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Speaker 1: Clayton. I'm gonna start this episode with a statement and

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Speaker 1: not a question. The War on Drugs killed Brianna Taylor.

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Speaker 1: That's a powerful statement. On March thirteenth, twenty twenty, Louisville

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Speaker 1: police officers rated Taylor's apartment looking for drugs allegedly stashed

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Speaker 1: by a former boyfriend. You know what happened when Brianna Taylor,

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Speaker 1: she was just sort of lumped in, you know, it

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Speaker 1: was almost like a sort of an afterthought, We'll go

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Speaker 1: ahead and raid her house. Du N Walker, who was

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Speaker 1: in the apartment and dating Taylor at the time, fired

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Speaker 1: one shot at police. Louisville police officers fired more than

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Speaker 1: thirty shots, many blindly, into the apartment. Taylor was struck

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Speaker 1: and killed the mere fact that she was sort of

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Speaker 1: adjacent to a drugs I mean, this is you know,

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Speaker 1: this is how we justified collateral damage in war. No'm

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Speaker 1: not grave. This becomes a nation issue because of a

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Speaker 1: Senate stafford in his early twenties named Don Santarelli, and

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Speaker 1: he proposes it as a wedge issue, Like wait a minute,

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Speaker 1: hold on, that's where it came from. He just made

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Speaker 1: a suggestion that we should bust into people's houses and

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Speaker 1: they went with somebody who had no police That's crazy.

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Speaker 1: You'd be stunned how much laws made by twenty two

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Speaker 1: year olds. That's crazy. I'm Greg Glaud and this is

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Speaker 1: the War on Drugs telling how you doing today? Man?

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Speaker 1: Good about yourself? Greg? Doing well? Doing well? Yeah? Uh

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Speaker 1: read something the other day and the title of the

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Speaker 1: article was the War on Drugs killed Brianna Taylor and

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Speaker 1: you know Brin Taylor for those um who don't know,

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Speaker 1: because I mean there's been so many just tragedies since

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Speaker 1: since then. As a shame we get lost in you know,

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Speaker 1: the tragedy of which is which? But yeah, and it

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Speaker 1: kind of crazy, like it's just it happened so often. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it cannot getting them to this stuff, like you really can't.

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Speaker 1: But well, really the thrust of the article was just

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Speaker 1: saying that, you know, they were able to break into

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Speaker 1: her house, coming there at the middle of the night,

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Speaker 1: her boyfriend sleeping next to her, and it turns out

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Speaker 1: it was on a no knock warrant for some small

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Speaker 1: connection that she had with a former kind of friend

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Speaker 1: boyfriend drug dealer that she was not helping whatsoever on

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Speaker 1: drugs and his house was a you know, miles away

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Speaker 1: and it was for a small amount of drugs. Even

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Speaker 1: if they found anything, didn't find anything. Bryan Taylor's dead. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you lost somebody close to you, somebody lost a family member,

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Speaker 1: that was somebody in the community that was, you know,

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Speaker 1: contributing to society. Yeah. Yeah, there was no knock warrants.

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Speaker 1: Those that's a that's that's a real kind of dangerous

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Speaker 1: thing in the community because it's it's just an excuse

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Speaker 1: to kick in somebody's door, Like I mean, that's that's

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Speaker 1: essentially what it is. Like, there's no people can't respond

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Speaker 1: to the police because you haven't announced yourself as the police.

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Speaker 1: You haven't, you know, And I don't understand the value

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Speaker 1: in a no knock warrant. It seems like it's more

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Speaker 1: of a dangerous situation for the officers, right, yeah, because

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Speaker 1: if this person is selling drugs, then the person that

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Speaker 1: they probably worried about is other drug dealers, right and

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Speaker 1: you know who kicks indoors without stating this is the

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Speaker 1: police and flashing lights other drug dealers. So yeah, Omar

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Speaker 1: is the only one from the wire that ever announced

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Speaker 1: himself that we're about rob right with a whistle, You

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Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, Like he comes up whistling farmer

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Speaker 1: in the daily you know what it is like the

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Speaker 1: police don't even give you that much of a warning

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Speaker 1: with the no knock like yeah, yeah, maybe that should

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Speaker 1: be the law to play the ice cream music or

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Speaker 1: something like you gotta turn your music up. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, and Branda's story, as tragic as it was,

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Speaker 1: is you know, not something that's rare in our It's

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Speaker 1: not uncommon. Now it's a little bit too common, I think. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean there's countless stories of people, you know, officers

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Speaker 1: getting the wrong address and barreling into someone's house. I

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Speaker 1: mean we've seen that a million times. We saw that

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Speaker 1: in was that Henry County? Yeah, yeah, outside Atlanta. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And like you talked about with like police, I mean

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Speaker 1: there's places that don't do this at all in the

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Speaker 1: United States. I mean, Florida has has not allowed for

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Speaker 1: nor Knox for for years in statute, and like they're

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Speaker 1: doing just fine. Um, it's it's not necessary. But the

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Speaker 1: reason that you're able to do these things is because

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Speaker 1: the War on drugs. The vast majority of no knock

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Speaker 1: warrants and swat units and all this stuff is to

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Speaker 1: execute drug ring. Yeah, a lot of this stuff, like

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Speaker 1: when you make it the War on drugs, which this

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Speaker 1: podcast is about, it's a war, so it is. That's

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Speaker 1: what you're seeing. You're seeing police having to be more

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Speaker 1: like soldiers and looking at citizens as enemy combatants. Almost. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and you know we're gonna talk to um Radley Alco

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Speaker 1: who's an amazing investigative reporter, has an awesome book called

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Speaker 1: Rise of the Warrior Cop. And what I love about

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Speaker 1: it it shows like cops didn't always act like this,

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Speaker 1: Like they didn't have these tactics of swat team units

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Speaker 1: and military gear that literally is coming over from Iraq

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Speaker 1: and Afghanistan in our war zone. Yeah, and it's coming

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Speaker 1: right to local law enforcement with little to no training, accountability,

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Speaker 1: oversight and all these things. And the trigger at every

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Speaker 1: point when you see this expanded police power that makes

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Speaker 1: them more like the military. It's all drug related. It's

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Speaker 1: the fear of the drug war and it allows for

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Speaker 1: this government expansion and it's kind of terrifying, and it

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Speaker 1: happens so slow you don't realize it, and then these

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Speaker 1: tragic consequences have you're like, wait, we didn't always do

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Speaker 1: it this way. We didn't have to always do it

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Speaker 1: this way? Why are we doing this right? And yeah,

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Speaker 1: I like it because I'm glad to hear what he

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Speaker 1: has to say because it's kind of it makes me

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Speaker 1: feel like I'm not crazy because we're seeing how far

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Speaker 1: it's come. But even in my lifetime I've seen it

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Speaker 1: doesn't seem like the SWAT team does what they used

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Speaker 1: to do. Seemed like the SWAT team used to be

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Speaker 1: called in dangerous situations when things, you know, when nobody

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Speaker 1: else could do. Now it seems like SWAT Team is

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Speaker 1: strictly for serving no knock war rufen. Yeah, like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: SWAT used to We used to watch those movies like

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Speaker 1: in the eighties nineties, like Liam Neeson would be in

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Speaker 1: it or Arnold Hostages, Yeahstages. We got a dude and

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Speaker 1: the sniper rifle on the scope and you got the

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Speaker 1: negotiating dude, don't take the shot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And

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Speaker 1: now it's just dope fiends and they're they're just right,

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Speaker 1: like that's who we're going on right with m fors

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Speaker 1: and A. Yeah. So yeah, I'm I can't wait to

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Speaker 1: get into with Radley about like all this stuff, like

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Speaker 1: the history of it. I mean, the nerd of me

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Speaker 1: just loves that stuff. But it really does show you

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Speaker 1: how we got here and it doesn't have to be

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Speaker 1: this way, and what other places do and what can

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Speaker 1: we do and what are the reforms that can you know,

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Speaker 1: get us away from these devastating consequences like Grinn and

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Speaker 1: Taylor and people need to hear it. Yeah, so let's

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Speaker 1: get in to it. Excited Bradley, Welcome to the War

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Speaker 1: on Drugs. Thanks thanks for having me. Yeah, we're glad

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Speaker 1: to have you. Yeah, this is awesome. Yeah, I'll kind

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Speaker 1: of kick it off here. You know, we all heard

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Speaker 1: the story of Brianna Taylor that it was a no

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Speaker 1: knock garade based upon very scant evidence of drug activity

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Speaker 1: at her house. It was an old boyfriend or a

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Speaker 1: friend that used to have packages delivered to her house

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Speaker 1: because his would get porch pirated and hers were able

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Speaker 1: to be protected. You know. They came in at you know,

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Speaker 1: midnight or whatever. It was one o'clock, her and her

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Speaker 1: boyfriend lawful, you know, firearm owner, and people are barreling

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Speaker 1: into their house. What do you expect? And then he

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Speaker 1: was shot and killed or she was shot and killed,

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Speaker 1: and he was charged with murder at first, and then

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Speaker 1: I believe those were all dropped. But it seems like

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Speaker 1: these types of tactics no knock garades and warrants not

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Speaker 1: only are incredibly dangerous for the people that are being

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Speaker 1: rated on, also for the police officers as well. Can

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Speaker 1: you talk a little bit about kind of the rise

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Speaker 1: of these type of tactics. Where does no knock warrants

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Speaker 1: come from? Has that just always been how it's been

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Speaker 1: just kind of talk about that, and then kind of

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Speaker 1: the combination and connection with the War on drugs and

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Speaker 1: how that's kind of raisen at the same time of

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Speaker 1: these type of military tactics. Sure, before I get into

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Speaker 1: the history, I mean, one thing that I think we

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Speaker 1: need to mention about the Brenna Taylor raid is, you know,

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Speaker 1: if you buy into the war on drugs and you

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Speaker 1: buy into the idea that they have to do these

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Speaker 1: kinds of raids, which I don't buy into either, you know,

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Speaker 1: they had enough evidence for the guy that they were

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Speaker 1: after in this case, right, there was overwhelming evidence. The

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Speaker 1: reason why they raided Brionna Taylor as well. I think

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Speaker 1: is important to note in a discussion like this. You know,

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Speaker 1: in order to fight a war, you have to do

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Speaker 1: humanize your enemy, right, you have to make them sort

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Speaker 1: of look like worthless. You have to you have to

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Speaker 1: sort of instill in the public the idea that these

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Speaker 1: people aren't worse, sort of the basic dignity that we

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Speaker 1: give to other human beings. And the fact that you know,

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Speaker 1: what happened with Brionna Taylors, which she was just sort

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Speaker 1: of lumped in. You know, it was almost like a

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Speaker 1: sort of an afterthought that was gonna we'll go ahead

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Speaker 1: and raid her house too, since while we're at it,

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Speaker 1: and like the idea that you know, you're gonna be

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Speaker 1: breaking somebody's door down in the middle night and subjecting

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Speaker 1: them to these volatile tactics, subjecting them in any people

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Speaker 1: that happened to be in the home that you know,

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Speaker 1: just the mere fact that she was sort of adjacent

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Speaker 1: to a drug. I mean, this is you know, this

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Speaker 1: is how we justify collateral damage in wars, right, that's

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Speaker 1: how we justify killing citizens wars. Well, we had to

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Speaker 1: bomb you know, this bridge and there happened to be

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Speaker 1: citizens on it, you know, Oh well, you know, I

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Speaker 1: mean it's a tragic, but it had to be done.

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Speaker 1: And you know, it's important to remember that the no

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Speaker 1: knock grade for the first sort of couple decades of

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Speaker 1: its existence as a as an actual sort of policy.

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Speaker 1: This is not something that police chiefs were clamoring for

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Speaker 1: or sheriffs wanted. Um you know again, police were reluctant

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Speaker 1: to use it, and when the places where it was passed.

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Speaker 1: But then Nixon runs in nineteen sixty eight and he

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Speaker 1: makes um, you know, drugs and the drug war a

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Speaker 1: huge priority of his campaign. He's it's this you know,

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Speaker 1: pretty blatant racist appeal to sort of white fear of

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Speaker 1: black crime or suburban fear of urban crime. And so

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Speaker 1: you know, as part of that campaign, he has a

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Speaker 1: number proposes a number of policies like doing away with

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Speaker 1: cash bail, um, a lot of really some insane things

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Speaker 1: about that sort of indefinite attention. And at one point

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Speaker 1: they wanted to sort of arrest the attorneys for you know,

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Speaker 1: suspected drug dealers. But one of the big policies was

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Speaker 1: the no not great. It was this idea that you know,

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Speaker 1: we're going to show how tough we are in drugs

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Speaker 1: by we're gonna let cops just kick down doors to

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Speaker 1: to you know, go in and seize the drugs. And

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Speaker 1: I mean the interesting thing about this, you know, I said,

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Speaker 1: this is not something that law enforcement wanted. Um, this

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Speaker 1: is not something they were clamoring for. So this becomes

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Speaker 1: a national issue because of a guy, a Senate stafford

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Speaker 1: in his early twenties named Don Santarelli, and he proposes

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Speaker 1: it as a wedge issue like this is this is

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Speaker 1: going to be something that we can do to appeal

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Speaker 1: to Middle America. You know, most people don't think of

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Speaker 1: themselves that the kind of people who are going to

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Speaker 1: be wrongly rated by police officers. Wait a minute, hold on,

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Speaker 1: that's where it came from. He just made a suggestion

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Speaker 1: that we should bust into people's houses and they went

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Speaker 1: with somebody who had no police That's crazy. You'd be

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Speaker 1: stunned how much law is made by twenty two year

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Speaker 1: old just say it like about this. Yeah, man, it's yeah.

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Speaker 1: This whole city's run by like people making thirty thousand

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Speaker 1: dollars a year. Where it's nuts. Yeah. I read interviewed

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Speaker 1: centrally from my book, and you know today he says

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Speaker 1: this is one of the biggest mistakes of his career.

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Speaker 1: And he's he's very sort of mournful, almost for the

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Speaker 1: way that this tactic has been sort of used and

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Speaker 1: abused over the years. Um. You know, but it's part

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Speaker 1: of this successful campaign. And Nickson gets elected and in

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Speaker 1: I believe its seventy or seventy one, Congress passes this law.

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Speaker 1: They pass two laws. One is a bill that authorizes

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Speaker 1: no knock grades for federal narcotics officers, and the other

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Speaker 1: is one that legalizes no knock grades for police officers

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Speaker 1: in Washington DCS. Congress has jurisdiction over the District of Columbia.

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Speaker 1: And they're two very different reactions. In DC, DC at

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Speaker 1: the time actually had a pretty progressive police chief named

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Speaker 1: Jerry Wilson. I interviewed him for the book as well,

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Speaker 1: and Wilson hated this idea. Um. And you know, when

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Speaker 1: I asked him why he didn't want to implement this idea,

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Speaker 1: this no knock graide idea, he said some things that

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Speaker 1: I think are pretty profound. Um. First, he said, you know,

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Speaker 1: nobody goes into drug dealing to kill cops, right they Uh,

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Speaker 1: any drug dealer knows that to be kill a cop,

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Speaker 1: you're going to be lucky to survive the next five

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Speaker 1: or six seconds. It doesn't do business. Yeah, business. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's bad for business, You're gonna be it's bad for life. Right,

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Speaker 1: You're you're probably gonna be killed, or you're gonna go

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Speaker 1: to prison for the rest of your life. You're gonna

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Speaker 1: be executed. Um. The other thing he said is, you know,

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Speaker 1: the main justification for no knock grades other than say

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Speaker 1: the police is that they need that evidence in the

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Speaker 1: house to get a prosecution. Right. And if you wait

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Speaker 1: and give the person time to destroy the evidence, um,

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Speaker 1: then uh, you know that person's going to be to charge, right.

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Speaker 1: And from his perspective, it's like, you know, the amount

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Speaker 1: of drugs that you can flush down the toilet or

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Speaker 1: dispose of, you know, in the in the whatever twenty

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Speaker 1: thirty seconds that the police ought to give you before

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Speaker 1: breaking in, you know, um, you know, that's not a

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Speaker 1: significant quantity enough that it merits justifies the risk that

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Speaker 1: comes with a no knock rade and the kind of

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Speaker 1: violation of civil liberty. Yeah, you're not a kingpin, You're

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Speaker 1: not El Chapo. If you got it down in two flush, yeah,

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Speaker 1: And if the purpose of the drug wars to get

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Speaker 1: the drugs out of the the streets, you know, those drugs

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Speaker 1: aren't on the streets. Anymore. Right there, they're flushed. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: you know, his officers refused to to implement it, and interestingly,

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Speaker 1: crime actually goes down in DC over the next couple

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Speaker 1: of years as it goes up and the rest of

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Speaker 1: the country. I don't think his decision not to do

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Speaker 1: no knock rades it's the reason crime went down, but

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Speaker 1: it certainly didn't make things worse. But the federal level,

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Speaker 1: it's very different. Um So Nixon had also set up

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Speaker 1: these strike forces, which were federal narcotics officers teaming up

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Speaker 1: with local police. And these guys just go crazy. They

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Speaker 1: start kicking down doors left and right. They're they're raiding

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Speaker 1: places without warrants, they're lying on warrants, and they're raiding

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Speaker 1: the wrong houses, and people are getting terrorized, and some

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Speaker 1: people are getting killed. You know, since then there's a

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Speaker 1: trail of bodies. You know, I write about a botch

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Speaker 1: no knock that ended up with an innocent person dying.

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Speaker 1: You know, I would say they're probably four or five

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Speaker 1: of those a year, at least, lots more where people injured,

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Speaker 1: lots more where cops are killed or injured. And we

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Speaker 1: see this in the Brionna Taylor case. So the warrant

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Speaker 1: for the search warrant for the raid on Brionna Taylor's

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Speaker 1: own was illegal. It had this cut and paste boilerplate

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Speaker 1: language that they'd used in all the other search warrants

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Speaker 1: in that investigation. And I think it's a very sort

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Speaker 1: of underappreciated aspect of the case, which is that this

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Speaker 1: is kind of standard policy. I mean, the police police

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Speaker 1: departments across the country are routinely violating the Supreme Court's

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Speaker 1: ruling and nobody really cares. Um. You know, I found

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Speaker 1: in Little Rock a few years ago, I did a

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Speaker 1: review of about one hundred search warrants over a year

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Speaker 1: and a half period in Little Rock, a hundred no

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Speaker 1: knock warrants, and I found I think it was ninety

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Speaker 1: to ninety five percent of them had verbatim word for word,

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Speaker 1: cut and paste in the no knock section. And you know,

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Speaker 1: I actually interviewed the judges who signed those warrants, and

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Speaker 1: they didn't think they had done anything wrong. They could

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Speaker 1: They did no idea why it was even you know,

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Speaker 1: asking about this, and it's sort of like they were

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Speaker 1: signing illegal warrants. They were violating the law. And yet

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Speaker 1: because there are no consequences for any buddy involved, the judges,

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Speaker 1: the prosecutors, the police. It's just become sort of routine

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Speaker 1: for police to do this. And that's what happened in

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Speaker 1: Brenna Taylor's case. Yeah, that's that's unbelievable, and that she's

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Speaker 1: kind of just looked at as the same as someone

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Speaker 1: who actually was a suspected trafficker or whatever else and

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Speaker 1: just the exact same on that same footing. And to

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Speaker 1: your point, it's that almost dehumanizing of everyone. It's too general,

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Speaker 1: just boilerplate. These are the people that are in a

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Speaker 1: different subcategory of human beings more or less, and we

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Speaker 1: can do whatever we want. Yeah, there's there's no consideration

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Speaker 1: for their for their humanity. And you know the other

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Speaker 1: thing about Brown and Taylor's case, there was a criminologist

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Speaker 1: at the University of Eastern Kentucky who part of his

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Speaker 1: grad student thesis, he was allowed to sort of inbed

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Speaker 1: himself in the Louisville Police department and he talked about

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Speaker 1: how he went on a lot of these raids and

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Speaker 1: he was sort of in the car watching it, and

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Speaker 1: over and over again he saw them. The battering ram

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Speaker 1: hit the door at the very time the same time

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Speaker 1: that they announced that they were pleased, right, and this

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Speaker 1: is a you know, brazen violation of Supreme Court. Again,

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Speaker 1: the police thought called those knocking announce rates right, even

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Speaker 1: though they'll whole purpose of knocking announces to give the

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Speaker 1: people inside notice and let them avoid this violence by

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Speaker 1: coming to the door. Yeah, if your second knock is

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Speaker 1: a battering ram, you didn't really not. We have a

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Speaker 1: few bills to pag so we're going to go to

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Speaker 1: a couple of commercials right now. Hi, I'm Jason Flom,

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Speaker 1: CEO and founder of Lava for Good podcasts, Home to

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Speaker 1: with America's boldest change makers to tackle the root causes

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Speaker 1: of our country's biggest problems. Like many others who experienced addiction,

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Speaker 1: Scott Strode was using drugs and alcohol to numb the pain.

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Speaker 1: For him, it was childhood trauma. In his early twenties,

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Speaker 1: and that's where he discovered the healing power of sport

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Speaker 1: and community. In two thousand and six, Scott founded The Phoenix,

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00:17:26,320 --> 00:17:29,920
Speaker 1: a free, sober active community that uses the transformative power

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Speaker 1: of sport to help people treat and heal from addiction.

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Speaker 1: Scott Strode is one of many entrepreneurs partnering with Stand

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00:17:36,240 --> 00:17:40,960
Speaker 1: Together to drive solutions and education, healthcare, poverty, and criminal justice.

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Speaker 1: To learn more of visits stand together dot org. You know,

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Speaker 1: one of the things that we are discussing on this

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Speaker 1: podcast quite a bit is how the War on drugs

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Speaker 1: was never about drugs, and it was about all these

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Speaker 1: other things. And one of the themes that I really

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Speaker 1: see in your book is, you know, from the sixties

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Speaker 1: to the Nixon eras, through Reagan and Bush and Obama

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Speaker 1: and all throughout, drugs are used kind of as a

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Speaker 1: reason to expand military kind of reduce some of the

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Speaker 1: constant protections from the Fourth Amendment and all these other things.

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Speaker 1: Can you kind of talk a little bit about that

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Speaker 1: history of militarization through the eyes of the War on

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Speaker 1: drugs a little bit, or are just generally there? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think that's an important question. I think there are

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Speaker 1: two aspects to police militarization. The first is the stuff, right,

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Speaker 1: the guns, the armored personnel carriers, the helicopters, the bayonets,

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Speaker 1: ballistics gear, all of that, and that you know, that

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Speaker 1: stuff is all problematic, you know, for various for very

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Speaker 1: obvious reasons, which is this is stuff that was designed

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Speaker 1: for use on a battlefield that's being used in domestic policing,

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Speaker 1: you know, on American streets in American neighborhoods against America

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Speaker 1: and citizens. But the other side, I think, which is

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Speaker 1: sort of unappreciated and maybe overlooked a little bit, is

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Speaker 1: the mindset, militaristic mindset, and the two kind of go

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Speaker 1: hand in hand. Right. If you have a if you

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Speaker 1: take a domestic police officer and you dress him in camouflage,

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Speaker 1: you dress him like a soldier, you train him like

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Speaker 1: a soldier, you arm him like a soldier, and you

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Speaker 1: tell him, you know, he's fighting a war, whether it's

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Speaker 1: a war on drugs or crime or terrorism or know

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Speaker 1: anything else. You know, we shouldn't be surprised if they

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Speaker 1: start to think of themselves as soldiers and think of

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Speaker 1: their job as the job of a soldier, and so

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Speaker 1: the mindset though, I think, you know, we've increasingly seen

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Speaker 1: this sort of US versus them mentality in policing has

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Speaker 1: driven a lot at the top by politicians who kind

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Speaker 1: of have you know, described the war on drugs and

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Speaker 1: very warlike, sort of militaristic terms. Yeah. I always think

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Speaker 1: about like when I used to put pads on for football,

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Speaker 1: like in high school, Like it changes your mentality ready

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Speaker 1: to hit. Yeah, Like I don't care if I'm at

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Speaker 1: like the Dunbar High School, you know, powder puff football

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Speaker 1: game for a homecoming, like I'm going through some people. Yeah, Like,

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Speaker 1: you know, it just change your mentality. And if you're

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Speaker 1: like doing flag football, like you're a different person. Like

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Speaker 1: of course that's going to change that analoviously, that changes

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Speaker 1: your perception as a citizen, Like these aren't my neighbors anymore,

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Speaker 1: These aren't community police. These are occupiers in a way.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I think just intuitively, there's it's going to

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Speaker 1: have a profound effect, right. Um. I mean you know

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Speaker 1: I've often, um, sort of joked about this on social media.

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Speaker 1: But when you see, you know, an officer in a

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Speaker 1: city trusting camouflage, Um, there's no you know, there's no

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Speaker 1: practical reason for that, right, I mean, you're not You're

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Speaker 1: not raiding woods in the middle of New York right then,

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Speaker 1: and moreover, it tends to be very conspicuous. They're not

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Speaker 1: trying to hide from anything. Right. The whole point is

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Speaker 1: to send a message. I mean, that's why they wear it, right. Um.

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Speaker 1: And again you know this, the problem with this is that, um,

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Speaker 1: police officers aren't soldiers right there. They're supposed to be

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Speaker 1: peace officers. Their job is to protect our constitutional rights,

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Speaker 1: whereas the soldier's job is basically to to kill people

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Speaker 1: and break things to annihilate a foreign enemy. Very different

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Speaker 1: primary objectives, right, And for a long time this country

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Speaker 1: have done a good job of separating those two and

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Speaker 1: keeping them apart. But I think that the War on drugs,

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Speaker 1: what it's done, probably one of the more destructive things

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Speaker 1: that's done, is has blurred that line between police and

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Speaker 1: soldier and it's while we've done a good job of

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Speaker 1: keeping soldiers out of domestic policing, where we've kind of

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Speaker 1: dropped the ball as we've allowed our domestic police to

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Speaker 1: become more and more like soldiers. Yeah, and Raley, one

426
00:21:24,320 --> 00:21:27,119
Speaker 1: thing I always kind of discuss is the you know,

427
00:21:27,280 --> 00:21:30,640
Speaker 1: the relationship between violent crime and the drug war. Can

428
00:21:30,680 --> 00:21:34,120
Speaker 1: you talk a little bit about that connection between militarization,

429
00:21:34,240 --> 00:21:37,239
Speaker 1: drug war and an actual just violent crime occurring, Like

430
00:21:37,280 --> 00:21:41,320
Speaker 1: how much violence in this country happens because of drug

431
00:21:41,359 --> 00:21:44,400
Speaker 1: prohibition and the war that we're you know, putting out

432
00:21:44,480 --> 00:21:46,560
Speaker 1: on on narcotics. Well, I mean, if you if you

433
00:21:46,640 --> 00:21:49,240
Speaker 1: go back to the prohibition era and you look at

434
00:21:49,280 --> 00:21:51,920
Speaker 1: the homicide rate, I mean there's a spike the moment

435
00:21:51,920 --> 00:21:54,240
Speaker 1: alcohol is broken into the Bolstad Act, and then it

436
00:21:54,320 --> 00:21:57,439
Speaker 1: drops the moment that it's it's repealed. So that's you know,

437
00:21:57,520 --> 00:22:00,000
Speaker 1: that's pretty striking. And if you look at the homicid

438
00:22:00,160 --> 00:22:02,080
Speaker 1: rate over a longer period of time, there's a spike

439
00:22:02,640 --> 00:22:05,240
Speaker 1: right at about the time Nixon declares war on drugs

440
00:22:05,280 --> 00:22:08,359
Speaker 1: and implement his policies and during the regular administration. Um,

441
00:22:08,480 --> 00:22:10,200
Speaker 1: So you know, I do think there's a Yeah, there's

442
00:22:10,960 --> 00:22:14,200
Speaker 1: clearly every time you sort of well, when you prohibit

443
00:22:14,240 --> 00:22:15,600
Speaker 1: drugs for the first time, you're going to see a

444
00:22:15,600 --> 00:22:18,440
Speaker 1: spike because you know, you're you're taking a legal activity

445
00:22:18,480 --> 00:22:21,359
Speaker 1: and pushing it underground. Um. You know, I would make

446
00:22:21,359 --> 00:22:24,159
Speaker 1: the joke you don't very often see people murdered in

447
00:22:24,200 --> 00:22:28,600
Speaker 1: a michelobe deal gone back exactly yea Corona boys are

448
00:22:28,640 --> 00:22:32,080
Speaker 1: coming over. Yeah right. I mean, if you two alcohol

449
00:22:32,119 --> 00:22:33,960
Speaker 1: distributors have a beef, they go to court and saddle

450
00:22:34,080 --> 00:22:36,120
Speaker 1: to two drug dealers have a beef, it's a whole

451
00:22:36,119 --> 00:22:39,960
Speaker 1: different matter, right. Um. But you know, also just you know,

452
00:22:40,000 --> 00:22:42,000
Speaker 1: in general, when you then when you sort of crack

453
00:22:42,119 --> 00:22:47,320
Speaker 1: down on drugs, then you just you disrupt the sort

454
00:22:47,320 --> 00:22:49,760
Speaker 1: of established black market. So then people start fighting for

455
00:22:49,840 --> 00:22:52,000
Speaker 1: turf again. I mean, we saw this in Mexico when

456
00:22:52,000 --> 00:22:53,840
Speaker 1: the US government for some of the Mexican government to

457
00:22:53,880 --> 00:22:55,960
Speaker 1: take a more militaristic approach to the war on drugs.

458
00:22:55,960 --> 00:22:58,959
Speaker 1: It disrupted the black market. And you saw this just

459
00:22:58,960 --> 00:23:03,560
Speaker 1: just massive heart wrenching sort of escalation and homicides across

460
00:23:03,640 --> 00:23:07,000
Speaker 1: from Mexico. And you know, the really perverse thing about it,

461
00:23:07,080 --> 00:23:08,720
Speaker 1: I know, getting a little bit off topic here, but

462
00:23:09,119 --> 00:23:12,919
Speaker 1: you saw politicians justify this by saying, basically, I mean

463
00:23:12,920 --> 00:23:16,120
Speaker 1: everybody from Hillary Clinton to Bush's drugs are that, you know,

464
00:23:16,840 --> 00:23:19,159
Speaker 1: these tens of thousands of murdered Mexicans were sort of

465
00:23:19,160 --> 00:23:21,040
Speaker 1: the price that we had to pay to stop Americans

466
00:23:21,080 --> 00:23:23,240
Speaker 1: from getting high, right. I Mean it's just like we

467
00:23:23,320 --> 00:23:25,239
Speaker 1: want to talk about the humanization. I mean, it's just

468
00:23:25,280 --> 00:23:28,159
Speaker 1: this utter sort of disregard for human life. Yeah, and

469
00:23:28,240 --> 00:23:30,479
Speaker 1: kind of switching to something a little bit different, but

470
00:23:30,600 --> 00:23:33,840
Speaker 1: on the same topic as you know, recently, you know,

471
00:23:33,920 --> 00:23:36,680
Speaker 1: Joe Biden just asked, you know, you know, pardoned everyone

472
00:23:36,720 --> 00:23:40,160
Speaker 1: with low level drug possession, kind of a more symbolic

473
00:23:40,440 --> 00:23:43,639
Speaker 1: approach and then also potentially rescheduling. And we've seen, you know,

474
00:23:43,680 --> 00:23:45,640
Speaker 1: thirty five states have some sort of form of legal

475
00:23:45,680 --> 00:23:48,919
Speaker 1: marijuana across the country. I think it would shock people

476
00:23:49,000 --> 00:23:52,280
Speaker 1: and Clay this song. We've talked about how much marijuana

477
00:23:52,400 --> 00:23:56,359
Speaker 1: still is a major contribute to the drug war, criminal

478
00:23:56,440 --> 00:24:00,919
Speaker 1: justice and kind of interactions between police and citizens. You know,

479
00:24:01,000 --> 00:24:02,960
Speaker 1: can you talk a little bit about like how marijuana

480
00:24:03,000 --> 00:24:05,320
Speaker 1: is still able to be you know with this Yeah,

481
00:24:05,359 --> 00:24:08,520
Speaker 1: with the smell of marijuana coming from a car like civilized,

482
00:24:08,680 --> 00:24:11,280
Speaker 1: which is which is crazy too because it can be

483
00:24:11,359 --> 00:24:14,320
Speaker 1: used for anything, like you can if you can smell

484
00:24:15,240 --> 00:24:18,960
Speaker 1: marijuana with both of my windows up while I'm doing sixty. Yeah,

485
00:24:19,040 --> 00:24:21,800
Speaker 1: you were a RoboCup. You are like, yeah, and they

486
00:24:22,119 --> 00:24:24,119
Speaker 1: use it for everything. Well, what it amaze me is

487
00:24:24,119 --> 00:24:25,840
Speaker 1: they you know, they can pull a car over because

488
00:24:25,880 --> 00:24:28,920
Speaker 1: they smelled you know, marijuana that was you know, locked

489
00:24:28,960 --> 00:24:31,199
Speaker 1: in the trunk right of the car, or they can

490
00:24:31,200 --> 00:24:35,600
Speaker 1: smell marijuana that you know, gave rise to a demeaning

491
00:24:35,880 --> 00:24:38,600
Speaker 1: roadside search where they go through every single bag and

492
00:24:38,640 --> 00:24:41,000
Speaker 1: throw everything out on the ground and they don't find anything.

493
00:24:41,359 --> 00:24:45,360
Speaker 1: And yet nobody, nobody, you know, clearly they didn't smell marijuana,

494
00:24:45,400 --> 00:24:48,040
Speaker 1: and yet nobody nobody says anything. It's like, oh, the

495
00:24:48,119 --> 00:24:50,680
Speaker 1: officer was mistaken, Oh well move on. And then you're

496
00:24:50,720 --> 00:24:52,879
Speaker 1: able to use everything there because it was a or

497
00:24:52,880 --> 00:24:54,840
Speaker 1: even if you don't, you just subjected somebody to a

498
00:24:54,920 --> 00:24:57,560
Speaker 1: humiliating search. You know, their ships like spread out all

499
00:24:57,560 --> 00:25:00,280
Speaker 1: over the interstate, and the cops like, all right, see

500
00:25:00,320 --> 00:25:02,000
Speaker 1: you later, go on, you know, and they move on

501
00:25:02,040 --> 00:25:03,359
Speaker 1: to the next person. I mean, I wrote about a

502
00:25:03,359 --> 00:25:06,919
Speaker 1: story where one of these canine units just outside of

503
00:25:08,320 --> 00:25:12,640
Speaker 1: Saint Louis Collinsville, Illinois, um, you know, he pulled over

504
00:25:12,680 --> 00:25:15,000
Speaker 1: this guy and you know, the drug dog magically alerted

505
00:25:15,040 --> 00:25:16,600
Speaker 1: and they didn't find anything. And of course the cops

506
00:25:16,640 --> 00:25:18,160
Speaker 1: will say, well there was there must have been trained

507
00:25:18,200 --> 00:25:22,960
Speaker 1: to shake, you know, yeah, traces of And that guy

508
00:25:23,040 --> 00:25:24,840
Speaker 1: sued the guy that got pulled over, and he found

509
00:25:24,840 --> 00:25:27,560
Speaker 1: out that this cop was training. How he would train

510
00:25:27,640 --> 00:25:30,800
Speaker 1: his dogs. He would go to roadside motels and hotels

511
00:25:30,800 --> 00:25:33,240
Speaker 1: into the parking lot and he would rub pot on

512
00:25:33,280 --> 00:25:35,040
Speaker 1: the bumpers of some of the cars and then he

513
00:25:35,040 --> 00:25:37,639
Speaker 1: would take his dog through dog alerted and that's how

514
00:25:37,680 --> 00:25:39,520
Speaker 1: he trained his dog. Well, imagine if you're one of

515
00:25:39,560 --> 00:25:42,280
Speaker 1: those cars didn't get pulled over the next day, you know,

516
00:25:42,480 --> 00:25:44,719
Speaker 1: and the drug dog comes out and alerts, and now

517
00:25:44,760 --> 00:25:47,040
Speaker 1: you got to search, you know, I mean the drug

518
00:25:47,080 --> 00:25:48,720
Speaker 1: dog thing. I mean, we could do a whole episode

519
00:25:48,720 --> 00:25:52,919
Speaker 1: just on that. Man. I've never probably calls believed on

520
00:25:52,960 --> 00:25:55,880
Speaker 1: them like all the way, like no like, and even

521
00:25:55,920 --> 00:25:57,600
Speaker 1: the research shows they're only good for about like two

522
00:25:57,640 --> 00:26:00,359
Speaker 1: hours out of the day. Well also snah, so I

523
00:26:00,359 --> 00:26:08,160
Speaker 1: am too well as government work. Well, I mean, yeah,

524
00:26:08,160 --> 00:26:10,080
Speaker 1: these dogs are trained, dogs have great noses, but but

525
00:26:10,119 --> 00:26:13,159
Speaker 1: we've also bred into dogs for several hundred years. This

526
00:26:13,160 --> 00:26:17,400
Speaker 1: this innate desire to please us. And so if you're

527
00:26:17,520 --> 00:26:19,560
Speaker 1: a drug handler, you want a dog that's gonna please you.

528
00:26:19,560 --> 00:26:21,119
Speaker 1: And so the dog can read that and if he

529
00:26:21,200 --> 00:26:22,919
Speaker 1: if you're drug handler things there's drugs in the car,

530
00:26:22,960 --> 00:26:24,359
Speaker 1: the dogs are going to alert because it wants to

531
00:26:24,359 --> 00:26:26,680
Speaker 1: please the handler. And that's not taught out of them.

532
00:26:26,720 --> 00:26:29,119
Speaker 1: I mean I've talked to people who train drug dogs

533
00:26:29,359 --> 00:26:32,520
Speaker 1: and they've said told me, we could train that out

534
00:26:32,520 --> 00:26:35,080
Speaker 1: of dogs. So they only alert when they're actually drugs

535
00:26:35,119 --> 00:26:36,840
Speaker 1: in the car. Police departments don't want that. They want

536
00:26:36,840 --> 00:26:38,600
Speaker 1: dogs they're gonna alert that they are gonna alert whenever

537
00:26:38,600 --> 00:26:41,000
Speaker 1: the cop wants them to alert. It's amazing. Yeah, cop

538
00:26:41,040 --> 00:26:45,520
Speaker 1: get excited, the dog get excited. Ye, everybody's happy. Yeah. Radley,

539
00:26:45,560 --> 00:26:47,879
Speaker 1: we want to thank you for coming on. We really

540
00:26:47,920 --> 00:26:51,960
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Man. Pleasure. Um, what the work you're doing

541
00:26:52,080 --> 00:26:56,000
Speaker 1: is important, and let these people know how they can

542
00:26:56,040 --> 00:26:58,919
Speaker 1: support you, where they can find you and where they

543
00:26:58,920 --> 00:27:01,840
Speaker 1: can get more formed on what's going on. Sure. So

544
00:27:02,560 --> 00:27:05,119
Speaker 1: I'm an independent journalist now, so you can find my

545
00:27:05,160 --> 00:27:07,560
Speaker 1: work at the Watch, which is a substack. So if

546
00:27:07,560 --> 00:27:10,840
Speaker 1: you go to Radley Balco dot substack dot com or

547
00:27:11,040 --> 00:27:13,240
Speaker 1: just google my name and the watch or my name

548
00:27:13,240 --> 00:27:15,040
Speaker 1: and substack. You should be able to find it pretty easily.

549
00:27:15,720 --> 00:27:18,480
Speaker 1: I appreciate that. Yeah, everyone go check out Radley's work.

550
00:27:18,560 --> 00:27:21,359
Speaker 1: He is one of the foremost experts on this issue.

551
00:27:21,440 --> 00:27:24,359
Speaker 1: His book Rise of the Warrior Coop is terrific, something

552
00:27:24,400 --> 00:27:27,520
Speaker 1: that definitely got me more interested in my career to

553
00:27:27,600 --> 00:27:30,000
Speaker 1: do this. So yeah, thank you again, thanks for the invitation.

554
00:27:30,040 --> 00:27:35,000
Speaker 1: I appreciate it again, Thank you so much. Clayton wasn't

555
00:27:35,080 --> 00:27:36,440
Speaker 1: cheap to get so we had to cut a couple

556
00:27:36,440 --> 00:27:40,920
Speaker 1: of commercials. We'll be right back. Somebody gotta pay me.

557
00:27:49,840 --> 00:27:53,960
Speaker 1: The theme I kept seeing was drugs was an excuse

558
00:27:54,040 --> 00:27:57,240
Speaker 1: to kind of militarize the police. And so it wasn't

559
00:27:57,240 --> 00:27:59,560
Speaker 1: that we were concerned about drugs and safety. It was

560
00:28:00,280 --> 00:28:02,840
Speaker 1: this is an area that we can exploit to actually

561
00:28:03,760 --> 00:28:07,280
Speaker 1: increase the police force, increase this kind of presence, increases

562
00:28:07,280 --> 00:28:11,240
Speaker 1: police state. Yeah, I mean, once you get past automatic weapons,

563
00:28:12,280 --> 00:28:14,479
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know who you think they're dealing with,

564
00:28:14,640 --> 00:28:17,720
Speaker 1: Like you need that much military equipment and I think,

565
00:28:17,800 --> 00:28:21,199
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's it's scary because I think the

566
00:28:21,320 --> 00:28:27,280
Speaker 1: military probably has more protocol there's accountability, there's protocol, like

567
00:28:27,320 --> 00:28:30,960
Speaker 1: if you act up, you go to a military tribunal. Yeah. Yeah,

568
00:28:31,000 --> 00:28:34,160
Speaker 1: you know, like you could get courtmark, you could get yeah.

569
00:28:34,200 --> 00:28:37,679
Speaker 1: Like and I think with police, they're getting all that

570
00:28:37,720 --> 00:28:41,560
Speaker 1: equipment with none of that. There's no training requirements, there's

571
00:28:41,600 --> 00:28:44,040
Speaker 1: nothing like it. And in facts with them, it's called

572
00:28:44,040 --> 00:28:46,040
Speaker 1: the ten thirty three program. If you don't use it

573
00:28:46,080 --> 00:28:47,960
Speaker 1: within a year, you have to give it back. Oh

574
00:28:47,960 --> 00:28:50,080
Speaker 1: so you got to use it. You're incentivized to use

575
00:28:50,120 --> 00:28:53,760
Speaker 1: it in some way. So whenever something the next thing

576
00:28:53,840 --> 00:28:57,240
Speaker 1: that happens, whether it's you know, the high school football

577
00:28:57,280 --> 00:28:59,760
Speaker 1: game was out of control, yeah, put that right gear on,

578
00:29:00,080 --> 00:29:02,320
Speaker 1: get it on. Yes, you have to go out there,

579
00:29:02,960 --> 00:29:05,400
Speaker 1: don't smack anybody, but show them we got it. Yeah,

580
00:29:05,560 --> 00:29:08,720
Speaker 1: so we could keep it. Yeah, seriously, it's crazy. Um.

581
00:29:09,440 --> 00:29:12,520
Speaker 1: And you know when I mean, you're you're dude, I'm

582
00:29:12,560 --> 00:29:15,720
Speaker 1: a guy. Like, we're idiots. Um. All we do is

583
00:29:15,720 --> 00:29:17,680
Speaker 1: like we have new toys, we want to use them. Yes,

584
00:29:17,840 --> 00:29:19,600
Speaker 1: and so you're going to give these things to police forces,

585
00:29:19,640 --> 00:29:22,320
Speaker 1: they're going to use them. And you know, you you

586
00:29:22,360 --> 00:29:24,480
Speaker 1: have all this stuff lying around. What is the most

587
00:29:24,480 --> 00:29:26,880
Speaker 1: common thing you do? It's drug warrants, and we've seen

588
00:29:26,920 --> 00:29:29,400
Speaker 1: it a million times go horribly wrong, these middle of

589
00:29:29,400 --> 00:29:32,960
Speaker 1: the night swat style raids, no knock warrants, when they're

590
00:29:32,960 --> 00:29:35,240
Speaker 1: not knocking and announcing, and I mean, I think the

591
00:29:35,240 --> 00:29:38,040
Speaker 1: most famous one that we've seen Pascual Hers with Breonna Taylor.

592
00:29:38,240 --> 00:29:41,760
Speaker 1: It's a midnight raid. Their only evidence was that the

593
00:29:41,840 --> 00:29:46,320
Speaker 1: guy that there was their target had packages delivered to

594
00:29:46,360 --> 00:29:48,160
Speaker 1: her house at some point because they were on and

595
00:29:48,200 --> 00:29:51,760
Speaker 1: off again dating, and that was the justification to break

596
00:29:51,800 --> 00:29:58,080
Speaker 1: into our home at midnight without announcing themselves break into

597
00:29:58,600 --> 00:30:02,120
Speaker 1: because that's what it is like. If you announce yourself

598
00:30:02,160 --> 00:30:05,920
Speaker 1: as the police and you've got the place surrounded, you

599
00:30:06,120 --> 00:30:09,120
Speaker 1: probably have the upper hand. But when you just bust

600
00:30:09,160 --> 00:30:11,400
Speaker 1: through somebody's door, and if you say you're gonna have

601
00:30:11,440 --> 00:30:17,000
Speaker 1: the drug dealers, drug dealers worry about other drug dealers. Yeah,

602
00:30:17,200 --> 00:30:20,680
Speaker 1: he don't. And they don't announce themselves. They don't be like, hello,

603
00:30:20,760 --> 00:30:24,960
Speaker 1: this is the cartel, we're outside, where's our money? You know,

604
00:30:25,000 --> 00:30:28,200
Speaker 1: they just bust in and they start shooting. So now

605
00:30:28,240 --> 00:30:30,560
Speaker 1: you're blending to get how is that even safe for

606
00:30:30,640 --> 00:30:33,600
Speaker 1: the officers? It's not, And I think people forget that.

607
00:30:33,720 --> 00:30:35,760
Speaker 1: We look at like, Oh, that's the bad guys. These

608
00:30:35,800 --> 00:30:38,000
Speaker 1: the good guys. These are the bad guys. These are

609
00:30:38,000 --> 00:30:42,920
Speaker 1: the good guys. But everybody's a human being in this,

610
00:30:43,240 --> 00:30:46,000
Speaker 1: and that's stuff you don't even think about, like when

611
00:30:46,000 --> 00:30:51,160
Speaker 1: you talk about the War on Drugs. Make sure you

612
00:30:51,200 --> 00:30:54,400
Speaker 1: follow the War on Drugs podcast so you don't miss

613
00:30:54,520 --> 00:30:58,560
Speaker 1: any new episodes or any of our quick fixed bonus content.

614
00:30:58,920 --> 00:31:01,400
Speaker 1: And we'll be back next week with another episode of

615
00:31:01,520 --> 00:31:07,160
Speaker 1: War on Drugs. Until then, thank you for listening. Executive

616
00:31:07,200 --> 00:31:10,400
Speaker 1: producers for War on Drugs are Jason Flam and Kevin Wordis.

617
00:31:10,840 --> 00:31:14,240
Speaker 1: Senior producer is Michael Epstein. Editing by Nick Massetti and

618
00:31:14,280 --> 00:31:18,240
Speaker 1: Michael Epstein. Associate producer and mix and mastering by Nick Massetti.

619
00:31:18,600 --> 00:31:22,520
Speaker 1: Additional production by Jeff Cleburne and Anna mcintee. Be sure

620
00:31:22,560 --> 00:31:26,440
Speaker 1: to follow the show on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at

621
00:31:26,520 --> 00:31:29,360
Speaker 1: Lava for Good. You can follow Greg on Twitter at

622
00:31:29,360 --> 00:31:32,680
Speaker 1: Greg Glaude, and you can follow Clayton English on Instagram

623
00:31:32,720 --> 00:31:35,800
Speaker 1: at Clayton English. The War on Drugs is a production

624
00:31:35,800 --> 00:31:39,200
Speaker 1: of Lava for Good Podcasts and association the Signal Company

625
00:31:39,640 --> 00:31:43,120
Speaker 1: Number One. I'm your host, Clayton English, and I'm Greg Glaude.

626
00:31:43,640 --> 00:32:03,200
Speaker 1: And thanks for listening to the War on Drugs podcast