WEBVTT - America’s Militarized Police 0:00:01.440 --> 0:00:09.200 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.680 --> 0:00:14.080 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's 0:00:14.200 --> 0:00:16.720 shuck and it's just us today. But that's okay because 0:00:16.800 --> 0:00:22.279 this is stuff you should know. The Is this a 0:00:22.320 --> 0:00:22.840 good idea? 0:00:24.800 --> 0:00:27.480 Oh, I think it's a good idea. You know, we're 0:00:27.480 --> 0:00:30.160 just going to kind of report what happened over the 0:00:30.280 --> 0:00:36.479 last you know, sixty years or so in the United States. 0:00:36.760 --> 0:00:40.600 Yeah, there's been this increasing trend that Yeah, I guess 0:00:40.600 --> 0:00:44.080 it's about how long it's been going on where the 0:00:44.080 --> 0:00:50.120 police departments across the US have become increasingly militarized. And 0:00:50.400 --> 0:00:54.120 to be specific, it's not just a question of wearing 0:00:54.600 --> 0:01:00.000 technical helmets and vests, carrying assault rifles sometimes driving through 0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:05.560 through cities and m wraps and tanks. It's also a 0:01:05.680 --> 0:01:10.200 change in attitude that it's created where people are no 0:01:10.319 --> 0:01:15.280 longer citizens who are presumed innocent until proven guilty. They 0:01:15.280 --> 0:01:18.560 are the enemy and the police at that moment are 0:01:18.600 --> 0:01:22.959 an occupying force coming in full force to that person's house, 0:01:24.120 --> 0:01:27.000 or even when they're not doing that, just looking intimidating 0:01:27.240 --> 0:01:30.720 to basically everyone who sees them. That's essentially what people 0:01:30.760 --> 0:01:33.880 who talk about this stuff consider the full scope of 0:01:33.920 --> 0:01:35.600 the militarization of the police. 0:01:36.200 --> 0:01:39.280 Yeah for sure. And like I said, this has been 0:01:39.280 --> 0:01:43.600 happening since about the nineteen sixties. If you go back 0:01:43.680 --> 0:01:47.640 in time to like the eighteen hundreds, when cops first 0:01:47.640 --> 0:01:50.200 started being a thing in the United States, they were 0:01:50.200 --> 0:01:54.160 initially just hired as politicians. It was called a patronage system, 0:01:54.240 --> 0:01:57.560 so they were kind of appointed. It wasn't until the 0:01:57.640 --> 0:02:01.160 nineteenth century that they started get a little more like, hey, 0:02:02.000 --> 0:02:07.480 let's squash that patronage. Let's hire police instead of appointing them, 0:02:07.520 --> 0:02:11.360 so they basically don't work for politicians. And that's when 0:02:11.760 --> 0:02:15.919 union started being founded. That's when formal training programs started. 0:02:16.760 --> 0:02:18.880 I know a lot of this stuff we've covered in 0:02:18.880 --> 0:02:21.040 other episodes, but I know, if we talked about Robert 0:02:21.040 --> 0:02:24.320 Peel and the London Metropolitan Police is sort of a 0:02:24.320 --> 0:02:29.680 big north star that when America started their like real 0:02:29.680 --> 0:02:32.680 police force, they often looked to London and how he 0:02:32.760 --> 0:02:33.040 did it. 0:02:33.360 --> 0:02:36.040 Yeah for sure. And part of that was what's called 0:02:36.080 --> 0:02:39.480 the professionalism movement of police. Like you said, no longer 0:02:39.560 --> 0:02:42.560 making them political appointees in the pocket of some politician 0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:45.000 who wants them to go rough up as opponent and 0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:47.480 part of professionalism. One of the central tenets is that 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:51.799 essentially the police is its own silo within society. It's 0:02:51.840 --> 0:02:55.160 not influenced by politics and all that stuff, which is 0:02:55.200 --> 0:02:57.360 good in that sense, but in the other sense, the 0:02:57.440 --> 0:03:01.880 police then kind of become their own well police force, 0:03:02.240 --> 0:03:05.919 and they make a lot of decisions about society, and 0:03:05.440 --> 0:03:09.480 as there's less I guess control or input or influence 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:12.680 from society, things can start to get out of hand. 0:03:13.040 --> 0:03:15.720 On the other hand, professionalism also meant like, you know, 0:03:15.960 --> 0:03:18.840 people who are trained as police now know what they're doing. 0:03:18.880 --> 0:03:20.919 They're actually getting professional training. 0:03:21.720 --> 0:03:23.480 Yeah, I mean it was in some ways it was 0:03:23.520 --> 0:03:26.960 a progressive era at first when the professionalism movement started, 0:03:27.000 --> 0:03:30.880 but even early on there was a guy in California 0:03:30.919 --> 0:03:33.799 and Berkeley, of all places, the chief of police there 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:38.800 named August August Volmar, who you know, even way back then, 0:03:38.960 --> 0:03:41.840 was like, hey, I think you know, it should be 0:03:41.880 --> 0:03:44.000 more like the military. He had a quote where he said, 0:03:44.000 --> 0:03:46.040 after all, we're conducting a war, a war against the 0:03:46.160 --> 0:03:49.520 enemies of society. So even back then there was some 0:03:49.680 --> 0:03:55.320 ideological seeds being planted. Other people have defended Volmer in 0:03:55.360 --> 0:03:59.360 this movement and saying, hey, you know, he actually is 0:03:59.560 --> 0:04:02.520 one of the people who first started formal training. He's 0:04:02.600 --> 0:04:06.680 the first person to encourage the escalation and hire the 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:09.760 first black and women police officer. So he also had, 0:04:09.840 --> 0:04:13.440 you know, people kind of sticking up for his movement 0:04:13.440 --> 0:04:13.800 as well. 0:04:14.000 --> 0:04:16.160 Yeah, he's become kind of the poster child for who 0:04:16.240 --> 0:04:18.360 started all this, and other people are like, that's just 0:04:18.480 --> 0:04:23.680 not really fair. So either way, he definitely was a 0:04:23.800 --> 0:04:26.719 huge proponent of police reform and kind of established a 0:04:26.760 --> 0:04:30.520 lot of the ways that police thought. And like you said, 0:04:30.600 --> 0:04:32.640 part of it was this idea that there should be 0:04:32.720 --> 0:04:36.479 some degree of militarization of the police. And then after 0:04:36.520 --> 0:04:40.680 August Volmer, nothing happened for about sixty years, and then 0:04:40.720 --> 0:04:47.279 in nineteen sixty five things nothing happened, nothing, The police 0:04:47.440 --> 0:04:49.479 just went along doing their thing and everybody was happy 0:04:49.520 --> 0:04:51.479 with what they were doing. Yeah, no, I know what, 0:04:52.360 --> 0:04:55.480 in the sixties everything turned and you can really trace 0:04:56.160 --> 0:04:59.400 the militarization of the police back to a couple of 0:04:59.480 --> 0:05:02.080 years in the sixties. There are other things that happened 0:05:02.080 --> 0:05:05.720 along the way. I think in the eighties there was 0:05:05.760 --> 0:05:09.920 a shootout in Miami nineteen eighty six that ended up 0:05:10.360 --> 0:05:13.880 leading to full throated support for police getting access to 0:05:13.920 --> 0:05:20.560 bulletproof vests, which I really don't think is problematic. Another one, 0:05:20.920 --> 0:05:23.560 we've done an entire podcast on the North Hollywood shootout 0:05:23.560 --> 0:05:27.080 in nineteen ninety seven. Yeah, that led access to police 0:05:27.680 --> 0:05:31.159 being equipped with long guns like assault rifles and stuff 0:05:31.200 --> 0:05:33.680 like that after that. And in both those cases, the 0:05:33.680 --> 0:05:36.919 police were unprepared. They were shown to be unprepared, So 0:05:37.360 --> 0:05:39.960 there were steps taken to prepare them that you can 0:05:40.080 --> 0:05:44.840 kind of say are military in nature, I guess, But 0:05:45.360 --> 0:05:48.520 that's nothing compared to the effect that the riots of 0:05:48.600 --> 0:05:52.200 the nineteen sixties had on the militarization of the police. 0:05:52.720 --> 0:05:55.240 Yeah, for sure, And we covered some of these in 0:05:55.279 --> 0:05:58.200 our episode on riots. But in nineteen sixty five, the 0:05:58.240 --> 0:06:02.400 Watts riots occurred. Then a couple of years later, in 0:06:02.480 --> 0:06:05.120 nineteen sixty seven, there were riots in Newark and Detroit, 0:06:05.960 --> 0:06:09.000 and this stuff was all over the news. It was, 0:06:09.040 --> 0:06:13.000 you know, being widely reported. Americans were getting pretty worried 0:06:13.000 --> 0:06:16.200 about just crime in general, sort of in the nineteen sixties, 0:06:16.279 --> 0:06:18.000 you know, thinking things were kind of out of control. 0:06:18.800 --> 0:06:21.560 There was a poll in nineteen sixty nine in Newsweek 0:06:22.360 --> 0:06:26.080 that found that sixty six percent of white Americans thought 0:06:26.120 --> 0:06:29.479 police should be given more power, and the Watts riots 0:06:29.720 --> 0:06:33.479 directly led to the creation of swat units. You know, 0:06:33.520 --> 0:06:36.760 we talked about this in our Swat episode all the 0:06:36.800 --> 0:06:38.200 way back in twenty ten. 0:06:38.480 --> 0:06:38.680 Wow. 0:06:39.640 --> 0:06:42.320 But there was a guy named Darryl Gates, who I'm 0:06:42.320 --> 0:06:43.960 pretty sure isn't that the same guy who was chief 0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:48.320 during the Rodney King riots? Okay, well, back then in 0:06:48.400 --> 0:06:53.040 sixty five, he was an laped inspector and he basically 0:06:53.200 --> 0:06:55.600 said what you said was like they were just completely 0:06:55.680 --> 0:06:58.480 unprepared for how to handle something like that at that scale. 0:06:59.080 --> 0:07:02.240 So he went directly to the military and said, Hey, 0:07:03.160 --> 0:07:05.279 I want to create a special unit that's more like 0:07:05.360 --> 0:07:08.320 you guys that can handle something like this, And out 0:07:08.320 --> 0:07:11.480 of that came America's first SWAT team in Los Angeles. 0:07:11.680 --> 0:07:16.040 Yeah, and swat teams are specifically considered a paramilitary police 0:07:16.120 --> 0:07:19.520 units or PPUs, like they are a sterling example of 0:07:19.600 --> 0:07:22.720 militarization of the police, right, And so you can thank 0:07:22.800 --> 0:07:25.720 Darryl Gates for creating this, like you said, although I 0:07:25.720 --> 0:07:28.680 suspect along the way somebody would have come up with 0:07:29.160 --> 0:07:32.240 something like this since they already existed in the military, right, 0:07:32.800 --> 0:07:35.440 So that was one big key point in the militarization 0:07:35.520 --> 0:07:39.320 of police. Another big one came from Lyndon Johnson. In 0:07:39.400 --> 0:07:44.240 nineteen sixty five, under his guidance, I guess, the United 0:07:44.240 --> 0:07:48.320 States passed the Law Enforcement Assistance Act, and Johnson had 0:07:48.360 --> 0:07:51.679 declared a war on crime, and part of it allowed 0:07:51.680 --> 0:07:55.320 the federal government to give military weapons to local police departments. 0:07:55.760 --> 0:07:57.840 So that was the first time this is actually happening 0:07:57.840 --> 0:08:00.640 all the way back in sixty five. And again these riots. 0:08:00.640 --> 0:08:03.320 There was one hundred and sixty riots in one summer 0:08:03.480 --> 0:08:07.800 nineteen sixty seven alone, So people were nervous, and like 0:08:07.800 --> 0:08:09.640 you said, a lot of people were in support of 0:08:09.880 --> 0:08:13.680 the police having things like access to military weapons. Then 0:08:13.720 --> 0:08:16.360 after that, a year later, there was the Omnibus Crime 0:08:16.400 --> 0:08:20.880 Control and Safe Streets Act, and that created this permanent 0:08:21.000 --> 0:08:27.080 administration that oversaw transferring military weapons to local police departments. 0:08:27.440 --> 0:08:31.480 Yeah, that was it was called the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. 0:08:31.800 --> 0:08:34.800 And because of that, cops were like, all right, I 0:08:34.840 --> 0:08:36.960 mean we can start, you know, police departments could start 0:08:37.000 --> 0:08:39.760 stockpiling these you know, military grade weapons, and that's really 0:08:39.840 --> 0:08:43.320 when it kicked off. People did, and this is a 0:08:43.320 --> 0:08:47.960 pretty important part of this episode, but not everyone was 0:08:48.000 --> 0:08:50.959 just saying, yeah, this is awesome. Some people stood back 0:08:51.000 --> 0:08:53.120 and said, wait a minute, why don't we like kind 0:08:53.120 --> 0:08:56.600 of look at like why these riots are happening. Of course, 0:08:56.600 --> 0:08:58.000 we need to be able to deal with this stuff, 0:08:58.040 --> 0:08:59.560 but if we get to the root of the problem 0:08:59.600 --> 0:09:02.240 and maybe try and stop them before they happened, that 0:09:02.320 --> 0:09:05.960 might be a good approach. And so in nineteen sixty seven, 0:09:07.520 --> 0:09:11.560 Johnson formed a commission. It ended up resulting in what's 0:09:11.600 --> 0:09:14.599 called the Kerner Commission Report. It was officially called the 0:09:14.679 --> 0:09:18.800 National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, but it was named 0:09:18.800 --> 0:09:22.280 after its chairman, Auto Kerner, and he said, I want 0:09:22.320 --> 0:09:25.920 to find out three things. What happened, why it happened, 0:09:26.000 --> 0:09:29.319 and how can we keep it from happening again. They 0:09:29.400 --> 0:09:33.959 surveyed different riots and uprisings in twenty three cities and 0:09:34.200 --> 0:09:36.520 assigned people and investigators to go out and you know, 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:39.920 kind of get to the bottom of it. And the 0:09:39.960 --> 0:09:45.000 conclusions of the report didn't lead to any substantive change. 0:09:46.160 --> 0:09:47.400 It was basically ignored. 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:51.000 It was and that's I mean, it was like the 0:09:51.040 --> 0:09:56.000 most controversial document ever produced by the US government that 0:09:56.040 --> 0:09:59.160 basically said there's institutional racism in the US and that 0:09:59.280 --> 0:10:05.840 is directly responsible for riots in low income, majority black areas, right, 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:07.920 But part of it was like, part of the problem 0:10:08.000 --> 0:10:11.600 is heavy handed policing. And the current report went even further, 0:10:12.240 --> 0:10:16.440 and they said the Commission condemns moves to equip police 0:10:16.440 --> 0:10:20.560 departments with mass destructive weapons such as automatic rifles, machine guns, 0:10:20.559 --> 0:10:24.000 and tanks. Weapons that are designed to destroy, not to control, 0:10:24.280 --> 0:10:27.920 have no place in densely populated urban communities. So all 0:10:27.960 --> 0:10:30.960 the way back in the late sixties, this government appointed 0:10:31.000 --> 0:10:33.760 panel is like, we should not be militarizing the police. 0:10:33.760 --> 0:10:37.160 That is the wrong direction. And like you said, it 0:10:37.240 --> 0:10:40.680 was just totally ignored. And not only that, rather than 0:10:41.840 --> 0:10:44.240 go in the direction of getting to the bottom of 0:10:44.280 --> 0:10:47.600 the root causes of this stuff and trying to cure 0:10:47.840 --> 0:10:53.160 social ills that way, probably forever, America went the other 0:10:53.200 --> 0:10:57.760 way and said, no, let's overwhelm these neighborhoods with full 0:10:58.040 --> 0:11:02.959 military style force, equipping the police with military weapons and armor, 0:11:03.600 --> 0:11:07.600 and we'll keep Bryant suppressed that way, And it worked, 0:11:08.080 --> 0:11:11.440 but at a really huge cost, which is essentially an 0:11:11.480 --> 0:11:15.520 erosion of trust in the police, not just in those 0:11:15.520 --> 0:11:17.280 communities but across the country. 0:11:17.960 --> 0:11:20.160 Yeah, and I mean, if you're wondering, like, wait a minute, 0:11:20.200 --> 0:11:22.560 Lindon Johnson did so much work for civil rights, this 0:11:22.640 --> 0:11:25.400 doesn't quite add up. That was kind of one of 0:11:25.440 --> 0:11:28.320 the reasons he didn't bury the report. I mean, you know, 0:11:28.480 --> 0:11:30.520 it came out and it was published, even in a book, 0:11:30.559 --> 0:11:32.880 so it got people talking at least, but he never 0:11:32.920 --> 0:11:35.240 spoke publicly about it. And one of the reasons why 0:11:35.960 --> 0:11:38.440 was because of his good track record with civil rights. 0:11:38.480 --> 0:11:41.040 He was like, this report, he felt like it was 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:43.240 an indictment on his presidency, and he was like, I 0:11:43.240 --> 0:11:45.520 don't like the way it makes me look. And so 0:11:46.000 --> 0:11:49.480 not only did he never even address it, but apparently 0:11:49.480 --> 0:11:51.920 when you have commissions like this, there are these customary 0:11:52.000 --> 0:11:54.600 letters thanking the commissioners for their service that they draw 0:11:54.679 --> 0:11:58.560 up that the presidents sign. I think they drew up 0:11:58.600 --> 0:12:00.600 those letters, but he wouldn't even sign those. 0:12:00.720 --> 0:12:02.880 No, they sent him out without his signature because he's 0:12:02.920 --> 0:12:06.560 being a big fat baby about the whole thing. That's 0:12:06.640 --> 0:12:10.160 essentially what happened. Yeah, sure, but yeah, because he ignored 0:12:10.160 --> 0:12:14.280 it publicly, and because they refused to implement any of 0:12:14.320 --> 0:12:18.000 the stuff, it went well they it wasn't implemented, but 0:12:18.200 --> 0:12:20.800 it was also given a lot of media attention, and 0:12:20.840 --> 0:12:24.000 it kind of laid the groundwork for discussions about race 0:12:24.080 --> 0:12:27.920 and the existence of institutional racism in America from that 0:12:28.040 --> 0:12:32.080 point on. So, even though Johnson ignored it or his 0:12:32.360 --> 0:12:36.840 administration didn't implement anything that it did get some attention. 0:12:36.920 --> 0:12:40.079 That book you mentioned became a best seller. There's a 0:12:40.120 --> 0:12:42.480 lot of media attention, and it really laid the groundwork 0:12:42.480 --> 0:12:47.400 for discussions about racism in America and institutional racism that 0:12:47.440 --> 0:12:47.960 would come. 0:12:49.160 --> 0:12:52.520 Yeah, for sure. So should we take a break and 0:12:52.559 --> 0:12:53.880 then talk about Nixon? Yeah? 0:12:53.920 --> 0:12:55.920 I think so, because that's a really big turning point 0:12:55.960 --> 0:12:56.360 as well. 0:12:56.760 --> 0:12:59.120 All Right, we're gonna take a break and we're gonna 0:12:59.160 --> 0:13:37.520 talk about Richard nick right after this. All right, we 0:13:37.600 --> 0:13:42.000 promised talk of Richard Nixon and his war on drugs, 0:13:42.160 --> 0:13:44.559 and I don't know why it didn't occur to me 0:13:44.640 --> 0:13:48.559 until ten minutes ago, But war on crime, war on drugs, 0:13:48.640 --> 0:13:51.480 if we're talking about the militarization of the police, maybe 0:13:51.480 --> 0:13:54.160 they should stop using words like war about everything. 0:13:54.240 --> 0:13:56.320 Yeah, that's a really good point. As a matter of fact, 0:13:56.400 --> 0:13:59.760 some people basically lay the blame on the militarization of 0:14:00.360 --> 0:14:05.400 America on Congress. Even Ran Paul Well, I don't necessarily 0:14:05.440 --> 0:14:09.080 agree with traditionally. He wrote in twenty fourteen and an 0:14:09.120 --> 0:14:12.120 op ed in Time that like, it's basically all Congress's 0:14:12.120 --> 0:14:17.160 fault for police militarization happening in the US because of 0:14:17.240 --> 0:14:19.600 all of these policies that were passed. 0:14:19.320 --> 0:14:22.640 Over the years. Yeah, So Richard Nixon comes along in 0:14:23.200 --> 0:14:26.920 nineteen seventy one, declared this war on drugs. He very 0:14:26.960 --> 0:14:31.680 famously called drug abuse public Enemy number one. And you know, 0:14:32.000 --> 0:14:34.480 there has always been drug problems in the United States, 0:14:34.480 --> 0:14:36.560 and along with that ghost crime. I don't think anyone 0:14:36.600 --> 0:14:40.320 disputes that drug deaths were increasing at a pretty big 0:14:40.400 --> 0:14:44.720 rate in the seventies, and so he decides to do 0:14:44.760 --> 0:14:48.040 something about it. If you talk to people on the inside, 0:14:48.600 --> 0:14:51.360 they'll say it actually has to do with other things. 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:54.920 One of his adviser's name was John Airlickman, who we 0:14:54.960 --> 0:14:57.880 talked about before, But he said what the War on 0:14:57.960 --> 0:15:00.400 drugs really was, if you knew Nixon, it was a 0:15:00.880 --> 0:15:04.600 ploy to attack his enemies, which was the anti war left, 0:15:04.640 --> 0:15:08.440 the progressive left, and black Americans. He has a quote 0:15:08.480 --> 0:15:10.160 he said, we knew we couldn't make it illegal to 0:15:10.200 --> 0:15:12.880 be either against the war or black, but by getting 0:15:12.880 --> 0:15:15.800 the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks 0:15:15.840 --> 0:15:19.160 with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily. We could disrupt 0:15:19.200 --> 0:15:19.960 those communities. 0:15:20.080 --> 0:15:23.400 Yeah, and one of the hallmarks of Nixon's War on 0:15:23.480 --> 0:15:29.920 drugs was really aggressive policing police tactics. One of the 0:15:29.920 --> 0:15:31.720 things that they set up was the Office of Drug 0:15:31.720 --> 0:15:35.720 Abuse Law Enforcement ODALE, which was the predecessor to the DEA. 0:15:36.480 --> 0:15:43.000 And this really aggressive approach moved the focus of fighting 0:15:43.080 --> 0:15:47.320 drug trafficking by targeting huge drug traffickers, which was traditionally 0:15:47.760 --> 0:15:51.240 how law enforcement had done it to basically busting like 0:15:51.720 --> 0:15:55.040 not even just low level dealers, but drug users in 0:15:55.120 --> 0:15:58.880 their homes. And one of the big things that they 0:15:58.920 --> 0:16:02.640 came up with to facilitate those raids on their homes, 0:16:02.680 --> 0:16:05.840 military style raids on homes was the no knock warrant, 0:16:06.120 --> 0:16:10.040 another big concept in the militarization of police. 0:16:10.280 --> 0:16:13.360 Yeah, and you know how it traditionally worked was you 0:16:13.400 --> 0:16:15.680 get a warrant and you go and you knock on 0:16:15.720 --> 0:16:18.800 someone's door and you see if they answered the door, 0:16:19.040 --> 0:16:22.280 and then when they answered the door, you know, start 0:16:22.280 --> 0:16:24.200 the process from there. A no knock warrant is just 0:16:24.240 --> 0:16:25.920 what it sounds like we've seen them on the news 0:16:26.360 --> 0:16:29.840 when they just go barging in a house. Basically previous 0:16:29.880 --> 0:16:33.400 to this, the Drug Enforcement Agency, or the predecessor rather, 0:16:33.800 --> 0:16:36.760 had conducted five no knock searches in the five years 0:16:36.840 --> 0:16:39.680 leading up to the formation of ODALE, and in its 0:16:39.720 --> 0:16:44.080 first six months they had over one hundred no knock grades, 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:47.400 And over the course of about thirteen months from April 0:16:47.440 --> 0:16:51.360 seventy two to May seventy three, they conducted almost fifteen 0:16:51.480 --> 0:16:52.680 hundred no knock grades. 0:16:52.800 --> 0:16:56.640 Yeah, and one of the huge problems that people have 0:16:56.720 --> 0:17:00.360 with no knock raids is that it's just rude. It 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:04.960 is very rude. It results in property destruction. If they 0:17:05.240 --> 0:17:07.600 or I should say, when they kick in your front door, 0:17:08.000 --> 0:17:10.480 you're on the hook to replace your front door, even 0:17:10.520 --> 0:17:14.760 if your house was mistakenly raided. They use flashban grenades 0:17:14.800 --> 0:17:18.440 that can injure people, and I mean just police using 0:17:18.440 --> 0:17:20.600 grenades I think should kind of stand out to you. 0:17:21.520 --> 0:17:25.000 They will engage in gunfire with assault rifles. It can 0:17:25.040 --> 0:17:27.520 be a really bad jam. But even like on a 0:17:27.520 --> 0:17:30.840 more fundamental level than when those things go really wrong 0:17:30.960 --> 0:17:33.280 or even when they go right, and the destruction that 0:17:33.320 --> 0:17:37.600 can result is the philosophical change that they represent something 0:17:37.600 --> 0:17:40.600 we talked about earlier, where if you go up to 0:17:40.640 --> 0:17:42.440 someone's house and you say you have a warrant, you 0:17:42.480 --> 0:17:46.040 say you're the police, you knock on their door, that 0:17:46.320 --> 0:17:50.159 you're treating that person like a citizen who is suspected 0:17:50.200 --> 0:17:52.840 of something but hasn't been proven guilty. If you throw 0:17:52.880 --> 0:17:55.479 a flash bang grenade through somebody's window and kicking their 0:17:55.520 --> 0:17:58.520 front door and come in like a seal team, yeah, 0:17:58.560 --> 0:18:01.479 you're basically saying you're guilty. We're here to remove you 0:18:01.520 --> 0:18:05.280 and take you to jail. And you basically have very 0:18:05.320 --> 0:18:06.600 little rights if any. 0:18:07.119 --> 0:18:10.000 Yeah, and any sudden movement, and I would imagine there's 0:18:10.000 --> 0:18:13.439 probably nothing but sudden movements. When someone does that, yeah, 0:18:13.520 --> 0:18:18.240 you're probably shot. And as an animal lover, that dog 0:18:18.320 --> 0:18:20.479 of yours that runs up and barks at someone that 0:18:20.520 --> 0:18:23.119 barges in the house is immediately shot on the spot. 0:18:23.280 --> 0:18:26.080 Yeah. So there's a lot of problems with these no 0:18:26.200 --> 0:18:29.760 knock warrants. They've been a target of police reform for years, 0:18:29.800 --> 0:18:33.200 but essentially there's nothing that's been done about them. 0:18:33.560 --> 0:18:36.160 Yeah, for sure. So while this is going on, all 0:18:36.240 --> 0:18:41.360 this increase of militaristic approach Darryl Gates is in LA. 0:18:41.560 --> 0:18:43.879 He's got his swat team up and running in the 0:18:43.880 --> 0:18:48.680 seventies and there were some really high profile shootouts. We've 0:18:48.880 --> 0:18:51.399 talked about. It's funny how many of these things have 0:18:51.560 --> 0:18:54.600 come up over the years. But one famous shootout with 0:18:54.640 --> 0:18:58.600 the Black Panthers, another one with the Symbionese Liberation Army 0:18:58.640 --> 0:19:02.600 the SLA that Patty Hurst was involved in. We covered 0:19:02.600 --> 0:19:05.560 that one, but they were very high profile on the 0:19:05.600 --> 0:19:08.879 news kind of things, and the whole concept of swat 0:19:08.880 --> 0:19:11.439 teams was all of a sudden, like really in the 0:19:11.480 --> 0:19:14.199 public eye and in cities all over the country, you know, 0:19:14.280 --> 0:19:17.520 major cities for sure, and even smaller towns they were like, hey, 0:19:17.840 --> 0:19:20.320 we won a swat team too, leading to the point 0:19:20.320 --> 0:19:23.280 where even though there are no there are no official stats. 0:19:23.640 --> 0:19:26.240 There was a criminologist named Peter Kroska who did some 0:19:26.400 --> 0:19:30.719 estimates that they're between fifty thousand and eighty thousand swat 0:19:30.800 --> 0:19:35.240 raids a year in the United States, right, So that's 0:19:35.359 --> 0:19:36.360 the point where we're at now. 0:19:36.880 --> 0:19:39.440 It's it's also well that and I think he also 0:19:40.240 --> 0:19:43.320 determined that in nineteen eighty there were something like three thousand, 0:19:44.240 --> 0:19:50.119 so that's quite a quite an uptick over the years. Yeah. 0:19:50.160 --> 0:19:54.760 I think one of the other overlooked influences on normalizing 0:19:54.800 --> 0:19:58.720 SWAT teams was the TV show Swat from the mid seventies. 0:19:58.720 --> 0:20:00.360 I think it just was on a season or two, 0:20:00.359 --> 0:20:03.800 but it was really popular, so people were like, SWAT 0:20:03.800 --> 0:20:07.040 teams are kind of awesome. Like you said, even small 0:20:07.040 --> 0:20:10.480 towns were getting these right now. From what I could find, 0:20:10.840 --> 0:20:13.520 the smallest town that has its own SWAT team, not 0:20:13.560 --> 0:20:15.439 just access to a SWAT team, but they maintain their 0:20:15.440 --> 0:20:18.679 own SWAT team is a town called Kerville, Texas, and 0:20:18.720 --> 0:20:21.800 it is a population of twenty five thousand. So SWAT 0:20:21.800 --> 0:20:25.480 team's definitely spread. And one reason why is not so 0:20:25.560 --> 0:20:27.480 the police can be like, man, this is so great. 0:20:27.480 --> 0:20:30.440 I love carrying out these raids and using flash bang grenades. 0:20:30.640 --> 0:20:33.080 I'm quite sure that it is a sentiment among some cops, 0:20:33.119 --> 0:20:38.080 but definitely not all. They are incentivized in every way, 0:20:38.200 --> 0:20:41.800 shape or form to have SWAT teams and to use 0:20:41.880 --> 0:20:45.520 them to carry out raids for basically anything. And the 0:20:45.560 --> 0:20:47.960 reason why they're incentivized to do that is because, like 0:20:48.040 --> 0:20:51.639 ram Paul said, the federal government has been incentivizing it 0:20:51.680 --> 0:20:54.920 over the years with policy after policy starting with Johnson 0:20:55.119 --> 0:20:56.520 and leading up till today. 0:20:57.520 --> 0:20:59.600 Yeah, and you know, you get a TV show like 0:20:59.640 --> 0:21:03.560 SWAT coming out and promoting and encouraging and sort of 0:21:03.560 --> 0:21:06.960 glorifying the use of SWAT teams. Yet Magnipi comes out 0:21:07.520 --> 0:21:10.600 and not every city is saying, hey, we need super 0:21:10.640 --> 0:21:14.640 hot guys in ferraris investigating things privately. 0:21:15.000 --> 0:21:18.560 No, but ironically, SWAT teams started to wear short shorts 0:21:18.640 --> 0:21:21.679 after magnum Pi came out during their raids. It was 0:21:21.680 --> 0:21:23.040 a trend for a little while. 0:21:23.680 --> 0:21:26.200 I sent you that picture of Tom Selleck at eighty 0:21:26.280 --> 0:21:28.840 years old the other day, Yeah, and he said he 0:21:28.880 --> 0:21:30.280 looks better than I done that. 0:21:31.119 --> 0:21:31.439 Man. 0:21:32.359 --> 0:21:34.200 He's put on a little weight, But I gotta say, man, 0:21:34.560 --> 0:21:36.000 Tom sellok still looks pretty dang good. 0:21:36.080 --> 0:21:38.800 It does, especially for eighty. Sorry to be agist, but 0:21:39.040 --> 0:21:39.679 it's true. 0:21:40.080 --> 0:21:43.160 Yeah, handsome older man. One thing you mentioned a second 0:21:43.200 --> 0:21:48.840 ago was the incentivization. Is that the word of cops 0:21:48.840 --> 0:21:51.480 to carry out these no knock rades and stuff like that. 0:21:51.480 --> 0:21:55.399 That really ramped up with President Ronald Reagan in the 0:21:55.480 --> 0:22:00.119 nineteen eighties. Under his presidency, they started doing more or 0:22:00.200 --> 0:22:04.760 more drug raids, a lot more frequent, a lot more intense, 0:22:04.920 --> 0:22:07.800 for sure. And part of the reason is because in 0:22:07.880 --> 0:22:11.600 nineteen eighty four he passed the Federal Crime Bill, which 0:22:11.760 --> 0:22:16.320 expanded civil forfeiture laws relating to drug arrests. So basically, hey, 0:22:16.440 --> 0:22:19.040 if you conduct a no knock grade and you go 0:22:19.119 --> 0:22:22.520 in there and you get you a gym bag full 0:22:22.560 --> 0:22:26.160 of money and cocaine, you get to keep that, keep 0:22:26.160 --> 0:22:26.840 those spoils. 0:22:26.960 --> 0:22:29.000 Yeah, before they had to turn it all over to 0:22:29.119 --> 0:22:33.280 the Department of Justice. The Fed's got all that. 0:22:32.240 --> 0:22:38.320 That's right, So it literally financially incentivized these no knock grades. 0:22:38.440 --> 0:22:42.080 Yeah, because if you're a budget strapped police department and 0:22:42.119 --> 0:22:44.560 all of a sudden you can make millions of dollars 0:22:44.640 --> 0:22:47.760 a year for your police department, or keep drug dealers 0:22:47.840 --> 0:22:51.119 cars and auction them off or whatever, that's a huge 0:22:51.119 --> 0:22:53.840 financial incentive to carry out those raids and get as 0:22:53.880 --> 0:22:56.720 much of that money as you possibly can. I don't 0:22:56.760 --> 0:23:01.160 think that that's to say unfairly that that's the reason 0:23:01.840 --> 0:23:05.320 why cops are organizing raids like that. Like, I think 0:23:05.359 --> 0:23:08.040 that it's just like I was saying, or we both said, 0:23:08.280 --> 0:23:11.240 a real incentive to carry out those raids rather than 0:23:11.880 --> 0:23:14.720 you know, say non military policing. 0:23:16.119 --> 0:23:18.720 Yeah, for sure. That was eighty four was a federal 0:23:18.760 --> 0:23:20.919