Speaker 1: Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to
Speaker 1: welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our
Speaker 1: mission is to foster allyship empathy and understanding. I am
Speaker 1: your host, Ramsey's.
Speaker 2: Job is Ramsey's job. I am q ward. You are
Speaker 2: tuned in once again and hopefully for the ninety two
Speaker 2: hundredth times pacivic scit.
Speaker 1: That's right, man, listen, we are ready for today's show.
Speaker 1: We got some some Jesse Jackson playing in the background
Speaker 1: a little earlier, were a little hyped up.
Speaker 2: Thank you, rever.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, and we are feeling like we got a
Speaker 1: lot to share with you. So first off, rest in peace,
Speaker 1: Rico Way.
Speaker 2: One time for the Dungeon family.
Speaker 1: Okay, if you don't know about Rico Way, you need
Speaker 1: to get to know about him and then offer, you know,
Speaker 1: some some positive and cultivate some positivity and radiate that
Speaker 1: into the universe.
Speaker 2: Our prayers and thoughts to the whole DF absolutely.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, But stick around because today we're going to be
Speaker 1: talking about the police.
Speaker 2: Not a whole lot new.
Speaker 1: There, but something specific came out recently and our who
Speaker 1: came out that kind of compared police spending rates to
Speaker 1: the impact on crime rates, and so you know, city
Speaker 1: budgets for policing and whether or not more officers on
Speaker 1: the streets or better training or better you know whatever equipment,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, what have you if that impacts crime
Speaker 1: rates and spoiler alerted doesn't. But we're going to break
Speaker 1: that down for you and so you can think about
Speaker 1: things a little bit more critically as you vote in
Speaker 1: local elections. I just want to make sure you're going form.
Speaker 1: And then we're going to spend the second part of
Speaker 1: the show discussing some recent examples of police misconduct, police violence,
Speaker 1: police cover ups, all that sort of stuff that we
Speaker 1: haven't been able to get to. And you know, if
Speaker 1: we take a couple of weeks off to talk about
Speaker 1: you know, this or that or the other thing, these
Speaker 1: things tend to pile up. Indeed, I think we had
Speaker 1: like six or eight choices that were national stories and
Speaker 1: we picked three to share with you today. So a
Speaker 1: lot to stick around. But first and foremost, it is
Speaker 1: time to discuss some ebony excellence. And today's Ebony Excellence
Speaker 1: is sponsored by Major Threads for Innovative Fashionable Sports, where
Speaker 1: check majorthreads dot com. And I'm going to share a
Speaker 1: bit from NBC News Ralph y'arrel. For those that remember,
Speaker 1: Ralph y'arl was the black teenager who survived being shot
Speaker 1: in the head after he rang the wrong doorbell. It's
Speaker 1: about a year ago. He's now coming to grips with
Speaker 1: how the shooting has affected him, and we thought that
Speaker 1: this was an example of resilience and triumph over adversity,
Speaker 1: and so we wanted to share a little bit about
Speaker 1: his story. We've talked about him a couple of times
Speaker 1: on the show, but you know, as he continues to
Speaker 1: recover and kind of get back into his normal routine,
Speaker 1: we just want to continue saluting him, so I'll share
Speaker 1: a bit. Sometimes, y'all, age seventeen turns it inward, ignoring
Speaker 1: phone calls and text from loved ones. He skipped senior
Speaker 1: prom because he was afraid people would ask him about
Speaker 1: the shooting and he wasn't sure how he'd respond, and
Speaker 1: he acknowledges that his brain doesn't process dense information the
Speaker 1: way that it once did.
Speaker 2: That's okay, baby boy.
Speaker 1: You do what you can. You focus on being the
Speaker 1: best version of yourself as you can be.
Speaker 2: Here's a quote from him. Quote.
Speaker 1: It's definitely a bumpy journey, he said in his first
Speaker 1: in depth interview about how the shooting has affected him.
Speaker 1: One year later. He goes on to say, whenever there's
Speaker 1: something that goes on that reminds me of what happened,
Speaker 1: I just have such a negative wave of emotions, anger, disgust.
Speaker 1: It's always a mix of good and bad days, and
Speaker 1: I feel like the good days are when I'm able
Speaker 1: to be around people that helped me build myself up.
Speaker 1: So recently on Easter, y'all was full of spunk, hiding
Speaker 1: eggs in his aunt's backyard for his younger cousins. He's
Speaker 1: taking life one day at a time, and I'll leave
Speaker 1: you with this quote. I just feel I got lucky
Speaker 1: instead of being alive. And he plans to study engineering
Speaker 1: at university next ball, although he's undecided on where. So
Speaker 1: shout out to him for keeping it moving. All right,
Speaker 1: So let's get to this article. I'll just share a
Speaker 1: bit this from Publicnewsservice dot org. You're welcome to check
Speaker 1: this out, and of course there's other locations with this
Speaker 1: is where we source this material. A new report shows
Speaker 1: that despite record spending on law enforcement in California, the
Speaker 1: clearance rate that is, the rate of prime solved was
Speaker 1: at the lowest ever. Researchers from the Center on Juvenile
Speaker 1: and Criminal Justice found that the state spent a record
Speaker 1: twenty seven billion dollars on police in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: but the clearance rate was just thirteen percent for all
Speaker 1: reported defenses. And this is down from twenty percent as
Speaker 1: far back as nineteen eighty five. So senior researcher for
Speaker 1: the Center and report author Mike Man explain, quote, it's
Speaker 1: that the police are simply not making arrest. In Oakland,
Speaker 1: for instance, they have a crime clearance a rate of
Speaker 1: two percent serious Part one violence and property offenses. State
Speaker 1: Department of Justice data shows that San Francisco's clear rate
Speaker 1: for all crimes in twenty twenty two was six point
Speaker 1: six percent. That city's police department has blamed widespread autobreak
Speaker 1: ins for low clearance rates, but Males said that it's
Speaker 1: not enough to account for the decline and clearances over
Speaker 1: the last thirty years. Some in law enforcement have suggested
Speaker 1: that Prop. Forty seven, which raised the threshold for a
Speaker 1: theft to be charged as the felony, has contributed to
Speaker 1: the uptick and property crimes over the last two years
Speaker 1: and to fewer arrests. But Assembly Member Isaac Bryan, was
Speaker 1: Democratic and from Los Angeles, noted the Prop forty seven
Speaker 1: saved the state more than seven hundred and fifty million
Speaker 1: dollars in incarceration costs in twenty fourteen and reinvested the
Speaker 1: money into programs that help people find housing, jobs, and
Speaker 1: treatment for addiction and mental illness. Quote, if we provided
Speaker 1: a economic opportunity and the resources for the people to
Speaker 1: thrive and live their lives, we wouldn't see rampant theft.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm gonna stop here for a second, because
Speaker 1: so far in this article, this really affirms what we
Speaker 1: talk about quite a bit on this show. And I
Speaker 1: know that there are a lot of people are thinking, Oh,
Speaker 1: that's just California. No, We've covered this very thing several
Speaker 1: times on the show, this very phenomenon that people feel
Speaker 1: like spending more money on the police, more police officers,
Speaker 1: police training, all these things lead to safer communities. People
Speaker 1: feel that way, and I understand why if I didn't
Speaker 1: know better, if I didn't do this show and have
Speaker 1: to research all of this like data all the time,
Speaker 1: I would feel the same way. It makes sense if
Speaker 1: you don't know otherwise. But the fact of the matter
Speaker 1: is that none of the things that I mentioned, not
Speaker 1: more police, not bigger police budgets, not better armed police,
Speaker 1: police with better equipment, not better police training. None of
Speaker 1: these things impacts crime rates. The truth of the matter
Speaker 1: is that the more police that there are, the more
Speaker 1: police corruption that there ends up becoming. And you wouldn't
Speaker 1: know that unless you looked at the university based studies,
Speaker 1: and I employ you to go back and look. Almost
Speaker 1: every maybe two three episodes, we're doing something like this
Speaker 1: that's in depth. But I do recall when we spend
Speaker 1: some time discussing police training and how that doesn't work.
Speaker 1: It's a myth, you know, these officers need better training.
Speaker 1: It's just a myth. You know, you might give some
Speaker 1: diversity training to an officer and send it back on
Speaker 1: on the streets. But after about a month, the studies,
Speaker 1: the university studies concluded that after about a month, the
Speaker 1: officers just kind of reverted to type. And that was
Speaker 1: indicative of the fact that there's a more pronounced police
Speaker 1: culture at play than individual and that culture has a
Speaker 1: gravity that's more dominant than a person's individual sensibilities. Right,
Speaker 1: So there's a whole, a whole plethora of issues going
Speaker 1: on here, But insofar as spending is concerned, if we
Speaker 1: spend more money on police, then we will have less crime.
Speaker 1: That is an utter myth, and we've had to wrestle
Speaker 1: with that here quite a bit.
Speaker 2: We and I don't simply mean Ramses and Q, but we,
Speaker 2: as whatever portion of society that thinks along the same
Speaker 2: lines as defund the police, have really done an awful
Speaker 2: job at even explaining the why that was. That was
Speaker 2: bad messaging in general. In my opinion, I said that
Speaker 2: the very first time I've ever heard on this show
Speaker 2: like saying it like that is a bad idea because
Speaker 2: it's going to freak everybody out. But there's been a
Speaker 2: lack of explanation, and we've tried, but we just don't
Speaker 2: have enough time to explain it with the depth and
Speaker 2: nuance necessary as to providing a better solution. And if
Speaker 2: you read in depth what people were trying to say
Speaker 2: when they said defund the police, you would have found
Speaker 2: a bunch of ideas, a bunch of ways to diversify
Speaker 2: spending or reallocate funds that made a lot of sense
Speaker 2: toward an end that would result in less crime, similar
Speaker 2: to some of the things mentioned in this article that
Speaker 2: we're reading now. It's just that when that's the cover page,
Speaker 2: that's the headline, that's the headline, nobody's reading the rest.
Speaker 2: Because what you and I have to admit this is
Speaker 2: Qan Ramses and we have a long stated history on
Speaker 2: our position in policing in this country. When we show
Speaker 2: up at a nightclub or a concert, or a walk
Speaker 2: down on a dark street and see a police officer there,
Speaker 2: we feel safer, even us. And I know that because
Speaker 2: it happened to me like in the last ten days,
Speaker 2: so I know that it's true for even me. So
Speaker 2: when society at large feels safer by the presence of police,
Speaker 2: they are not lining up to stand in the way
Speaker 2: of their being more police present, especially when they do
Speaker 2: not understand because they've been indoctrinated and taught and kind
Speaker 2: of brainwashed since childhood, that police are in essence, not
Speaker 2: just heroes but crime solvers and crime preventors and the
Speaker 2: narrative and any movie you want to watch about police,
Speaker 2: even one of our favorites, Bad Boys, starring Will Smith
Speaker 2: and Martin Lawrence. These gentlemen are full time investigative detectives,
Speaker 2: solving and preventing crime at the highest level, and in
Speaker 2: no place on Earth does it work that way. Like
Speaker 2: some federal agencies work that way, but on a scale
Speaker 2: that's just way beyond the stuff that's happening in your
Speaker 2: local community. Right, So what we see in these increased
Speaker 2: budgets is more about the appearance of good policing, right.
Speaker 2: And I make it similar to when the new Call
Speaker 2: of Duty comes out and you download the game where
Speaker 2: you buy that game, stop or whatever the case, and
Speaker 2: you see all the gear, you know, custom ar rifles
Speaker 2: and bulletproof vest and subs that have been repurposed as
Speaker 2: like tanks with bulletproof doors and a mini gun, and
Speaker 2: all these things that look really cool, that really look
Speaker 2: like Call of Duty is the best example, because they've
Speaker 2: marketed Call of Duty to be like cool military, like
Speaker 2: kids want to dress up like that for Halloween instead
Speaker 2: of like firemen. It's the marketing of our military and
Speaker 2: the marketing of our local and state level law enforcement
Speaker 2: has led to this. Let's give them faster cars and
Speaker 2: bigger weapons thing with those budgets. Let's hire more officers
Speaker 2: and make them more intimidating so they can stand on
Speaker 2: corners and drive through neighborhoods and intimidate the crime out
Speaker 2: of the place. Except the criminals look at that and laugh,
Speaker 2: because you're not going to be here when we commit crimes.
Speaker 2: You're going to show up after and try to find
Speaker 2: us and fam we.
Speaker 1: Out outro That's why the solve rate is too PERCAI.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're not listen, You guys are are spending that
Speaker 2: budget preparing for some forgive the term for lack of better,
Speaker 2: for some war that's not going to happen. Like if
Speaker 2: there was a war between all the criminals and all
Speaker 2: the cops, the cops would win in a landslide that
Speaker 2: they got all the equipment. But you've lived your whole life,
Speaker 2: whoever you are listening to this, have you ever seen
Speaker 2: such a thing? And even in cases where you think
Speaker 2: they'd show up on some Gi Joe where innocent people
Speaker 2: are being unalived and shot, they don't. They stay outside,
Speaker 2: They stay out the way, they get out the way,
Speaker 2: they run out of the way.
Speaker 1: So much so that do you remember that episode that
Speaker 1: we did where we had to take a moment to
Speaker 1: acknowledge there was a police officer where they were in
Speaker 1: the Midwest, Yeah, toward the gun ward the gunfire, and
Speaker 1: we're like, that's a hero. He's actually going he's being brave.
Speaker 1: So we can call this one individual brave. He's going
Speaker 1: toward the gunfire. He's helping the people who are trying
Speaker 1: to escape stay behind that car, don't get up, and
Speaker 1: he's still going toward the gunfire. That's a hero. That's
Speaker 1: a brave officer. Credit where it's due, Right, we're very
Speaker 1: critical of police on this show, but credit where it's due.
Speaker 2: I mean, even what you just said isn't true though,
Speaker 2: because we're not very critical of police. We know a
Speaker 2: bunch of police officers that are awesome. We spend time
Speaker 2: as standing outside talking to them, walking from miles, exchanging
Speaker 2: ideas and having conversations with police officers that are amazing people. Sure,
Speaker 2: when we say police, we are not talking about your
Speaker 2: officer that you know. We are talking about the system
Speaker 2: that exists that Unfortunately, even some awesome people succumb to
Speaker 2: part of the culture that is involved with that job
Speaker 2: and end up having to turn off their human being
Speaker 2: and be an.
Speaker 1: Officer of the law. Yeah, they're police first, human second.
Speaker 1: That is something that is very problematic. Those type of
Speaker 1: people are indoctrinated. We believe with that police culture, police
Speaker 1: at all costs. You know, if you pull someone over
Speaker 1: and you search their vehicle and you pat them down,
Speaker 1: you're looking for something. And what this is something that
Speaker 1: I say to often lady friends of mine, that's usually
Speaker 1: where I have this conversation, but sometimes male friends too.
Speaker 1: It's like when you're going through someone's phone, you know,
Speaker 1: like your partner's phone, right, if you're looking for something,
Speaker 1: you're going to find it even if it's not there.
Speaker 2: And the interesting thing is it's a great example, just
Speaker 2: like in relationships in law enforcement, even when they don't
Speaker 2: find anything, it's not like, oh my god, I'm so
Speaker 2: sorry I did that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't get that.
Speaker 2: Oh no, no, No, They're gonna make something what they
Speaker 2: wanted it to be, no matter how small, no matter
Speaker 2: how insignificant, no matter how unrelated it is, and it's
Speaker 2: never their fault. Right Like in our case, right, there
Speaker 2: was some drugs present. I know this car is k new.
Speaker 2: I know neither of you have ever had or tried drugs,
Speaker 2: but there were some drugs present. The guy could not
Speaker 2: just say my bad, fam yeah no he got had dog.
Speaker 2: We didn't have all on the side of the hours,
Speaker 2: in the middle of the dark in Mississippi, and Strip
Speaker 2: searched the car, like, took parts panels off, took panels
Speaker 2: off of doors and seats out of this brand new car.
Speaker 2: Even then, it couldn't just be my bad man. He
Speaker 2: was tripping.
Speaker 1: He was liken the dog dogs.
Speaker 2: The dog's nose was nine hundred million, thousand trillion times
Speaker 2: stronger than the human knows. And a person with a
Speaker 2: joint in their pocket about nine hundred miles ago probably
Speaker 2: scraped when we left podcast rushed up against the car
Speaker 2: and that's what the dog. So we're going eighty miles
Speaker 2: an hour across two states, is that's when we last
Speaker 2: filled up, and that's the last time someone potentially got
Speaker 2: close to the car.
Speaker 1: We were both in the car, by the way, so
Speaker 1: no one got close to the car. You couldn't have
Speaker 1: anyway anyway. So watch this. One of the things that
Speaker 1: I liken, this phenomenon too, this phenomenon of people feeling safe.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Oh, well, that we're increasing the police budget. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna make Denver a safer city or whatever city you
Speaker 1: live in, right, cracked down on crime.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: We're going to hire eleven hundred new police officers to
Speaker 1: make sure your community. Say right, so this rhetoric, I
Speaker 1: liken that too, because we know it doesn't work, does
Speaker 1: not prevent crime. That's what people will We know it
Speaker 1: doesn't work. Yeah, well we know it doesn't work. So
Speaker 1: this is what I like you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, large doesn't the part that.
Speaker 1: We're here to teach.
Speaker 2: You know, we're trying. We even we get to push
Speaker 2: back because they don't a lot of people don't believe
Speaker 2: it because it comes across as we're biased. We have
Speaker 2: a negative bias towards the police.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: Listen, so we're going to find all this data to
Speaker 2: make us right.
Speaker 1: Let me let me help everybody that might feel that
Speaker 1: way out. We are DJs. We have a way funner
Speaker 1: job that we could be doing. This is necessary. This
Speaker 1: is something that is fueled by conviction. This is something
Speaker 1: that's appropriate given the space in which we work, and
Speaker 1: no one else is kind of working here, and we
Speaker 1: cannot continue to just throw parties and have fun and
Speaker 1: travel the world and dejail on beaches and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And know that we have this opportunity and indeed this
Speaker 1: responsibility to deliver these messages. But this is we're not
Speaker 1: doing this because we love it. We're not looking for statistics,
Speaker 1: so we can be right and that Lord knows, this
Speaker 1: isn't where we're getting money at so sure, but anyway,
Speaker 1: So what I like in that too, that phenomenon of
Speaker 1: people feeling like more police officers are going to make
Speaker 1: them safe. It's like the same thing as if you
Speaker 1: have like a mold problem. Right, if you have a
Speaker 1: mold problem. Let's say there's mold growing on the walls
Speaker 1: in your bathroom or your kitchen or something like that,
Speaker 1: and you're aware that there's a mold problem there, and
Speaker 1: then you paint it. That doesn't fix the mold problem,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't look like there's mold anymore, doesn't look
Speaker 1: like it. But that problem is still there, and eventually
Speaker 1: it will affect you, it'll affect someone close to you.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So what we've been saying and what certainly more brilliant
Speaker 1: people in terms of strategy, more brilliant people than us.
Speaker 1: It might not be more brilliant in terms of marketing,
Speaker 1: but certainly in terms of strategy. They've come up with
Speaker 1: this idea of hey, let's allocate police resources into programs
Speaker 1: that prevent the necessity of crime. In the first place,
Speaker 1: there's this this prevailing thought that people commit crimes because
Speaker 1: they're bad, right, and most of the crime there's certainly
Speaker 1: some people who commit crimes because they're just that's what
Speaker 1: they're going to do. But this isn't just anecdotal evidence
Speaker 1: you can look at you know, uh, and I'm not
Speaker 1: talking about even violent offenses, although and there's an argument
Speaker 1: to be made.
Speaker 2: There, but property real just real unbiased data.
Speaker 1: Yeah, property crimes there, this is these are crimes of
Speaker 1: people who are poor. Rich people aren't stealing bicycles. Rich
Speaker 1: people aren't, you know, That's that's not the thing.
Speaker 2: We're so conflicted as a society, though, ramses, it is
Speaker 2: counterintuitive for a capitalist society to create the socialist infrastructure
Speaker 2: required for its citizens to not be starving, sick and hungry.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's it's actually against wise, it goes against
Speaker 2: the nature of it. So there's no actual incentive for
Speaker 2: them to do that, not because they want crime, but
Speaker 2: your alternative is creating situations where crime is less likely
Speaker 2: to happen, which means people are less likely to be poor.
Speaker 2: And unfortunately, our capitalist system requires that some of us
Speaker 2: not have anything yet is it requirement for the system
Speaker 2: to exist?
Speaker 1: Capitalism needs unemployments to keep wages low. It is a
Speaker 1: function of the formula. Now I'm going to double down
Speaker 1: on what you just said because I've taken an interest
Speaker 1: in Finland lately.
Speaker 2: I've taken an interest in a bunch of places elsewhere.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm just studying them. You actually want to move, man,
Speaker 1: I'm just studying them.
Speaker 2: There's an election coming up, people. I mean, if it
Speaker 2: doesn't make sense why I want to move, please open
Speaker 2: your eyes, as Laurence Fishburne want to say it, wake up.
Speaker 1: Well dig this. So in Finland they Finland is capitalistic, right,
Speaker 1: the capitalistic economic model there, but they have such robust
Speaker 1: socialist programs that it doesn't feel like the unfettered crony capitalism,
Speaker 1: the runaway capitalism that is part and parcel to American life.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And you know, there are people who make arguments foreign
Speaker 1: against socialism. There are people who make arguments foreign against
Speaker 1: communism or any other type of economic model. Right, But
Speaker 1: for better or worse, we will seed that on a
Speaker 1: global scale, capitalism is the idea that has won out.
Speaker 1: Capitalism drives the economies of the world. Right, we don't
Speaker 1: have to love. That's the reasons why you're so obvious though, Right.
Speaker 2: Yeahs want to remain that system allows them to do so.
Speaker 1: And trick they can.
Speaker 2: They think that they can get there too. Right.
Speaker 1: But I think that societies that offset the nature of
Speaker 1: capitalism with robust socialist programs, they're the ones where there's
Speaker 1: low crime rates, low incarceration rates, there's more economic mobility
Speaker 1: for people, on and on and on. Right, people don't
Speaker 1: readily fall through the cracks homelessness, you know, whatever, pick
Speaker 1: a thing, they suffer from less of those, right, And
Speaker 1: when we try to examine how could we do that here, well,
Speaker 1: it takes money, and where are we going to get
Speaker 1: the money from. Well, the police were spending a lot
Speaker 1: on them. If we reallocate those resources, then we might
Speaker 1: end up with a more robust socialist program.
Speaker 2: Just California, Rama said, spent twenty five billion. Yeah, no police,
Speaker 2: that's what we have. That's just California. That's not the United.
Speaker 1: States twenty seven billion, one billion with the B. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so a lot to chew on here. There's certainly more here.
Speaker 1: But again check the article Publicnews Service dot org and
Speaker 1: then you know, hit us up, let us know your thoughts,