Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome back to It Could Happen Here. I
Speaker 2: am once again your occasional host Molly Conger joining me
Speaker 2: today for a very special episode. Are my friends and
Speaker 2: yours Scharen and Mia So Sharin Mia. We're here today
Speaker 2: to honor and reflect upon a very somber and important holiday.
Speaker 2: It is May fifteenth, as we are recording this today,
Speaker 2: and today is actually recognized the world over as Knackba Day,
Speaker 2: a day to remember the first Nakba, the founding of
Speaker 2: the state of Israel, and the forest displacement of the
Speaker 2: Palestinian people. And this year, as a new Knakua continues,
Speaker 2: as the genocide is being committed against the Palestinian people,
Speaker 2: it's more important than ever to remember that these atrocities
Speaker 2: did not start last year. But that isn't the memorial
Speaker 2: day I invited you here to talk about. Here in
Speaker 2: the United States, the holiday officially on the books today
Speaker 2: is not knack Ba Day. It is National Peace Officers
Speaker 2: Memorial Day. In nineteen sixty two, President Kennedy signed a
Speaker 2: proclamation establishing May this National Peace Officers Memorial Day and
Speaker 2: the week it falls within as National Police Week. It's
Speaker 2: an entire week to honor and commemorate the brave boys
Speaker 2: in blue who've lost their lives in the line of duty.
Speaker 2: And I can't think of a better way to spend
Speaker 2: this afternoon with both of you than to talk about
Speaker 2: how this holiday is celebrated and to share some of
Speaker 2: these incredible stories of courage and sacrifice. So one of
Speaker 2: the most frequently cited sources during Police Week and year
Speaker 2: round when you're talking about the mortality rate of police
Speaker 2: officers is a website called the Officer Down Memorial Page.
Speaker 2: Highly encourage you to visit it, make an account, browse
Speaker 2: the pages. The website is run by a nonprofit organization
Speaker 2: by the same name and has had tax exempt status
Speaker 2: since two thousand. According to their IRS Form nine nineties,
Speaker 2: the tax form that tax exempt nonprofits have to file annually,
Speaker 2: they're pulling in around seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 2: a year, a third of which goes directly toward executive compensation.
Speaker 2: And why why shouldn't someone make a quarter of a
Speaker 2: million dollars annually to do such important work? Public records
Speaker 2: show the website's founder, Chris Cosgriff, is a police officer
Speaker 2: himself in Fairfax County, Virginia. Available salary data from twenty
Speaker 2: eighteen shows him making a policeman salary of about sixty
Speaker 2: nine thousand dollars. According to his LinkedIn page, Cosgriff still
Speaker 2: works for the Fairfax County Police Department as a recruiting
Speaker 2: supervisor the officer down memorial page. Tax documents show he
Speaker 2: paid himself a paltry twenty four thousand, five hundred dollars
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty three as the executive director of the nonprofit,
Speaker 2: though they list key employee compensation at an expense of
Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty thousand dollars that year, with no
Speaker 2: indication of who's being paid that remaining two hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty five thousand dollars or what that person's position is.
Speaker 2: When the organization received a thirty thousand dollars PPP loan
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty, they indicated on their loan documents that
Speaker 2: there were five employees at the organization. I'm not an accountant,
Speaker 2: so I won't hazard any kind of guesses here, but
Speaker 2: I am having trouble making sense of that twenty twenty
Speaker 2: four nine ninety, which lists five company officers by name
Speaker 2: and only Cosgriff is drawing his salary. He paid himself
Speaker 2: fifty thousand dollars that year. So that same document from
Speaker 2: twenty twenty shows that the organization had expenses of two
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars for compensation of officers, but it doesn't
Speaker 2: say where that remaining one hundred and fifty thousand dollars went.
Speaker 3: Hmmm, I worry.
Speaker 2: Maybe they have a secret employee that they're not counting.
Speaker 3: His son, his wife, his other wife.
Speaker 2: The website indicates that donations to the nonprofit go towards
Speaker 2: maintaining the website, making posts on their Facebook, maintaining the
Speaker 2: site's companion mobile app, and historic research, claiming that their staff, again,
Speaker 2: those five people have uncovered records of over two thousand
Speaker 2: fallen officers that otherwise would have been forgotten to time.
Speaker 2: The site has memorial pages for officers who died as
Speaker 2: far back as seventeen seventy six, so it's as old
Speaker 2: as America.
Speaker 4: That's that's not.
Speaker 2: Real, it's not We didn't actually really have what is
Speaker 2: considered modern policing back then. So they're really kind of
Speaker 2: stretching definitions, are they including.
Speaker 4: Like people that went after slaves, like you know what
Speaker 4: I mean?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's yeah. Tax collectors.
Speaker 2: Yes, olive stretching, Yes, a lot.
Speaker 4: You want to go that far back, but I mean,
Speaker 4: do you.
Speaker 2: Donations also help fund their No Parole for cop Killers program,
Speaker 2: which tracks the cases of the people they call convicted
Speaker 2: cop killers and flood local parole boards with letters advocating
Speaker 2: against release. The donation page claims to have sent out
Speaker 2: over ten thousand such letters in the last six months alone.
Speaker 2: They also have a merch page where you can buy
Speaker 2: a lovely trio of thin blue line Christmas ornaments in
Speaker 2: a gift box for the low reasonable price of sixty dollars.
Speaker 4: Jesus, out of all the things I thought you were
Speaker 4: going to say, I did not think you were going
Speaker 4: to say, Christmas ornaments.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, beautiful, beautiful memorial ornaments. You can get them customized.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 2: The site list information about American law enforcement officers, prison employees,
Speaker 2: and police dogs who have lost their lives in the
Speaker 2: line of duty. Kind of see. While the website is
Speaker 2: the source cited in every local news puff piece when
Speaker 2: May fifteenth rolls around every year, putting their version of
Speaker 2: the numbers in the headlines, the organization's stats don't match
Speaker 2: those in the FBI's annual report on the subject an
Speaker 2: official annual report called the Law Enforcement Officers Killed and
Speaker 2: Assaulted or LEOCA Report. The data used by the FBI
Speaker 2: is collected as part of the uniform Crime Reporting system,
Speaker 2: and if you take just a minute to look at
Speaker 2: the Officer down Memorial page's annual data, the reason for
Speaker 2: this mismatch is immediately clear. They're padding their numbers by
Speaker 2: including deaths by natural causes on duty, deaths due to
Speaker 2: accidents or incidents unrelated to the officer's duties, and they're
Speaker 2: including law enforcement adjacent personnel that the FBI does not
Speaker 2: consider to be law enforcement deaths in their reporting. The
Speaker 2: FBI's LEOCA report has really clear criteria for inclusion. To
Speaker 2: be considered a law enforcement line of duty death, the
Speaker 2: must have been a duly sworn law enforcement officer acting
Speaker 2: in their official capacity at the time of their death,
Speaker 2: So they have to be a real cop, somebody who
Speaker 2: carries a badge and a gun and has full arrest powers.
Speaker 2: And the FBI specifically excludes death binatural causes like heart
Speaker 2: attacks or COVID deesth the occurred on duty, but quote
Speaker 2: attributed to their own personal situation, such as domestic violence,
Speaker 2: neighbor conflict, et cetera, which like that they have to
Speaker 2: list that by name. If you died doing a domestic
Speaker 2: violence in uniform, that doesn't count. How often is that happening?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I hope people who killed them are getting parole, like.
Speaker 2: Good God, right, Like if your wife kills you while
Speaker 2: you're beating her, but you're on the clock, the FBI says, no, dice.
Speaker 2: They also specifically note that they do not include corrections officers,
Speaker 2: Bureau of Prisons officers, bailiffs, judges, probation and parole officers,
Speaker 2: or US attorneys and assistant US attorneys. So just cops,
Speaker 2: not the people who sort of work in the industry
Speaker 2: around them but are not.
Speaker 4: Cops, not people that basically are cops, like actual cops,
Speaker 4: you know, and actual cops.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the FA is really aware clearly that the
Speaker 2: numbers on the ODMP get cited more often than their own,
Speaker 2: because the FBI's Crime Data Explorer page offers this weasly
Speaker 2: little caveat quote. The FBI's LEOCA program is one of
Speaker 2: a number of entities that report information concerning line of
Speaker 2: duty debts and or assaults of law enforcement officers in
Speaker 2: the United States. Each organization has its own purpose and
Speaker 2: may use different methods to collect and report information, or
Speaker 2: focus on somewhat different aspects of these important topics. Therefore,
Speaker 2: care should be taken not to compare LEOCA data to
Speaker 2: data provided by other entities, such as the Officer down
Speaker 2: Memorial page. So they're specifically saying, we know these numbers
Speaker 2: don't match. We know these numbers don't match because a
Speaker 2: few years ago we gave them a few hundred thousand
Speaker 2: dollars in grant money to make numbers that are fake.
Speaker 3: Wow. Incredible Wow.
Speaker 2: So the ODMP is patting out their numbers with off
Speaker 2: duty accidents, prison guards, parking lot, heart attacks, and COVID deaths.
Speaker 2: The database includes nearly nine hundred COVID deaths, causing massive
Speaker 2: statistical anomalies in their twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, and
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two data, they include officers who died of
Speaker 2: natural causes years after sustaining minor on the job injuries, which,
Speaker 2: you know, if you're involved in a civil lawsuit after
Speaker 2: the death of a loved one, you could maybe argue
Speaker 2: that this was sort of a you know, a downhill
Speaker 2: kind of thing if you're trying to getting a settlement
Speaker 2: from the state. Maybe you could say that, you know,
Speaker 2: the injury sustained contributed to the death, but that's you
Speaker 2: can't tell me that slipping in the parking lot and
Speaker 2: then dying six years later is an experience unique to
Speaker 2: the dangers of law enforcement. A district attorney who flipped
Speaker 2: his car after hitting a log that fell off a
Speaker 2: truck on the highway on a Friday night is not
Speaker 2: a law enforcement line of duty death because that not
Speaker 2: only was that not a cop it was a single
Speaker 2: car accident. And when DeSoto County Search and Rescue Director
Speaker 2: Deputy William Nichols went on a beach vacation and took
Speaker 2: his family into the ocean despite red flag riptide hazard
Speaker 2: condition warnings, he lost his life trying to rescue his son.
Speaker 2: And that's very sad, But drowning on vacation is not
Speaker 2: a line of duty death. When Indiana Department of Natural
Speaker 2: Resources Sergeant Ed Bowman and his friend drowned in the
Speaker 2: middle of a frozen lake while ice fishing, that wasn't
Speaker 2: a line of duty death. It's just a sad accident
Speaker 2: while dudes were hanging out.
Speaker 3: These people they really, they really should have a bad
Speaker 3: time around water float.
Speaker 2: There is a shocking number of drowning deaths where the
Speaker 2: cop just like the second his feet caught when he
Speaker 2: just disappeared. Don't get them wet. It's not a gremlin situation.
Speaker 4: Include swimming in the cop test, right, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, these people barely know how to point their guns, like,
Speaker 3: expecting them to be able to swim is the standards
Speaker 3: or that that's a bit too high of a standard
Speaker 3: for them.
Speaker 2: Wan to be fair, most of these deaths are single
Speaker 2: car accidents. One guy died after t boning a school bus.
Speaker 2: The children were fine.
Speaker 3: The children, Oh, thank god, Okay, thank god.
Speaker 2: Oh and so, rather than a detailed statistical analysis relying
Speaker 2: on uniformly reported official data, the ODMP relies on user
Speaker 2: submitted content. So people are submitting things and then Wikipedia. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Wikipedia for bootleggers, no, no thanks. But when National Police
Speaker 2: Week rolls around, it's their inflated numbers in every infographic,
Speaker 2: not the FBI's methodologically consistent data. And if I'm being generous,
Speaker 2: you know you could write that off on the ease
Speaker 2: of access to the data on ODMP. It's very user friendly.
Speaker 2: It shows you a little picture and a bio of
Speaker 2: each officer. It's very easy to use. You can search
Speaker 2: by year, agency, cause of death, state, or an officer's name.
Speaker 2: It's not a wall of small text with little data
Speaker 2: tables and links to zip files of more data tables.
Speaker 2: The FBI's report is ugly, and it's uncompelling, and it's
Speaker 2: sort of overwhelming to navigate if that's not something you
Speaker 2: are interested in doing, so I don't want to be
Speaker 2: too hard on the twenty two year old news anchors
Speaker 2: scrambling to put something on the screen at six o'clock.
Speaker 2: The officer down memorial page makes it a matter of
Speaker 2: a few easy clicks for your local news anchor to
Speaker 2: find a handful of local interest stories to run on
Speaker 2: May fifteenth. But the people who run the website know
Speaker 2: exactly what they're doing, and it's an intentional ideological project
Speaker 2: to perpetuate the myth of the courageous, noble policeman doing
Speaker 2: America's most dangerous and thankless job, a job that is
Speaker 2: uniquely and outlandishly perilous, standing apart from any other profession,
Speaker 2: and that that's not true. That's not true. And for
Speaker 2: this I take you to another government agency's annual reports,
Speaker 2: the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Speaker 3: Oh, I love this report. This is the best one.
Speaker 2: The Bureau of Labor Statistics has consistently reported, I'm talking,
Speaker 2: you know, for the last thirty years, consistently since the nineties,
Speaker 2: a fatal workplace injury rate for police officers of around
Speaker 2: fourteen per one hundred thousand full time equivalent employees. You know,
Speaker 2: it varies year to year, but it's consistently a little
Speaker 2: under fourteen per hundred thousand. And of course, yes, that
Speaker 2: is higher than the national average for all labor categories.
Speaker 2: So for all workers in the US, the workplace fatality
Speaker 2: rate is about three point seven per hundred thousand. So
Speaker 2: the cops are dying at a rate of four times
Speaker 2: higher than the average worker. And of course it's more
Speaker 2: dangerous if your job requires driving all day most of
Speaker 2: these cops die in car accidents, or if your job
Speaker 2: involves mishandling a firearm every day. Of course it's more
Speaker 2: dangerous to do that than it is to do data
Speaker 2: entry or be a cashier. I mean, obviously we do
Speaker 2: not have a high mortality rate for the average desk job.
Speaker 2: But while it is more dangerous than being a receptionist,
Speaker 2: policing doesn't even crack the top ten for most dangerous professions.
Speaker 2: Loggers are seven times more likely to die on the job.
Speaker 2: Roofers are more than four times more likely than a
Speaker 2: cop to die due to a workplace incident. Being a
Speaker 2: fisherman is more than three and a half times more
Speaker 2: dangerous than being a cop. General construction work is more
Speaker 2: than three times more dangerous than police work. Delivery drivers
Speaker 2: are more than twice as likely to die at work
Speaker 2: than a cop. It is more dangerous to be a
Speaker 2: day laborer on a farm picking fruit or to drive
Speaker 2: a garbage truck. Being a cop has a similar level
Speaker 2: of risk of death by workplace incident as being a groundskeeper,
Speaker 2: So it is about as safe as being the guy
Speaker 2: that cuts the grass at the park.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think there's a real issue with a
Speaker 3: labor reporting for like the category of farm worker, because
Speaker 3: whenever you see data that says like farm worker, that
Speaker 3: can either mean someone who's actually a farm worker, or
Speaker 3: it can mean like a guy who sits in an
Speaker 3: air conditioned office every day. And even the buer of
Speaker 3: labor sistics is not very good at actually sifting those
Speaker 3: out because there's been a sustained effort by like farm
Speaker 3: owners to make sure this data is like as non
Speaker 3: transparent as possible. So I am I will say, I
Speaker 3: am fairly confident. I cannot say this is nasty effect.
Speaker 3: I am confident that farming is actually significantly more dangerous
Speaker 3: than the real Labor Statistics says, so like it is
Speaker 3: so much more dangerous to like pick your food that
Speaker 3: it is to be a cop.
Speaker 2: And because I think for a lot of industries there
Speaker 2: is a lot of incentive to under report workplace accidents,
Speaker 2: I think policing is one of the only industries where
Speaker 2: they are incentivized to over report accidents. Right, So the
Speaker 2: data is I mean, even for as skewed as the
Speaker 2: data may be at the point of entry, it's still
Speaker 2: a lot safer to be a cop than it is
Speaker 2: to drive a truck.
Speaker 4: And this is with the numbers of them like falling
Speaker 4: into a puddle.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Well, so I think the buera of labor statistics is
Speaker 2: probably using something closer to the FBI numbers, okay, which
Speaker 2: is still I mean, you know, on the.
Speaker 3: Other hand, cops are the biggest babies about this in
Speaker 3: the entire world because.
Speaker 2: They get paid leave. If every time you had a
Speaker 2: booboo at work. You could just go home for a week,
Speaker 2: you'd do it too.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But also, I mean, just like in the media,
Speaker 3: it's like these people never shut up about how dangerous
Speaker 3: their job is, and it's like your job is more
Speaker 3: safe than like most of the actual hard jobs people work,
Speaker 3: like please shut up? Oh my god.
Speaker 2: And the one thing that all those jobs have in common,
Speaker 2: aside from requiring you to be braver, smarter, and stronger
Speaker 2: than a cop, they don't typically come with platinum level healthcare,
Speaker 2: paid leave for minor booboos, state subsidized life insurance, a pension,
Speaker 2: a discount at the coffee shop, and a license to kill.
Speaker 3: You know what else has a license to kill?
Speaker 2: Okay, I was gonna say, but before we get into
Speaker 2: really honoring our boys on this special day, I think
Speaker 2: we should take a quick ad break that is hopefully
Speaker 2: not an ad for the Washington State Patrol. Okay, And
Speaker 2: with all that background out of the way, would you
Speaker 2: care to join me in commemorating some of the officers
Speaker 2: our nation is honoring this National Police Week.
Speaker 4: This is what I came here for.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so excited.
Speaker 2: Now, before we get into the handful I picked out
Speaker 2: for us today, I want to be really clear for
Speaker 2: the boys over at the officer down memorial page, because
Speaker 2: their website specifically prohibits the use of their content for
Speaker 2: commercial purposes. So I will say I found these names
Speaker 2: on their website, but I don't trust their methodology enough
Speaker 2: to take their content at face value, so I wouldn't
Speaker 2: use it as a source anyway, even if I were
Speaker 2: allowed to do that. So for each of these vignettes,
Speaker 2: I pulled original contemporaneous local reporting on the incidents, and
Speaker 2: in some cases, actual court records, so you can't get me.
Speaker 2: In twenty ten, Saint Joseph, Missouri police officer Dan Dacry
Speaker 2: was participating in a training exercise. During a break, he
Speaker 2: and another officer put down the training weapons they've been using,
Speaker 2: which were loaded with something called simmunition, so simulated ammunition.
Speaker 2: It's not real bullets, it's a plastic, non lethal object
Speaker 2: that goes in the gun. Before leaving the training facility,
Speaker 2: which was a recently closed elementary school, to walk to
Speaker 2: a nearby convenience store to get a soda, the officers
Speaker 2: put down their training weapons and holstered their duty weapons,
Speaker 2: so to walk down the street to get to the
Speaker 2: seven eleven they needed their real guns. So they put
Speaker 2: their real guns back on in case they encountered any
Speaker 2: emergency situations. Yeah, in case, you know, in case they
Speaker 2: saw it. We'll get to a dog. So they holstered
Speaker 2: their duty weapons. Upon returning after their break, drinks in hand,
Speaker 2: Officer to Cry asked his colleague, officer Jason Strong, to
Speaker 2: shoot him with a simmunition round because he wanted to
Speaker 2: know what it would feel like.
Speaker 5: Oh my gosh, that's just a beautiful desire, you know,
Speaker 5: just curious. He's just curious, you know, a good day
Speaker 5: would be curious. And so Officer Strong drew his weapon
Speaker 5: and shot Officer to Cry in the back. I guess
Speaker 5: they both forgot that they put their real guns back
Speaker 5: on and not their training weapons. So I don't know
Speaker 5: if you ever probably know this, but the if it's
Speaker 5: not a real gun, if it has fake bullets in it,
Speaker 5: if it is a training object, it has an orange tip.
Speaker 4: I was going to ask that. I was going to ask,
Speaker 4: you can't look identical to a real gun.
Speaker 2: They're easily visually distinguishable for an important reason. And I
Speaker 2: guess he didn't look so he pulled it out and
Speaker 2: shot him in the back, and the officer Decry died
Speaker 2: later that day.
Speaker 3: Wow incredible.
Speaker 2: Later reporting on the incident indicates the department did say
Speaker 2: they were going to revise some of their policies regarding
Speaker 2: standard procedure for checking weapons in and out at training exercises.
Speaker 2: So you have to check your weapon in when you
Speaker 2: get your toy gun, and then you check it back out.
Speaker 2: They did not do that previously, but they revised those
Speaker 2: procedures and declined to comment further. The officer who killed
Speaker 2: Dan Decry was not charged and remained with the department.
Speaker 2: Officer Deacraie's family received a settlement of three hundred and
Speaker 2: seventy six thousand dollars from the City of Saint Joseph. Again,
Speaker 2: settlement money does not come from police departments. It comes
Speaker 2: from the municipality. It comes from just the taxpayers. It
Speaker 2: does not affect the police's budget to do this.
Speaker 4: That enrages me.
Speaker 3: You know, to give to give credit to that guy
Speaker 3: though actually hitting your cop hitting their target on the
Speaker 3: first shot is pretty remarkable. That that is a shooting
Speaker 3: the guy in the back on the first tries a
Speaker 3: pretty remarkable feet of cop marksmanship, so he might have
Speaker 3: been maying for his knee though that's true. We don't
Speaker 3: know he was hitting for the back.
Speaker 2: It's just remarkable. I just want to know what it
Speaker 2: would feel like.
Speaker 4: I wonder how close he was too. He must have
Speaker 4: been close.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I imagine there was sort of a conversational distance.
Speaker 4: That's insane. That is just I cannot well, wow, well.
Speaker 2: Well, our next story of a cop who should not
Speaker 2: have gotten wet, it is not actually even about a cop.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and seven, David Polling d in the
Speaker 2: Ohio River Polling, who's thirty two at the time, had
Speaker 2: previously been employed as a police officer with the Gallipolas
Speaker 2: Police Department and at a different time as a sheriff's
Speaker 2: deputy with the Galia County Sheriff's Office. So by thirty two,
Speaker 2: he's been both a police officer and a sheriff's deputy,
Speaker 2: but he is neither of those things anymore. In two
Speaker 2: thousand and seven, he was working as a parole officer.
Speaker 2: In the reporting from the time, it's not actually clear
Speaker 2: why he was present, but he was nearby when a
Speaker 2: police officer stopped a pedestrian on the sidewalk and firsked
Speaker 2: him because he suspected this man may have just come
Speaker 2: out of the house where he believed drug deals were
Speaker 2: being conducted. So he's doing a stop and frisk on
Speaker 2: a guy mined in his business. The man was not
Speaker 2: charged with a drug offense when this was all over,
Speaker 2: so I guess they didn't find drugs. But during the encounter,
Speaker 2: the man bolted and Polling, who again had a cop
Speaker 2: just a guy who's nearby, chased after him. The man
Speaker 2: jumped into the Ohio River, and Polling jumped in after him.
Speaker 2: The suspect, Joseph Hair, made it quickly to a small
Speaker 2: island in the middle of the river, but pulling immediately
Speaker 2: after hitting the water, sank and disappeared.
Speaker 3: No, he did not.
Speaker 2: It took hours for divers to recover his body.
Speaker 4: When you said they didn't float, that wasn't a joke.
Speaker 2: No, he just disappeared like the second the water he
Speaker 2: was just gone.
Speaker 4: That is its comical. I can't believe that's real.
Speaker 2: Like did he did he know? He couldn't swim, like he.
Speaker 4: Just sucked down to the bar.
Speaker 3: It's it's so good too, because it's like, you know,
Speaker 3: you could attribute this to just purely like the first
Speaker 3: story of a drowning where it's like Okay, the cop
Speaker 3: clearly went into a situation he shouldn't have been in
Speaker 3: because he's a cop and doesn't think about, oh wait,
Speaker 3: the ways you get to kill me. But like, no,
Speaker 3: clearly this river was symable, the other guy made it.
Speaker 2: The other guy was fine. Well, the other guy was
Speaker 2: fine until they charged him with manslaughter and he did
Speaker 2: four years in jail.
Speaker 4: Oh but wait, this is the guy that didn't have
Speaker 4: was in charge with drugs but was charged with man.
Speaker 3: Kind of manslaughter because the other guy jumped in.
Speaker 4: Wait for manslaughter for the cop that sunk.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, wow, But like some guy who's not even
Speaker 2: a cop is just chasing you. That's kind of on him. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he was convicted of manslaughter.
Speaker 4: That is I hate that. But also can you just
Speaker 4: to imagine just this cop like Mario jumping into like
Speaker 4: a river and just completely just like like the video
Speaker 4: game sound and he at the bottom, And.
Speaker 2: You do have to wonder how he had worked for
Speaker 2: two different police agencies and then didn't work for either
Speaker 2: of any more by the age of thirty two.
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 2: I did a little looking. I couldn't find anything about that,
Speaker 2: but it's it's an unusual career trajectory.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, it's like he's getting bounced down to lower
Speaker 3: leagues every time. It's like, are you that it's you're
Speaker 3: a like, it's how do you screw that? Up?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 2: It would seem that he wasn't a cop anymore because
Speaker 2: he wasn't allowed to be a copy. Yeah, and now
Speaker 2: this third one is the one that I had in
Speaker 2: mind when I first started writing this episode, and it's
Speaker 2: really just, on its surface, kind of the perfect encapsulation
Speaker 2: of this foolish project. Right. It's got a guy getting
Speaker 2: shot in the crotch, it's got a cop trying to
Speaker 2: kill a dog. It's got a dirty cop. It's got
Speaker 2: a cop staying on the force after a string of
Speaker 2: expensive mishaps. This is just policing. But when I started
Speaker 2: looking for primary sources about this incident, actually just kept
Speaker 2: getting weirder. And now I'm kind of down a new
Speaker 2: rabbit hole of got some requests out for more documents,
Speaker 2: Like I'm gonna figure this out. Something happened here. But
Speaker 2: before I tell you about Officer Henry Macalene and Junior,
Speaker 2: we'll take another quick ad break, all right. I hope
Speaker 2: he used that ad break time. Not only did about
Speaker 2: products and services, but to reflect on the sacrifice of
Speaker 2: the parole officer who drowned in the Ohio River. On
Speaker 2: August twenty first, two thousand, Miami Dade Police officers Henry
Speaker 2: Macalene and Junior and his partner Itala Elias responded to
Speaker 2: a request from a home alarm company to check out
Speaker 2: what turned out to be a false alarm at a
Speaker 2: residential home in southwest Miami. Arriving on the scene, they
Speaker 2: found no sign of a break in, nothing unusual, and
Speaker 2: no one answered the front door. Normally a cop would
Speaker 2: probably just leave. They don't really like working. They don't
Speaker 2: really like doing their jobs. It's hard and it's boring,
Speaker 2: and they have candy crush to play Molly.
Speaker 4: It's dangerous. It's dangerous.
Speaker 2: It was a weekday, afternoon in a nice neighborhood in Miami,
Speaker 2: but the home belonged to a retired Miami Police detective,
Speaker 2: so they took you know, they did the extra mile. So,
Speaker 2: after determining there was no sign of the breaking out front,
Speaker 2: no one answered the door, they went around the back
Speaker 2: of the house and entered the backyard, where two rottweilers
Speaker 2: quote came running at them. According to a South Florida
Speaker 2: Sun article that week, Machaelinn pulled out his expandable baton
Speaker 2: and began beating the dogs. Well, they were really just
Speaker 2: doing their job in their own backyard.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, like.
Speaker 3: That that's the noble thing that happens when you walk
Speaker 3: towards a dog. Is it runs towards.
Speaker 4: You're invading its territory. You shouldn't be there.
Speaker 2: You gotta figure a guy who has a home alarm
Speaker 2: system and two rottweilers like that is that dog's job?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I keep thinking about that. Uh that
Speaker 3: picture of Mike Bloomberg when he was running in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: They were like he just grabs the dog's face.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, where It's like there's.
Speaker 3: Just something like on a fundamental level, like we co
Speaker 3: evolved with this animal, and like if you like cannot
Speaker 3: do the basic this is a dog and your response
Speaker 3: is like I'm gonna grab his face, or your response
Speaker 3: is I Am going to beat this dog up with
Speaker 3: a baton, like you have somehow fundamentally failed at like
Speaker 3: the process of being human.
Speaker 2: And also like if the dogs are immediately reacting to
Speaker 2: your presence in the yard and they were not previously
Speaker 2: reacting to anything. Maybe you could assume there was no
Speaker 2: break in. Maybe you could assume the dogs have it
Speaker 2: covered and you maybe don't break into the yard. But
Speaker 2: our boy, Henry, he's beating these dogs with a stick,
Speaker 2: and I guess maybe he was struggling, so his partner,
Speaker 2: Officer Elias, drew her service weapon and attempted to shoot
Speaker 2: the dogs as he is beating them.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: Now, we talked before about some problems with aiming, right,
Speaker 2: Cops don't have great marksmanship when you're talking about a
Speaker 2: little complicated physical situation. Right, they're sort of entangled. The
Speaker 2: dogs are small, the man is big. She shot him
Speaker 2: in the dick. So he's beating these dogs. She shoots
Speaker 2: him in the groin. It doesn't say what happened to
Speaker 2: the dogs, but it doesn't indicate she fired her service
Speaker 2: weapon multiple times, so maybe she just shot him and
Speaker 2: then put it up. He was airlifted to the hospital
Speaker 2: to undergo emergency groin surgery, and he did survive.
Speaker 5: Oh.
Speaker 2: Officer Mackleenen continued to serve with the Miami Dade Police
Speaker 2: Department for another sixteen years, and he was still with
Speaker 2: the department when he passed away in twenty sixteen. At
Speaker 2: the age of sixty six. His own obituary does not
Speaker 2: list a cause of death, only that his wife was
Speaker 2: at his bedside for thirty six days before he passed.
Speaker 2: The first mention of Mackleenan's passing being a line of
Speaker 2: duty death is in a National Police Week local news
Speaker 2: piece the following year, which lists his cause of death
Speaker 2: as accidental gunfire. A year later, in twenty eighteen, a
Speaker 2: Police Week story indicates that he was quote killed by
Speaker 2: gunfire on the date that he died in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: It's not until years later that you start to see
Speaker 2: claims that his cause of death was due to complications
Speaker 2: from the sixteen year old wound. So it's not clear
Speaker 2: where that claim even originated. But he did die sixteen
Speaker 2: years after being shot, and during those intervening sixteen years
Speaker 2: he was well enough to continue to serve on the force.
Speaker 4: I mean, if you know, if the family went with
Speaker 4: that lie, maybe they got money out of it.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I guess it's possible.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, there was what other motive is there
Speaker 4: other than I don't know.
Speaker 2: I see an indication that there was a wrongful death
Speaker 2: lawsuit after he died. He did file a civil lawsuit
Speaker 2: in two thousand and four against the homeowner retired Miami
Speaker 2: detective Heyesu's caames, but that was dismissed and he didn't
Speaker 2: even recover attorney's fees. He didn't get anything out of that.
Speaker 3: Wait, so he tried. So he started beating two dogs
Speaker 3: with the baton, and his partner shot him in the balls.
Speaker 3: Tried to hit the dog, and he tried to sue
Speaker 3: the guy whose house you broke into. I mean, this
Speaker 3: is incredible.
Speaker 2: If the guy, if the homeowner, hadn't been a retired
Speaker 2: potentially dirty cop. I found some articles in the eighties
Speaker 2: alleging that this so not alleging in the in the eighties,
Speaker 2: this officer Haes Whu's Karamas, who is deceased now, but
Speaker 2: was suspended briefly during an investigation into a ring of
Speaker 2: Miami officers who were trafficking cocaine. Of course, I don't
Speaker 2: know how that turned out. Well, I mean probably it
Speaker 2: went fine, like well, yeah, he didn't get fired because
Speaker 2: he was still on a force in nineteen ninety seven
Speaker 2: when he shot a guy during a traffic stop. Wow,
Speaker 2: but no, his his lawsuit against the homeowner, the alarm company,
Speaker 2: and the woman who shot him. The cop did not succeed.
Speaker 2: Did not succeed.
Speaker 4: I mean, at least there's that he loved being a
Speaker 4: cop so much getting his or did I say Crosser cop?
Speaker 4: He loved being a cop so much as Crosser shot
Speaker 4: off and that didn't stop him. I didn't stop him.
Speaker 2: I do have a request into the court clerk in
Speaker 2: Miami to see if I can so. The documents are
Speaker 2: so old that they're not all uploaded on the court website,
Speaker 2: but I would like to see the original civil complaint
Speaker 2: because maybe it goes into more detail about or the
Speaker 2: severity of his injuries and the ways in which that
Speaker 2: he truly suffered from this. Maybe that'll give us some
Speaker 2: more insight into how it killed him sixteen years later.
Speaker 2: So hopefully hopefully the clerk in Miami gets back to
Speaker 2: me with that, because I do want to know what
Speaker 2: happened to the dogs.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, that's all I really care about there now.
Speaker 2: The officer who shot Macleena in the crotch, Etala Elias,
Speaker 2: had been on the force for about five years at
Speaker 2: the time of the incident. In that time, she had
Speaker 2: wrecked her patrol car six times wow, injured her hand
Speaker 2: slamming it in a car door, and racked up fifty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars in workman's comp and medical expense reimbursement after
Speaker 2: falling off a bicycle during a training exercise. Oh As
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty two, Ittala Elias is still an officer
Speaker 2: with the Miami Dade Police Department, earning one hundred and
Speaker 2: eight thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 4: Wow, that's just I mean, I wonder how many more
Speaker 4: car accidents she's she's been in if that was her
Speaker 4: record in five years. Wow, that's uh impressive.
Speaker 3: Like I am trying to think of another job that
Speaker 3: you could keep after crashing your car six times on
Speaker 3: the deb I'm shooting someone in the dick, yeah, jod cops, Wow, cops.
Speaker 3: Cops have the kind of job security that was previously
Speaker 3: reserved for like workers in the state owned industries in
Speaker 3: Maoist China. Like no one else has ever had this
Speaker 3: kind of job security before.
Speaker 2: And so I will end our stories here because Sophie
Speaker 2: will put one of us in the pit if the
Speaker 2: episodes keep coming out over an hour long. But there
Speaker 2: are an unbelievable number of stories of cops getting hurt
Speaker 2: doing shit they were not supposed to be doing. A
Speaker 2: cop who died because he didn't know which antibiotics he
Speaker 2: was allergic to when he went to the hospital because
Speaker 2: he was messing around with an injured feral cat and
Speaker 2: got scratched the fuck. A prison guard who tripped in
Speaker 2: the wreckyard and hit his head. A shocking number of
Speaker 2: accidents at the shooting range or during training exercises.
Speaker 4: Thease want know what it felt like. They just want
Speaker 4: to know what it felt like.
Speaker 2: Including one very weird one where they were role playing
Speaker 2: a scenario. And so there these were cops in the
Speaker 2: Gaming Commission, so casino cops, but during a training exercises,
Speaker 2: during a training exercise, they were role playing a scenario
Speaker 2: where one of the cops was being attacked by an
Speaker 2: assailant and he was supposed to, you know, roleplay it
Speaker 2: out right. They're pretending this is pretend they're in a
Speaker 2: conference room. But he got scared and drew his real
Speaker 2: gun and really shot and really killed the director of
Speaker 2: the Mississippi Gaming Commission. Almost every cop death was completely preventable.
Speaker 2: They're careless and they're reckless, and they're doing shit they
Speaker 2: should not be doing. They're counting normal wear and tear
Speaker 2: like knee injuries and heart attacks, as though these are
Speaker 2: noble deaths of martyrs. And it's all part of this
Speaker 2: ideological product of myth making around American policing, right, because
Speaker 2: you have to believe that this is a uniquely dangerous
Speaker 2: and frightening job that only the bravest boys can do.
Speaker 2: Because they're under so much risk, they have to react
Speaker 2: the way that they do. They have to react with
Speaker 2: extreme violence. They have to shoot first and ask questions
Speaker 2: later because their job is just so dangerous, right, And
Speaker 2: I think it's it's interesting as we drove to a
Speaker 2: close to draw a comparison here, right, because they react
Speaker 2: with great violence against us because of their fear of
Speaker 2: imaginary violence that they might face. So the FBI prepares
Speaker 2: this meticulous report every year with rigorous and mandatory data
Speaker 2: collection processes, so we have a comprehensive set of data
Speaker 2: about not just every cop who dies, but every cop
Speaker 2: who is assaulted on the job. The LEOCA report includes
Speaker 2: on the job assaults and injuries, so we have a
Speaker 2: very clear idea of how much violence and how many
Speaker 2: accidents cops are exposed to, mostly in the form of
Speaker 2: single car accidents, but we have the data. There is
Speaker 2: no equivalent data for the kinds of violence police perpetrate
Speaker 2: on others. The FBI only started collecting information for the
Speaker 2: National Use of Force Database in twenty nineteen, and participation
Speaker 2: in that data collection process remains optional. Police yeah, three
Speaker 2: years ago, four.
Speaker 4: Year it is.
Speaker 2: That was prevoluntary. It's voluntary, so police departments do not
Speaker 2: have to tell anyone. They do not have to tell
Speaker 2: the federal government when they kill someone, they don't have
Speaker 2: to report that. So comprehensive data on police killings is
Speaker 2: something that only exists when newsrooms and nonprofits scrape the
Speaker 2: information together on their own. The Washington Post has a
Speaker 2: very thorough police shooting database, and nonprofit websites like Mapping
Speaker 2: Police Violence do their best to document each case, but
Speaker 2: even they admit they aren't capturing every fatal encounter with police.
Speaker 2: So while the FBI reports literally just a few days,
Speaker 2: officers a year fall into the feloniously killed category in
Speaker 2: the Lioga report, so not the car accident one. So
Speaker 2: there's a few dozen actual killings of officers a year.
Speaker 2: We can only hope to know the names of the
Speaker 2: average of over twelve hundred people who are killed each
Speaker 2: year by a cop, and that does kind of send
Speaker 2: a message about whose lives matter. So as you celebrate
Speaker 2: National Police Week this week, I guess you'll be hearing
Speaker 2: this on Friday if you listen to it the day
Speaker 2: it comes out, just take a moment to remember our
Speaker 2: brave boys like Lonnie Burton, who tripped on a curb
Speaker 2: outside of the Wayland Baptist University Police station and later
Speaker 2: died of complications, or brave officers like Trooper Jack Holland
Speaker 2: who died because he was allergic to yellowjackets, or officers
Speaker 2: like Deputy Sheriff Joseph Baka who was trying to tackle
Speaker 2: a suspect to the ground and fell into a bee's nest.
Speaker 2: It turns out he was allergic to bees. It's beautiful. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I should have I should have asked you both your
Speaker 2: hometown so I could get you a local boy, because
Speaker 2: one of my favorites is patrolman Billy Toot. Billy Toot.
Speaker 2: He was a jailer in Richmond who died when two
Speaker 2: inmates were trying to escape after they obtained pistols that
Speaker 2: were smuggled into the jail inside of a baked turkey.
Speaker 2: That just sounds like a cartoon.
Speaker 3: Hell not how it worked for them?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it it was in nineteen thirty four. I
Speaker 2: don't think you would put guns inside of a turkey anymore.
Speaker 2: I just have a whole turkey.
Speaker 4: A security detector or something.
Speaker 2: But yes, And I hope you're all having a safe
Speaker 2: and healthy police week and that you celebrate that by
Speaker 2: not encountering any policeman. It could happen here as a
Speaker 2: production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 1: coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
Speaker 1: find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at
Speaker 1: coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.