okay,
Speaker 2: let's begin our episodes, Okay. Mark James Furman was born
Speaker 2: on February fifth, nineteen fifty two, in Eatonville, Washington. Now
Speaker 2: that's not that far from where Sophie and I live
Speaker 2: right now up here in the Pacific Northwest. Today, Eatonville
Speaker 2: is about seventy five percent white.
Speaker 3: I think it's a little.
Speaker 2: Bit less than seventy five percent white, but not much.
Speaker 2: And it was a lot whiter than that in the
Speaker 2: nineteen fifties. So, you know, the PNW is a very
Speaker 2: white place today, and it was even more so back then.
Speaker 2: And that is definitely the kind of community that Mark
Speaker 2: grows up in. What became Eatonville began with the homestead
Speaker 2: of a guy named Thomas Cobb Van Eaton in eighteen
Speaker 2: eighty eight, constructed very close to picturesque Mountaineer. As more
Speaker 2: settlers arrived in the area and particularly began to advance
Speaker 2: towards the mountain, Eaton turned his homestead into a business
Speaker 2: selling necessities to travelers. People settled around his house, and
Speaker 2: in nineteen oh three, a railroad connection made Eatonville a
Speaker 2: real town and the Eatonville Lumber Company the biggest business
Speaker 2: in town. Prior to that point, settlers in the area
Speaker 2: had tended to just call the whole area Marshall's Prairie,
Speaker 2: after a group of Niscali Indians who originally inhabited the region.
Speaker 2: These native people had been massacred in eighteen fifty six
Speaker 2: by a militia not as Maxon's Raiders in retaliation for
Speaker 2: a fight with a Washington militia a few weeks earlier.
Speaker 2: I think this is all part of the Puget Sound
Speaker 2: War perthwebsite historylink dot org. Official reports claimed only eight
Speaker 2: of the Nashall hostels were killed, but virtually all accounts
Speaker 2: and testimonies agree that the raiders under Maxim's command killed
Speaker 2: defenseless elderly women, children, and infants. So that's where Mark's
Speaker 2: hometown comes from many such cases in the US, A
Speaker 2: lot of little genocide villas out in the PNWN elsewhere.
Speaker 3: I love that this whole town just started because a
Speaker 3: bunch of dudes squatted on another dude's front lawn. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, after wiping out the people who had previously lived there.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's the classic Pacific Northwest straight.
Speaker 2: Very tale as old as well the paw and Mark
Speaker 2: would have grown up. He wouldn't have been grown up
Speaker 2: being taught that like Maxim's raiders had killed all of
Speaker 2: these people's like kids, right like.
Speaker 3: They would have been taught.
Speaker 2: And there was a battle, you know, and they killed
Speaker 2: eight of these braves right as opposed to it, and
Speaker 2: then a genocide was done.
Speaker 3: They killed one hundred warriors. Yeah, parenthesperies, women and children,
Speaker 3: the original military aged males.
Speaker 2: Ye. So he would have been raised, as I stated,
Speaker 2: in a community that was nearly all white and in
Speaker 2: which legends of Indian hunters like Maxon's Raiders would have
Speaker 2: been celebrated in school and in the popular culture of
Speaker 2: the day. Racism would not have been weird for him.
Speaker 2: I've never read Mark discuss any of this history, not
Speaker 2: even in his books. Does he really talk a lot
Speaker 2: about his childhood, but he wouldn't have been able to
Speaker 2: avoid this kind of stuff growing up in the region.
Speaker 2: His dad, Ralph, was a truck driver and a carpenter,
Speaker 2: and would be described later by Mark as insensitive and irresponsible,
Speaker 2: as well as a braggart who doesn't mind hurting his
Speaker 2: loved once. His mom, Billy, was a waitress. Their marriage
Speaker 2: was not a love match, and the two divorced when
Speaker 2: Mark was just seven years old.
Speaker 3: How their kid ended up being a cop? Yeah, yeah, shocking.
Speaker 2: This guy who talks about what an asshole, what a violent,
Speaker 2: angry asshole his dad was, turns into a violent, angry asshole.
Speaker 2: It does happen. Sometimes it's a bummer.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I actually hate that this happens. But it's not good.
Speaker 2: So Mark stays mostly with his mom, who remarries once,
Speaker 2: but not for very long as she has a hell
Speaker 2: is drinking problem and for those who knew her, could
Speaker 2: be a mean drunk. So again, Mark doesn't just grow
Speaker 2: up with his dad being this like very abrasive kind
Speaker 2: of figure. His mom, who largely raises him, is like
Speaker 2: an abusive drinker at some times. Mark thus grows up
Speaker 2: this same person alleged very mistrustful and paranoid. Right, this
Speaker 2: is something you'll hear from people who are close to him,
Speaker 2: as he's just kind of a paranoid kid who has
Speaker 2: trouble being at ease with people, which is not an
Speaker 2: uncommon reaction to growing up in an abusive household.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, this is all tracking so far.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's all tracking so far. An article in the
Speaker 2: New York Times review of books by Fox Butterfield notes
Speaker 2: this about Mark's level of we'll call it racial awareness
Speaker 2: as a child, only a few Yeah, only a few
Speaker 2: black families lived in Eatonville, and mister Furman and his
Speaker 2: younger brother Scott had run ins with two boys, and
Speaker 2: one of them the Blues. They'd see you coming down
Speaker 2: the street and say, here come the in words, recalled
Speaker 2: Daniel Blue, now a truck driver Intocoma, Washington. So that's
Speaker 2: this claim you'll get. The Blues will say that like
Speaker 2: Mark and his brother, would use racial slurs, target them
Speaker 2: with racial slurs, would make fun of them, you know,
Speaker 2: would mock them. We're like bullies, we're racist bullies.
Speaker 3: Right now.
Speaker 2: For his part, Marc has denied these allegations, right, or
Speaker 2: at least he denied them back in the late nineties,
Speaker 2: and he writes a book after the O. J. Simpson
Speaker 2: trial because everybody does, called murder in Brentwood, and he
Speaker 2: addresses the allegations from the Blue Brothers during this book.
Speaker 2: And this is again, this is while he's like right
Speaker 2: after the case, so he's been essentilly revealed as a
Speaker 2: racist to the entire world. So he has to address that.
Speaker 2: And his book Mark says that although Dan like, basically
Speaker 2: this is a lie, I never said that to anybody.
Speaker 2: You know, Dan says that we played football together, but
Speaker 2: we weren't even at high school at the same time,
Speaker 2: so we couldn't have played football together. And I guess
Speaker 2: that's probably true. But also I can see Dan like
Speaker 2: mixing up who he played football with and win but
Speaker 2: remembering accurately somebody called him a slur, you know, like people.
Speaker 3: Use them today. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but Mark did say, the truth is I never
Speaker 2: heard either brother called anything other than their name by
Speaker 2: me or anyone else.
Speaker 3: And that's the thing.
Speaker 2: If before Mark saying like, well, we weren't even in
Speaker 2: high school together, you know, this is a big story
Speaker 2: at the time, I'd be willing to believe maybe somebody
Speaker 2: would like life or attention, you know, to have a
Speaker 2: little moment in the biggest news story of all time
Speaker 2: at this point. But Mark is like, I never heard
Speaker 2: anyone call those boys a name. I'm sorry you guys
Speaker 2: grew up. These are like the only two black kids
Speaker 2: in town. You grew up in the fifties in rural Washington,
Speaker 2: and you never heard anyone call them anything but their name.
Speaker 3: I don't believe that. I don't like them for a second,
Speaker 3: No for a second. And like even like the idea like,
Speaker 3: oh well, we couldn't have played football together. We weren't
Speaker 3: even in the same grade. Yeah, because nobody who lives
Speaker 3: in the neighborhood a small town plays pick up football games.
Speaker 2: Ever, would ever have played any kind of pickup football game, right,
Speaker 2: And it's the or would have mistaken like you for
Speaker 2: younger brother.
Speaker 3: Maybe I don't know, like the the whole, the whole.
Speaker 2: Thing idea that like he never heard any racism against
Speaker 2: these kids in small town washing like growing up in
Speaker 2: rural Oklahoma in the nineties, I heard black kids in
Speaker 2: my school get called slurs, you know, like and number one,
Speaker 2: it was a lot more diverse like rural Oklahoma, way
Speaker 2: more diverse than rural Washington, but just the whole fucking
Speaker 2: like that. I just like that from the jump Mark
Speaker 2: You're lyon. So I don't know how racist he was,
Speaker 2: but he grew up with a lot of racism. Mark
Speaker 2: moved around as an adolescent and attended high school, first
Speaker 2: in gig Harbor and then Belfair. In nineteen seventy, he
Speaker 2: graduated high school. By this point, Mark had come to
Speaker 2: be known for something besides his racism. He was an
Speaker 2: artsy kid. Weirdly enough, like he is, he really likes art.
Speaker 2: He wants to be a creative. He wants to like be,
Speaker 2: you know, pursue a creative vocation. That seems to be
Speaker 2: his passion. And he will always and also the people
Speaker 2: who are close to Hi will always say that, like
Speaker 2: Mark at his core wanted to be an artist. And
Speaker 2: I think there's a version of this story that's like
Speaker 2: also the tragic tale of like a kid who, because
Speaker 2: of the time and place and his ideas about like
Speaker 2: macho stuff, couldn't do the thing that would have made
Speaker 2: him happy, and so kept forcing himself to do these
Speaker 2: like aggressive masculine things that he didn't really want because
Speaker 2: he just wants to be an artist, but in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy he graduated enlisted in the Marines, because that's what
Speaker 2: you do, right And yeah.
Speaker 3: Was he also turned down by an art school in
Speaker 3: Austria or is this a weirdness? He doesn't even apply,
Speaker 3: doesn't even know why.
Speaker 2: But he does kind of do the Hitler right, like
Speaker 2: where he volunteers for the stupid war that he didn't
Speaker 2: necessarily need to volunteer for, and so instead of continuing
Speaker 2: or doing anything to further the art thing, he winds
Speaker 2: up going to No. Now he serves, I should say
Speaker 2: during the Vietnam War. He is a Vietnam era veteran.
Speaker 2: I guess he is a veteran of the Vietnam. He's
Speaker 2: deployed the Vietnam, but he doesn't. He's not a combat veteran, right,
Speaker 2: like she never actually fights, and he will claim otherwise
Speaker 2: most peoples relevant, Yeah, that's most people, most people. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And but he and the only again there's no shame
Speaker 2: in that, but he does. He will lie about this, right,
Speaker 2: and that's why that's really relevant. Mark service came late
Speaker 2: in the war and was in reality quite boring. He
Speaker 2: doesn't actually get to do any of the stuff that
Speaker 2: like you get the thing. He really wants to fight, right, Like,
Speaker 2: this is a kid who, like as a lot of
Speaker 2: young men do, wants to prove himself in combat, like
Speaker 2: feels like he wants to wants to have that experience,
Speaker 2: and he's not going to get it. He gets trained
Speaker 2: as an MP and a machine gunner and rises to
Speaker 2: the level rank of sergeant. During his four years in
Speaker 2: the cores, Uh, he could have been deployed to combat,
Speaker 2: but it never quite happened. That times, that New York
Speaker 2: Times Review of Books article claims that quote the closest
Speaker 2: he got to the ground war was aboard a ship
Speaker 2: in the South China Sea. The ship he's on is
Speaker 2: the USS New Orleans and it's an amphibious transport ships
Speaker 2: and Mark is basically like living there and like on call,
Speaker 2: like if we need to, you might get sent into
Speaker 2: combat at any point in time, but it never actually
Speaker 2: quite happens. So Mark spins a period of time just
Speaker 2: kind of living for months on like the edge of
Speaker 2: maybe going into battle. But he never gets to like
Speaker 2: consummate this act that really does seem to mean a
Speaker 2: lot to him. And this this act is like the
Speaker 2: fact that this gets interrupted that he never gets his
Speaker 2: baptism of fire is going to bother him the rest
Speaker 2: of his life. Like, I get the feeling he never
Speaker 2: fully gets over not being tested in this way, and
Speaker 2: he seems to really want that.
Speaker 3: I've been a lot of guys like that over the years. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: they want it so much. They enlist as like infantry dudes,
Speaker 3: and then they end up on like a massive forward
Speaker 3: operating base that might have a rocket fired at it,
Speaker 3: and they want to sound like the most high speed
Speaker 3: Green Beret ass motherfucker for the rest of their life.
Speaker 3: And they probably wear hats about where exactly they were,
Speaker 3: where exactly they whatever? Yeah, like Camp Liberty, Like that's
Speaker 3: the lamest fucking shit. My my favorite was Cold War
Speaker 3: veteran hat. I've seen that. One's a classic man that's
Speaker 3: like the ultimate dude who never did shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love a And it's the like I feel,
Speaker 2: I feel like I have a level understanding, because like
Speaker 2: there is our society does like idolize the experience of
Speaker 2: being a combat veteran to such an extent for young
Speaker 2: men that like, I get why he's obsessed with this.
Speaker 3: Of course he.
Speaker 2: Is right, it's not an unfamiliar thing, and you know,
Speaker 2: I'm not like no one's like very few people are
Speaker 2: immune entirely to that feeling of like, oh, there's got
Speaker 2: to be like something to this experience that's like special
Speaker 2: and powerful.
Speaker 3: And about it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that when somebody believes that and buys into
Speaker 2: that and goes as far as getting on the assault
Speaker 2: boat next to the coast, it never quite gets to
Speaker 2: have it. There's like a degree of failure to launch
Speaker 2: almost syndrome that I think is just going to spark
Speaker 2: in him the rest of his life. He never gets
Speaker 2: over this, you know.
Speaker 3: And he doesn't even go into the country, right, Like
Speaker 3: he's living on this boat. So it's like he's living
Speaker 3: on the boat. Yeah, that's like even worse because even
Speaker 3: if you go to one of these bases, it's very
Speaker 3: similar to any other irregular conflict where you might get ambushed, still,
Speaker 3: you might get artillery, might get mortared, whatever, something could
Speaker 3: still happen that you can kind of grab onto that
Speaker 3: you did something. But he's just sitting on a boat.
Speaker 2: He's just sitting on a boat, and it's just not
Speaker 2: the thing he wants it to be. Now again, he
Speaker 2: does this is he's not a draftee, So he's not
Speaker 2: just doing his like you know, one quick, you know,
Speaker 2: in and out. He does a full four years. During
Speaker 2: his time as a sergeant. He develops a reputation for
Speaker 2: what that Times journalist Butterfield calls a reputation as a
Speaker 2: macho officer. And again, he's not an officer. That's that's
Speaker 2: Butterfield using the wrong terminology. He's a non commissions. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's an oncom and not specifically a macho. Quote in
Speaker 2: the Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry mold and Mark's kind of
Speaker 2: love this movie when it comes out not long after,
Speaker 2: and he is going to deliberately like try to play
Speaker 2: act as Dirty Harry like people are, especially early in
Speaker 2: his career. He's like often kind of LARPing specifically as
Speaker 2: Dirty Harry. And he'll compare himself to Dirty Harry a lot.
Speaker 3: He really it's really dork serious.
Speaker 2: Man, come on, bro, come on, like yeah, it's it's
Speaker 2: it's sad. And it's just the the number of like
Speaker 2: toxic men like this who you could just you really needed,
Speaker 2: like an older brother who would be like, hey, man,
Speaker 2: I know you've like gotten a lot of picked up
Speaker 2: a lot of shit from like comic books and like
Speaker 2: movies about like what men are supposed to do, and
Speaker 2: like like and that's all wrong. You need to like
Speaker 2: calm down, comfortable in your own skin, like you're not
Speaker 2: missing anything because you didn't get shot at, like there
Speaker 2: were he didn't have any I really get the feeling
Speaker 2: there was not There was not any kind of positive
Speaker 2: male influence in his life who could have like modeled
Speaker 2: proper behavior. So he's he's doing these things like, well,
Speaker 2: I guess I go to the Marines, and that'll make
Speaker 2: me a man, you know, And then later it's gonna
Speaker 2: be I guess I've become a cop, and that'll make
Speaker 2: me a man.
Speaker 3: And you get the feeling.
Speaker 2: This is a guy who doesn't know who he is
Speaker 2: and who has some who it's not even that this
Speaker 2: is a guy who knows a little of who he is.
Speaker 2: He knows he wants to be an artist, but he
Speaker 2: can't do that, and so he never gets to find
Speaker 2: out like more of the person that he might otherwise
Speaker 2: be as he falls into pretending to be this violent,
Speaker 2: macho asshole and gradually that becomes him more and more.
Speaker 2: Is kind of the thing that I take out of this.
Speaker 2: This is a guy I don't think had to go
Speaker 2: down this route, but chose to over time because he
Speaker 2: was scared to try to portray himself as anything else.
Speaker 3: What's the chaotic evil version of a glow up.
Speaker 2: Right right exactly? So Mark's second wife, Janet Hackett later
Speaker 2: told reporters he loved art, but he joined the Marines
Speaker 2: and the police as if he was trying to prove himself.
Speaker 2: On the outside, Mark is very poised, but inside he
Speaker 2: had the lowest self esteem. You can't imagine. So that's
Speaker 2: one of his three ex wives. I'm not making all
Speaker 2: of this up myself, you know. This isn't just like
Speaker 2: my head canon. That's at least someone who was close
Speaker 2: to him saying pretty much the same thing. So after
Speaker 2: he does his four years with the Marines, Mark decides
Speaker 2: to see if joining another heavily armed group of men
Speaker 2: working for the government might stop him from feeling insecure,
Speaker 2: so he joins the LAPD in nineteen seventy five. He
Speaker 2: excels at police academy and he graduates second in his
Speaker 2: class with widespread praise from his instructors. When he becomes
Speaker 2: a rookie cop, his bosses were all impressed by his appearance.
Speaker 2: Mark is in great shape. His uniform is always spotless.
Speaker 2: He like looks really good. He looks like the perfect cop.
Speaker 2: He's like tall, blonde haired, blue eyed, and you know,
Speaker 2: his shit's always like really like locked down his.
Speaker 3: Back friends and marines taught him to do that.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep, yep. And he's also he's kind of a
Speaker 2: fastidious dude. His background as an art NERD shows through
Speaker 2: here too. His superiors noted that his penmanship was quote
Speaker 2: almost a work of art, right, like that's one of
Speaker 2: his like la like his superiors in the ilbed is
Speaker 2: like his his writing was beautiful, like being writing.
Speaker 3: Just like finger painting. Yeah yeah, they could barely read.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know who else can barely read?
Speaker 3: Joe? Who's that?
Speaker 2: The sponsors of this podcast all nearly illiterate thanks to
Speaker 2: America's broken public education system, and we're back. I was
Speaker 2: that wasn't even really a joke. There's a good cho
Speaker 2: to sponsor this podcast. Are illiterate. A shocking number of
Speaker 2: Americans functionally are any.
Speaker 3: Time to be writing a book, Robert, let me tell you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the pain in my laugh mm hmm.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So in his first days as an LAPD, rookie, Mark
Speaker 2: seems to have been very eager to please and impress.
Speaker 2: He would often show up to work like a half
Speaker 2: hour to an hour early. This commitment to going above
Speaker 2: and beyond the job description was recognized by his bosses,
Speaker 2: and in nineteen seventy seven, he was assigned to a
Speaker 2: dangerous but prominent assignment, working with a sexy new unit
Speaker 2: in East LA targeting Hispanic street gangs. Per an article
Speaker 2: in the La Times, quote in nineteen seventy seven, with
Speaker 2: black gangs emerging as a formidable criminal element in Latino,
Speaker 2: gangs continuing to pose problems, department administrators received a one
Speaker 2: year federal grant for a special forty four man unit
Speaker 2: to concentrate on neighborhoods where gang crime was heaviest. Based
Speaker 2: at the Hollandbeck Division in East Los Angeles. The unit
Speaker 2: was dubbed Total Resources against Street Hoodlums trash, but civic
Speaker 2: leaders thought the acronym disparaging Total resources against street hoodlums hoodlums.
Speaker 3: Come on, guys, I love to use my fifties slang. Yeah,
Speaker 3: now it is the seventies, but yeah, it still seems outdated. Ultimately,
Speaker 3: the trash, get those roustabouts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, get the roustabouts out of air, and people probably
Speaker 2: haven't heard about the Trash program, but a lot of
Speaker 2: Angelinos have heard about the Crash program, and the c's.
Speaker 3: Where I thought you were going. I was like, of
Speaker 3: course this guy was a fucking crash unit. That's where
Speaker 3: I am going. Because the trash unit is the immediate
Speaker 3: precursor to the crash unit. So they start to crashing it.
Speaker 2: In like seventy seven, and I think it's seventy nine,
Speaker 2: they changed the name to crash. They're like, oh, you
Speaker 2: know what, trash is a bad acronym. But if we
Speaker 2: throw a C in there, you know, the changes everything.
Speaker 2: That sounds a lot better.
Speaker 3: Right. It's what we're doing on the streets is not
Speaker 3: the problem, Robert. It's what we're calling ourselves to put
Speaker 3: out a really cool challenge coin.
Speaker 2: Right right, total tea for total that's bad. See for
Speaker 2: community that's good. So the Crash Program becomes the cornerstone
Speaker 2: of Chief Daryl Gates's anti gang initiative. The goal here
Speaker 2: was to counter gang activity by treating the battle against
Speaker 2: organized crime as if it were a literal war, to
Speaker 2: use the lessons of insurgent conflict in Vietna in order
Speaker 2: to defeat street crime. Now, one major early measure adopted
Speaker 2: by the LAPD was the use of stop and frisk tactics,
Speaker 2: which they referred to as jamming. So, you know, a
Speaker 2: lot of racism, a lot of like targeting of black
Speaker 2: and Hispanic men, and a lot of like targeting in
Speaker 2: a way that leads to violence when there doesn't need
Speaker 2: to be. So a lot of people are gonna get
Speaker 2: beaten and arrested and killed who don't need to be
Speaker 2: because this program is basically built in order to ensure
Speaker 2: there are additional unnecessary violent interactions between law enforcement and
Speaker 2: the community.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they had to name it crash because it was
Speaker 3: really hard to find an acronym for the word boomerang. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the city government judged the CRASH program a
Speaker 2: success and took over funding it in seventy nine. And
Speaker 2: again that's when it becomes crash instead of trash. And
Speaker 2: I'm not sure by what metric you'd call crash success
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy nine, As that article noted, from seventy
Speaker 2: nine to eighty one, the number of major gangs related
Speaker 2: crimes in Los Angeles more than doubled from two thousand
Speaker 2: and eighty eight to fivey one hundred and fifty eight
Speaker 2: during the first like four years or so that the
Speaker 2: crash program, I mean for during the second two years
Speaker 2: of it. But like, yeah, from like seventy nine to
Speaker 2: eighty one, it doubles more than now. What's funny is
Speaker 2: that around that time the Sheriff's department had a program
Speaker 2: with a similar goal that worked much better. Like the
Speaker 2: Sheriff's anti gang program is a lot more effective than
Speaker 2: the LAPDS, But the LAPD just kind of keeps ballsing
Speaker 2: their way through crash, which critics say spread out police
Speaker 2: attention far too widely. A large part of the problem
Speaker 2: with these antigang units is that they had very little
Speaker 2: effective oversight and a ton of incentive to lock people
Speaker 2: up for bullshit reasons and carry out acts of extreme
Speaker 2: violence against them. These programs would ultimately culminate and the
Speaker 2: shattering LAPD ramparts scandal. This keeps getting worse and worse
Speaker 2: until it blows up in a major way that causes
Speaker 2: massive problems, like all LAPD scandals, because that's how the
Speaker 2: LAPD works, you know, like we're always building to something
Speaker 2: that's going to like blow up. In the City of
Speaker 2: Los Angeles's face, they had to.
Speaker 3: Create their own gangs, to fight gangs with tattoos and colors,
Speaker 3: and you know, especially the Sheriff's department.
Speaker 2: Ironically enough, the only way to be the bad guy
Speaker 2: with a gang is a bad guy also with a gang.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right, but one is paid by the government.
Speaker 2: But yeah, one of them has official badges. So at
Speaker 2: the same time as Crash is making the gang problem worse,
Speaker 2: it contributes to this ever growing sense of unease and
Speaker 2: this building racial tension in Los Angeles. This is all,
Speaker 2: like the whole all of the bad things about this
Speaker 2: program are going to help cause and lead to the
Speaker 2: LA riots. Right, this all feeds into Rodney King and
Speaker 2: and you know the reaction to that. Why everyone is
Speaker 2: so fucking pissed at the LAPD, you know, before that
Speaker 2: even happens. For his part, Mark does not seem to
Speaker 2: have liked anti gang work. He described his mission to
Speaker 2: his second wife, who he was married to during this period,
Speaker 2: as to quote, harass anyone who looked like a gang
Speaker 2: member and obliterate them. Yeah, he does not. Per the times,
Speaker 2: the job put enormous pressure on mister Furman. Missus Hackett
Speaker 2: said that's his ax. He was blonde and blue eyed,
Speaker 2: six foot three, and he stood out in a crowd
Speaker 2: in the largely Hispanic neighborhood. She said he became a
Speaker 2: lot more on the edge, moody and depressed because of
Speaker 2: the job. Missus Hackett recalled sometimes he refused to talk
Speaker 2: or smile for days, and like, you don't need to
Speaker 2: be there. No one's making you do this job. I'm
Speaker 2: not surprised it's miserable. It sounds awful.
Speaker 3: Bro, you have a job you could just quit. You're
Speaker 3: not the Marines anymore. Just he just hit the bricks.
Speaker 2: She doesn't tell us a lot, like I don't have
Speaker 2: a ton of detail inside their marriage, but you get
Speaker 2: a lot from the fact that she's like, yeah, he
Speaker 2: seemed miserable.
Speaker 3: So I left him. I got out of there.
Speaker 2: Like she divorces him because of his moodiness, like right
Speaker 2: around this dive. So Mark winds up alone and has
Speaker 2: to like live with a fellow cop and in an apartment.
Speaker 2: This does not make him less depressed.
Speaker 3: I think the.
Speaker 2: Cause of his deep and like the cause of his
Speaker 2: sadness should be pretty obvious. He wants to like be
Speaker 2: an artist. He doesn't like this job, but his need
Speaker 2: to prove himself as a man has forced him into
Speaker 2: a series of brutal, dangerous, and pointless jobs that make
Speaker 2: him miserable and make him miserable to be around, and
Speaker 2: he seems to have recognized this as well. In nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty one, the LAPD had just opened a Behavioral Science
Speaker 2: Service section, which hosted the first police psychological counselor unit
Speaker 2: in the country. So there aren't any police psychological counselors
Speaker 2: officially until nineteen.
Speaker 3: Eighty one, which explains a lot. That's fun, right, they
Speaker 3: do so well nowadays. Yeah, yeah, it helps so much today. Yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 3: it changed American policing obviously.
Speaker 2: Yeah, after this, there were no more problems.
Speaker 3: Yeah, solved it.
Speaker 2: So it actually this actually explains maybe why the counseling
Speaker 2: doesn't help and even can contribute to making things worse
Speaker 2: within within like the construct of these police departments, because marlogy,
Speaker 2: it's called. It's a little worse than that. Actually it's weird.
Speaker 2: So Mark sits down. He has a counseling session with
Speaker 2: a psychiatrist or psychologist named Susan sas Clifford, and she
Speaker 2: talks to him and he goes through because he's he's
Speaker 2: trying to get. He wants to quit. He wants to
Speaker 2: get like a like a medical pension, basically like a
Speaker 2: disability pension. So he starts telling her this elaborate story
Speaker 2: about how he has uncontrollable urges to commit acts of
Speaker 2: violence on suspects, sometimes choking and beating them, because he's
Speaker 2: just like overwhelmed by a desire to do like murderous
Speaker 2: violence to them as a result of his military training.
Speaker 2: He tells this to the department psychologist, and Susan's like,
Speaker 2: I think you should turn into your gun.
Speaker 3: But two things you're true.
Speaker 2: Number one, that's a very reasonable response on Susan's part.
Speaker 2: I love doing violence to suspects. But it's also kind
Speaker 2: of why programs like this are doomed to fail or
Speaker 2: make the problem worse, because if you're gonna have and
Speaker 2: apparently we are organizations in every city where a bunch
Speaker 2: of guys are given guns and the ability to use
Speaker 2: them with almost impunity to stop quote unquote crime, and
Speaker 2: you don't have any way for those guys when they're
Speaker 2: having a psychological problem to like say hey, I'm having
Speaker 2: a psych problem and have it not ruined their career.
Speaker 2: You might cause a lot of worse problems, right, Like,
Speaker 2: if that's how they see it, sure, yeah.
Speaker 3: Then they're just not going to say anything. Or like
Speaker 3: also when she's like, I think you should turn in
Speaker 3: your gun, yeah, obviously he remains a cop, right, Like,
Speaker 3: he remains a cop. So it's not like there's any
Speaker 3: force in you know, it's like the concept of international law, right,
Speaker 3: Like it's all just a list of suggestions, yeah, with
Speaker 3: no meaningful enforcement, right.
Speaker 2: And with with this thing set up almost to like
Speaker 2: encourage guys not to talk about stuff. Now that said,
Speaker 2: I would go more into like, oh, the psychological issues here,
Speaker 2: except for I think he's lying from the jump. I
Speaker 2: think he just doesn't want to do this job anymore, right,
Speaker 2: So I don't even want to treat this like it's
Speaker 2: a serious psych issue that he's actually coming to them with.
Speaker 2: But I can see how this would make guys like
Speaker 2: that less willing to talk about their problems too.
Speaker 3: Sure.
Speaker 2: For her part, doctor sax Clifford later said I wouldn't
Speaker 2: remove someone from duty unless I had very serious concerns.
Speaker 2: The very fact that he had said these things to
Speaker 2: a doctor shows bad judgment. And I gotta say, I
Speaker 2: think that's a bad way to phrase it that, like, well,
Speaker 2: but shouldn't he say things to a doctor if he's
Speaker 2: feeling them?
Speaker 3: Like this? Is that that judgment?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's good if you are if legit
Speaker 2: if you were really if a cop was legitimately feeling
Speaker 2: uncontrolled or just to murder people and he decided as
Speaker 2: a result, I need to go to a therapist.
Speaker 3: That that's actually good judgment. I'd say, right, yeah, right,
Speaker 3: really right, Like well, if you know, if he was
Speaker 3: really troubled, he wouldn't have told me, So that's fine.
Speaker 3: I think that's a bad psych Maybe I think this
Speaker 3: might be a bad therapist. Yeah, I think this she
Speaker 3: she might not be good at her chop Yeah, University
Speaker 3: of Phoenix or some ship. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And like that said, I don't think Mark's telling the
Speaker 2: truth here, right, Because Furman wants out of the force
Speaker 2: and he wants to get a permanent disability pension by
Speaker 2: arguing that his experiences in the gang unit fucked him
Speaker 2: up too badly to go on. Uh, he does get
Speaker 2: placed on temporary workers comp leave, and so he's getting
Speaker 2: paid to not work and he's able to go take
Speaker 2: art classes. So he goes to like Long Beach City College.
Speaker 2: He starts taking art courses. He's like happy for like
Speaker 2: a year or so while this process is going on,
Speaker 2: as he's trying to like get cashiered out on disability
Speaker 2: because he gets to take his art classes.
Speaker 3: The hand turkey the university has ever.
Speaker 2: Seen exactly, Yeah, weeping with beauty at it.
Speaker 3: Yea.
Speaker 2: Now here's the thing. The cops don't want to the cops.
Speaker 2: They don't want to do that. They don't want to
Speaker 2: like pay him forever to not work. They would like
Speaker 2: him to either return to duty or to quit without
Speaker 2: a permanent pension because he hasn't really served very long.
Speaker 2: And they think this is bullshit too, But Mark really
Speaker 2: wants that disability pension, and so later in nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 2: he applies for one, telling his superiors that he's just
Speaker 2: been too damaged by the job to go on. So
Speaker 2: this point you're probably wondering, how do I know that
Speaker 2: he's lying.
Speaker 3: One reason would.
Speaker 2: Be Mark Furman's mouth was moving throughout all of this,
Speaker 2: and that's a pretty good indicator to tell if he's lying. However,
Speaker 2: I have other evidence. Mark told the doctors at the
Speaker 2: time that who had been assigned to evaluate him for
Speaker 2: his disability claim that he loved his time in Vietnam
Speaker 2: and had fond memories of becoming a trained killer. He
Speaker 2: lied about his actual deployment, regaling them with stories of
Speaker 2: heavy combat and near death experiences. At the same time,
Speaker 2: per doctor Ronald Koegler, he quote bragged that he never
Speaker 2: had any second thoughts about what he did in Vietnam,
Speaker 2: never had any flashbacks. And I guess that's true because
Speaker 2: he just sat on a boat. Why would you second
Speaker 2: guess that?
Speaker 3: But that's not what he means, right, you know. But
Speaker 3: I think the one moral thing that Furman ever tried
Speaker 3: to do, hear me out here, is steal a pension
Speaker 3: from the lap.
Speaker 2: It is it is, This is him at the moral
Speaker 2: height of his life. Absolutely, we would all have been
Speaker 2: better off if he'd stolen a pension from the LAPD.
Speaker 2: So I think Furman's plan was to try and argue
Speaker 2: that because the Marine Corps had made him into such
Speaker 2: a lethal killing machine, he was unsafe to be a
Speaker 2: cop because he couldn't see suspects without wanting to beat
Speaker 2: and maim them, And per doctor Kogler, he traces his
Speaker 2: feelings about violence to his experiences in the Marines. Mark
Speaker 2: told another panel of doctors who evaluated him. I'm really
Speaker 2: capable of violent things. I feel like I'm out on
Speaker 2: a limb and someone's sawing it off. I have this
Speaker 2: urge to kill people. And again, I think these are lies.
Speaker 2: But it could have worked if it weren't for the
Speaker 2: fact that Mark was like the millionth LAPD cop to
Speaker 2: realize that a permanent disability pension sounded way better than
Speaker 2: working for a living. The department was noted nationwide as
Speaker 2: having a number one, an usually good pension plan that
Speaker 2: promised officers with a psych disability up to half their
Speaker 2: pay tax free for life. And so from nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: to nineteen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not a bad deal. Yeah.
Speaker 2: From nineteen eighty to nineteen eighty five, one hundred and
Speaker 2: seventy five LAPED officers were granted stress disability pensions, which
Speaker 2: became known as psycho pensions. That's like the term within
Speaker 2: the department for this. Now. The fact that these kind
Speaker 2: of disability pensions were weirdly common just in LA was
Speaker 2: noted in a nineteen eighty five Los Angeles Times article
Speaker 2: by Robert Welkes and Claire Spiegel. Quote, although stress pensions
Speaker 2: have risen dramatically in the LAPD during the last five years.
Speaker 2: They are rare in many other major law.
Speaker 3: Enforcement agencies outside of California, so no one else does this,
Speaker 3: and it's weird.
Speaker 2: Only LAPD cops are getting these because they.
Speaker 3: Just don't want to don't want to do the thought
Speaker 3: like the biggest department in the country, the best institutional corruption,
Speaker 3: Like are you between them and their own sheriff's department
Speaker 3: and give it a way out to cash out early?
Speaker 3: They fuck yeah, they're gonna take it. Let them just
Speaker 3: steal all their overtime like they normally.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I consider this probably a net benefit, you know, yeah, Like,
Speaker 2: let's get these dudes off the fucking streets.
Speaker 3: I support this.
Speaker 2: You know who else we should get off the streets?
Speaker 3: Joe? Who's that? Robert?
Speaker 2: The sponsors of this podcast, all of whom are walking
Speaker 2: the streets.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing it.
Speaker 3: And we're back.
Speaker 2: We're back, and we're talking about Mark Furman's attempt to
Speaker 2: get a psychicability pension from the la b ED. So
Speaker 2: this doesn't work out for him ultimately. Psychiatrist John Hackman
Speaker 2: concluded that Furman was not legitimately disabled by his work.
Speaker 2: Hawkman wrote, there is some suggestion here that the patient
Speaker 2: was trying to feign the presence of severe psychopathology. This
Speaker 2: suggests a conscious attempt to look bad and an exaggeration
Speaker 2: of problems. In a presentation to the pension board, he
Speaker 2: noted that Furman had failed a standard psychological test as well.
Speaker 2: The board voted six to zero to deny Mark's disability
Speaker 2: pension ouch.
Speaker 3: Nice to go steal ot and backup vacation days like
Speaker 3: a normal LAPD officer. That's right.
Speaker 2: You have to be a corrupt, lazy bastard, the normal cobway. Now,
Speaker 2: the fact that Mark had completely invented his combat experiences
Speaker 2: and Nam wasn't caught at the time, but the pension
Speaker 2: board did note that police records found no complaints of
Speaker 2: excessive force had been filed against Furman. If he were
Speaker 2: dangerously unhinged, the argument went, he probably would have fucked
Speaker 2: somebody up by now. I don't know if that's the
Speaker 2: best way to go about this is the LAPED, but
Speaker 2: that's how they do it.
Speaker 3: I would expect nothing less from the LAPD to be
Speaker 3: fair like well, he was trually insane, he would have
Speaker 3: murdered someone by now.
Speaker 2: We have a ton of cops who have trust us.
Speaker 2: We know what the murder cops look like, and we
Speaker 2: keep them on the job too.
Speaker 3: We would promote him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he'd be cheap by now. So Mark doesn't take
Speaker 2: this denial lying down.
Speaker 1: Though.
Speaker 2: He appealed to a county judge, which made his court
Speaker 2: records public, which is why we know all of this now.
Speaker 2: In September of nineteen eighty three, the judge upheld the
Speaker 2: board's ruling and Mark Furman's brief break for the artistic
Speaker 2: life was over. He'd either have to quit the LAPD
Speaker 2: and find a real job or go back to work,
Speaker 2: probably as something of a pariah within the department. Mark's
Speaker 2: not willing to get a real job, so he goes
Speaker 2: back to the LAPD, and sure enough, he spends most
Speaker 2: of his first year back on active duty writing a desk. Now,
Speaker 2: I don't have a lot of detail on this period
Speaker 2: of time in his life, but it's interesting to me.
Speaker 2: It's just eight months before he gets back to active
Speaker 2: duty work as a patrolman in May of nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 2: And this is interesting because you would assume, after having
Speaker 2: tried to get out and like saying all this bullshit,
Speaker 2: he would be kind of unpopular and people would be
Speaker 2: making fun of him. I think he's actually like really
Speaker 2: charming and charismatic within sort of an organization like this,
Speaker 2: because he seems to have friends in the department. He
Speaker 2: gets his gun and patrol route back pretty quickly, and
Speaker 2: in short order he's actually assigned to a better location.
Speaker 2: He gets sent to West LA. West Los Angeles is
Speaker 2: the wealthiest part of town and thus the easiest beat
Speaker 2: to walk, right, Like a lot less of the crime
Speaker 2: and gang stuff that Mark was clearly scared by. And
Speaker 2: despite Mark's claims that he suffered from uncontrollable bloodlust, he
Speaker 2: excelled at working in West LA, where tact and charm
Speaker 2: were significantly more valuable than violence, which also maybe suggests
Speaker 2: that he was never actually all that violent of a guy.
Speaker 2: The fact that he does really well once there's a
Speaker 2: job where he could just be charming to other white people,
Speaker 2: he suddenly is a good cop, like quote unquote right,
Speaker 2: And if he was, you.
Speaker 3: Know, handicapped by an uncontrollable urge to savage every single
Speaker 3: person he ever met, Yeah, wouldn't he want to just
Speaker 3: ride the desk instead? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Why does he want to be back in the street, Like, dude,
Speaker 2: just file paper, you get paid the same amount of money.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: So again I think he's lying about being this like
Speaker 2: violent maniac. As Brian Bentley, a black police officer who
Speaker 2: was Freman's partner during this period, told a journalist in
Speaker 2: West LA you can't even yell at people. There are
Speaker 2: movie stars who know the president of the United States
Speaker 2: and they write everyone they can. Basically like, Mark was
Speaker 2: really great at like being a cop who has to
Speaker 2: interact with celebrities sometimes. You know, I know from personal
Speaker 2: experience that's a slight exaggeration, but the basic point is
Speaker 2: pretty sound. What's Furman moves to an area where he's
Speaker 2: in no real days. He seems to like being a cop,
Speaker 2: and his semi annual evaluations back this up. He gets
Speaker 2: positive reviews from his superiors in the August of nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty seven. He's described by one as highly motivated and
Speaker 2: having a bias for action. He was described somewhat differently
Speaker 2: by civilians who encountered him at the time. Natalie Singer
Speaker 2: met Mark and his partner at the in during this
Speaker 2: period in a hospital emergency room in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 2: She claims that he told her the only good inward
Speaker 2: is a dead inward, So cra it's not what a
Speaker 2: great to hear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and knowing him, he just brings it up like, hey,
Speaker 3: by the way, that's what she says it.
Speaker 2: Yeah now, and actually kind of how Mark says it,
Speaker 2: because in his book Murder in Brentwood, he does kind
Speaker 2: of deny this, but he gives a very different story
Speaker 2: of his relationship with this woman.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 2: I met Natalie Singer in nineteen eighty seven because my
Speaker 2: partner was dating her roommate. I can't recall exact incidents,
Speaker 2: but I won't say we didn't argue. I do remember
Speaker 2: that we did not get along, and I tried hard
Speaker 2: to irritate and anger her. He's like he's saying, oh,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have said that, but I did say stuff
Speaker 2: just to piss her off.
Speaker 3: So his defense is straight out of twenty twenty six, Like, no,
Speaker 3: you don't understand. I was simply trolled. It was a bit,
Speaker 3: It was a bit. Yeah, that's yeah, fuck off. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So here's the thing, And like, I don't know that
Speaker 2: either of them are lying about the basic facts, by
Speaker 2: which I mean I believe that Mark said what Natalie
Speaker 2: said that he said because we have him recorded saying
Speaker 2: almost identical things. I also believe that Mark when when
Speaker 2: Mark said that, like, well, I would often just say
Speaker 2: shit to piss her off. I think that's true, and
Speaker 2: I think he might have said that, he might have
Speaker 2: said racist shit just to piss her off. I think
Speaker 2: his motivation in that might have been just to troll her,
Speaker 2: which doesn't make it not racist, right.
Speaker 3: Right, I believe every side of the story simultaneously. That's possible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, these are all and then if these are
Speaker 2: in conflict. Another contact of Marx during this period who
Speaker 2: would later be asked to testify about his racism was
Speaker 2: Roderick Hodge, who he arrested on drug charges also in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty seven. Hodge was acquitted of these charges and
Speaker 2: claims that the cop Furman who arrested him per time,
Speaker 2: as quote, snarling from his patrol car. I told you
Speaker 2: we'd get you in word right, So Hodge says, when
Speaker 2: this guy arrested me, he snarls this to me, and
Speaker 2: then I'm acquitted because they were bullshit charges. Here's what
Speaker 2: Mark writes later about this interaction with Roderick. I came
Speaker 2: to know Rodrick Hodge while working a Gang narcotic unit
Speaker 2: as a uniformed officer in West Los Angeles from nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty five to nineteen eighty seven, Hodge was under investigation
Speaker 2: for dealing narcotics. I had many contacts with Hodge and
Speaker 2: arrested him twice. During both arrests, he made complaints about
Speaker 2: his handling by both arresting officers and wanted to speak
Speaker 2: with a sergeant. There was no merit to his charges,
Speaker 2: and he never claimed I used racial epithets. He was
Speaker 2: just complaining in an attempt to draw attention away from
Speaker 2: his own arrests. Now, I don't know who this is,
Speaker 2: who's telling the truth.
Speaker 3: I have no idea.
Speaker 2: The fact that Hodge was acquitted certainly makes me more
Speaker 2: inclined to take a side maybe than Mark's here. But
Speaker 2: I don't actually know what happened.
Speaker 3: That's the whole book. Him just trying to explain all.
Speaker 2: The shocking a lot of it because he says it
Speaker 2: a lot. He's used those words that weren't a lot.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna go on a limb here, and suggests he
Speaker 3: might not be the most trustworthy motherfucker. Might be a racist, Yeah.
Speaker 1: It might be racist, might be a horrific racist.
Speaker 2: It is noteworthy that there are allegations of racism from
Speaker 2: Mark that also come from within the LAPD one of
Speaker 2: Mark's office.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's wild. How are you so racist that
Speaker 3: the lapd is like? Whoa WHOA great question, Joe.
Speaker 2: How Let's let's explore that one of Mark's co workers,
Speaker 2: officer James Perty, married a Jewish woman around nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: five and would later testify that after his marriage, Mark
Speaker 2: Furman painted a swastika on his locker.
Speaker 3: Now, oh my god, Mark.
Speaker 2: Denies this, and Mark is like, I would ever have
Speaker 2: done anything that hateful, Oh my swap painter a swastika
Speaker 2: on an officer's you know, locker just because he married
Speaker 2: a Jewish one. I would never do anything like that.
Speaker 2: And then Mark continues with a line of argument that's
Speaker 2: almost like craft in a lab to make me doubt him. Well,
Speaker 2: Perty was hardly popular in West LA. There were so
Speaker 2: many people who either didn't care for him or flat
Speaker 2: out couldn't stand him, that it would be difficult to
Speaker 2: speculate who might have defaced his locker if that incident
Speaker 2: ever really occurred. The whole apartment wanted to paint a
Speaker 2: swastika on that guy's locker?
Speaker 3: Why do you think it was me? People cops were
Speaker 3: lighting up to paint a swastika on this guy's locker.
Speaker 3: And the fact that when the swastika was painted on
Speaker 3: his locker and the cop in quest was like, this
Speaker 3: had to be Furman. Tyah, that there's like a chain
Speaker 3: of events that led to the point where someone looked
Speaker 3: at him like that's a cop would paint a swastika
Speaker 3: on the motherfuck his locker, you know what I'm saying?
Speaker 3: Like how many things did he do to get there?
Speaker 2: The fact that this guy defaulted to assuming it was Furman,
Speaker 2: if that's what he did right, right, is says almost
Speaker 2: more than like if we knew for a fact Furman
Speaker 2: had painted the swastika, just people like it had to
Speaker 2: have been him. It literally has to have been him, right.
Speaker 3: The other cop was like, yeah, this has Furman written
Speaker 3: all over it.
Speaker 2: It sounds like Mark. Yeah, it sounds like Mark. So
Speaker 2: it's one of those things like it's such a like saying, oh,
Speaker 2: I would never have like done something that bad, But
Speaker 2: also this guy sucks that almost anyone could have done it,
Speaker 2: so like why is he blaming me? It's such perfect
Speaker 2: bully logic, and I think that's the correct comparison to draw,
Speaker 2: like a high school bully if you want to understand
Speaker 2: the social role that Mark Furman held in the LAPD
Speaker 2: hierarchy by the late nineteen eighties, like the mid to
Speaker 2: late eighties, he is like a kind of popular bully.
Speaker 2: He's like popular specifically with like the cool kids in
Speaker 2: the LAPD who are like the white guy officers, right.
Speaker 2: Like that kind of seems to be his position in
Speaker 2: the way department. He's like, you know, and again, he's
Speaker 2: obviously capable of being charming when he wants to be
Speaker 2: and being likable when he wants to be. It's also
Speaker 2: worth noting that as comfortable as he is with racism,
Speaker 2: and as like natural as it is for him to
Speaker 2: use racism in humor and slurs in humor, I think
Speaker 2: it's largely because he likes the edgy trolling. Because Mark
Speaker 2: is at least capable of forming genuine friendships and working
Speaker 2: well with non white officers, right, which makes me think, again,
Speaker 2: he's capable of viewing individuals as people. He's obviously racist,
Speaker 2: but the racism also comes out, not just the racism
Speaker 2: is not coming out uncontrollably. He lets his racism out
Speaker 2: when he thinks it's funny and will be socially beneficial,
Speaker 2: and he's more than capable of like not letting it
Speaker 2: out when he either is with like an like a
Speaker 2: black or Hispanic officer that he gets along with, or
Speaker 2: that he recognizes as popular and that he doesn't want
Speaker 2: to be like unol. Right, Like, he's able to do that,
Speaker 2: He's able to calculate when he lets the racism out.
Speaker 3: So we have like another classic example of some dickhead
Speaker 3: racist troll you deploying racism as something is a barb Yeah,
Speaker 3: slowly over time, simply becoming a racist, right, Yeah, Robert
Speaker 3: heard this civilian Yes, tale is all his time.
Speaker 2: So when the oj Simpson trial came out, and like
Speaker 2: the recordings of Mark being a racist that we'll talk
Speaker 2: about later came out, several of his former partners who
Speaker 2: were black and Hispanic men were brought forward by the
Speaker 2: LAPD to talk about the fact that, oh no, Mark
Speaker 2: wasn't a racist, and they all expressed seemingly genuine sentiment
Speaker 2: that Mark had not been racist around them. These guys
Speaker 2: are all cops, so I won't say I believe them entirely,
Speaker 2: but I could also see individual guys not having had
Speaker 2: that experience with Mark for the reasons that I just explained.
Speaker 2: And again, racism is a thing for Mark, but it's
Speaker 2: not the only thing. Social state and comforted work matters,
Speaker 2: and he's capable of like taking people's individuals and forming
Speaker 2: relationships with them based on that, especially if it's advantageous
Speaker 2: to his social standing. One of his first partners was
Speaker 2: referred to Allance, an Hispanic officer, who said that Furman
Speaker 2: exemplified exactly what a police officer ought to be. We
Speaker 2: take it to the bad guys, and Mark was very
Speaker 2: good at it. However, it's just as clear to me
Speaker 2: that in the normal course of daily life, dealing with
Speaker 2: people he saw as civilians and not colleagues, Mark defaulted
Speaker 2: to violence and to bigotry. For The New York Times,
Speaker 2: from nineteen eighty four to nineteen ninety, at least half
Speaker 2: a dozen complaints were made against mister Furman, including several
Speaker 2: contending that he threatened or beat suspects, but most of
Speaker 2: them were ruled groundless by the department for lack of
Speaker 2: independent witnesses. In nineteen eighty four, he lost a day
Speaker 2: off for seizing a pedestrian's wrists. In nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 2: he received a one day suspension for leaving an improper
Speaker 2: remark on our motorist's windshield.
Speaker 3: So again, and what did he write on someone's witch shield?
Speaker 2: I wish I'd found out. I could not find that anywhere.
Speaker 2: I did look, but I didn't find like that specified anywhere.
Speaker 2: But I you want to keep because when the tapes
Speaker 2: that include him claim and talking about all the crimes
Speaker 2: he pretended to have committed or claimed to have committed,
Speaker 2: the LAPD will be like, well, he was lying. We
Speaker 2: didn't find any evidence, So it's braggadocio. Some of it
Speaker 2: certainly was. But also every time he got accused of
Speaker 2: a violent crime, it usually got ignored because there were
Speaker 2: no independent witnesses, which means, in my head, Mark probably
Speaker 2: just beats someone up and it was his word versus
Speaker 2: that guy. And Mark was a cop, right, yeah, Because
Speaker 2: we do know he did beat some people. He got
Speaker 2: in trouble for it several times, which means I assume
Speaker 2: a lot of these other cases were just Yeah, the
Speaker 2: LAPD was able to ignore it anyway.
Speaker 3: It's not like a cop gets caught beating someone the
Speaker 3: first time. You know once they start fucking people up,
Speaker 3: it's because they've built up, been doing it all over time.
Speaker 3: You know that they know they can get away with it.
Speaker 3: The their bros, their coworkers are going to lie for them.
Speaker 3: They know the departments in internal investigations is never going
Speaker 3: to find them. Yep, exactly. You know they're imus.
Speaker 2: And part of what has given Mark that sense of
Speaker 2: impunity is experience. And a lot of his experience is
Speaker 2: in being bigoted against female LAPD officers. And I want
Speaker 2: to quote again from that New York Times article, the
Speaker 2: most serious blemish on mister Furman's work in the West
Speaker 2: Los Angeles Division was the hostile views he sometimes expressed
Speaker 2: about minorities and women. His performance evaluation in August of
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty five, which was made available to the New
Speaker 2: York Times by a member of the Simpson Defense, noted
Speaker 2: he has outspoken and critical in his perception of the
Speaker 2: department's application of affirmative action. He's been counseled to leave
Speaker 2: his personal feelings at home and to make every effort
Speaker 2: to adhere to the affirmative action guidelines. And that that
Speaker 2: says a little bit right there. And I think the
Speaker 2: first and most important thing for me to note as
Speaker 2: a result of that is that while all this comes
Speaker 2: out during the trial because the oj Simpson defense team
Speaker 2: needs to paint Furman as a particularly toxic racist officer,
Speaker 2: that's not true. Mark is toxic and racist, but his
Speaker 2: racism and sexism are pretty normal among his colleagues. One
Speaker 2: LAPD officer during this period told The Times that when
Speaker 2: he was assigned to West LA, he was warned there
Speaker 2: are a bunch of old white guys who hate blacks
Speaker 2: and women at West LA. That's the department that Mark
Speaker 2: is transferred to. Because he's a racist and a bigot,
Speaker 2: you know, right, and.
Speaker 3: A lot of the eighties. Of course he's a misogynist.
Speaker 3: And this isn't like a defense of Furman. If nobody's confused,
Speaker 3: it would be really weird if there was a cop
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty five he's like, no, I would love
Speaker 3: to work with all That guy doesn't exist.
Speaker 2: And the reason this is relevant is not that like
Speaker 2: and so that makes it okay that he was a
Speaker 2: normal level of racist for the LAPD kind of It
Speaker 2: just means that, like, don't take the defense seriously, and
Speaker 2: don't take the LAPD seriously when they try to position
Speaker 2: Mark as a particular outlier. Mark's a normal cop and
Speaker 2: a normal detective, and that racism is normal, you know,
Speaker 2: Like that's the thing to take it out of this, Yeah,
Speaker 2: the problem right, Like, no, he is just indicative of
Speaker 2: the LAPD as a whole, and he's not. When I
Speaker 2: say normal, doesn't mean every cop says the same shit,
Speaker 2: because he does stand out sometimes. But what I mean
Speaker 2: is that that even even though he was noted as like, oh,
Speaker 2: Mark is more of a bigot than a lot of
Speaker 2: other he speaks out more. No one noted and that's
Speaker 2: crazy that a cop would say this. Nobody fired him,
Speaker 2: nobody didn't want to work with him. He was like
Speaker 2: maintained his position in the LAPD because it just wasn't
Speaker 2: that weird that he was that kind of guy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he just stuck out exactly. So that nineteen eighty five
Speaker 2: performance evaluation of Marx continued. He was also counseled by
Speaker 2: this rating Lieutenant and Captain regarding his very strong expression
Speaker 2: of his personal views regarding women and minorities and police work.
Speaker 2: He was not receptive. He stated he felt as an
Speaker 2: American citizen he had a right to express his views.
Speaker 3: Of course, this isn't about me being a racist, Robert,
Speaker 3: It's about my freedom.
Speaker 2: Speaks about my freedom to be a racist. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: By way of defe fending Mark. His supervisor from nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty nine to nineteen ninety four, Gary Fullerton, told The
Speaker 2: New York Times that Furman joined a basketball league made
Speaker 2: up in largely of black LAPD officers who had to
Speaker 2: meet up at six thirty am, and was like, who
Speaker 2: would do that if they were racists? The Times talk
Speaker 2: to one of these players, Sergeant Ed Palmer, who is
Speaker 2: a black officer, and told them that he saw no
Speaker 2: signs of racism from Furman in their basketball games. If
Speaker 2: you really hate African Americans, why would you get up
Speaker 2: at five point forty to play basketball with me? And like,
Speaker 2: I don't know, Mamber, racists do all sorts of crazy shit, dude,
Speaker 2: Like you know that, Like you actually do know that, Ed?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And again these are only dudes who are cops
Speaker 3: as well. Yeah, exactly. This is the classic US versus
Speaker 3: them of American policing, where like, yeah, yes he's a racist,
Speaker 3: but he's totally fine to hang out black people who
Speaker 3: are also.
Speaker 2: Cops, that's right. And all of these accounts are coming
Speaker 2: out during the trial when Mark. When the tri it's
Speaker 2: become clear that the trial hinges largely in whether or
Speaker 2: not Mark's a racist, and the LAPED gets everyone they
Speaker 2: can who's not white in the department to say something
Speaker 2: nice about Mark, and every woman that they can. Now
Speaker 2: that fact leads to a lot of like seesaw moments
Speaker 2: when you're reading about Furman, particularly during the Simpson trial,
Speaker 2: because you'll read like one series of quotes about how
Speaker 2: this is these allegations of awful things he said, and
Speaker 2: then you'll read a very heartfelt quote about someone saying
Speaker 2: something nice about Mark, and this is all a result
Speaker 2: of a coordinated campaign within the LAPD, you know, in
Speaker 2: order to kind of buttress Mark's reputation because he was
Speaker 2: sort of standing in for the department at that point.
Speaker 2: One person who definitely saw the racist side of Mark
Speaker 2: was Laura Hart McKinney, a screenwriter who in the spring
Speaker 2: of nineteen eighty five got interested in writing a movie
Speaker 2: about female cops, so she starts interviewing several real LAPD
Speaker 2: officers for like texture and research purposes. McKinney's notice being
Speaker 2: like a pretty dedicated researcher when she lived as a
Speaker 2: homeless person in Santa Monica for like a week I think,
Speaker 2: to like research a screenplay at one point. And so
Speaker 2: she's like really talks to a lot of people, and
Speaker 2: one of the people she meets is Mark Furman. They
Speaker 2: like meet kind of casually earlier that year and become friends.
Speaker 2: And so she starts sitting out and like taping Mark
Speaker 2: talking about his experiences on the job. And McKinney would
Speaker 2: utimately interview Mark several times between nineteen eighty five and
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety four, and depending on who you read, McKinney
Speaker 2: is either again a very diligent screenwriter trying to do
Speaker 2: research to do the best work she can, or basically
Speaker 2: a hack who like can't quite make it. And you know,
Speaker 2: is largely during this period once it comes out that
Speaker 2: Mark's the center of this case, is trying to like
Speaker 2: profit off of it. That's certainly what some people will
Speaker 2: argue about her. I don't think that's really fair. But
Speaker 2: she has all of these tapes with Mark. She winds
Speaker 2: up having hours an hour, I think it's thirteen hours
Speaker 2: of recorded interviews with him, with him just kind of talking.
Speaker 2: And here's how Elizabeth Gleek writing for Time magazine, described
Speaker 2: the contents of these tapes. According to partial transcripts and
Speaker 2: comments by the lawyers in court, Furman descript engaging in
Speaker 2: police misconduct of the most damning kind, beating suspects of
Speaker 2: bloody coercion, and badgering minorities. Contrary to his sworn testimony
Speaker 2: last March that he had not used the in word
Speaker 2: in the past ten years, Furman's blustering talk of the
Speaker 2: tapes is laced with that word and contains other terms
Speaker 2: offensive to African Americans, Hispanics, women, and Jews. In a
Speaker 2: portion of the transcripts obtained by Time, for instance, he
Speaker 2: tells Martha Loriie Diaz, a friend of McKinney's, that women
Speaker 2: cops are ineffectual because they don't do anything. They don't
Speaker 2: go out and initiate contact with some six foot five
Speaker 2: inch inWORD that's been in prison for seven years, pumping weights.
Speaker 2: And God, these tapes are bad and remarkable. That's not
Speaker 2: even the that's the least of the crazy, awful. And
Speaker 2: he knows it's being reed. He knows this is intentional.
Speaker 2: Now he does not when the Simpson case comes up,
Speaker 2: because this has been going on since eighty five, and
Speaker 2: when the fucking Simpson case starts in ninety four, he's
Speaker 2: not thinking, Oh, there's tapes of me with the inWORD
Speaker 2: on him that could become part of this case. He doesn't.
Speaker 2: I don't see anything from McKinny, right, Like why would
Speaker 2: m ckinny because he's not There's never been a case
Speaker 2: that blows up like the OJ Simpson case, right, So
Speaker 2: Mark would have had no way to expect, Well, maybe
Speaker 2: I'll be all over every new station in the country
Speaker 2: and there will be potentially a lot of money in
Speaker 2: having a bunch of incriminating info about me. Right. He
Speaker 2: doesn't think about that at all as he's sitting down
Speaker 2: for these tapes. And I don't think McKinney is either
Speaker 2: to be fair, like she's trying to write a screenplay.
Speaker 2: She's not trying to like, gotcha, Mark Furman. And if
Speaker 2: you want a critiquer for something, it's the fact she's
Speaker 2: listening to this guy say this awful shit. But the
Speaker 2: crimes he's committed inside the lapd and it's just like
Speaker 2: cool stuff from a screenplay.
Speaker 3: This will be very useful for me, thank you.
Speaker 2: Like if I were to sit down with an act
Speaker 2: of laped detective who were to admit to me blithely
Speaker 2: about all of the crimes and torture that he commits,
Speaker 2: I would try to get him imprisoned.
Speaker 3: Like that would be my as a journalists, Like, that's
Speaker 3: what I do. I love to casually sit down and
Speaker 3: create the LAPD version of an act of kill and
Speaker 3: then just.
Speaker 2: Raise it from drama. Weird, But it is why I
Speaker 2: kind of wind up being really good for Ojo Simpson.
Speaker 2: That McKinny has these tapes, and once these tapes in
Speaker 2: the audio in them comes out, Mark's basic audio argument
Speaker 2: and defense of himself is going to be that, like, well,
Speaker 2: none of this was I had lied in the tapes.
Speaker 2: I was putting on a show a character that's not
Speaker 2: really me. I was trying to impress this outsider, and
Speaker 2: so none of it was true. I just wanted to
Speaker 2: sound cool so that her script would be cool, right,
Speaker 2: I was trying to give her what she needed to
Speaker 2: make an entertaining movie. Some of that is true. Mark
Speaker 2: is definitely judging things up to sound more exciting because
Speaker 2: he thinks maybe it'll wind up in a movie, right,
Speaker 2: Like that's absolutely a part of what's going on. I
Speaker 2: do buy that and yeah, and it's not hard to buy.
Speaker 2: And Mark tells several specific stories of specific incidents of
Speaker 2: violence and racism that can't be documented, and several more
Speaker 2: that have been documented as having not happened, that like,
Speaker 2: we know this didn't happen. We know this didn't happen,
Speaker 2: and there's a bunch more where it's like we don't
Speaker 2: know if it happened or not. There's no evidence one
Speaker 2: way or the other. Right, However, within kind of that
Speaker 2: mix of things that definitely didn't happen and that we
Speaker 2: can't prove happened, there are some things that we know
Speaker 2: happened that there's outside evidence of them that are proven
Speaker 2: to have happened. And probably the most important thing that
Speaker 2: we know was real that Mark talked about was a
Speaker 2: club that he started inside the Los Angeles Police Department
Speaker 2: called Men Against Women, And we will talk about that
Speaker 2: the theoj Simpson trial in part two.
Speaker 3: How you doing, Joe? This is like some Jophie. This
Speaker 3: is like the Little Rascals. He man woman hater club
Speaker 3: for cops. It is it is. He makes the human
Speaker 3: woman hater club for cops. He does do that. He's
Speaker 3: the Alfalfa of the lapd I so much. Thank you.
Speaker 3: It's it's really funny.
Speaker 2: I mean it's not like the horrible things that he does,
Speaker 2: but it's like funny and like a cosmic sense, you know, sure,
Speaker 2: or if you're just a fan of the little rascals.
Speaker 3: It's funny because it's fucking pathetic, you know, like everything
Speaker 3: about this man is so pathetic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's that's the thing, right, And and I
Speaker 2: I this is that was the surprise to me as
Speaker 2: like growing up as a young man who also grew
Speaker 2: up like with a bunch of different like misogynistic and
Speaker 2: sexist beliefs, but I fundamentally missed the whole like, Oh,
Speaker 2: we're supposed to like hate women. I thought you, like,
Speaker 2: what did to have like like a wife or a girl? Like?
Speaker 2: I thought like that that was like the goal was
Speaker 2: to like, h like have women in your life as
Speaker 2: opposed to like people like Mark where it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: is the goal to like not ever have any contact
Speaker 2: with them? Like what is what is what is masculinity?
Speaker 2: Like do you want to be liked by women or
Speaker 2: do you want to hide from them? Like I don't
Speaker 2: understand which we're supposed to do.
Speaker 3: I was I was raised by Like my dad was
Speaker 3: a pretty misogynistic piece of shit, and that all kind
Speaker 3: of confused me as well, because he kind of fell
Speaker 3: into the furmin kind of things. He was also a racist,
Speaker 3: and it always confused me because I was like, I
Speaker 3: thought that you wanted to attract women, right, and I'm
Speaker 3: like ten, and now you're leading me down a path
Speaker 3: where you're going to be Mark Furman, which is divorced,
Speaker 3: living with the shitty cop for a roommate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't want to spend any time around girls.
Speaker 2: I thought the goal was to be liked by them,
Speaker 2: And but was I wrong? Like, obviously that's not shouldn't
Speaker 2: be your life goal. But like as a kid, realize like, oh,
Speaker 2: a lot of like guys just like hate being around women.
Speaker 2: I didn't realize that. I thought, like, that doesn't make
Speaker 2: any sense. Yeah, this is We're gonna have some fun
Speaker 2: talks about h gender politics in the Los Angeles Police Department.
Speaker 2: But first let's talk about gender politics and Joe Casabian's bibliography. Sorry, Joe,
Speaker 2: way to lead to your books, but books.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I'm the host of the Lines Up by
Speaker 3: Donkeys podcast. We talked about military history, which I had
Speaker 3: to make things interesting and fun. And I am the
Speaker 3: author of the book The Highlands Burn, which is a
Speaker 3: military gunpowder fantasy novel, and you can get it wherever
Speaker 3: it does. You get your books ebook, audiobook, read by me, paperback,
Speaker 3: stoned tablet, whichever you'd like. Excellent.
Speaker 2: Well, I personally approve of the fact that you have
Speaker 2: stone tablet publications of your book, Joe, that's a good idea.
Speaker 2: All of my books are about to be rereleased in
Speaker 2: the form of an old man telling the story around
Speaker 2: a fire, Let's go, which yeah, yeah, no, yeah, that's
Speaker 2: that's always That's a real proud moment in any author's
Speaker 2: life when you get your old band around a fire edition. Anyway,
Speaker 2: the episodes over was probably Dead by Joe's Books.
Speaker 3: By Joe's Books.
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