Speaker 1: Alzoone Media. Welcome back to It could Happen Here, a
Speaker 1: podcast where Robert Evans is slightly adjusting the levels on
Speaker 1: his microphone because I am in New Orleans traveling and
Speaker 1: with my friend and city resident and former guest of
Speaker 1: the pod, Carla carl.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me. Robert. It's great to be back.
Speaker 4: I mean, we've done a few episodes in the past
Speaker 4: on different podcasts, and it's always I don't want to
Speaker 4: say a treat, but it's good to work with you
Speaker 4: because some of the topics, of course, are pretty rough.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you and I have talked, i think primarily
Speaker 1: in our previous episodes about both like digital security and
Speaker 1: then guns, Like we've talked about people getting into shooting.
Speaker 1: We've talked about like kind of what's responsible and irresponsible
Speaker 1: when it comes to training and firearms advice. And today
Speaker 1: we're kind of starting by talking about guns in a
Speaker 1: different context, which is the fact that specifically they are
Speaker 1: often used as an excuse by a law enforcement like
Speaker 1: the fear of the fear or the reality of them
Speaker 1: in being armed, as an excuse for killing them. Right,
Speaker 1: we can talk about the killing of Filando Castile in
Speaker 1: July of twenty sixteen, who was a black man who
Speaker 1: was stopped by the police and a legal license concealed
Speaker 1: carry holder and was shot during that traffic stop because
Speaker 1: the officer panicked. But the case that's right now on
Speaker 1: people's minds is the case of Alex Pretty, who was
Speaker 1: killed by Border patrol earlier this year. Was wearing a
Speaker 1: gun during a confrontation, but he was just filming. They
Speaker 1: stripped him of his weapon, and they shot and executed
Speaker 1: him in a case that has actually drawn criticism from
Speaker 1: gun rights organizations towards the Trump administration, which doesn't happen often.
Speaker 1: But I think the kind of point you brought up
Speaker 1: when you and I started talking about this was that
Speaker 1: what happened to Pretty, you know, not only can you
Speaker 1: go back to other cases where law enforcement have shot
Speaker 1: people legally concealed carrying, as we talked about with Castile,
Speaker 1: but this is not a thing that is the result
Speaker 1: of the escalation of the Trump administration's use of bord
Speaker 1: patrol and ice. This this is a long standing behavior
Speaker 1: that border patrol agents have exercised and been exercising elsewhere
Speaker 1: for years. Like what happened to Preddy is novel because
Speaker 1: he was a white guy in the middle of Minneapolis.
Speaker 1: But it's not a novel because Border patrol shot and
Speaker 1: killed somebody and then justified it by saying he had
Speaker 1: a gun.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's border patrol, and really by that extension of
Speaker 4: all law enforcement in the US, because there's so many examples,
Speaker 4: it's almost hard to draw out just one or two.
Speaker 4: You can go for on forever for this, but there's
Speaker 4: some real prominent ones that make a lot of sense.
Speaker 4: In fact, even here in New Orleans, right after Katrina,
Speaker 4: there were a family that were crossing a bridge trying
Speaker 4: to just recover some water and supplies, and a bunch
Speaker 4: of law enforcement officers jumped into unmarked vehicles, ran over
Speaker 4: on a bridge, jumped out, and with unauthorized guns, including Ak's,
Speaker 4: unloaded on them, and it was called the Danziger Bridge shootings.
Speaker 4: I have a video on the channel about it. And
Speaker 4: this is where this gets relevant. They not only shot them,
Speaker 4: they chased them down from a moving vehicle and killed
Speaker 4: them in their back with a shotgun while he was
Speaker 4: running away. But they used the pretense of them being
Speaker 4: armed even though they were not, by dropping drop guns
Speaker 4: and calling them ham sandwiches. So again, the pretest of
Speaker 4: there were guns, therefore were allowed to kill them is
Speaker 4: just an example of that, right there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is really interesting because, first off, you
Speaker 1: get the gun rights people, or at least a chunk
Speaker 1: of the conservative gun rights people, who will come out
Speaker 1: whenever someone actually is carrying a gun. But the fact
Speaker 1: that this happens so much more often, where the police
Speaker 1: just kill someone and say because we thought they had
Speaker 1: a gun, is also I mean, it's a human rights issue,
Speaker 1: but it is a Second Amendment issue, right, You've got
Speaker 1: this weird dichotomy. We're on the right the existence of
Speaker 1: the second because it's often said that like, oh, the
Speaker 1: presence of a gun, even though you have the Second
Speaker 1: Amendment means the police can kill you. But the reality
Speaker 1: is that the existence of guns in the country means
Speaker 1: that the police have the ability to justify killing and
Speaker 1: border patrol has the ability to justify killing someone for no.
Speaker 4: Reason, which it really brings up a really interesting question because,
Speaker 4: i mean, the Second Amendment is literally the second amendment
Speaker 4: of the Bill of Rights, which is now right enshrined
Speaker 4: directly in the Constitution. It's the first freedom of speech,
Speaker 4: and the second one is the right to kill and
Speaker 4: bare arms, and so if that is a constitutional right,
Speaker 4: even in instances where you see like Alex Pretty who
Speaker 4: is a legally licensed CCW holder, still can be killed
Speaker 4: with essentially no justice being delivered for their actions. Raises
Speaker 4: a very interesting question about how is a right a
Speaker 4: right when they can kill you for the presence of
Speaker 4: a gun, even when it's legally possessed and not even
Speaker 4: being used in a offensive manner, like even if it's
Speaker 4: just on you or they think there's one there, suddenly
Speaker 4: they can kill you and nothing comes of it. And
Speaker 4: that's the case with so many instances. I got a
Speaker 4: few more here if you want, Like Daniel Shaver, this
Speaker 4: is one in Masis. It's not border patrol, but it's
Speaker 4: still law enforcement. It has the precedent of the problem.
Speaker 4: Twenty sixteen, he was a Texas exterminator. He was traveling
Speaker 4: through Arizona and he was up in his hotel room
Speaker 4: and someone on the street saw him or thought they
Speaker 4: saw him messing with a firearm. Turned out it was
Speaker 4: like a pellet gun or something he used to shoot rats.
Speaker 4: But they rolled up, they called him out of his
Speaker 4: room and in a very horrific video of screaming at
Speaker 4: him and giving very inconsistent commands, along with another gun
Speaker 4: that was illegally modified or at least not authorized to
Speaker 4: be modified, where they dust cover on the air fifteen
Speaker 4: said you're fucked on it. They unloaded on him while
Speaker 4: he was crawling on his hands and knees, begging for
Speaker 4: his life, literally begging for his life in the video,
Speaker 4: and again really nothing came of it. In fact, the
Speaker 4: officer that shot him ended up getting back on the
Speaker 4: force just long enough to give him essentially a life
Speaker 4: pension for the trauma he received for killing the man.
Speaker 4: So the presence or the perceived presence of a firearm
Speaker 4: justified them killing him while he was crawling on his
Speaker 4: hands and knees.
Speaker 1: You know, we've talked about the warrior cop ethos and
Speaker 1: guys like Colonel Grossman who have helped to inculcate this
Speaker 1: idea in law enforcement that you are in like dire
Speaker 1: threat of immediate death every second of every day, as
Speaker 1: like the sworn law enforcement officer, and thus you have
Speaker 1: to react like this, right like, you have to react
Speaker 1: immediately with lethal force the instant someone like reaches into
Speaker 1: a pocket or I can't tell you how many times
Speaker 1: it protests. I can remember one really clear time from
Speaker 1: twenty twenty where.
Speaker 2: I was with a group of people.
Speaker 1: They were promising to arrest all of us, and I
Speaker 1: was kind of talking to the police officer basically being like,
Speaker 1: looker the mayor's most recent orders, like we are allowed
Speaker 1: to be out here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Anyway, it was a whole thing.
Speaker 1: But one of the protesters, who is just kind of
Speaker 1: standing behind me, very nervous, like, reached into his pocket.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it was to get a phone,
Speaker 1: and all of the officers tend stuff, and I had
Speaker 1: to be like, don't fucking go, like, keep your hands visible, man,
Speaker 1: Like we're standing in front of a bunch of and
Speaker 1: you shouldn't have to do that, right, putting your hands
Speaker 1: in your pocket shouldn't be a justification for a man
Speaker 1: pulling a gun and blowing you away with the authority
Speaker 1: of the state behind him. But the reality of this
Speaker 1: situation is that like, whenever I am talking to police officers,
Speaker 1: I keep my hands in front.
Speaker 2: Of me and fucking visible.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: It produced a situation in which regular American citizens or
Speaker 4: we'll get into this too. The tahona Otum Reservation members,
Speaker 4: Indian members members of the tribe. You have to be
Speaker 4: as a civilian trained how to interact with these very
Speaker 4: dangerous people who have been given.
Speaker 2: An ideology of like killology.
Speaker 4: You mentioned Lieutenant Colonel Grossman, who actually never shot on
Speaker 4: anyone himself, but was one of the sea crystals of
Speaker 4: this training mentality in which he espoused don't be afraid
Speaker 4: to shoot. Only thing that's going to happen is you
Speaker 4: might get sued, but don't worry about getting sued. It
Speaker 4: just gives you a little break and some time off
Speaker 4: the force until you get it cleared. He's on video
Speaker 4: saying this stuff, and that mentality so imbued into all
Speaker 4: of the law enforcement agencies now presents a problem where
Speaker 4: the legal right of having a firearm is I'd say
Speaker 4: very questionable that it's a right when they have all
Speaker 4: authorization to kill you for the thought or presence of
Speaker 4: a gun. And it shouldn't be civilians, just regular people
Speaker 4: that have to be trained how to deal with these
Speaker 4: dangerous agents of the state, because they're the ones that
Speaker 4: are indoctrinated into this fear mindset when we're prayed to
Speaker 4: at this point because they can kill you and nothing
Speaker 4: seems to come of it.
Speaker 1: I think the thing when we were chatting about this
Speaker 1: kind of behind the scenes that you brought up that
Speaker 1: was really interesting to me to emphasize was the degree
Speaker 1: to which this is not a training problem, Right, this
Speaker 1: is not a lack of training problem. You hear a
Speaker 1: lot on the kind of more moderate democrat side of
Speaker 1: things about how we need to be retraining these agents,
Speaker 1: and that like the murder of Renee Good, the murder
Speaker 1: of Alex Pretty is the result of like bad training
Speaker 1: behalf of Border per control, and it's kind of part
Speaker 1: of this whole rogue agency thing you get with Border
Speaker 1: Patrol and ice that like because of the Trump administration
Speaker 1: and how they've flooded it with bad recruits and how
Speaker 1: they're not getting properly trained. That's why things have been
Speaker 1: so deadly. And when you look at the history of
Speaker 1: how Border Patrol has worked on things like the Tahanamodo Reservation,
Speaker 1: what you see is a whole bunch of cases that
Speaker 1: sound a lot like what happened to Rena Good and
Speaker 1: Alex Petty. They're just not happening to white people in Minneapolis, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think that's something that a lot of people who
Speaker 4: haven't had the experience of living near the border, because
Speaker 4: I also spend a lot of my life in Arizona
Speaker 4: near Tucson, and therefore the tahuna Otum reservations right there,
Speaker 4: and therefore have some insight into the things that go
Speaker 4: on right there near the border. And this is not new.
Speaker 4: The thing that's new is that it's being extended across
Speaker 4: the country and now into internal spaces. But the policies
Speaker 4: and the way the Border Patrol and Ice have acted
Speaker 4: is by no means a new standard. For example, not
Speaker 4: only with the firearms, but their instances at least two instances,
Speaker 4: if not more, in which there's verified video of Border
Speaker 4: patrol agents intentionally swerving their vehicles to hit tribal members.
Speaker 4: It's on footage, not only car footage, but footage of
Speaker 4: the cell phone being struck. One instance at Leach, they
Speaker 4: were killed. Another instance they were hurt, and with that footage,
Speaker 4: even though it very clearly the car swerved to hit them,
Speaker 4: nothing came of it. So it's hard to not see
Speaker 4: that there's something going on here. I don't think this
Speaker 4: is a train anything. I don't think they're training them
Speaker 4: to run over people. But there's some cultural maliciousness that's
Speaker 4: imbued into some of this that's hard to ignore. Another
Speaker 4: example of that was in twenty twenty three there was
Speaker 4: a TOO member, Raymond Mattia, that he was called for
Speaker 4: supposedly there was gunfire herd, and so border patrol shows
Speaker 4: up and he's in front of his house and he
Speaker 4: reached for his cell phone in his pocket much like
Speaker 4: you just described. Again, Wow, there's a recurring theme here.
Speaker 4: And he was shot nine times, thirty eight rounds fired killed.
Speaker 4: He had no gun on him, he was just a
Speaker 4: TOO member, and therefore it didn't really make any press.
Speaker 1: Again, you see, this is a qualified immunity problem, right,
Speaker 1: and it go back to that. And there's been some
Speaker 1: talk of, like if you're going with the reforming ice
Speaker 1: rather than the abolishing thing, which is you know, certainly
Speaker 1: something a lot of Democrats talk about, Like I've heard
Speaker 1: some discussion of like, well, maybe removing qualified immunity.
Speaker 2: At least for border patrol and ICE.
Speaker 1: And it's so much bigger of a problem than that,
Speaker 1: Like I certainly will I will accept any reductions in
Speaker 1: qualified immunity for law enforcement.
Speaker 2: Because that's where a lot of this starts.
Speaker 1: But even without that, if these go to court, if
Speaker 1: the officer in that specific shooting had gone to court
Speaker 1: for that specific shooting. I think there's a very good,
Speaker 1: if not overwhelmingly likely chance that he would have just
Speaker 1: been able to argue as in fear of my life. Right,
Speaker 1: everyone knows how dangerous police officers' jobs are. Of course,
Speaker 1: you know, if you reach into a bocket around them,
Speaker 1: you're signing your own death warrant. And some of my
Speaker 1: problem with this is the degree to which Americans, and
Speaker 1: maybe this is starting to shift, but things are as
Speaker 1: bad as they are because for a very long time,
Speaker 1: Americans were willing to go along with the idea that
Speaker 1: police officers lie were so dangerous and their jobs were
Speaker 1: so important that almost any violence they meet out is
Speaker 1: justified by the danger that they exist in. And I
Speaker 1: want to talk more about that with you, but first
Speaker 1: here's some ads.
Speaker 2: And we're back, Karl.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna hand back to Mike to you if we're
Speaker 1: going to continue ourtist cut.
Speaker 4: That's the challenge that I see with all these and
Speaker 4: these are just like again, a handful of examples of
Speaker 4: which there are so many you can't even enumerate them all.
Speaker 4: I mentioned the Danziger Bridge shootings, in which two men
Speaker 4: were killed and there was really no justice came for that,
Speaker 4: although there was long trials and almost almost someone got
Speaker 4: in trouble, but not really. They all eventually got out
Speaker 4: with very little justice. Daniel Shaver was killed in Mesa.
Speaker 4: That guy got pension, Borlando Castile, nothing really came of that.
Speaker 4: Paul O Reims the guy hit by the Border patrol
Speaker 4: sev nothing came of that. Another example, while this was
Speaker 4: a protester to Guita in twenty twenty three, protesting cop
Speaker 4: City was unloaded on in his tent where they said
Speaker 4: he had a firearm. Again another similar example fourteen times
Speaker 4: and was killed in the process. Hey everybody, Carli here
Speaker 4: and an important update to the podcast. Once it was released,
Speaker 4: we quickly realized that there was a mistake embedded in
Speaker 4: it and it really kind of lies on me. We
Speaker 4: recorded this today after Marti gram That's no excuse. We
Speaker 4: were both a little tired. But at the same time
Speaker 4: we had a conversation in which we discussed we just
Speaker 4: remove this from the podcast entirely, just snip it out,
Speaker 4: and both of us came to the same conclusion that
Speaker 4: it was too important to leave Tortuguita's story in the podcast,
Speaker 4: because the reality is they're not talked about as much
Speaker 4: as they should be, and what happened to Tortegito matters
Speaker 4: very much and it should be kept in the public consciousness,
Speaker 4: especially since the bodycam footage has not been released. But
Speaker 4: in this I mistakenly used the pronoun he and him,
Speaker 4: and Robert followed suit, just because we were kind of
Speaker 4: recording together in that time and space, and this was
Speaker 4: recorded very live and raw and real. But tortu Ghita,
Speaker 4: the queer indigenous activists that gave their life fighting against
Speaker 4: Cop City, went by they them. So please accept my
Speaker 4: apology and our apology for this mistake in the podcast.
Speaker 4: But again we wanted to leave it in because it
Speaker 4: was too important and too significant to tell Torteguito's story
Speaker 4: than it.
Speaker 2: Was to snip it out due to this mistake.
Speaker 4: So hopefully you'll understand and accept this disclaimer and apology
Speaker 4: for this mistake and realized that was of course not intentional.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 4: There was a bunch of actual bodycam footage that's never
Speaker 4: been released to the public. But at the same time,
Speaker 4: the autopsy of him showed that his hands were up
Speaker 4: in the position he was in when he got hit
Speaker 4: with those multiple fourteen rounds, but we don't even get
Speaker 4: to see the bodycam footage. And there was audio where
Speaker 4: the cops at least implied that one of the cops
Speaker 4: shot one of the other cops and that's what instigated
Speaker 4: the shooting.
Speaker 1: It's the kind of thing that like, we don't know
Speaker 1: what happened in the shoot of Tortuguhito, right We simply
Speaker 1: don't know, in part because they haven't released a lot
Speaker 1: of the information. And right now, the burden of proof
Speaker 1: is on Tortighita in this case, or you know, people
Speaker 1: who think he was unjustly killed, to prove that he
Speaker 1: didn't shoot the officer, as opposed to where I would
Speaker 1: argue the burden of proof should be, which is on
Speaker 1: the agents of the state. He shot somebody, right, Like,
Speaker 1: if you were going to say this kid pulled a
Speaker 1: gun and fired on you, I want the proof and
Speaker 1: it's on you to give me the proof. And if
Speaker 1: you the police do not prove beyond a shadow of
Speaker 1: a doubt that you were in fear for your life
Speaker 1: in being attacked when you use deadly force, my assumption
Speaker 1: is going to be that you murdered a guy.
Speaker 2: And I think that's.
Speaker 1: How everyone should feel, right, Like that should be how
Speaker 1: we treat police violence in any society, not this the
Speaker 1: United States. I mean, if you're listening to this in
Speaker 1: the UK or Germany and you're a reasonable person, I
Speaker 1: would think that your attitude should be Yes. If a
Speaker 1: Bobby or whatever the Germans call their police kills somebody,
Speaker 1: he should should have to prove that he or she
Speaker 1: should have to prove that they were an immediate fear
Speaker 1: of their life, which is not so different from anybody else, right,
Speaker 1: I can think of I can think of one police
Speaker 1: shooting that I saw a video of spreading on Twitter,
Speaker 1: where like a guy was literally like sprinting around in
Speaker 1: traffic with a gun, like pointing it at people in
Speaker 1: traffic and got shot and killed by an officer. And
Speaker 1: I was like, look, if I'd had a gun and
Speaker 1: felt like I could take the shot, I might have
Speaker 1: shot that guy too, because he was parjacking people at
Speaker 1: gunpoint and pointing a firearm.
Speaker 2: And they're like, yeah, that's the.
Speaker 1: Case in which maybe you have to shoot a guy
Speaker 1: because like he could kill someone at any second, right,
Speaker 1: And I'm not going to judge a police officer for
Speaker 1: shooting in that instance, but I wouldn't judge a civilian either.
Speaker 1: I don't have a different standard for them. If you
Speaker 1: are a cop or a civilian and somebody shoots at you,
Speaker 1: you have the right to defend yourself, right, but you
Speaker 1: also should expect to prove that they were.
Speaker 2: Trying to hurt you.
Speaker 4: This is the challenge I have with all of this is,
Speaker 4: like you said, in any instance that's a self defense shooting,
Speaker 4: And in this and in many instances, law enforcement are
Speaker 4: put in a situation where they're not necessarily even defending themselves,
Speaker 4: but defending the community or others, and therefore they have justification.
Speaker 4: I'm not to say here to say that every law
Speaker 4: enforcement shooting is not justified.
Speaker 3: Many of them are.
Speaker 4: But in the instances where there are questionable circumstances, of
Speaker 4: which many we've just enumerated here, even instances in which
Speaker 4: they have body cams on which are supposed to be
Speaker 4: would validate their actions, but they won't release it to
Speaker 4: the public to see it. It draws a very significant
Speaker 4: question of the validity of these events and what they're
Speaker 4: doing and why there I would say no better way
Speaker 4: to say than covering something up. In fact, going back
Speaker 4: to Lieutenant Colonel Grossman. There's a video of him talking
Speaker 4: about law enforcement, which of course extends to ice and
Speaker 4: border patrol, as the samurai of the land. And you know,
Speaker 4: that reference isn't really a good one because when you
Speaker 4: know what the samurai are, that's a disturbing statement. But
Speaker 4: in his mind, he's making this point that they have
Speaker 4: these tools that are for life and death and the
Speaker 4: right to essentially kill, and referring to them as samurai.
Speaker 4: And I think that mindset is sadly very much permeating
Speaker 4: the law enforcement agencies of this country.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's the myths of the warrior cop.
Speaker 1: And I think one of my frustrats here stems from
Speaker 1: just as someone like you, I carry a firearm regularly,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot about what would happen if
Speaker 1: I had to use it. And I think about not
Speaker 1: just the practicality of like, okay, am I trained properly
Speaker 1: to use this thing competently, you know, but what would
Speaker 1: the order of operations need to be if somebody tries
Speaker 1: to kill me and I successfully kill or injure them
Speaker 1: with a firearm, Well, I'm going to need to call
Speaker 1: the police immediately. I'm going to need to contact a
Speaker 1: lawyer immediately, I'm going to hope that there are eyewitnesses there.
Speaker 1: I'm going to hope and seek to provide as much
Speaker 1: evidence that I possibly can that I had no other
Speaker 1: choice to do what I was going to do. Right,
Speaker 1: any civilian carrying a firearm responsibly thinks about the same
Speaker 1: things about like if I am in a shooting. First off,
Speaker 1: there's the question of I need to defend myself, But
Speaker 1: then there's immediately the question if I need to defend
Speaker 1: myself in court. And police don't have that second part,
Speaker 1: not really, not in a way that matters.
Speaker 4: And this, to me is why the Alex Pretty situation,
Speaker 4: which was so visibly documented by multiple cameras, is such
Speaker 4: a concern because in this instance, we see two officers
Speaker 4: unload on the guy. One guy shoots him at least
Speaker 4: once or twice, and then another guy unloads on him again,
Speaker 4: and we have multiple video angles. Yet the narrative from
Speaker 4: them is that this guy was attacking them, which is
Speaker 4: clearly not the case on the video. I mean, you
Speaker 4: can look at it from multiple angles. Whether or not
Speaker 4: you agree with his protest methods, he was not attacking anyone.
Speaker 4: He was standing between them, getting pepper sprayed and being
Speaker 4: beaten with pepper spray can and then getting unloaded on
Speaker 4: and at the same time, we now live in this
Speaker 4: situation where at least some parts of the firearms community
Speaker 4: or gun community, which isn't owning a thing, isn't a community,
Speaker 4: but we use that term gun community. Like you said,
Speaker 4: some of these rights groups have said something, but the
Speaker 4: response to this is still disturbing to me, because there's
Speaker 4: a lot of people saying, well, don't show up to
Speaker 4: a protest with a gun, don't be in public with
Speaker 4: a gun, you can't bring gun. In fact, we saw
Speaker 4: parts of the Trump administration saying, don't show up with
Speaker 4: a gun. This man had a handgun and two magazines
Speaker 4: on him looking for trouble. Well, if he was, he
Speaker 4: didn't have the gun out. And by the way, carrying
Speaker 4: a handgun with an extra magazine is by no means abnormal.
Speaker 4: In fact, that's a normal procedure for most people that concealed.
Speaker 3: Carrie.
Speaker 4: If you and I were hanging out on the street
Speaker 4: and we decided that we got into a fight with
Speaker 4: some guy, you know, Sheila Woof comes out of the
Speaker 4: bar and starts swinging on us, and then and then
Speaker 4: not only did we punch him and knock them to
Speaker 4: the ground, You shoot him and then I shoot him
Speaker 4: nine more times.
Speaker 3: And there's video evidence of that. We're going to jail forever.
Speaker 4: But we have footage of these guys doing this and
Speaker 4: really nothing comes of it.
Speaker 1: Part of like what I really want to get across
Speaker 1: to people is how bog standard this behavior is. The
Speaker 1: agents that shot Preddy were experienced veterans. They were not newbies.
Speaker 1: They were not proud boys who just gotten inducted into
Speaker 1: the force, you know, and tasked with doing vigilante justice.
Speaker 1: They were sworn law enforcement officers with decorated careers, and
Speaker 1: they were acting the way the average cop expects people
Speaker 1: to act in a lot of situations, or at least
Speaker 1: at least a significant chunk of the law enforcement community
Speaker 1: expects police officers to be able to act right.
Speaker 2: Like I don't know that.
Speaker 1: I think most police officers are going to shoot a
Speaker 1: man who has been disarmed when he's in the middle
Speaker 1: of a pile of guys who have their hands on him.
Speaker 1: But most police officers will defend their colleagues who do
Speaker 1: the same right. That's almost more of the issue. It's
Speaker 1: not that the average police officer is looking for an
Speaker 1: excuse to shoot somebody. It's that there's enough of those
Speaker 1: guys on the force and all of their friends support
Speaker 1: them when they do it right, And that doesn't exist
Speaker 1: on the civilian side of things, right I think about
Speaker 1: like in Portland, we had a mass shooting that was
Speaker 1: stopped by a protester who was then gave himself up
Speaker 1: to the police and was taken into custody.
Speaker 2: He was initially charged with murder.
Speaker 1: And if there was the knowledge as a police officer
Speaker 1: that if I shoot someone, whether or not it's totally justified,
Speaker 1: the next few months of my life are fucked completely.
Speaker 1: I'm not getting time off to chill. I am having
Speaker 1: to defend myself and have some of the worst stress
Speaker 1: of my life. Maybe we'd have fewer police shootings, right
Speaker 1: if they knew it was going to be a miserable
Speaker 1: situation whenever they drew their gun and fired on somebody.
Speaker 1: And I think you have to have that be the understanding.
Speaker 1: And I know, like the counterpoint that at least police
Speaker 1: defenders will come up with is like, well that might
Speaker 1: make them less likely to defend themselves, and like, well,
Speaker 1: then why are you calling them heroes? If you're not
Speaker 1: expecting them to risk their lives the good of the
Speaker 1: body politic. Right, We'll talk more about this, but first, ads.
Speaker 3: What's really interesting about this?
Speaker 4: And I would think, I mean, I'm sure you have
Speaker 4: a really large amount of cops in the audience here,
Speaker 4: but here's the thing. Really, everyone should be concerned about this,
Speaker 4: even cops, even border patrol, even ice. Law enforcement in
Speaker 4: general should be concerned about this because as this activity
Speaker 4: becomes frankly more common and more accepted in their ranks,
Speaker 4: that thin blue line being not one about solidarity but
Speaker 4: one of silence and lack of justice. That puts them
Speaker 4: a danger too, because if a person or people are
Speaker 4: so afraid of the reality of the fact that they
Speaker 4: can be just executed in the street with no repercussions
Speaker 4: of it, it sort of gives civilians, well, it takes
Speaker 4: away our trust in the system. There's no due process.
Speaker 4: You can just die for nothing, for having a cell
Speaker 4: phone in your pocket. It'll make some people more reckless
Speaker 4: in their actions when dealing with law enforcement, because they
Speaker 4: are like, what do I have to lose, I'm gonna
Speaker 4: die anyway.
Speaker 1: It's the same logical problem as if you're like, well,
Speaker 1: armed robberies should have the same consequences as killing a guy,
Speaker 1: or they should be very similar. Your life should be
Speaker 1: over either way. Well, then what's the reason not to
Speaker 1: shoot someone and kill them at a robbery. Leaving them
Speaker 1: alive just increases the odds they identify you. If you're
Speaker 1: looking at the difference between thirty years in prison or
Speaker 1: fifty years in prison for robbery and murder, why not
Speaker 1: just commit the murder right Like, it's this calculus that's
Speaker 1: being forced on people. If you know, any time the
Speaker 1: police take you into custody or start to move to
Speaker 1: put hands on you, you feel like there's a very
Speaker 1: good chance they're just going to murder you. Then people
Speaker 1: are going to start making very different choices when they're
Speaker 1: physically in contact with the police, and that makes life
Speaker 1: a lot more dangerous for everybody. And that's part of
Speaker 1: why this is what we're seeing is just so fucking irresponsible.
Speaker 4: And historically there's realities for this too, depending on what
Speaker 4: part of the community or who you know, your demographic
Speaker 4: if you want to go back to the past, whether
Speaker 4: or not you agree or disagree with like the politics
Speaker 4: or actions of for example, the Black Panthers, The reality
Speaker 4: is because black men were just shot by cops with
Speaker 4: no justice being delivered. Ever, they started taking on strategies
Speaker 4: and policies that reflected that feer and concern. But now
Speaker 4: that's being extended to people well beyond that. When we
Speaker 4: see middle class VA nurses with a license being killed
Speaker 4: the same way, well, this is what's been going on
Speaker 4: in those communities for decades and decades, well before the
Speaker 4: Civil War. Let's be realistic. And so I'm not saying
Speaker 4: that was right or wrong, but I'm saying it is
Speaker 4: a logical conclusion. When you fear that the agents of
Speaker 4: the state can kill you and there's no justice to
Speaker 4: ever be had, well what do you have to lose.
Speaker 1: When we were talking about this early, you brought up
Speaker 1: something the Attorney General of Arizona had said recently on
Speaker 1: the subject of ice agents who are not identifiable as
Speaker 1: law enforcement coming to your door with guns.
Speaker 4: I don't have the direct quote, but I'm paraphrasing here,
Speaker 4: but it was along the lines of if people are
Speaker 4: at your doors that are unidentified with masks in Arizona,
Speaker 4: the castle doctrine essentially provides you the right to use
Speaker 4: force against them. And that is a very interesting statement
Speaker 4: to be made by someone as high in power of
Speaker 4: government of a state level at that point. But I
Speaker 4: mean there's some truth to that, and the reality is
Speaker 4: when people aren't identifiable, it is very easy to show up.
Speaker 4: And I mean we've already seen examples of people pretending
Speaker 4: to be ice because it's very easy to put on
Speaker 4: some body armors, some camouflage and a mask and look
Speaker 4: like these guys that are not identifiable. And therefore, when
Speaker 4: that is the case, how do you know what's there
Speaker 4: and what you're facing is even law enforcement in the
Speaker 4: first place?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And this is Chris Mays, Chris with a hey,
Speaker 1: who's a Democrat, and the Arizona Attorney General. And as
Speaker 1: you said, the way that it was framed in this
Speaker 1: conversation was basically, this is a disaster because if you
Speaker 1: have law enforcement agents that you can't identify, people absolutely
Speaker 1: have a right to just start blasting in Arizona based.
Speaker 2: On Castle doctrine.
Speaker 1: And in fact, the interviewer in that brom Resnik, asked like,
Speaker 1: are you giving people permission to shoot federal agents? And
Speaker 1: May said, like, the law does, right, Like that's the issue.
Speaker 1: You know, how do you know if some guy's just
Speaker 1: in a mask at your door with a gun.
Speaker 2: How do you know?
Speaker 1: And the fact that you're expecting Americans, a jumpy country
Speaker 1: of paranoid conspiracy theorists with four hundred million guns to
Speaker 1: see masked men at their doors and show discretion, it
Speaker 1: seems like a bad bet to me.
Speaker 4: You know, this comes back to the point I was making.
Speaker 4: I don't think the Attorney General was there. What was saying,
Speaker 4: just go shoot federal agents. I don't think that was
Speaker 4: the point. The point was simply what I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 4: which is when you can't identify or you don't know
Speaker 4: what is going on, or you're in a situation in
Speaker 4: which these people are not acting in a reasonable manner,
Speaker 4: you don't know what you're dealing with. It's the same
Speaker 4: thing I mentioned earlier, in which if you're that concern
Speaker 4: or you don't believe that due process or justice is
Speaker 4: going to be served, your decision making logic might very
Speaker 4: well change. And like you said, in a country where
Speaker 4: many people are armed, I think this is something that
Speaker 4: every side of this issue should be concerned about, including
Speaker 4: the law enforcement agents, because they are at risk too.
Speaker 4: As this continues, the risk to them increases, which will
Speaker 4: then be used to justify more force against civilians because
Speaker 4: it's a vicious circle.
Speaker 2: Well, that's a fun note to end on. Carl.
Speaker 1: I want to direct people towards en Range TV. You
Speaker 1: mentioned that you have a video about one of the
Speaker 1: shootings that we talked about, so I want to let
Speaker 1: you kind of plug that at the end.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks, Robert, I appreciate that a lot. So in
Speaker 4: Range TV is my video project. It's about ten years
Speaker 4: old now. You can just find it at range dot tv,
Speaker 4: which is my website, or you can just google in
Speaker 4: range TV on YouTube and you'll find it immediately. The
Speaker 4: algorithm will give it to you, but the search engines
Speaker 4: might and the video that I'm referencing there, and there's
Speaker 4: a lot of them on there in regards to topics
Speaker 4: like this historically speaking, but the specific one about danziger
Speaker 4: Bridge is right there. So if you go to range
Speaker 4: TV and type in danziger Bridge dam Zingr, you will
Speaker 4: find that two thousand and five shooting, which is just
Speaker 4: an example of so many of these had happened. And
Speaker 4: I do have some discussions on there about recent events
Speaker 4: about Alex Pretty and such as well. So Robert, thank
Speaker 4: you for having me back on the show. I always
Speaker 4: appreciate it, and I appreciate our collaborations, and hopefully somehow
Speaker 4: this stuff makes a difference.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hope so too.
Speaker 1: But at least I think it gives people something to
Speaker 1: like expect, right, like to look at this is kind
Speaker 1: of the cycle we're going to continue to see unless
Speaker 1: they pull back, unless ice and border patrols start using
Speaker 1: a great deal more discretion. Like, I think we've given
Speaker 1: people an idea of like where the future is trending,
Speaker 1: you know, and I unfortunately I'm not super optimistic about
Speaker 1: it right now, but you know, tomorrow's unwritten.
Speaker 2: It could happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.