Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know
Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant,
Speaker 1: and this is Stuff you Should Know the podcast. Are
Speaker 1: you waiting on me? Yes, it is Josh. Did you
Speaker 1: see Mark Marin? What do you mean he topp old
Speaker 1: Irony Glass for a few days. I did see that
Speaker 1: out in nowhere. Yeah, he must have had some sort
Speaker 1: of little, uh, publicity push or something something something happened. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's great for him. Yeah, he has a great show though. Yes,
Speaker 1: he does really good interviewer Mr Maron. I emailed him
Speaker 1: one time, told him that and he was like, he said,
Speaker 1: thanks a lot many Who are you? He probably did,
Speaker 1: but that's fine. Yeah, he's a nice guy. I'm not
Speaker 1: a famous comedian. No, not yet, No, Chuck. Did you
Speaker 1: ever watch Wkrappe and Cincinnati? Did so? Do you remember
Speaker 1: the one? Like every once in a while, different Strokes
Speaker 1: would do this too. They'd be like, uh, at the
Speaker 1: end of the episode when it was really serious, there
Speaker 1: would be no clapping. It'd just be quiet, right, but
Speaker 1: you could tell the audience was still. There was always
Speaker 1: somebody moving in their seat or coughing or whatever, so
Speaker 1: like the audience was just sitting there being silent, which
Speaker 1: threw a pall over the entire episode, even though it
Speaker 1: was jarring, and even as a lad, I remember thinking like, wow,
Speaker 1: something big just happened that I wasn't paying attention to,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, And there's a particular w KRP episode
Speaker 1: that stands out that was like that, the one where
Speaker 1: they sponsored the Who concert where those people got trampled.
Speaker 1: All right, did you see that one? Yeah? I remember,
Speaker 1: I knewhere you were going with that. So so this
Speaker 1: happened in real life. There was a a WHO concert
Speaker 1: in Cincinnati and it was general admission seating, which apparently
Speaker 1: UM it away with general admission for a while, open
Speaker 1: the gates and run to wherever you want to go.
Speaker 1: There was like a sound check, and people mistook the
Speaker 1: sound check for an early start. Was a late sound check,
Speaker 1: and they thought it was an early start, so people
Speaker 1: started pushing in. Well they I guess the people who
Speaker 1: owned the theater had fewer entrances open than they could have,
Speaker 1: so this massive people just started pushing forward, and um,
Speaker 1: some people got pressed against the doors and were asphyxiated
Speaker 1: by this huge crowd. People trampled to death. To this day,
Speaker 1: I mean, you can explain what the trigger was, but
Speaker 1: to this day, there's a lot of study that that
Speaker 1: has come up empty handed to that kind of crowd behavior.
Speaker 1: That's what it's called. It's the study of crowd behavior.
Speaker 1: People as individuals act differently when they submit to a
Speaker 1: larger collective group, a quote unquote mob mentality. That's part
Speaker 1: of it too, But things like that that stampede, um
Speaker 1: Black Friday stampedes. Have you ever seen video of this?
Speaker 1: They're nuts. There's one where like it ends with this
Speaker 1: guy coming into the foreground and he's like leaning over
Speaker 1: this railing like a target or something, and he's like,
Speaker 1: I got this horrible look on his face and he's
Speaker 1: like trying to catch his breath and like he's been
Speaker 1: trampled and they managed to extract him, and he's sitting
Speaker 1: there like leaning over the rail and catching his breath,
Speaker 1: and you just know that like once he called his breath,
Speaker 1: he was going to go right into the target and
Speaker 1: start shopping. But um, so all of this this is
Speaker 1: called crowd behavior. And one of the big ones, the
Speaker 1: one that's the one that's really always been elusive, is rioting.
Speaker 1: Why riots happened, Why ordinary people behave the way they
Speaker 1: do in a riot, breaking glass, beating up people for
Speaker 1: no good reason like stealing, looting, all this stuff. Right,
Speaker 1: One thing they have kind of figured out is how
Speaker 1: to control riots, right, Yes, they have, and they've gotten
Speaker 1: better at it over the years, um as recently as
Speaker 1: in l A with the famous La riots which my
Speaker 1: brother lived out there. At the time, they still weren't
Speaker 1: doing a great job at it, because I think that
Speaker 1: was a big learning experience. Your injuries, seven thousand fires
Speaker 1: Troy on the night before Halloween or something, well, we'll
Speaker 1: talk about Detroit to more than twelve thousand arrest, a
Speaker 1: billion dollars in damage after the Rodney King verdict came back.
Speaker 1: Is not guilty obviously for the four white cops who
Speaker 1: beat the tar out of Rodney King. And uh it
Speaker 1: lasted from April twenty ninth until May second. That was
Speaker 1: full on riding going on streets of l A. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they've gotten better at it since then. It's poor
Speaker 1: Reginald Denny getting shot in the leg. The trucker who
Speaker 1: got pulled out. Yeah, I do remember that. That was
Speaker 1: crazy man. So that's what's called the mob mentality. And
Speaker 1: one of the things this is the grabster ed Grabanowski
Speaker 1: always gets the good stuff. He's quality. One thing he
Speaker 1: pointed it out here, which is a big deal with
Speaker 1: my mentality I never considered, is anonymity. That is the point, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: You've got a crowd of people who are like, kind
Speaker 1: of all feeling the same way at the very least,
Speaker 1: they're all feeling the same energy. But the cops are
Speaker 1: standing there staring at you. You're not gonna do anything
Speaker 1: if the cops are staying they're staring at you, especially
Speaker 1: if you think you may be the only one to
Speaker 1: do something right. You're not gonna throw them all the
Speaker 1: top cocktail at a cop when you think everyone in
Speaker 1: the crowd is gonna look at you like, what did
Speaker 1: you just do that for? Right, But if you're anonymous,
Speaker 1: not just to the cops, but within the crowd, you're
Speaker 1: probably going to start something. Yeah, it gives it makes
Speaker 1: you do things you wouldn't ordinarily do you were on
Speaker 1: your own. And there's different schools of thoughts with with riots, right,
Speaker 1: they The prevailing idea is that UM riots are formed
Speaker 1: by a few people who do act as triggers once
Speaker 1: the risk of being arrested is low enough through anonymity,
Speaker 1: a few people who are angry enough have something to gain,
Speaker 1: there's some there's some reason they act as the leaders
Speaker 1: or the people who start the riots and everybody else
Speaker 1: which they're considered a homogeneous group, right of soccer fans
Speaker 1: or UM people are low on the socioeconomic ladder. In
Speaker 1: l A. R UM, they just got caught up in
Speaker 1: the in the mob mentality, right, And that's that's UM.
Speaker 1: That's pretty much how most people see riots these days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's basically every riot you just described. There's two
Speaker 1: things you need, the fuel and the spark. It's like
Speaker 1: a fire, and it's very much accurate to call it that.
Speaker 1: The fuel can build up and usually does build up
Speaker 1: over time. Uh. In the case of l A. It
Speaker 1: was it was racial prejudiced and what they perceived as
Speaker 1: unfair treatment because they might have been poor. Well, not
Speaker 1: just that, I think the l A p D has
Speaker 1: been especially at that time and was viewed as like
Speaker 1: the most crooked police department in the country. So this
Speaker 1: builds up over time. Maybe it's a union, uh, angry
Speaker 1: at their company, angry for years, decades even over mistreatment.
Speaker 1: And once you get a big enough group of people
Speaker 1: that are all ticked off about something together and you
Speaker 1: can have a spark, which doesn't even need to be
Speaker 1: something real. Sometimes it can be a rumor did something happen.
Speaker 1: People get whipped up to a frenzy. That spark ignites
Speaker 1: the fuel and you've gotta ride on your hands, and
Speaker 1: that sparked. Another term for it is a shilling um incident,
Speaker 1: shilling incident. I think, Yeah, there's this guy who studied
Speaker 1: crowd mentalities, crowd behavior and he uh, I think his
Speaker 1: name is Thomas Shilling. And um, a shilling incident is
Speaker 1: like a signal. It can be anything from like when
Speaker 1: you when you reach that peak moment where everybody's charged
Speaker 1: up but nobody's gonna do anything. If somebody suddenly shatters
Speaker 1: like a plate glass window, everybody's gonna go nuts. A
Speaker 1: shilling incident just happened. Yeah, But another way to put
Speaker 1: it is that that spark, right, but it takes something
Speaker 1: like that signal, like it's go, time for the balance
Speaker 1: to tip and a riot, a crowd to go from
Speaker 1: a crowd to a riot. Josh, we talked about in
Speaker 1: the past. Uh, they were not very good at it.
Speaker 1: And when I say they're not very good, it was
Speaker 1: because it was us versus them. Cops go in and
Speaker 1: start beating people into submission, and that's not the way
Speaker 1: they want to do things nowadays. No, it was viewed
Speaker 1: as a battle. Yeah, like let's go out and fight
Speaker 1: each other. Yeah, like Braveheart or uh the other one
Speaker 1: that he made like that. Yeah, and we've got better
Speaker 1: weapons cops do, so we're we're gonna win despite the
Speaker 1: fact that you may outnumber us, although sometimes we might
Speaker 1: out number you and have better weapons and um. Apparently
Speaker 1: one of the things they figured out this happened in
Speaker 1: l A. And when you don't number of the cops,
Speaker 1: the cops back down. Apparently that's what they did in
Speaker 1: l A. They were like, there's something we can do, well,
Speaker 1: we'll get eaten alive, so we're going to just kind
Speaker 1: of hang back and try to contain that, right. You know. Interesting, Uh,
Speaker 1: these days, it's pretty cool how they do it. There
Speaker 1: is a command team. They form a square, a big
Speaker 1: square of officers. Yeah. And by the way, it really
Speaker 1: helps to see this graphic. Do you have that to
Speaker 1: This graphic is as helpful as a graphic I've ever
Speaker 1: seen in my entire life. Yeah. So what you've got
Speaker 1: is you've got a big square of officers. In the
Speaker 1: center of that square, you have your command team giving
Speaker 1: out the orders. They're obviously well protected because they're in
Speaker 1: the middle. Yeah, and the outside the sides in the
Speaker 1: front and back are called echelons, right, yes, And and
Speaker 1: echelon is about ten to twelve cops that are you
Speaker 1: know that you know what echelon you're in, so you
Speaker 1: know what to do, like, oh, we'll get into that
Speaker 1: in a second. There's also in the center there's an
Speaker 1: arrest team, and they are the only people that are
Speaker 1: actually placing people under arrest. Everyone has their own job,
Speaker 1: and what I get from this is you gotta stick
Speaker 1: to your job in order to be effective. If you're
Speaker 1: in a front echelon, don't start arresting guys. It's not
Speaker 1: your job. And I think the whole thing would fall apart.
Speaker 1: Like you say, so, uh, it's very mobile, very tactical.
Speaker 1: You can change direction if if all those dudes in
Speaker 1: the square all of a sudden said, you know, the
Speaker 1: command team sends out the message we've got people coming
Speaker 1: from the south. They can all turn around and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, you've got the same effective team go
Speaker 1: in the other direction, very reactive, very act. The echelon's
Speaker 1: cover each other. They don't all go out at once
Speaker 1: like an echelon. If they want to advance, they'll send
Speaker 1: out one echelon while everyone else covers them. Then the
Speaker 1: next echelon will go forward. And then what you're doing
Speaker 1: is you're moving the square into another position. Right. And
Speaker 1: remember we said that rioting groups are generally taking as
Speaker 1: homogeneous mostly people who get caught up in this thrill
Speaker 1: of the moment um when they're confronted with police. The
Speaker 1: idea is that they really just kind of want to
Speaker 1: go home. They don't want to get arrested. They don't
Speaker 1: have any dog in the fight. So if they see
Speaker 1: this tactical squad coming at them, um, the one of
Speaker 1: the first points of the squad is to let these
Speaker 1: people go home. That's that's what the cops want, is
Speaker 1: they would just want you to get out of there.
Speaker 1: So it's not just like this solid wall, although it
Speaker 1: can be. These echelons they're also very capable of spreading
Speaker 1: out to let people flow through them and get out
Speaker 1: of there. That's what they want to do. They want
Speaker 1: to leave you an escape route, whereas in the old
Speaker 1: days they would actually try and strategically trap you in
Speaker 1: a corner, which with a night stick. But you know,
Speaker 1: when you're trapped in a corner, you're gonna be even
Speaker 1: more enraged and scared. So that just led to more violence.
Speaker 1: So if you are confronted by an echelon of this, right,
Speaker 1: let's say you're just an average person and you're you
Speaker 1: want to get out of there, you're probably going to
Speaker 1: be able to make it through or around them, right.
Speaker 1: But if you're just standing there and you're throwing rocks still,
Speaker 1: or you're shouting at him, or you're not moving and
Speaker 1: they're telling you to, what's gonna happen is they're gonna
Speaker 1: close ranks and then the the two officers that you're
Speaker 1: in between are gonna open up, and you're gonna find
Speaker 1: yourself swallowed by this tactical square of riots basically, and
Speaker 1: that's when you're going to be introduced to the arrest team.
Speaker 1: You were in a walled area of cops and that's
Speaker 1: probably not a fun place to know you're going to
Speaker 1: have your you're in trouble. So Josh, you want to
Speaker 1: talk about some of the devices these officers used to
Speaker 1: quell a crowd. You're you're not going to go into
Speaker 1: a riot, you know, wearing Madras shorts. You know it's
Speaker 1: not you could, but you're gonna be wearing them. Wonder
Speaker 1: what's called hardtack, which is a helmet with a visor. Right, Um,
Speaker 1: body armor and not just like the the chest armor
Speaker 1: chest and back, but like you know, the or the best,
Speaker 1: that's what it's called. You're you're gonna have body armor
Speaker 1: on your arms, your legs, your shins, probably flame retardant,
Speaker 1: and then a shield and the shield in the in
Speaker 1: the face mask are made of um what lex and yeah,
Speaker 1: which is like bulletproof if it's thick enough. This stuff
Speaker 1: isn't thick enough. It's not intended to be bulletproof, but
Speaker 1: it's probably brickproof or at least Molotov cocktail proof. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: that's what you're looking for. Um they have, um a
Speaker 1: baton is probably what most of these uh women in
Speaker 1: man I keep saying, Dudes, they're probably some female riot cops.
Speaker 1: I imagine that are holding a baton so generally made
Speaker 1: of wood about forty two inches long, and they use
Speaker 1: these instead of rifles because rifles can ignite a crowd,
Speaker 1: and you don't want someone grabbing your rifle, so they
Speaker 1: want to try and keep things as low key as
Speaker 1: possible initially at least, and bringing a rifle into the
Speaker 1: fight definitely will not do that. Well, no, not not
Speaker 1: only that, but if if somebody gets the rifle away
Speaker 1: from the cops, bad news. Yeah, they have non lethal rounds,
Speaker 1: but it just quick to point out there is really
Speaker 1: no such thing as a non lethal round. Anything fired
Speaker 1: from a gun can kill you potentially. Just ask Brandon Lee. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well I guess you couldn't ask Brandon Lee, but the
Speaker 1: director of the crow. Uh. And they are fired from
Speaker 1: a forty millimeter gun and it's one of those sometimes
Speaker 1: it's a single shot, but it's like a grenade launcher.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's those really cool looking things with a six
Speaker 1: or eight round barrels. Looks like a Tommy gun sort of.
Speaker 1: It's very cool. But they shoot out forty millimeter shells, right,
Speaker 1: and like you said, they're less than lethal rounds, right,
Speaker 1: less lethal. Um. And basically you have a couple of
Speaker 1: different kinds of rounds in or a couple of different categories.
Speaker 1: Like you know, blunt force rounds, right, and blunt force
Speaker 1: rounds are basically meant to knock you on your bottom
Speaker 1: when you're in the middle of a riot, a big
Speaker 1: thud in your chest, or at the very least, to
Speaker 1: smack your legs in your stomach. Because if you're a rioter,
Speaker 1: and you aren't, you weren't planning to be in a
Speaker 1: riot that day, you may be wearing moderates shorts, right,
Speaker 1: And so these rounds, these blunt force rounds, there's a
Speaker 1: wood baton, the rubber baton, the phone baton, all of
Speaker 1: these are designed. Um. They look like little canisters. They're
Speaker 1: shot from these grenade launchers and they're filled with these things, right,
Speaker 1: They're filled with little hockey pook like disks, right that
Speaker 1: when the shell hits the ground, usually you shoot them
Speaker 1: at the ground in front of protesters. When they hit
Speaker 1: the ground, the shell opens up and all these little
Speaker 1: disks just spread out and smack a bunch of people
Speaker 1: all at once, and all of a sudden they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: and snap out of their rioting mentality hopefully and go home. Right,
Speaker 1: that's the idea. That's the idea of the blunt force round.
Speaker 1: There's also a bean bag around um, which is exactly
Speaker 1: what it sounds. It shoots little square bean bags, or
Speaker 1: there's some that look like tadpoles if you are you know, aiming,
Speaker 1: if you want to be accurate. And then there's the
Speaker 1: sponge round, right, which is the cleanest of all the
Speaker 1: blunt force rounds. It's basically like a sponge bullet, which
Speaker 1: I imagine hurts pretty bad. Yeah. Actually, my nephew know
Speaker 1: it shot me in the back over christ Us with
Speaker 1: this little gun. Then he got a little air gun
Speaker 1: that shoots a little rubber pellets. Oh yeah, the little
Speaker 1: yellow ones. Hh yeah, very soft, I think so. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a second time for some reason in my life,
Speaker 1: I volunteered to be shot because everyone was wondering how
Speaker 1: bad it hurts, and I was like, well, to shoot me.
Speaker 1: So I made my back taught with my shirt and
Speaker 1: he shot me in the back and it hurt a lot,
Speaker 1: didn't Yeah that made raised a big red welt and
Speaker 1: uh yeah, it was not fun. So I talked to
Speaker 1: Strickland of tech stuff, John Stricklin. He went to c
Speaker 1: ES and m one of the things that was left
Speaker 1: out of this article was um electrocution, non lethal electrocuting
Speaker 1: weapons of the sho people, specifically Taser, which is a
Speaker 1: company's name by the way. But Strickland said that Taser
Speaker 1: was at c S in Vegas. Yes, are you serious?
Speaker 1: Tasing people who wanted to be tased to find out
Speaker 1: how it felt, and they were chasing people. But he
Speaker 1: said there was something called the Taser shock wave, which
Speaker 1: is an electric shot cannon. Wow, right, I should Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that thing. So basically, it's just this array of
Speaker 1: tasers that you sit on like a amount, and you
Speaker 1: can stack them up on four legs, stack them next
Speaker 1: to one another, so you create a barricade of tasers
Speaker 1: and if people are running at you, just deploy and
Speaker 1: it tastes. Let's see each each little stack can taste
Speaker 1: six people at once, and you start stacking them up
Speaker 1: in side by side. That's a lot of people that
Speaker 1: you're tasting at once. Strickland didn't get tasted. There's no
Speaker 1: way Strickling got taste. Uh. There's all kinds of cool
Speaker 1: non lethal weapons. Actually, I've seen those foam guns that
Speaker 1: like cover you in sticky goo and like sound things
Speaker 1: flash bang grenades, gay bomb that was created or that
Speaker 1: was thought of as a non lethal weapon at the time. Yes,
Speaker 1: Patterson right, Patterson Air Force Space Right. Yes, they don't
Speaker 1: use all these in riots though obviously, Um, they do
Speaker 1: use pepper ball rounds and those are basically modified paint guns,
Speaker 1: but instead of paint, it's filled with pepper spray that
Speaker 1: hits you. It's not gonna be very fun. No, it's
Speaker 1: gonna sting and then you're gonna get that stuff in
Speaker 1: your face. They said they can also use a water
Speaker 1: in case there are children or elderly in the crowd, right,
Speaker 1: and that wld on a pepper spray the elderly, You don't, Um,
Speaker 1: I just want to see the elderly rioting though. That's
Speaker 1: what I was trying to figure out. Buddy, Wait until
Speaker 1: they take away social Security and then you'll see some
Speaker 1: elderly rioting. He's slow, right, Apparently the water that will
Speaker 1: still cause a stinging sensation and uh have a similar effect. Well. Plus,
Speaker 1: if anyone who's savvy, a savvy rioter and has been
Speaker 1: hit with a pepper ball spray or pepper pepper ball around,
Speaker 1: UM may take this water round to be pepper spray
Speaker 1: and will start running, or it could have the same effect,
Speaker 1: has a psychological effect, psychs him out. Yeah, you're trying
Speaker 1: to disperse people. There's also if you're into pepper spray
Speaker 1: or cs gas, which I'm gonna go ahead and try
Speaker 1: to pronounce this now, okay, Chlora benzeldine Milan trial, Clara benzeliding,
Speaker 1: Clara benz aladine Milana trial, and oh, sea gas is
Speaker 1: oleah resin capsicum, which is what pepper spray is. Did
Speaker 1: you look at the pronunciation of capsicum? Is that wrong?
Speaker 1: I think that's right. It's either capsicum or capsicum. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go okay, But you can both of those can
Speaker 1: be um injected into an aerosol grenade, which is tear
Speaker 1: gas grenade. Uh, and you can throw that into a
Speaker 1: crowd if you want to start a stampede and kill
Speaker 1: a bunch of people. People get freaked out when you
Speaker 1: throw a grenade that starts spewing gas, right, they don't
Speaker 1: know what it is. But apparently this is very useful
Speaker 1: for crowd control. Like, if you want the crowd to
Speaker 1: move right, you throw one of these to the left
Speaker 1: and the left outskirts of the crowd and everybody starts
Speaker 1: moving the way you want them to. Or if some
Speaker 1: people are just beating somebody up, you can throw that
Speaker 1: into a crowd to get into layoff, or you can
Speaker 1: create a barricade of tear gas. Yeah. The other thing, Josh,
Speaker 1: they have is die rounds, so sponge drowns, ferret rounds.
Speaker 1: We didnt talk about ferret rounds, but they penetrate windows
Speaker 1: and wooden barricades kind of to blast through something so
Speaker 1: that they can send in some gas. Well, they have
Speaker 1: gas in the round. It wasn't spelled out. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: looked at like it's in the round. Okay, Yeah, Well
Speaker 1: all these things can be filled with die marker die
Speaker 1: as well. So if you see like one of the
Speaker 1: leaders or someone who's doing something especially bad, you can
Speaker 1: pop them with one of these, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the arrest team knows, hey, get that guy with the
Speaker 1: red splotch on his chest or surf or the blue
Speaker 1: spots in the uh. And so if I would suggest, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to suggest that if I was hit
Speaker 1: with one of these, I'd take off my shirt or something,
Speaker 1: which would be a whole different kind of problem. Um
Speaker 1: animals sometimes use dogs and horses to intimidate people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but not only that, horses and dogs are also relatively
Speaker 1: immune to O C and C S gas just C
Speaker 1: S gas. Pepper spray is not good for anyone that's
Speaker 1: just straight up hot um. But that's yeah, sure, I
Speaker 1: wonder they test that. You know exactly how they test it.
Speaker 1: They spray a horse and say, and then they'll wonder
Speaker 1: what happens if a horse um, josh. What they're trying
Speaker 1: to do here is the in fact, they don't even
Speaker 1: call it a riot squad anymore. What they now call
Speaker 1: it is crowd management units. Yes, we're onto the philosophy
Speaker 1: of riot control. Chapter one. Prevention, stop it before it
Speaker 1: starts is the goal. A lot of these things happen
Speaker 1: at planned um protests. So when they hear about this,
Speaker 1: someone applies for a permit to stage a rally. Let's
Speaker 1: say that's one that's particularly they think in an incendiary
Speaker 1: they'll send some a tactical unit in and they'll talk
Speaker 1: to the people beforehand and say, hey, you can do this,
Speaker 1: you can go here, but don't do this and don't
Speaker 1: go there. We won't have any problem. Right, And you're
Speaker 1: familiar with the battle for Seattle. Yeah, there was UM
Speaker 1: Direct Action Network was running the show for that, the
Speaker 1: World Trade Organization protests, and they met with the Seattle
Speaker 1: cops and we're like, you know, this is what we'll do.
Speaker 1: Here's a great plan. We'll agree to this. But before Warren,
Speaker 1: there are probably going to be people there that are
Speaker 1: not under our control. And there were. There was an
Speaker 1: anarchist group from Eugene organ and they're the ones who
Speaker 1: started just trash in the place. Yeah. Yeah, that didn't
Speaker 1: work out so well. Well. The Seattle police were grossly
Speaker 1: under prepared for it. They did not they were not
Speaker 1: ready for that at all. Chuck, you're talking. Sorry to
Speaker 1: take us off on that tangent, but we were talking
Speaker 1: about prevention and how you you meet with the cops
Speaker 1: will meet with you. They're gonna be like, don't do this,
Speaker 1: don't do that. If this does happen, we're gonna go
Speaker 1: from this passive, observant but present kind of mentality to you, Okay,
Speaker 1: now we're in a riot gear mentality. Yeah, but they
Speaker 1: say it's still important to be unbiased. Like if it's
Speaker 1: let's say Democrats are opposing some Republican Um convention or something,
Speaker 1: the cops aren't supposed to let their biases figure into
Speaker 1: how they react. They're supposed to be unbiased and treat
Speaker 1: them like they're members of the community. And they say,
Speaker 1: while they want to be uh not stormtroopers, you also
Speaker 1: can't appear to be subservient. You still have to like
Speaker 1: give the appearance at least that you're in charge. Right,
Speaker 1: So you gotta walk that fine line between stormtrooping, beat
Speaker 1: you down mode and oh, you're just doing great things
Speaker 1: and I got no opinion on the matters. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: your mad with shorts, it's very nice. Oh yeah, those
Speaker 1: so chuck. If the ground rules are broken, apparently, um,
Speaker 1: and a riot does break out, the cops kind of
Speaker 1: switch modes, right, intimidation mode. Yes, Again, the point and
Speaker 1: all of this is theoretical law enforcement. But the point
Speaker 1: is to get this crowd to disperse. And it's based
Speaker 1: on the philosophy that they're just temporarily out of their
Speaker 1: minds and caught up in this mob mentality, and if
Speaker 1: you confront them with the strong arm of the law,
Speaker 1: they'll come to their senses and want to go home. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And they do that, they'll like, um that they're very
Speaker 1: tight with their precision with their movements, which is intimidating. Apparently,
Speaker 1: will like beat their shields with their batons and stomp
Speaker 1: their feet all at the same time. And all this
Speaker 1: is the idea is to scare people into thinking, I
Speaker 1: don't want to be swallowed up into that square. Right.
Speaker 1: They also pick and choose who they arrest or even
Speaker 1: who they mark with die somebody who is Um. If
Speaker 1: they see somebody engaged in a crime, they're probably going
Speaker 1: to try to arrest them, depending on the severity of
Speaker 1: the crime, or at least they'll probably try to mark
Speaker 1: that person for arrest later. But if they see somebody,
Speaker 1: like if they see a group of people beating down
Speaker 1: one person or shooting poor O Reginald Denny in the leg, Um,
Speaker 1: they're going to go after those people because there's someone
Speaker 1: whose life is in danger. Um. So they kind of
Speaker 1: triage I think in the in the middle of this chaos,
Speaker 1: they triaged the you know who they're gonna go after first, right,
Speaker 1: makes sense. Um, so we've talked about um, the rioters, police,
Speaker 1: obviously national guards sometimes trying to contain riots. Right. There
Speaker 1: have been some dark spots in the history of the
Speaker 1: world and continue to be where you get what's called
Speaker 1: the police riot when the cops are the ones that
Speaker 1: are kind of I don't know about instigating in all cases,
Speaker 1: but definitely the aggressors in the situation, they've definitely been
Speaker 1: police rights. The Haymarket riot was a very good example
Speaker 1: of that. Which one was that That was the one
Speaker 1: in Chicago in six that created the first May Day.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there were some striking workers and the cops
Speaker 1: showed up and just started beating the tar out of them. Somebody, Um, no,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, the cops showed up. It was very tense. Um.
Speaker 1: Someone threw a bomb at the cops and kill late cops,
Speaker 1: and the cops went nuts and started firing on the crowd,
Speaker 1: killed four people. Um. And ultimately they went after the
Speaker 1: these anarchists who founded this rally and without any evidence
Speaker 1: that tied them to this bombing, and they also think
Speaker 1: it's possibly an agent of provocateur, someone who's paid by
Speaker 1: the cops to agitate the crowd by throwing this bomb.
Speaker 1: Um through the bomb. But without tying these eight guys
Speaker 1: to the bombing, they hung four of them, one of
Speaker 1: them committed suicide and then three were finally pardoned. But
Speaker 1: that's the Haymarket riot. He certain, Well, you can't mention
Speaker 1: Chicago or riot without talking about the nineteen sixty eight
Speaker 1: Democratic National Convention. You know that's a big, very big one. Uh.
Speaker 1: Ten thousand anti war protesters showed up, um because they
Speaker 1: wanted to protest hippies yippies. Actually, well, the people were um.
Speaker 1: Hubert Humphrey was the candidate that was to replace who
Speaker 1: was it, Lyndon Johnson? Yeah, we guess, and Humphrey was
Speaker 1: pro war. Democrats didn't like that, so they went to protest.
Speaker 1: Richard Daily was the mayor. He didn't want any part
Speaker 1: of this stuff. He was pretty angry about it going
Speaker 1: in said things like, no one's going to protest in
Speaker 1: my city. Yeah, built up big barricades around the convention center,
Speaker 1: got a lot of cops and National guardsmen involved. Apparently
Speaker 1: twenty three thousand cops and National guardsmen were on hand,
Speaker 1: and they had a stance on things, and they started
Speaker 1: beating the tar out of people. Yeah, there was a
Speaker 1: have you seen Chicago ten? Now you see it, you'd
Speaker 1: like it? Is it part of the Chicago seven? Eight?
Speaker 1: Then seven? But it's um. You tend to begin with, well,
Speaker 1: the filmmakers include to the two defense lawyers who were
Speaker 1: cited for contempt, and Bobby Seals and then the Chicago seven,
Speaker 1: so which makes ten. But they they it's all animated,
Speaker 1: like Waking Life. It's mostly animated. There's also like archival
Speaker 1: footage and all that's a document entry. But it's really
Speaker 1: really cool. It's based on court transcripts, but that's animated
Speaker 1: to check that out. It's very it's very cool. But um,
Speaker 1: they were saying that people were staying in this park
Speaker 1: in Chicago, Jackson Park, Lincoln Park one of the parks,
Speaker 1: and the cops are like, yeah, stay as long as
Speaker 1: you want until when the park closes at eleven o'clock
Speaker 1: and then after that we're gonna go through and sweep
Speaker 1: the park and beat the tar out of anybody we find.
Speaker 1: And then I think ultimately set off the riots. When
Speaker 1: it got real bad was the cops wouldn't stop doing that. Well,
Speaker 1: it got pretty out of hand to say the least,
Speaker 1: and everyone from Mike Wallace and Dan Rather, two Red
Speaker 1: Cross medics were roughed up. Hunter Thompson, I was he there, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure he was roughed up. They went into a
Speaker 1: hotel where people were staying and dragged people out of
Speaker 1: their rooms. It was bad. Well, I know that they
Speaker 1: said they throw so much tear gas on the scene
Speaker 1: that um, Hubert Humphrey was actually bothered in the shower
Speaker 1: in this hotel by the tear cats. So yeah, that
Speaker 1: was a dark spot on our nation's history for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think Hunter Thompson road in our client like it's
Speaker 1: probably fair and loathing at the Democratic National Convention. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And uh, I said Detroit earlier, we would be remiss
Speaker 1: if we didn't mention that. In nineteen forty three, this
Speaker 1: was the case of rumors of things that never happened,
Speaker 1: sparking your riot. There was already a race fight going
Speaker 1: on at an amusement park, uh. And then there was
Speaker 1: two rumors one that um, some white men had thrown
Speaker 1: a black woman who was holding a baby into a
Speaker 1: lake right there, Like the throwing a white woman into
Speaker 1: the lake wasn't bad enough right there? And then then
Speaker 1: they're like and she was holding a baby, right They're
Speaker 1: like what? And then white people heard news that a
Speaker 1: mob of black folks had assaulted a white woman. Neither
Speaker 1: of these things even happened. But that was my point earlier.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter if it happened or not. There were
Speaker 1: racial tensions in Detroit at the time in nineteen forty three,
Speaker 1: and this set it off, and cops apparently we're shooting,
Speaker 1: uh fleeing black people in the back. That was the rumor. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know about rumor. Five black folks and nine
Speaker 1: white folks were killed, two million in property damage, and
Speaker 1: yet another black spot on our nation's history when it
Speaker 1: comes to writing. But you know, they say they've got
Speaker 1: it figured out now. Uh. Yeah, it's not just our
Speaker 1: nation either. Right now in Moscow they have race riots
Speaker 1: going on. Yeah, Tunisia too, there's writing going on as
Speaker 1: we speak. Yeah, that's anti government rioting. Yeah. This guy
Speaker 1: set himself on fire. The twenty six year old student
Speaker 1: who had no had a college degree and dismal prospects
Speaker 1: for work. I think he was like a merchant or
Speaker 1: something in the market and he was being taxed or
Speaker 1: something unfairly. He felt, well, he was trying to sell
Speaker 1: fruit and vegetables and they basically told him he couldn't
Speaker 1: do it at all because he didn't have the proper
Speaker 1: permit and that was the only way he could make money.
Speaker 1: So he set himself on fire. And now through like Facebook.
Speaker 1: The word has spread to right it in Tunisia and
Speaker 1: it's still going on. And apparently Anonymous sent a message
Speaker 1: to the Tunisian government telling him to open up the internet.
Speaker 1: They have it locked down like China does. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's happening all over the place. Yes, it is. It's crazy.
Speaker 1: Time to be alive, my friend. It is. Well. If
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about how to control a riot,
Speaker 1: if your kids are ever going crazy or something like that,
Speaker 1: you can type in riot control in the handy search
Speaker 1: bar at how stuff works dot com. And since I
Speaker 1: said handy search bar, it's time for Facebook questions. Right,
Speaker 1: what's the jingle? Chuck questions? I don't think it's the same,
Speaker 1: but I'll change it every time. Alright. This is from
Speaker 1: Christian Winger. If money was no object, what job would
Speaker 1: you love to do besides the one that you have? Um?
Speaker 1: I would say two things. One selfishly, I would love
Speaker 1: to be a filmmaker, and then unselfishly selfish well because
Speaker 1: I'm not helping out my fellow man except offering them
Speaker 1: great movies. But if money were no object, I used
Speaker 1: to want to start a camp for behavioral disorder children.
Speaker 1: I take them camping. You mean the camp from Stir Crazy? Yeah, basically,
Speaker 1: or no, was it Stir Crazy? Was it Richard Pryor
Speaker 1: and Gene Walder? Yeah, Gene Walder wasn't in. It was
Speaker 1: the one where he was the bus driver. It was
Speaker 1: just Richard Pryor Silver Streak. Now that was the train
Speaker 1: And I know which one you're talking about, right, What
Speaker 1: would you do first, Chuck? I want to commend you
Speaker 1: on that. That is very sweet. It's not sweet. My
Speaker 1: dad did that. He had outdoor programs for he's a principal,
Speaker 1: you know. So you could do both. You could take
Speaker 1: some of the money you make from being a successful
Speaker 1: filmmaker open up a camp exactly. So there you go,
Speaker 1: both dreams realized. I would write books. Yeah, whatever books.
Speaker 1: I just write a book writing. Yeah, don't forget that
Speaker 1: is what I would be doing that anyway. Maybe, um
Speaker 1: cer lock card. What's the room like that you record
Speaker 1: the show in? It is smallish, It's got some phone
Speaker 1: padding on the walls, gotta there's heavy curtain chains and
Speaker 1: shackles that are bolted to the walls, jains and shackles. Bleak,
Speaker 1: it's bleak. It's depressing. There's a picture of Nikola Tesla
Speaker 1: and a picture of Pablo Picasso without his shirt on
Speaker 1: there is that's the only adornment on the walls. Right,
Speaker 1: that's what I can here, Kerr. You've got some josh, right,
Speaker 1: I do, But I'd like the way that you ask questions. Um,
Speaker 1: you see you've already already done that one, Chuck. Where
Speaker 1: you ever in a frat? That one's from Drew Sorenson
Speaker 1: was not in a frat, nor was I, but I
Speaker 1: did hang out with the pie Kappa Alpha's. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: had a bad frat friends, true, a few uh cigappes
Speaker 1: and figs. I didn't hang out with any of them.
Speaker 1: My dad was a teak. Was he at the University
Speaker 1: of Tilda, Ali Smith? What career did you think you
Speaker 1: would pursue when he graduated? At one point, I wanted
Speaker 1: to be a sportscaster, But I didn't pursue a whole
Speaker 1: lot right after college except bling and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: I traveled after college as well. I lived in a van.
Speaker 1: I think I've probably said before, right. Uh, this one's
Speaker 1: from Matthew Paul Morris. Possibly one of the better questions
Speaker 1: we've gotten, and justice for all or Master of Puppets,
Speaker 1: Master of Puppets. Yeah, me too. Yeah, but that's that's
Speaker 1: a very very close close contest. Yeah, and justice for
Speaker 1: all it's no no slouch. Uh. How about Luke Kelly?
Speaker 1: If you could, if you had to live in a
Speaker 1: world without cheese or movies, which would you choose? I
Speaker 1: would say no cheese because I love movies. But that's tough, man.
Speaker 1: I love cheese. I love cheese too, but I would
Speaker 1: definitely choose cheese over move. That means no pizza. That
Speaker 1: means Mexican food isn't as fun. Chinese foods are good, yeah, really,
Speaker 1: Sushi you're good. Yeah. Movies, I would want movies still. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What's your Dead Island beer? I think i'd say Sierra Nevada?
Speaker 1: Everyone knows I love that. Maybe Budweiser. I'm really big
Speaker 1: on um Bells too. Heart at Ale right now, that's good.
Speaker 1: It is really good. And yeah, they have it on
Speaker 1: tap at a place near me. It's very nice. Um
Speaker 1: Let's see, how did we meet? Obviously it was at work,
Speaker 1: But did you hit it off right away or did
Speaker 1: the friendship grow over time? This is from Tamara Beth Stevens.
Speaker 1: We hit it off and it continues to grow over time.
Speaker 1: Like any good friendship, I would say that too. Yes,
Speaker 1: it evolves and changes and makes us happy. It's nice.
Speaker 1: From Kim Rigden Briskow. Do you do your wife girlfriend
Speaker 1: slash girlfriend? Mind if you mentioned her on the podcast? Um,
Speaker 1: Emily loves it because I'm always plugging her company. You
Speaker 1: mean's fine with it too, Okay. Favorite childhood toy mine
Speaker 1: definitely was my um Evil Kine Evil crank up motorcycle
Speaker 1: because I that was I would jump him through like
Speaker 1: flaming coat hangar loops that we would set on fire,
Speaker 1: which by the way, you should never ever do, and
Speaker 1: we would jump him over the creek and all kinds
Speaker 1: of stuff. We would put him in peril. It was
Speaker 1: always fun. Uh wow, that is fun. What about you? Gee? Um,
Speaker 1: I would have to say I had. I had this
Speaker 1: um plastic Navone Castle Nava remember forced ten from Navone? Okay,
Speaker 1: So I had that and it had little green army
Speaker 1: guys or whatever. And now I looked back, I realized
Speaker 1: it was just like some generic knockoff toys. But I
Speaker 1: love that thing. And I also I think I did
Speaker 1: have a thing for castles, because I also loved my
Speaker 1: Castle Gray School he Man play set he certainly did.
Speaker 1: And then my sitting spam was pretty awesome too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had I wanted a green machine, but I was
Speaker 1: stuck with a big wheel. I don't remember the green machine.
Speaker 1: It was a more complex big wheel. That was. It
Speaker 1: was pretty tough and rich kids got that that I was.
Speaker 1: I was gonna worked up, all right. I've got one
Speaker 1: more Josh from Tim Lind's a I've always wondered how
Speaker 1: much coffee do you both drink in a typical work day.
Speaker 1: I drink in the wintertime, maybe a couple of cups
Speaker 1: a week. I'm not a huge coffee guy. I like
Speaker 1: it in the winter to warm me up. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: jacks me up, which is nice. But I'm not coffee guy.
Speaker 1: But I've got to hear your answer. Honestly, in a
Speaker 1: day and day wintertime, it definitely steps up a little
Speaker 1: from me. I don't know if I can quantify it.
Speaker 1: It's more like I drink coffee until I can't breathe.
Speaker 1: I'm seriously probably eight to ten cups in a day,
Speaker 1: hate the tin cups, maybe more all right, of regular
Speaker 1: because we don't have decap in the office. I was
Speaker 1: drinking the calf here there and now there's no decaf,
Speaker 1: so it's all regular. I don't I think that for
Speaker 1: a big coffee person. That's about right. Eight to tin cups.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of coffee, but it's way too much coffee. Yeah,
Speaker 1: who might judge? Yeah, keep drinking it, thanks man. A
Speaker 1: lot worse things you could be doing. Yes, I think
Speaker 1: I could be shooting junk or something eight to ten
Speaker 1: times a day. Don't want to do that. All right.
Speaker 1: That's it for Facebook questions. Thank you for those are
Speaker 1: always fun. Yeah again, we have fun over at Facebook.
Speaker 1: That's Facebook dot com slash stuff. You should know we
Speaker 1: tweeked s y s K podcast. Um and then we
Speaker 1: have an email address too. Can you believe it? Uh?
Speaker 1: It's stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com For
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast,
Speaker 1: click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner
Speaker 1: of our homepage. The How Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived.
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