Speaker 1: It's it's could happen here? That's the podcast that this is.
Speaker 1: It's about things crumbling and uh, how to maybe uncrumble
Speaker 1: some of the things that are crumbling. And today when
Speaker 1: we think about the crumbles, when you start thinking about
Speaker 1: the hell world that that we're all increasingly inhabiting, the
Speaker 1: scary ship that is getting scarier day by day. Number
Speaker 1: one on a lot of people's list is gonna be
Speaker 1: the cops. Um real cause of anxiety for a significant
Speaker 1: chunk of people listening to this podcast right now, including
Speaker 1: its hosts Um Alexander, you and I have chatted before
Speaker 1: on the air. Our guest today, Alexander Williams, Um, you
Speaker 1: were a police officer in the past and you are
Speaker 1: not currently and you want to chat about Um. The
Speaker 1: topic kind of the way you pitched it to us
Speaker 1: is there's a lot of aspects of police training that
Speaker 1: are very similar to what colts do to indoctrinate people,
Speaker 1: and you kind of wanted to speak on that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of there's a lot of cross sections. UM. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I used to be a cop. I was in law
Speaker 1: enforcement for just shot a fifteen years until I woke
Speaker 1: up and got out luckily, and all the stuff that's
Speaker 1: been going on over the last couple of years, and
Speaker 1: the craziness and really ingesting a lot of stuff around,
Speaker 1: you know, cults, And I've started going down that the
Speaker 1: little checklist that you go down of like are you
Speaker 1: in a high control group? And man, they all just
Speaker 1: look just deemed in my head every single time of like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is exactly what it was like being a cop. Oh,
Speaker 1: this is exactly what it was like being a cop.
Speaker 1: And I'm curious, kind of before we get more into it,
Speaker 1: do you want to walk us through a little bit
Speaker 1: more kind of what was your process of Um. I
Speaker 1: don't de radicalization isn't exactly the right term, but I
Speaker 1: think you know what I'm getting. It's it's in the
Speaker 1: it's in the it's in the neighborhood Shore. Yeah. Mine.
Speaker 1: So I was raising a cop family. My dad was
Speaker 1: a copy, went the whole nine yards, retirement, the whole thing.
Speaker 1: And when I got into it, just shy of twenty
Speaker 1: two years old, which that's young to be making those
Speaker 1: kinds of choices looking back on it. Um. We had
Speaker 1: talked on the last podcast of your season one, UM
Speaker 1: about when my brother got arrested and got beat by
Speaker 1: my own team. My my own crew, and the jail
Speaker 1: that I worked with, which is the jails is where
Speaker 1: I primarily spent most of my time. And I think
Speaker 1: that that was ah item number one kind of on
Speaker 1: my shelf, like people call it, that's that's that's a
Speaker 1: big one to right on the shelf. Um. And during
Speaker 1: my training, I've always been an obstinate little bastard and
Speaker 1: I've always had that kind of like authority defiance. And
Speaker 1: in training they say start telling you really early, like hey,
Speaker 1: you know what you know where your family? We understand you,
Speaker 1: We're gonna get you. And then like the language even
Speaker 1: then kind of flared red flags wrong for me. And
Speaker 1: whenever a group of people says we're your family, and
Speaker 1: so right, like that's what you like, we're your family
Speaker 1: and you can talk to us anytime. Fine, where your family?
Speaker 1: And I got your back. Fine, we're your family, and
Speaker 1: that's why you need to do this. Things have gone
Speaker 1: to ride. It's it's it usually is where your family?
Speaker 1: Comma now? Yeah? Yeah, and yes, So that that was
Speaker 1: like literally day one, it was where your family? Now,
Speaker 1: where you're you know, they use all that language. The
Speaker 1: familiar language where your brothers, your sisters. Yeah, And the
Speaker 1: one that kicked for me and my brain was they said,
Speaker 1: within a year, you're not gonna have any friends that
Speaker 1: aren't cops. Like all of your friends are going to
Speaker 1: be gone because they're not going to understand you and
Speaker 1: they're not going to be able to be around you
Speaker 1: and handle you. So within a year, you know, we're
Speaker 1: going to be everything you've got. And for me, that
Speaker 1: was like that was a line in the sand, and
Speaker 1: like part of my brain was screaming like, nope, never
Speaker 1: letting that happen. I will not let my uh myself
Speaker 1: not have any non cop friends. Yeah, that's probably good
Speaker 1: because that's I mean, you have like when it it
Speaker 1: gets to it's the same thing that happens to anybody, right,
Speaker 1: like some people got like last year in Portland and
Speaker 1: activist Brain, where there was this all the people were
Speaker 1: spending time with other people were out protesting, and so
Speaker 1: we have this really intense bond and we also are
Speaker 1: kind of separated, increasingly separated from the people around us
Speaker 1: because we just can't communicate with anybody else. And that
Speaker 1: kind of going on for years and years because this
Speaker 1: is your career for twenty something years, and it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that would you'd be, you'd be after a couple of
Speaker 1: years of that you were inhabiting a different planet. They
Speaker 1: really are. And it's the how you said that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, this is usually twenty to thirty years, you know,
Speaker 1: because you want to get that sweet retire a minut
Speaker 1: at the end after you've abused your mind and your
Speaker 1: body for three decades um. It was it keyed off
Speaker 1: something that you and Garrison talked about in a previous
Speaker 1: episode of The Hiring Practices where the Washington Stay guys
Speaker 1: and they were they got busted because the therapist was
Speaker 1: showing tons of bias, and that brought up for me
Speaker 1: the hiring process because those psych exams are the only
Speaker 1: time as a cop that you get a psych exam.
Speaker 1: That's the only time you ever talked to a therapist mandatorially. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a really bad move. And there's a joke in
Speaker 1: cop culture of like, well, yeah, you gotta pass it
Speaker 1: before you get hired, because after you get hired, you're
Speaker 1: never going to pass that test. M because you know,
Speaker 1: being a cop is is micro dosing PTSD in your
Speaker 1: system the entire time. See I guess one thing I'm
Speaker 1: wondering because you you were in it for fifteen years,
Speaker 1: so that's that's not an insignificant band of time. Has
Speaker 1: it gotten to be more that way? Because I knew
Speaker 1: about fifteen something years ago when I was like eighteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: just like I lived in the shitty little apartment complex,
Speaker 1: and like the dude who live below above me, and
Speaker 1: then like the dude who lived two doors down. We're
Speaker 1: both Dallas cops um, and I don't know, like I
Speaker 1: you know, I was not particularly political at that point,
Speaker 1: but I didn't They didn't seem to have trouble relating,
Speaker 1: Like they would hang out and ship after work, like
Speaker 1: just like not like like we would be like barbecuing
Speaker 1: outside and they would drop by and stuff, and it
Speaker 1: was never I never got the sense that they were
Speaker 1: living in a separate planet. But this is like fifteen
Speaker 1: years ago, and I'm wondering, what to what extent do
Speaker 1: you think this is kind of increased in recent memory,
Speaker 1: Like this the kind of you don't really socialize with
Speaker 1: people outside of the family, so to speak. It is
Speaker 1: kind of like that. So, yeah, a lot of the
Speaker 1: language you're using is perfect because so what you're describing
Speaker 1: and what I remember from being a kid in the
Speaker 1: eighties and the nineties and stuff was um community policing,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's a literal style of policing, going back
Speaker 1: to more of like the professional police style before it
Speaker 1: went military, and in areas where people actively live in
Speaker 1: their community and engage with their community, there's a striking
Speaker 1: difference in the level of police violence that happens. But nowadays, uh,
Speaker 1: it's not the same thing because a lot of especially
Speaker 1: in bigger metropolitan areas, you're a cop there, you can't
Speaker 1: afford to live there. You're you're definitely not getting paid
Speaker 1: enough to live most of the time in the cities
Speaker 1: that you're supposed to be, you know, a part of.
Speaker 1: And it's gotten to the point where they actually teach
Speaker 1: this like method up methodically in academies. They'll be like, hey,
Speaker 1: if you want to be a cop in a big town,
Speaker 1: you need to start shopping around in the smaller cities
Speaker 1: around it to find a place to live, maybe like
Speaker 1: an hour away. Um. And then they also pitch it
Speaker 1: as a safety thing because it's all about you know,
Speaker 1: the cheology grossman, we're all under attack, So they'll teach
Speaker 1: people you know what, it's it's safest to not live
Speaker 1: in the town where you're a cop now m So
Speaker 1: it's become intentional and it's one of those things where
Speaker 1: because I don't want to breeze past. This is not
Speaker 1: the episode world talk about community policing. There's very good
Speaker 1: criticisms of community policing, and there's a lot of things
Speaker 1: that doesn't solve. But I think it's yeah, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: we're not trying to say, like the solution is just
Speaker 1: to get cops, you know, to be members of their communities.
Speaker 1: But it it is worse when they're driving in from
Speaker 1: an hour out of town and see it as like
Speaker 1: I'm occupying almost this area like it does. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: language fits perfectly, especially with Grossman and all that. Yes,
Speaker 1: and we've got a two partner on David Grossman up
Speaker 1: behind the Bastards if you want to check it out.
Speaker 1: But he's kind of the one of the big one
Speaker 1: of the big individuals who's who's done the most to
Speaker 1: like really push um. I don't even like it's usually
Speaker 1: framed as militarized thinking, but I don't know a lot
Speaker 1: of soldiers who have been who were trained to think
Speaker 1: that way about ship like most of the people I
Speaker 1: know who were getting shot at every day for years overseas,
Speaker 1: we're not thinking the way Grossman does. No, that's probably
Speaker 1: because he never actually wouldn't did anything. I think maybe
Speaker 1: we should probably Alexander, have you go start going through
Speaker 1: this um this document you put together, kind of walking
Speaker 1: through UM and I wonder if you might start when
Speaker 1: you kind of started thinking about police training in the
Speaker 1: mindset inculcated inside police departments from like a cultic perspective.
Speaker 1: When did that really start to come together for you? Uh?
Speaker 1: It probably really started to come together. Um uh when
Speaker 1: actually when I got involved, I used to be an instructor,
Speaker 1: when I got you know, behind that part of the curtain,
Speaker 1: and I got involved in those things. UM and I
Speaker 1: started going to teaching, and I started teaching other departments
Speaker 1: that would come to us, and it was it was
Speaker 1: a joke in my head at first, was like, oh,
Speaker 1: we all speak the same language. And then that got
Speaker 1: my brain rolling on linguistics and how linguistics work and
Speaker 1: how that you know, the words we use change how
Speaker 1: we perceive reality. And then I clicked and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're like a we're a subculture. We're we're like, no
Speaker 1: matter where you go in the country, we are a
Speaker 1: little subculture. We are a little group. And uh, that's
Speaker 1: what started to kind of push me towards like it's
Speaker 1: like being in a cult, because you know, you grow
Speaker 1: up around Central California and there's a lot of really
Speaker 1: religious people and you start seeing the intersectionality of it
Speaker 1: really fast. Yeah, and that's interesting because we've talked a
Speaker 1: few times on various shows I've done about how any
Speaker 1: good subculture, any really good party, has elements of like
Speaker 1: a cult. Right, There's there's little bits of that. There's
Speaker 1: bits of that in friendship and Whatnotah. Yeah, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just a thing like cults are taking advance nage, like
Speaker 1: pulling a bunch of things that people do together in
Speaker 1: order to manipulate human beings. Um, I'm wondering kind of
Speaker 1: where where you think where are some of the areas
Speaker 1: you think it kind of crosses the line with police
Speaker 1: from like this is you know a degree of like
Speaker 1: I'm sure firefighters have a degree with this, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: these are people that like I hang around with all
Speaker 1: the time and we wipe up in some intense situations
Speaker 1: together that causes there are culti aspects. That's always going
Speaker 1: to cause Um, I'm wondering, kind of where where are
Speaker 1: the first areas you started to realize this, this is
Speaker 1: crossing that line of Probably the first area is in
Speaker 1: how much the department like and this was universal and
Speaker 1: lots of departments that I had contact with, is how
Speaker 1: much the department owns you? And I mean like they
Speaker 1: use that language. They they'll tell you like, we own you.
Speaker 1: Like anything you do in your personal life, your first
Speaker 1: thought needs to be how does this affect my department
Speaker 1: and my my sheriff, my chief, my whatever. Like every
Speaker 1: single thing you do is supposed to be potentially pr
Speaker 1: for the department. So they tell you flat out in
Speaker 1: the forefront of your mind every waking moment you're on duty,
Speaker 1: you're you're you're here, we own you. Um. And that
Speaker 1: that was the first one that was just like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: like no, I punch out at the end of my
Speaker 1: shift and I go home. This isn't like, this isn't
Speaker 1: this is a job. It's not supposed to be a life,
Speaker 1: it's it's And that that was the first one that
Speaker 1: started going it. Um. Probably the second one that I
Speaker 1: really noticed was that you can tell anyone's a cop,
Speaker 1: because they'll tell you within about five seconds of meeting them,
Speaker 1: but their cop. If you're at a bar, you're at
Speaker 1: a party or at whatever, they'll be like, Hi, my name,
Speaker 1: my MI name's Alexander. I work for the christ part
Speaker 1: Like it's it's gonna come out of their mouth in
Speaker 1: two seconds, because it is. It's their identity, it's their
Speaker 1: entire sense of self. Yeah, I wonder because one of
Speaker 1: the things we've seen in the last couple of years
Speaker 1: in particular, is aspects of that bleed out, like the
Speaker 1: thin blue lion flags and stuff. And some of that's
Speaker 1: some of that's just you know, signpost. Some of that's
Speaker 1: just I know people who were in uh certain jobs
Speaker 1: where they transported things that were sketchy and had those flags.
Speaker 1: Is like, well, maybe the cop won't search marr, you know,
Speaker 1: but like there and there's elements that they're just you know,
Speaker 1: I don't want the cops to stop me from you know,
Speaker 1: fucking with these people or whatever. But I I think
Speaker 1: there's also elements of that um and I think probably
Speaker 1: television is to blame for aspects of this, but of
Speaker 1: kind of that sheep dog culture as as a as
Speaker 1: Grossman calls that are starting to bleed over into chunks
Speaker 1: of the civilian world. Um, And I guess I'm wondering
Speaker 1: kind of like, yeah, what that looks like as a
Speaker 1: as someone on like the the deep inside of that
Speaker 1: as a police officer, Like what is it? I'm wondering,
Speaker 1: like to what extent where you kind of conscious of
Speaker 1: that aspect of society like filling out around you, like
Speaker 1: some of these like the cult of the of the
Speaker 1: heroic police officer kind of spreading to be um something new,
Speaker 1: which which it really started doing from like two thousand
Speaker 1: and eighteen up to the present moment is when a
Speaker 1: lot of that shift seems to have happened based on
Speaker 1: kind of what I've saw. No, that timeline fits perfectly
Speaker 1: because I remember when I first got hired, the thin
Speaker 1: blue line. It existed. It was a thing, but it
Speaker 1: was just it was just a matte black with a
Speaker 1: blue line and that was it. Uh. And I you
Speaker 1: didn't really even in cop culture, like I didn't grow
Speaker 1: up seeing that thing in the eighties and the nineties
Speaker 1: met much, not at all. And then when I was
Speaker 1: in the department in the in the in the two thousand's,
Speaker 1: you kind of saw it. Every now and again, someone
Speaker 1: might have a pelpin like in the department, but out
Speaker 1: in public, nobody had that stuff. No nobody, nobody had
Speaker 1: any of that rocking stuff. And it didn't It never
Speaker 1: really bothered me until it showed up on an American
Speaker 1: flag and then that was that was a big red
Speaker 1: flag of like, oh this this is bad. I was like,
Speaker 1: this is this is nationalism, guys, this isn't good. And
Speaker 1: like my whole crew looks me and go what's nationalism?
Speaker 1: And I'm just like, fuck, is there this like sense
Speaker 1: that people are totying or is it this sense that
Speaker 1: like this is kind of the silent majority that backs
Speaker 1: us in doing whatever hard work we need to do.
Speaker 1: I think it's started out as tody, it really did,
Speaker 1: and it's but it's now shifted into um this whole like,
Speaker 1: you know, you get those guys that are like, oh,
Speaker 1: if I see a cop getting in a fight, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get out of my car and I'm gonna jump
Speaker 1: in there and I'm gonna back them up because they're
Speaker 1: like they're playing top They really want that authority or
Speaker 1: that whatever, but for whatever reason they don't go do it. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but this has been a way of like kind of
Speaker 1: they get to see themselves as being like a posse
Speaker 1: kind of a thing, like I'm in the I'm in
Speaker 1: the club. I'm not in the club, but like they're
Speaker 1: my buddies and is there. I don't know, does that
Speaker 1: make being in the club cooler? The fact that there's
Speaker 1: these kind of posses forming around it, the people kind
Speaker 1: of work worshiping, the culture associated with it. Mean, there
Speaker 1: probably is now, but honestly, when I was in there
Speaker 1: freaked me the hell out. It really really creeped me out.
Speaker 1: I didn't like it at all. Yeah, I mean, you
Speaker 1: have to think about, if you're if you're a reasonable person,
Speaker 1: how weird it would be to see your job turned
Speaker 1: into a cult like Garrison. You know that feeling um
Speaker 1: or you're you're going to learn when we when we
Speaker 1: make the coult. Yeah, okay, so I wanted to. I
Speaker 1: guess let's let's let's get back to this kind of
Speaker 1: list you put together, because you were sort of going
Speaker 1: through different hallmarks of what makes something a cult. One
Speaker 1: of them is the group displays and excessively zealous and
Speaker 1: unquestioning commitment to its leader and whether he is alive
Speaker 1: or dead, regards his belief system, ideology in practices as
Speaker 1: the truth as law. Um, and I'll remind you we
Speaker 1: were not talking about my podcast. We're talking about cults here.
Speaker 1: Uh that's right. Um, yes, stay quiet, garrisons. They're just smiling,
Speaker 1: silently staring at us through zoom. I see you, okay,
Speaker 1: And you've written under this the law is the higher power.
Speaker 1: They grant control of their actions. Blind faith in the
Speaker 1: system frees them from having to consider their role in
Speaker 1: the system. It's my job to arrest in charge high
Speaker 1: let the court figure out the rest. It sounds a
Speaker 1: lot like kill them all, let and let God sort
Speaker 1: of out. In this case, the criminal justice system is
Speaker 1: a direct replacement for God. I think, I think this
Speaker 1: is this is a really good point. This is even
Speaker 1: This is the thing even when I was like a
Speaker 1: dumb kid and thought cops were fine, This was the
Speaker 1: one thing that even like just even still freaked me
Speaker 1: out about cops because every once in a while you
Speaker 1: would see a video of like the cot was randomly
Speaker 1: like assaulting somebody, and then other cops nearby just mindlessly
Speaker 1: join in, and I'm like, whoa, that's so such a
Speaker 1: weird kind of group dynamic of they see someone doing
Speaker 1: something and they just don't question it at all and
Speaker 1: immediately back it up, no matter what actually was happening,
Speaker 1: because like I always tried to think things through more
Speaker 1: like logically, and that type of like mindlessness really freaked
Speaker 1: me out. And I think was maybe one of the
Speaker 1: first things that was like huh, maybe it was. It
Speaker 1: was one of the first cracks and like maybe cops
Speaker 1: actually aren't good. Um, I think, yeah, I think this
Speaker 1: is a really great point in terms of how this
Speaker 1: ties into like, yeah, it's my job to it's my
Speaker 1: job to arrest and charge. I don't sort out what
Speaker 1: happens afterwards, so it doesn't actually matter. Like it's like
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not actually hurting these people because if
Speaker 1: if they did something wrong, it's going to get figured
Speaker 1: out in the court system. I'm just doing this like
Speaker 1: preliminary task. It's it plays into a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: like weird psychological things that make you feel better about
Speaker 1: horrible actions you're doing because you have so much backing
Speaker 1: that's going to make sure what you do actually isn't bad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is like this, you know, this arrest, which may
Speaker 1: be physical and ugly even if they're innocent later. It's
Speaker 1: just part of what you have to do to get
Speaker 1: to the point where you determine whether or not they're innocence.
Speaker 1: So I'm not doing anything bad. Yeah. Yeah, And actually, Garrison,
Speaker 1: I it's it's what you said. It's perfect because in
Speaker 1: the bottom of the thing where I was just spewing
Speaker 1: notes to myself, I literally put down here it's not
Speaker 1: a job to them. It's a central component of their
Speaker 1: sense of self. This is why they will do terrible
Speaker 1: things to validate their perceived reality and how they things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they it's you might say, like, imagine how like think
Speaker 1: about how hard it is to get people to admit
Speaker 1: they're wrong about a political belief on Twitter, especially when
Speaker 1: their name is attached to their account. Now imagine you
Speaker 1: have like imagine that's the thing being argued, is like
Speaker 1: the central thing around which you organize your life. And
Speaker 1: also you get to shoot people who make you angry.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's it's a rough situation to be in.
Speaker 1: It is, it is. It's crazy. And the part that
Speaker 1: I wrote of it's my job to arrest and charge
Speaker 1: high I think that's that's a part of the mentality
Speaker 1: of it is like, yeah, I don't want to say
Speaker 1: it's like a game, but it almost is like a game.
Speaker 1: It's almost like they're trying to get points, like score
Speaker 1: high and talk to me about talk to me a
Speaker 1: little when you say a rest and charge high kind
Speaker 1: of what is that? What does that sort of look
Speaker 1: like on the ground before we get into kind of
Speaker 1: why people do that. So when when you're using your
Speaker 1: your powers of arrest, you're you're you're supposed to adhere
Speaker 1: to a penal code, but there is code and I'm
Speaker 1: always speaking to California because that's where I got my trainer. Um.
Speaker 1: They don't expect cops to remember every single element of
Speaker 1: every single PC code because that's ridiculous. No one's going
Speaker 1: to be able to do that. Um. So there's there's
Speaker 1: wigow room, there's play where I know you did this
Speaker 1: thing and I know it's what they call a wobbler,
Speaker 1: Like I can go felony and go misdemeanor. They'll teach
Speaker 1: you in the academy. They're like, if it's a wabbler,
Speaker 1: you always charge felony every single time, even if you
Speaker 1: don't think it's gonna work, charge it felony, kick it
Speaker 1: to the d A and let the d A c
Speaker 1: if they can make it stick. And if they don't, whatever,
Speaker 1: who cares. That's not part of our job anymore. Wow.
Speaker 1: And yeah, And that's one of those things where a
Speaker 1: lot of people I've had friends who got charged with
Speaker 1: felonies that got dropped, but like, you're still living under
Speaker 1: your You essentially have to live as like the diet
Speaker 1: version of a felon while that's hanging over your head um,
Speaker 1: which is not fun. No, And it's a big part
Speaker 1: of the whole criminal justice. I'm sure you guys are
Speaker 1: aware that d a's love to crack deals. They love
Speaker 1: to make their big make little backroom deals. And facilitating
Speaker 1: that is cops charging high. You're you're in the room,
Speaker 1: you're facing felony charges and the d A is gonna
Speaker 1: be like, oh man, I can knock that down to
Speaker 1: him is demeanor. But that's because he knows he doesn't
Speaker 1: have a case. But he didn't get that opportunity without
Speaker 1: a cop charging the higher charge. Now you know who
Speaker 1: isn't going to charge high because their prices are incredibly low,
Speaker 1: very reasonable, very fair. The products and services that support
Speaker 1: our podcast. Uh, we're back. So the next thing you've
Speaker 1: got on here is kind of talking about cult carrot juristics.
Speaker 1: Questioning doubt and dissent are discouraged or even punished. And
Speaker 1: you've written academies are commonly paramilitary. They're working to break
Speaker 1: down and build up cadets. As discussed last season on
Speaker 1: my show, the FDO program is where fresh cadets meet
Speaker 1: salty veterans in the cycle of abuse starts. The paramilitary
Speaker 1: environment is usually casual and unnoticeable until somebody questions orders
Speaker 1: or tradition. Questioning order gets the that's an order threat,
Speaker 1: while questioning tradition and suggesting improvements gets that's how it's
Speaker 1: always been done. There is no forum for change or progress.
Speaker 1: Some places have these forums, but they're just for public relations.
Speaker 1: And this is the thing that I think people who
Speaker 1: are trying to engage with from a perspective of like
Speaker 1: reform or whatever, trying to change law enforcement, as a
Speaker 1: lot of people were last year, where things get jammed
Speaker 1: up a lot is the there's this attitude among civilians,
Speaker 1: so to speak, among most of us that like, well,
Speaker 1: anything the government does should be subject to like what
Speaker 1: we should watch out, We should look at it, we
Speaker 1: should see if it works. If it doesn't work, we
Speaker 1: should change it to it could work better. And that's
Speaker 1: how kind of everything should work. And that's what you're
Speaker 1: getting it here. Is interesting because it's the reticence to
Speaker 1: actual change among police as legendary. But I don't think
Speaker 1: there's a lot of discussion of the psychology behind it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's that it goes back to that whole
Speaker 1: will do anything to reinforce our perception of reality thing. Um,
Speaker 1: Like I said earlier, grew up in a cop family,
Speaker 1: and it's specifically in the department that I worked at,
Speaker 1: so you know, we were called like blue bloods or
Speaker 1: legacy kids, and no matter what was going on, like
Speaker 1: anything that you questioned, it was always so, well, that's
Speaker 1: always it's that's the way it's always been done. That's
Speaker 1: the way it's always been done. And I grew to
Speaker 1: hate that answer, like with a passion in my personal
Speaker 1: life everywhere. I refused to give that as an answer
Speaker 1: when I became a sergeant. Eventually, Um, and yeah, they'll
Speaker 1: do anything. I mean they will, they will bend laws,
Speaker 1: they'll break laws because was going to charge them. M Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's what they've always done. Always. My department famously
Speaker 1: had um our union got all of our union news
Speaker 1: embezzled by people in our brass, and they got caught
Speaker 1: dead to rights. But that case never went anywhere. Nobody
Speaker 1: would touch it with a ten foot poll. Uh. And
Speaker 1: even if you go and google it and you try
Speaker 1: to look at archives from the local newspaper, it's gone.
Speaker 1: It never happened. And Yeah, that's interesting to me because
Speaker 1: that's like cops getting screwed over by cops. Why how
Speaker 1: is that? How is that? How is it? Like? What? What?
Speaker 1: What is the impulse to defend the hat Well, because
Speaker 1: so there's a division in in cop culture of like
Speaker 1: like ranks and a cult. Once you get to what
Speaker 1: they call brass, your your lieutenant, captain or higher, they
Speaker 1: don't look at us the same way they don't look
Speaker 1: at the grunts, the line workers, the guys doing the
Speaker 1: twelve hour shifts were all that family talk goes out
Speaker 1: the window and it's like, well we're and dad now,
Speaker 1: and they change their role in that world, and again
Speaker 1: to maintain that power and authority, they'll do whatever they
Speaker 1: have to do. Yeah, that's um. I mean it also
Speaker 1: kind of feeds into this this idea that like there
Speaker 1: used to be less restrictions. There used to be like
Speaker 1: we used to really be able to like do this
Speaker 1: and do that, Like we like a lot of violence
Speaker 1: get justified that way. But it also it provides an
Speaker 1: opportunity I think for like police who are trying to
Speaker 1: engage with reformers to do some sneaky ship because often
Speaker 1: this like community policing, is referred to like, yeah, we
Speaker 1: need to go back to the old methods of policing.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, but there were problem Do you remember
Speaker 1: the fire houses being used to black people during the
Speaker 1: Civil rights movement? Like there were issues back before we
Speaker 1: got militarized. It's it's yeah, and I mean, and that
Speaker 1: was the stuff they were doing outside. Um, the jail
Speaker 1: I worked in, because you bring up fire hoses, this
Speaker 1: is where I'm going. Um, they we had big cotton
Speaker 1: fire hoses up on the floors in this jail and
Speaker 1: it was actually built out of old parts of the
Speaker 1: Texas prison. And you know, everyone talks about the good
Speaker 1: old days when we could really do stuff, And the
Speaker 1: story that always went around was that when the inmates
Speaker 1: were getting rowdy, they would just walk down the tier
Speaker 1: with the hose and just nail them, and then Jesus
Speaker 1: Christ put it back because again, who who's gonna who's
Speaker 1: gonna tell on me? Who's gonna believe these guys? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that was back in like seventies era, you know,
Speaker 1: it's the that's the big fish story that guys used
Speaker 1: to always tell. But I'm like, I have no reason
Speaker 1: to not believe that story. It sounds yeah, very I mean,
Speaker 1: worre stuff happens in prisons today. Yeah, I'm not surprised.
Speaker 1: All right, Moving on down your list. This one's really
Speaker 1: interesting to me, and I'm curious from some detail on this,
Speaker 1: because this is not something I ever really thought about. Um.
Speaker 1: Mind altering practices such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues,
Speaker 1: denunciation sessions, or debilitating work routines are used in excess
Speaker 1: and served to suppress outs about the group and its leaders.
Speaker 1: And you've written cop talk briefings, evails are always negative,
Speaker 1: and the work routine is abusive, it is paired with
Speaker 1: hyper vigilance. Um, I'm I'm extremely interested in that and
Speaker 1: kind of like how it how it sounds like the
Speaker 1: kind of language that you're talking about people using among
Speaker 1: each other when they're doing this. So I you know almost.
Speaker 1: I mean I'm not even almost in kind of a
Speaker 1: PTSD response, I've blocked out like a lot of my
Speaker 1: memories from those years, Like I'll talk to that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll talk to X cops and they're like, hey, remember
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, and I'm like no, Um, So cop
Speaker 1: talk is mostly slang. It's like it's the ten code stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: But it gets stuck in your head and you start
Speaker 1: and it's it's one of those things where they talk
Speaker 1: about how you're not gonna have friends outside of work
Speaker 1: because you're gonna start talking in this language. You will say,
Speaker 1: you know, what's your twenty you know on code for
Speaker 1: if you see someone who's acting a certain way, like
Speaker 1: out of the ordinary, maybe a mentally ill person, you'll
Speaker 1: say like, oh, that's a jay cat. Like you'll use
Speaker 1: this jailhouse slang and it just it permeates your brain
Speaker 1: and like we said before, your words manipulate how you
Speaker 1: perceive reality and you just start seeing everything that way. Um.
Speaker 1: The big one is the hyper vigilance cycle is the
Speaker 1: is the abusive part. That's that's the part that really
Speaker 1: got me thinking of cults of how though you know,
Speaker 1: deny you food, sleep, make you work crazy hours and
Speaker 1: do all these things. Um. And that's that's that's the
Speaker 1: one that really keep the whole called aspect for me
Speaker 1: was the hyper vigilant cycle. The studies that have gone
Speaker 1: into it. Um. I learned about it from a book
Speaker 1: this little guy right here. It's called Emotional Survival for
Speaker 1: Law Enforcement. It's by Kevin M. Gil Martin, PhD. He's
Speaker 1: an X cop who kind of PhD in neuroscience and
Speaker 1: studies studied cops brains and got to see how they function.
Speaker 1: And he's the one that kind of coined this whole
Speaker 1: hyper vigilant cycle of you're always edging at this parasympathetic
Speaker 1: fight flight or freeze response time when you're on duty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it just stays up there the entire time. I'm sure
Speaker 1: soldiers about the same thing, funk. I'm sure you had
Speaker 1: the same thing, Robert when you were doing your war
Speaker 1: journalism stuff man, or fuck just being in Portland last year. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it keeps you at that edge, that cresting peak, and
Speaker 1: then you crash and you get back up and boom,
Speaker 1: you peek up again and then you crash and it's
Speaker 1: almost like a drug your brain becomes addicted to that
Speaker 1: peeked out feeling that you get from the hyper vigilance
Speaker 1: because you do here a little better, you see a
Speaker 1: little burn better, your brains moving a little faster because
Speaker 1: there's that heightened amount of adrenaline just constantly dripping into
Speaker 1: your system. And then you crash. And when you crash
Speaker 1: is when you're not at work. So you start associating
Speaker 1: not being at work with feeling bad and being at
Speaker 1: work feels good. Yeah, I mean the same thing happened.
Speaker 1: I'm sure Garrison. It happened like during the riots, where
Speaker 1: you would feel shitty when you weren't out there. Um, yes,
Speaker 1: some days I would go out, not even to just
Speaker 1: to cover it, just to kind of just stand there
Speaker 1: like a block away because there was nothing else to do.
Speaker 1: Like it was, there's like I could sit at home
Speaker 1: and rest, but I'll just be watching whatever is happening,
Speaker 1: not doing anything else. You just it. It feels it
Speaker 1: would feel more relaxing just to stand on a street
Speaker 1: corner and watch people throws stuff over events, because that
Speaker 1: that that's just that's more relaxing than laying down. It
Speaker 1: was like, it's that a very a very weird disassociate
Speaker 1: of like feeling that. Yeah, Like my my brain is
Speaker 1: it's accustomed to this environment. Now, so this is the
Speaker 1: environment I'm gonna be in. And look how fast your
Speaker 1: brain got into that groove now, you know, imagine doing
Speaker 1: it for thirty years, yeah, instead of like six months
Speaker 1: or even though it's it's it's started only after like
Speaker 1: two months or right, and or even even in some
Speaker 1: cases like a month. Yeah, it sets in fast. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: all right, so I wanted to get into the kind
Speaker 1: of the next thing here. Um. The leadership dictates, sometimes
Speaker 1: in great detail, how members should think, act and feel.
Speaker 1: E g. Members must get permission to date, change jobs,
Speaker 1: are married or leaders prescribe what to wear, where to live,
Speaker 1: whether to have children, how to discipline children, and so forth. Um.
Speaker 1: Very classic cult ship, right, like the nut really of
Speaker 1: what it had. We had all all that stuff when
Speaker 1: I was a kid. Yeah, I would guess that, like
Speaker 1: the time, if you ask someone for a quick definition
Speaker 1: of a cult, this is what they're gonna say something
Speaker 1: or there. This this is the kind of ship they're
Speaker 1: going to highlight. Um, and I'm interested in Yeah, just
Speaker 1: talk because you already chatted a bit about about this.
Speaker 1: Just the fact that, like the way in which police
Speaker 1: policy works kind of restructures how you function off duty,
Speaker 1: which I think is something that people everyone understands elements
Speaker 1: of it, right Like if you're a fucking dishwasher for
Speaker 1: a living, you will wash dishes differently forever, right Like
Speaker 1: if you if you bag your like bagshit at a
Speaker 1: grocery store, Like that's something that you'll always kind of
Speaker 1: know how to do. Like these bits and pieces of this,
Speaker 1: but it's not quite the same as what you're talking about,
Speaker 1: and I want to get kind of into why. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like when you're when you're as an adult,
Speaker 1: you do something that you're like, oh, I used to
Speaker 1: do that at my first job and I was like fifteen.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it does stick with the muscle. The muscle
Speaker 1: memory sticks in those narrow pathways that your brain gets
Speaker 1: carved unless you get the right kinds of mushrooms to
Speaker 1: fix that. So and then you just throw ship in
Speaker 1: the bad it smooth out those curves. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the leadership really does dictate. I mean some of them
Speaker 1: are some of them you can foy and some of
Speaker 1: the republic you can you can pull up policies and procedures,
Speaker 1: standard operating procedures, and you can look at like there's
Speaker 1: a ton of policies that literally dictate what you are
Speaker 1: and are not allowed to do in your personal life.
Speaker 1: Things you're allowed to post on social media places, you're
Speaker 1: allowed to go in uniform, and it all just starts
Speaker 1: like tinking away at your armor. That that sense of identity,
Speaker 1: that sense of self, and that's how the job becomes
Speaker 1: your identity. Again, it permeates every corner of your life
Speaker 1: if you let it. Um, if you don't have like
Speaker 1: the I don't know the mental strength to kind of
Speaker 1: resist that, it washes over your real fast. Because while
Speaker 1: that's all going on, especially as a young cop, you
Speaker 1: feel great, You're you're special. Now, you're you're in this,
Speaker 1: you're in the magic club. You you have the the
Speaker 1: symbol on your chest and the gun on your hip,
Speaker 1: and it's really easy to let that slip and just
Speaker 1: become everything about you. Um. Yeah, remember permissions like so
Speaker 1: permission to date and things like that might sound a
Speaker 1: little weird, but there are times where like my wife
Speaker 1: and don't dress like the typical conservative Central Valley person, uh,
Speaker 1: and at out of work functions, I would get I
Speaker 1: would get comments from people being like hey, maybe, yeah,
Speaker 1: your your wife has a lot of really colorful hair,
Speaker 1: like maybe she should tone that down Jesus for again.
Speaker 1: That was another one where I'm like, what, No, that's
Speaker 1: my wife. She can do whatever she damn well wants. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's that's the kind of talking that
Speaker 1: should get somebody slapped upside the head. Yeah. Um the uh.
Speaker 1: The next thing you have here is the group is
Speaker 1: elitist claiming a special exalted status for itself, it's leader
Speaker 1: and it's members. The leader is and I'm interested in
Speaker 1: kind of because you you have you have elements of
Speaker 1: this right um with it, like the sheep dog thing.
Speaker 1: We're kind of like the cop is the center of
Speaker 1: the cult for people who are not cop colts. I
Speaker 1: don't know, like does this exist, Like I don't see
Speaker 1: like cult a cult leader sort of within this this thing.
Speaker 1: I think it's it's almost more nebulous than that, where
Speaker 1: this idea of the agent of the law is kind
Speaker 1: of the center of the cult that the people who
Speaker 1: are agents of the law buy into as well as
Speaker 1: folks outside of it. You know, I don't know, this
Speaker 1: is probably deserve any I mean I'm interested in your
Speaker 1: thoughts on this. This probably deserves significantly more analysis then
Speaker 1: we're going to give it today. But I think it's
Speaker 1: a fascinating thing to think about. Right. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like how I where I put earlier that the criminal
Speaker 1: justice system is the direct substitute for God. It is God,
Speaker 1: the law is God. I mean, how many times have
Speaker 1: you gotten into a debate with someone where they'll be like, well,
Speaker 1: it's ethically fine because it's legal, and you're like, well, no,
Speaker 1: legality does not equal you know, ethical or moral and there.
Speaker 1: But there's these people in America who are just like, no,
Speaker 1: if it's legal, it's legal, that means it's okay. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the elitism, yeah, it's obvious. I mean, if you've
Speaker 1: met it is kind of a religious belief though that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's illegal, so it's bad. She there were a criminal,
Speaker 1: so they deserved at sea making making a homebrewed cleric
Speaker 1: that believed in the law for D and D was
Speaker 1: pretty easy, uh, to be like, yeah, this is a church,
Speaker 1: this is a religion. Um, yeah it is. It is
Speaker 1: the sheep dog hum on im on sheep and the
Speaker 1: you know, it's us against the wolves and blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: And then we have a guy's name in here that
Speaker 1: I won't say for anonymity. But we had we had
Speaker 1: a braska, a lieutenant that would give us these prepared
Speaker 1: speeches whenever he thought someone's morale was getting low, uh,
Speaker 1: where he would talk about how and he was wrong
Speaker 1: that the word sheriff comes from um like Sanskrit or
Speaker 1: Arabic sharif, which is not true. It comes from shire reef.
Speaker 1: It's old English, just squished because English is a hideous language. Um.
Speaker 1: But he had to. I mean, I can't count how
Speaker 1: many times he told me that exact same speech to
Speaker 1: my face, over and over again, as if it was
Speaker 1: the first time I was hearing the story. And it's
Speaker 1: to me, that was another thing that clicked. I'm like, God,
Speaker 1: it's like talking. It's like a call in response when
Speaker 1: you're in church sometimes. Yeah, anytime you confront a religious person,
Speaker 1: they just have that that that that dogmatic skeew that
Speaker 1: regurgitates and just like, well, here's my opinion that I
Speaker 1: was told by someone who told me. Okay, so Alexander, Um,
Speaker 1: we've got more to say. You've got a lot more
Speaker 1: that you've written here. Um, we're gonna We've gone kind
Speaker 1: of a little over the time we had here, so
Speaker 1: I want to have you back on tomorrow for part
Speaker 1: two of this before we roll out, Do you have
Speaker 1: anything you'd like to plug? Maybe the Washington State Patrol? No, um, no,
Speaker 1: I don't really have anything to plug. I'm I'm never
Speaker 1: say die where all the easier threes because I'm that
Speaker 1: elder nerd from the nineties. Yeah, and uh saw hackers
Speaker 1: in the theater. I it's claimed to fame, So yeah
Speaker 1: on Twitter if you want to come see me. How
Speaker 1: are your hips doing about that? It's okay, Garrison's never
Speaker 1: seen Wayne's World. Oh I know that's true. That's true,
Speaker 1: too young. I tried to show Wayne's World to my brother,
Speaker 1: who's still like five years older than Garrison, and did
Speaker 1: not take. Didn't take. It's it's a it's a time thing.
Speaker 1: My oldest is about four years younger than Garrison, and
Speaker 1: they've seen Wayne's World. I'm just saying, wow, okay, Uh,
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