Speaker 1: As media, what's up, Y'all's your favorite cousin again?
Speaker 2: Prop is in the building?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm saying, well in y earbuds or speakers, however
Speaker 1: the hell you listen to this, your favorite cousin is here.
Speaker 1: I am going to assume that that is the truth,
Speaker 1: and since you can't answer me, we just gonna go
Speaker 1: with that. It's been a while since I tapped in
Speaker 1: with y'all ruined your music festivals and then told you
Speaker 1: about your municipalities and your waters. Somebody reached out to us,
Speaker 1: who you know, gestures wildly. We have not been able
Speaker 1: to get back to her, but about how she was
Speaker 1: a part of an effort to non privatize the water
Speaker 1: inside of her neighborhood and district and they won.
Speaker 2: So shout out to you.
Speaker 1: We apologize if you've You know, our job has not
Speaker 1: been boring.
Speaker 2: Since the start of twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: But today I'm gonna bring you some blackness, some genuine blackness,
Speaker 1: and then some This has to be a black conversation.
Speaker 2: Because you, matter of fact as are racist.
Speaker 1: I have to approach it like this because crime has
Speaker 1: become a color mute term in the era of Trump.
Speaker 1: It kind of always has been, but it's really obvious
Speaker 1: now with the National Guard being unleashed onto the streets
Speaker 1: of Washington, d C. There's this some sort of clearly
Speaker 1: obvious conflation between the houseless population, poverty, crime black folks. Like,
Speaker 1: it's all kind of like one thing with this food,
Speaker 1: which is not rocket science for y'all, it's just you
Speaker 1: know what he talking about. You know how I know
Speaker 1: this how he thinks is because whenever he talks about
Speaker 1: black people supporting him, he talks about criminal reform, because
Speaker 1: apparently that's what all black.
Speaker 2: People care about.
Speaker 1: Only just like you know, when he's say immigration, he
Speaker 1: mean Latino And the whole not feeling safe is just
Speaker 1: because you know, the crime that the houseless population of
Speaker 1: DC have is being ill. That's the crime, because they
Speaker 1: No one has ever given me a legitimate reason as
Speaker 1: to why not having a place to stay as a crime. Hell,
Speaker 1: you know, Margaret Kill joined him have this whole joint
Speaker 1: about loitering and loitering laws like truancies. Why I'm getting
Speaker 1: ahead of myself. The point is the crime is that
Speaker 1: you exist. So today I want to talk to y'all
Speaker 1: about something that y'all already know.
Speaker 2: Which is it's never been about the crime. All right.
Speaker 1: Now, first of all, some stuff that don't matter. Y'all
Speaker 1: still following Drake. I don't know if y'all like, Okay,
Speaker 1: my crowd is following Drake. Let me stop making a
Speaker 1: difference between us.
Speaker 2: But listen.
Speaker 1: So you know Drake suing UMG and his label over,
Speaker 1: you know, not like us, and just proven that he's
Speaker 1: not like us anyway. The new thing in this man's
Speaker 1: lawsuit he is he's demanding UMG bring evidence over to
Speaker 1: push the teeth thing.
Speaker 2: What do I mean by to push the teeth thing?
Speaker 2: When Push the T came.
Speaker 1: At him, which we can all agree if you in
Speaker 1: the rap, he won also shout out the clips. So
Speaker 1: when you go back to the Push the Teeth time,
Speaker 1: this is the back to back and I'm charged up
Speaker 1: that time he was like, Yo, I'm gonna show y'all
Speaker 1: the emails, and y'all bring in the emails from when
Speaker 1: you guys were suppressing Push the T's stuff, when you
Speaker 1: guys were like making sure that like it got copyright
Speaker 1: claimed and stuff getting off the streamers and pulled down
Speaker 1: all the say, man, you helped me suppress this man's music.
Speaker 1: When Push the te came after me. Why y'all don't
Speaker 1: do it with not like us.
Speaker 2: Which means your corny ass you just told on yourself.
Speaker 2: Oh so push it was right.
Speaker 1: So what you're saying is and you trying to take
Speaker 1: down Kendrick unsnitched on twenty eighteen, you right, okay, so
Speaker 1: because you had to label interfere with this battle fam. Now,
Speaker 1: if you want to hear some more like real just
Speaker 1: rapping ass rappers, there's this great battle that was going
Speaker 1: on between Joey Badass and Ray Vaughn and then somehow
Speaker 1: it became a triple with this dude named Daylight and
Speaker 1: this other brother named Reason. These were some really really
Speaker 1: dope bars. Now Absol got into the middle of it.
Speaker 1: But now Apsol, Rhapsody, and Joey are going on tour,
Speaker 1: which sucks because I'm on the same management team as
Speaker 1: all of them, and I ain't on that tour.
Speaker 2: I wish I was, though it'd.
Speaker 1: Be a rap and rapping tour, but I definitely don't
Speaker 1: do the numbers they do anyway. Today, you know, in
Speaker 1: light of like I said, the Feds in DC, Trump
Speaker 1: keep claiming these emergency cases that gives him these powers
Speaker 1: to do these different things. And as a side note,
Speaker 1: remember when Jay six happened and he was like, well,
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi should have called in the National Guard. Shan't
Speaker 1: call in the passion of guard? What was President Trump's
Speaker 1: supposed to do? Well, I would think what he's doing now,
Speaker 1: because they used to say these same people that was
Speaker 1: arguing that Trump ain't had a power to stop it,
Speaker 1: meaning he didn't have the power to call in the
Speaker 1: National Guard, are also praising him right now for using
Speaker 1: his presidential power to call in the National Guard. Boy,
Speaker 1: I tell you, racism make you dumb as hell. But
Speaker 1: in light of this, despite all evidence showing that the
Speaker 1: crime rate has dropped thirty percent in DC, this man
Speaker 1: still keeps talking about the crime wave and the safety
Speaker 1: or the lack of safety that people feel in DC. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna let Bridget do a full episode on really
Speaker 1: what's going on in Chocolate City? My mama from DC.
Speaker 1: You know, my whole mama side of the family still
Speaker 1: out there. So I used to spend every other summer
Speaker 1: in DC. Now, don't give me it wrong. Being down
Speaker 1: thirty percent is absolutely positive, But DC ain't safe now.
Speaker 1: It depends on what parts you in see, that's the
Speaker 1: thing about crime statistics. But before I get into crime statistics,
Speaker 1: I need to talk about the concept of crime.
Speaker 2: Period.
Speaker 1: This will be no surprise to y'all because you listen
Speaker 1: to cool Zone media.
Speaker 2: Crime is made up.
Speaker 1: Now, criminal crime, I think it's very important to understand
Speaker 1: that it is a social construct.
Speaker 2: Now what do I mean by that?
Speaker 1: What I mean is it's situational, right, How the same
Speaker 1: act can mean two different things. Now, this is a
Speaker 1: conceptual thing that obviously our felt experience is a little
Speaker 1: more real.
Speaker 2: But let me give you an example.
Speaker 1: Let a disaster hit, a hurricane, an earthquake, a flood.
Speaker 1: If I go into that grocery store and get some bread,
Speaker 1: am I looting or scavenging? Am I stealing or surviving?
Speaker 1: And the answer is depends on what color you are.
Speaker 1: Crime is a social construct. Because if that's the case,
Speaker 1: how is George Zimmerman still walking? Having said that, one
Speaker 1: could take this argument and go super bonkers on it
Speaker 1: and say the same thing about pedophilia, Like, who's to
Speaker 1: say that what Epstein did is a crime? Because, like
Speaker 1: you said, crime is a social construct. Here's my answer
Speaker 1: to that. It's social because we live in a social
Speaker 1: soci it t fam. Although borders are made up, so
Speaker 1: is money, and so are driver's licenses. Of course, there's
Speaker 1: no force field at the forty ninth parallel that separates
Speaker 1: Canada from America. However, we have decided that before you
Speaker 1: get behind the wheel of a car, you better have
Speaker 1: passed some sort of examination for us to know that
Speaker 1: you're safe enough to drive behind this You could physically
Speaker 1: drive this car, but we live in a society that says, hey, homy,
Speaker 1: I need you to make sure.
Speaker 2: We need to have some sort of due diligence.
Speaker 1: We have decided as a species that is self aware
Speaker 1: that our children matter.
Speaker 2: Their safety is important to us.
Speaker 1: The person standing next to you has the right to exist.
Speaker 1: Whether you like that person or not, they have the
Speaker 1: right to exist. You cannot hold them against they will.
Speaker 1: That's hey be as corpus, apparently unbeknownst to Christy Nole,
Speaker 1: who clearly don't.
Speaker 2: Know what hate be as corpus means.
Speaker 1: As a whole other topic, what is criminal and what
Speaker 1: is lawful is something that we've agreed upon in our
Speaker 1: social contract. Now, we, however, live in a modern secular
Speaker 1: democracy which says that we have a say in what
Speaker 1: becomes laws or not so and got to just lay
Speaker 1: down and let you just cause stuff a crime that
Speaker 1: ain't a crime or that shouldn't be a crime. Now,
Speaker 1: speaking of what is and is an crime, here's the
Speaker 1: thing Black people have been telling you the answer for
Speaker 1: a long time, specifically rappers. Okay, Now, I saw a
Speaker 1: TikTok about this, and it's very irresponsible of me that
Speaker 1: I can't remember love Hommy's name and I can't you know,
Speaker 1: you get the suggested, you know, or yeah, just stuff
Speaker 1: pop in like before you. I cannot find Brad Brushs
Speaker 1: TikTok black Man, super brilliant, but he reminded me of
Speaker 1: some lyrics that Freeway said that captures the point of
Speaker 1: what we're trying to make. I love his dude's TikTok man, God,
Speaker 1: I gotta find it. Hopefully, I'll hopefully I'll find it
Speaker 1: and put it in the show notes. But Freeway's verse
Speaker 1: with a song with jay Z says, we still hustle
Speaker 1: to the sun come up, crack a forty when the
Speaker 1: sun go down. It's a cold winter, y'all, niggas better
Speaker 1: bundle up. I bet it's a hot summer. Grab an
Speaker 1: onion just to rock it down, you hot, Now listen up,
Speaker 1: follow me. You don't know the cops soul purposes to
Speaker 1: lock us down. Throw away to key. But without this
Speaker 1: drug shit, your kids ain't got no way to eat.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 1: We still trying to keep mom smiling because when her
Speaker 1: teeth stops showing and her stomach start growling, then the
Speaker 1: heat start flowing. If you from my hood, you know
Speaker 1: you feel me keep going, the sneaks start leaning and
Speaker 1: the heat stop working, then my heat start working, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna rob me a person.
Speaker 2: Okay, now listen.
Speaker 1: These are the lyrics that Lil Bra quoted in his TikTok,
Speaker 1: and the point he's making, which is the same point
Speaker 1: I'm making, is that he's talking about the solutions to crime.
Speaker 1: Like he said it right there, like I just want
Speaker 1: my mom to smile. My kids don't have any other
Speaker 1: way to eat. And then he says, when the heat
Speaker 1: stop working, then my heat start working, I'm gonna rob
Speaker 1: me a person.
Speaker 2: It is resources.
Speaker 1: But again, follow what this brood trying to tell you
Speaker 1: is that you putting law enforcement in our neighborhoods doesn't
Speaker 1: fix anything?
Speaker 2: Does you?
Speaker 1: Does what we're saying, He's like, no, you just want
Speaker 1: to lock us up. That is not solving the problem.
Speaker 1: The problem is I'm hungry, My mama's hungry, my kids
Speaker 1: are hungry. My sneaks start leaning. What he's talking about
Speaker 1: is his tennis shoes as sneakers, they're leaning. You know,
Speaker 1: when you walk on your sneakers too much in the
Speaker 1: back of your shoes in the back house start running
Speaker 1: around the side. Then it starts thinning out, so it's
Speaker 1: like the back of your shoe just looks uneven. That's
Speaker 1: when your sneaks are leaning. This is what he's trying
Speaker 1: to say. My stomach is rumbling. Had we had better
Speaker 1: funded schools, had we had more opportunities, he was like,
Speaker 1: I'm robbing this person because there is no other OPA. Now,
Speaker 1: are there other options? Maybe, But if you're gonna do
Speaker 1: the math, listen, this is simple economics. If you want
Speaker 1: to make one thousand dollars tonight because the rents do tomorrow,
Speaker 1: you go over to Spanish Jose's house. Spanish Jose say, hey, listen,
Speaker 1: you ain't got to do nothing. Just put this bag
Speaker 1: in your backseat and drive the park slope, drop it
Speaker 1: off a comeback, or you can go.
Speaker 2: Work twenty dollars an hour at McDonald's.
Speaker 1: Ain't no uncles with endowments, and check this out exactly.
Speaker 1: Let me push you even further, even if you are
Speaker 1: smarty awt Now, even if you're a smart one. The
Speaker 1: government just told Harvard that they can't recruit in my neighborhood,
Speaker 1: even if I got the grades for it, because that's
Speaker 1: woke shit.
Speaker 2: So what you want? What the fuck you want me
Speaker 2: to do?
Speaker 1: Now here's the premise of what I'm talking about, which is,
Speaker 1: we know the solutions. It's never been about crime, okay,
Speaker 1: but let me talk about out some folks, some black
Speaker 1: folks who do care about the solution, who do care
Speaker 1: about crime. Because if we're talking about crime in our
Speaker 1: urban areas, who the fuck do you think the crimes
Speaker 1: are against? And see, that's the part that makes me
Speaker 1: so mad. When I be talking to these people. You
Speaker 1: think we don't care because who are these crimes getting
Speaker 1: carried out against.
Speaker 2: You think we happy to see all them police.
Speaker 1: One would think, if it worked, we would be happy
Speaker 1: to see all these police in our streets.
Speaker 2: But you know what, the shit don't help. Okay.
Speaker 1: What I'm gonna do in the rest of the show
Speaker 1: is prove to y'all, based on decades of research, what
Speaker 1: does reduce crime.
Speaker 2: We're gonna link all the things in the bio.
Speaker 1: I knew I had to come my a game if
Speaker 1: I'm going on the cappen here, because these some of
Speaker 1: the smartest people like y'all. Listen, the people on this show, y'all,
Speaker 1: y'all is like real journalists. I'm just a rapper that
Speaker 1: knows how to explain shit. So I needed to make
Speaker 1: sure that i have my ducks in a row. So
Speaker 1: I'm about to show y'all a trillion examples of where
Speaker 1: if you really from these blocks, if you really do
Speaker 1: care about the welfare of black people, then maybe you
Speaker 1: should listen to black people see and let me bring
Speaker 1: in my trans community here because they problem with you this.
Speaker 1: To be honest with y'all, I'm gonna be transparent, which
Speaker 1: this is part of what radicalized me whilst really started
Speaker 1: to understand the trans experience is because the shit they
Speaker 1: say about us is the shit they say about you.
Speaker 1: Your crime is we just don't like you around. At
Speaker 1: the end of the day, all these laws against trans
Speaker 1: people is really just because you just think they gross
Speaker 1: And so with us, it was just like you, like,
Speaker 1: what is redlining, discriminatory practices in jobs? You just don't
Speaker 1: want us around. What is white flight, you just don't
Speaker 1: want us around. And your justification of this is this
Speaker 1: made up ass word name crime and that you care
Speaker 1: that crime at But Nikki, you don't. Okay, I'm getting
Speaker 1: getting ahead of myself. Let's take a break. All right,
Speaker 1: here we go. I've calmed down. So the first thing
Speaker 1: you want to think about is how crime is reported,
Speaker 1: right in the ways for which it's reported, and then
Speaker 1: the geographical locations that we're talking about. So when you
Speaker 1: say the crime in Washington, DC, it's not like the
Speaker 1: crime happens in an evenly distributed thing, Like it's not
Speaker 1: all of DC, if you will, there's northeast, Northwest, Southeast,
Speaker 1: south southeast, and southwest. Now due to gentrification, southeast which
Speaker 1: is where Anacostia is and was at one time the
Speaker 1: sort of mecha of just like Black DC of chocolate Cy,
Speaker 1: Chocola Cy. The whole city was chocolate forever. Like I said,
Speaker 1: I noticed because I spent every other summer there and
Speaker 1: my mama from there. But like Southeast DC is the
Speaker 1: last non gentrified area. Now do you think it's thugs
Speaker 1: sitting on the National Monument sipping forty ounces.
Speaker 2: No you out there with the tourists sipping macha.
Speaker 1: So in one sense is when you say crime has
Speaker 1: dropped thirty percent, it's like thirty percent since when?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 1: And is it averaged across all of DC or are
Speaker 1: you talking about in its areas where things like carjackings,
Speaker 1: homicides and stuff like that happened right now? Remember what
Speaker 1: I talked about a long time ago, at least on
Speaker 1: my show. Hopefully y'all remember this that the crime rates
Speaker 1: in America is always a weird situation because we don't
Speaker 1: live in America. You live in your city, so maybe
Speaker 1: is going crazy in your own local neighborhoods, so you
Speaker 1: feel like, damn, this place is wild. Or maybe, like
Speaker 1: I said, maybe you're in like Northwest Portland, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Like you know, over there off Gleason,
Speaker 1: you feel me in like it's nice, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? Like you don't never see a single But
Speaker 1: if you live over there in Chinatown next to Voodoo Donuts, Dog,
Speaker 1: you seem like you walking over zombies.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: What I'm trying to say is sometimes the statistics can
Speaker 1: be deceiving. Now Granny and them who you know, bought
Speaker 1: their house a long time ago. They see the graffiti
Speaker 1: on the wall and they think, you know, YadA YadA,
Speaker 1: the boys like loitering outside. How do you fix it? Well,
Speaker 1: allow me to introduce it to Philadelphia, which coincidentally is
Speaker 1: where Freeway is from.
Speaker 2: So the data is pretty clear. You know.
Speaker 1: If you look at the Violent Crime Reduction Report, it's
Speaker 1: literally it's at the Department of Justice.
Speaker 2: You can read it yourself.
Speaker 1: It tells you exactly what has worked to drop homicide,
Speaker 1: violent crime, carjacking, theft. It tells you what has worked,
Speaker 1: what has not worked. A simple google right, and the
Speaker 1: intro of this is this is a violent crime reduction
Speaker 1: between twenty twenty one and twenty twenty five, and it
Speaker 1: says for the past three years, the Justice Department has
Speaker 1: been executing comprehensive strategies to reduce violent crime rooted in
Speaker 1: local communities, and we're seeing trends in the form of
Speaker 1: crimes being prevented in live saved. According to available data
Speaker 1: from twenty twenty three, murder, rape, robbery, and aggregated assault
Speaker 1: is in a considerable decline and nearly ninety major cities
Speaker 1: across the country. Violent crime has continued to drop during
Speaker 1: the last six months of this year compared to the
Speaker 1: same period last year, including a seventeen percent decrease in homicide.
Speaker 2: This is the Deputy.
Speaker 1: Attorney General Monkyo on September seventeenth, twenty twenty four. Now,
Speaker 1: to keep it very real again, violent crime rates being
Speaker 1: up and down are obviously relative. Now, one thing was, well,
Speaker 1: we were in a pandemic, so there's that, right. Another
Speaker 1: thing is it's almost like how everybody was complaining again
Speaker 1: that crime was up.
Speaker 2: It's like y'all forgot the nineties existed.
Speaker 1: Like I lived it, and baby, this ain't nothing, you know,
Speaker 1: the actual fear of pain and suffering.
Speaker 2: This pales in comparison.
Speaker 1: We live in a great place in relation to what
Speaker 1: we went through in the eighties and nineties. Now again
Speaker 1: we're talking national trends right again. In your local neighborhood,
Speaker 1: it may be it may be a green light apvening.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying for you to say that our country's
Speaker 1: becoming a cess.
Speaker 2: Pool means you not reading the data.
Speaker 1: According to the Conversation, it's like independent journalist this author.
Speaker 2: Her name is Katerina g Roman.
Speaker 1: She's a professor of criminal justice at Temple University and
Speaker 1: as a side note, at Temple University, Mahomie Timothy, he's
Speaker 1: teaching a class on Kendrick.
Speaker 2: Lamar and his lyrics and hip hop and justice.
Speaker 1: I actually spoke at his class a couple of times,
Speaker 1: so that was pretty dope to hear what he's doing.
Speaker 2: But now check this out.
Speaker 1: According to her writing, it says that the Pennsylvania spends
Speaker 1: roughly two hundred thousand dollars a year for each juvenile
Speaker 1: it incarcerates. According to the twenty twenty one report from
Speaker 1: a bipartisan Pennsylvania Juvenile Justice Track Force, that's fifty times
Speaker 1: the cost to deliver evidence based family therapy that would
Speaker 1: prevent kids from going into the justice system in the
Speaker 1: first place. I'm gonna tell you before I even read
Speaker 1: the rest of this, because I lived it. We just
Speaker 1: be bored. It ain't nothing to do. There are no opportunities.
Speaker 1: When the heat stopped working, then my heat start working.
Speaker 1: In Philadelphia, juvenile incarceration involves the confinement in city ran
Speaker 1: Philadelphia Juvenile Services and other residential placements facilities young people
Speaker 1: leave these facilities with lower chances of graduating high school,
Speaker 1: freight mental health, and the higher likelihood of re arrest
Speaker 1: or being shot. Can I again please speak from my
Speaker 1: own experience. When you go into these juveniles cases, you
Speaker 1: have to pick a location of people that you would
Speaker 1: fo protection, even if you don't run with them, even
Speaker 1: if you an'll know them niggas outside here, when y'all
Speaker 1: get outside, y'all may never have talked again. But in here,
Speaker 1: even if you went in there over some stupid like shoplift,
Speaker 1: is some damn spray paint, whatever the case may be,
Speaker 1: you now got to run with the people that got
Speaker 1: your same skin tone and are from your part of town.
Speaker 1: You have to kids. Don't go in being members of gangs.
Speaker 1: You have to join one to stay alive. Now check
Speaker 1: this out. When you get out. Part of the terms
Speaker 1: of your probation is you can't be around certain criminal
Speaker 1: festivities or activities or people.
Speaker 2: With criminal records. Where you're gonna go.
Speaker 1: If I just happen to live on sixtieth Street next
Speaker 1: to my uncle, I just live here. You mess around,
Speaker 1: go visit your granny house, and then it got a
Speaker 1: report to your PO. You've been fragnized when known gang members.
Speaker 1: You're probably going back. This shit don't work, y'all. But
Speaker 1: what does now?
Speaker 2: Again?
Speaker 1: Back to this article, drawing from about thirty five years
Speaker 1: of work in Philadelphia and other cities to understand what
Speaker 1: makes neighborhoods safe for I believe the surest returns home
Speaker 1: from prevention strategies aimed at young people who are not
Speaker 1: yet immersed in robbery, shootings and gun activities. Right so
Speaker 1: they give some examples of the things that they've done.
Speaker 1: First of it is a school based case management in
Speaker 1: Barthrom High now in southwest Philly, John Bartram High Schools
Speaker 1: has a youth violence reduction initiative that launched in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three. It was designed by former school safety chief
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia now Philadelphia Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel, School Safety
Speaker 1: Offer Programs Manager Ken Rosa, and criminal justice researcher Brandy
Speaker 1: Blasco and.
Speaker 2: This person that wrote the article.
Speaker 1: Students who have been involved in fights or show other
Speaker 1: risk factors of violence and street gang.
Speaker 2: Involvements are referred to this program.
Speaker 1: The initiative's core idea is simple, earn students trust through consistent,
Speaker 1: credible mentorship and step in when needed. Stepping in means
Speaker 1: teaching conflict resolution skills, running engaging workshops, buying a meal,
Speaker 1: intervening when a fight is brewing or a student is
Speaker 1: on the verge of being expelled. Each week, a team
Speaker 1: of administrators, counselors, school safety officers, and community outreach workers,
Speaker 1: most of whom are based in the school, review the participants, progress,
Speaker 1: the tracks, follow through referrals, and coordinate communication with family,
Speaker 1: school and staff. This is a tightly managed, relationship driven
Speaker 1: safety net that gives students quicker access to help make
Speaker 1: school climates calmer and safer.
Speaker 2: This seems so obvious. You just need somebody you trust. Listen.
Speaker 2: One of the things even in.
Speaker 1: My own house, my own life was I knew my neighbors,
Speaker 1: and my neighbors knew me, and if they call me
Speaker 1: outside standing with the wrong people, I knew they was
Speaker 1: going to tell Mama. Sometimes, since they're teenagers, they don't
Speaker 1: have conflict resolution skills. All they know is to pop off.
Speaker 1: You ever been angry? You don't think kids be angry.
Speaker 1: Your teacher in there asking you about your algebra homework,
Speaker 1: your stomach rumbling. I ain't got shit to say to
Speaker 1: her because I'm hungry. And sometimes it's just a meal.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's just knowing somebody cares. Sometimes it's just you
Speaker 1: feel like I know. I've experienced it too. I feel
Speaker 1: like it's not even they ain't even no reason to
Speaker 1: explain my position to you, because you're.
Speaker 2: Not gonna believe me, or you just gonna call the police.
Speaker 1: I taught a kid, I've said this story so many
Speaker 1: times who used to show up late in class. When
Speaker 1: I used to teach, he show up late in class
Speaker 1: maybe three to four times a week, always had his
Speaker 1: homework in his hand. You've tarty that many times were
Speaker 1: supposed to call a truancy officer. Ain't no way in
Speaker 1: the world I'm calling a truancy officer because that means
Speaker 1: they mama gonna have to pay a twenty five hundred
Speaker 1: dollar fee.
Speaker 2: Number one and number two. Now he got a record.
Speaker 1: All I did, guys, I just asked him, why are
Speaker 1: you late every day?
Speaker 2: He say, because he trusts me.
Speaker 1: My daddy'd be drinking too much at night, so he
Speaker 1: can't get up and take us to school. So I
Speaker 1: take my brother to school first and then come here.
Speaker 2: And this is just the time I get here.
Speaker 1: I never marked him thirty, since all you do is ask, right,
Speaker 1: which leads me to the second thing, the power of
Speaker 1: credible caring adults.
Speaker 2: It's real simple.
Speaker 1: You got people that care, you got food programs. All right,
Speaker 1: let me nerd it up again now. According to the
Speaker 1: Youth Justice Services, Relationships, Rehabilitation, and the Reality of Young
Speaker 1: People Involved a metasynthesis of qualitative literature. This is a
Speaker 1: scholarly literature reviewed results that says that just having an
Speaker 1: adult who you know cares, just having one that cared,
Speaker 1: changes significantly the chances of a student getting into a
Speaker 1: life of crime.
Speaker 2: But just knowing somebody care.
Speaker 1: I'm going to link in it again into these show notes,
Speaker 1: all of the data, all the stuff I've been looking at,
Speaker 1: so you can check it out yourself. I know it
Speaker 1: seems like a gross oversimplification by the way that I'm
Speaker 1: just saying it right now. Usually you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: If we was doing the it can happen here thing.
Speaker 1: I got to be able to read this stuff out
Speaker 1: to you, but I can read a part of it.
Speaker 1: It says that that the themes that broke out after
Speaker 1: interviewing one hundred and fifty kids is that young people
Speaker 1: reported first being pessimistic about entering these services, and their
Speaker 1: past experiences impacted their ability to trust and were initially
Speaker 1: cautious of professionals.
Speaker 2: But watch this.
Speaker 1: These were the themes and sub themes they felt valued
Speaker 1: and finding worth within their system. The reciprocal nature of
Speaker 1: understanding and respect. These kids felt respected, the importance of
Speaker 1: having one good person, creating a secure base for exploration
Speaker 1: and development, and then showing a genuine care by going
Speaker 1: above an beyond.
Speaker 2: So basically, just be kind.
Speaker 1: And it helps a student sixed.
Speaker 2: Ain't that crazy?
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, homicides at Philadelphia
Speaker 1: at the lowest level they've been in twenty five years.
Speaker 2: How it's long time and it takes effort.
Speaker 1: But next, I want to talk about whoa the city
Speaker 1: of Baltimore or is new mayor up there cooking?
Speaker 2: All right? Next? All right, we bike now Baltimore.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you notice which I love about it,
Speaker 1: and of course you probably don't know about it because.
Speaker 2: A black man did this.
Speaker 1: Baltimore's homicide rate has fallen forty percent. Baltimore, you understand,
Speaker 1: this is where the wire took place. Don't get me
Speaker 1: wrong about Baltimore. Baltimore active murder capitalal of a dog.
Speaker 1: Oh listen, Baltimore was active now. According to the Guardian,
Speaker 1: violent crime in America's big cities has been receiving since
Speaker 1: the pandemic for about two years. But even in comparisons
Speaker 1: baltimore improvement is breathtaking. Fewer people have been killed in
Speaker 1: the city over the last seven months than any other
Speaker 1: particular period for fifty years.
Speaker 2: Here's the funny part.
Speaker 1: Mississippi talking about sending a National Guard up to DC
Speaker 1: to help with the crime in DC. Meanwhile, Jackson, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: got a higher murder rate than DC. Right now, y'all, people,
Speaker 1: is weird. It's never been about crime now, back to Guardian.
Speaker 1: As of fifteen August, the running three hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: five day total for murders in Baltimore stood at one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty five dead. Assuming the city remains that pace,
Speaker 1: the murder rate will finish below thirty per ten thousand
Speaker 1: residents for the first time.
Speaker 2: Since nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 1: If it remains on pace since the first of January,
Speaker 1: it would have finished twenty twenty five at one hundred
Speaker 1: and forty three murders, a rate of about twenty five
Speaker 1: per one hundred thousand, the last scene in Baltimore since
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 2: Now check this out.
Speaker 1: Y'all may not remember this, but y'all remember Freddie Gray,
Speaker 1: the boy that got killed in the back of the
Speaker 1: police holding tank. See, that's what happens when you just
Speaker 1: bring cops into a place. It ain't about the crime. Though,
Speaker 1: back to the Guardian, since twenty fifteen, there has been
Speaker 1: here in Baltimore, this acknowledgment that the equity needs to
Speaker 1: be the priority.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Mayor Brown said the riots were as much about the
Speaker 1: conditions of poverty as it was about Gray's death. I
Speaker 1: hope you hearing that people losing their homes and foreclosures
Speaker 1: to water bills, for example, as they were about police brutality.
Speaker 1: But the heavy handed response to the cops of the
Speaker 1: protests failed to hold the police accountable for misconduct, right,
Speaker 1: eviscerating the relationship between the Baltimore police and the public.
Speaker 1: Baltimore State Attorney Marion Moseley laid murder charges on the
Speaker 1: officers involved, and Baltimore's police union closed ranks and response,
Speaker 1: eviscerating the relationship between the police and politicians, and serious
Speaker 1: scandals at the City Hall and the state's attorney offers
Speaker 1: and the failure of Moseley's charges to result in convictions,
Speaker 1: violence skyrocket. But here come this young brother, Brandon Scott,
Speaker 1: young black man. Right, he's a former city council member. Right,
Speaker 1: he's been a long observer of the violence, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. And before he became the mayor in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, then he implemented what he's calling a comprehensive
Speaker 1: three pillar approach.
Speaker 2: Right. The first pillar is called public health approach to violence. Right.
Speaker 1: The second pillar is community engagement and interagency coordination.
Speaker 2: Right. The third pillar is evaluation and accountability. Right.
Speaker 1: So, like I said in the beginning, it starts with
Speaker 1: the community, all right. So check this out again from
Speaker 1: the Guardian. Against Baltimore's police budget topping a half a
Speaker 1: billion dollars, the largest police budget per capital of any
Speaker 1: large city in the USA. The political establishment gave its
Speaker 1: new millennial mayor room to experiment with fifty million dollars
Speaker 1: of Washington's money. So they took that budget that was
Speaker 1: a half a billion, gave him fifty million.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And since trust was like solo, the first step was
Speaker 1: to get everybody aboard. So he took that money the cops,
Speaker 1: the hospitals, the jails, the school the social services, the
Speaker 1: State Department, the Feds, and he appointed this dude named
Speaker 1: Richard Worley, Oh who is the city police Commissioner in
Speaker 1: June twenty twenty three. Wesley was a lifelong Baltimore officer,
Speaker 1: picked in part to bring the rank and file in
Speaker 1: line with Scott's anti violence program. Scott emphasizes partnerships as
Speaker 1: an important.
Speaker 2: Part of the process.
Speaker 1: Now, he took other federal grants and he gave the
Speaker 1: money to the people that actually do the services. He
Speaker 1: ain't just keeping for them. Now here's the thing cuts
Speaker 1: my mouth to say it. But if you are going
Speaker 1: to stop violence in the situation that we live in,
Speaker 1: the cops got to be involved. Because most of the
Speaker 1: time the cops are the problem. It's always punishment in
Speaker 1: prison with them. They only come with a stick when
Speaker 1: something already happened. So you got to get them on
Speaker 1: the table, and you got to get them at the
Speaker 1: table with somebody that's going to be willing to be
Speaker 1: held accountable.
Speaker 2: And remember that's pillar three.
Speaker 1: Now, Now, far being from me, because I don't live
Speaker 1: in Baltimore, would I ever shield for no mayor like this.
Speaker 1: I'm just telling you what the data say is and
Speaker 1: I got family in Baltimore. Now, what Scott said is again,
Speaker 1: we focus on the individuals and groups that are most
Speaker 1: likely to be the victim or perpetuator of violence.
Speaker 2: We go to them. Listen, they knock on doors.
Speaker 1: There's a social worker that comes to the door with
Speaker 1: a letter from the mayor that says, yo, you're trying
Speaker 1: to be a part of this, and their only targeting
Speaker 1: kids are families that they know got low poverty rates
Speaker 1: and high chances of crime. You looking for the people
Speaker 1: who are most likely going to fall a victim, to
Speaker 1: perpetuating it or receiving it.
Speaker 2: Because remember how we started this whole thing.
Speaker 1: Before you think we don't care about crime, we're the
Speaker 1: ones that it's happening too. So he says, quote Curtis Palomero,
Speaker 1: who runs the youth violence prevention nonprofit RAKA in Baltimore,
Speaker 1: it says, we're talking about young people with the elevated risk.
Speaker 1: We're not talking about the young person that says FU
Speaker 1: to his teacher or tells his mom and dad are
Speaker 1: ground while he don't want to do XYZ. We're talking
Speaker 1: about kids who have literally probably have two tracks jail
Speaker 1: and death. He knocks on the door while the cop
Speaker 1: is carrying met the mayor's letter, and as often as
Speaker 1: not he has to knock on a dozen doors before
Speaker 1: he gets a chance. Why cause niggas don't trust the cops, right,
Speaker 1: Why would they? But since there's no single thing that
Speaker 1: is preventative, trust must be built right moving on in
Speaker 1: this article, there are two types of people that are
Speaker 1: most vulnerable, nasays, the people in their early twenties who
Speaker 1: are feuding over trivial matters someone looked at me wrong,
Speaker 1: somebody bumped in as somebody right, or other people who
Speaker 1: are in the drug game more around. The violence that
Speaker 1: has to do with other criminal enterprises are so much
Speaker 1: more calculated. Critically, it's not every young person with Instagram
Speaker 1: beef and not every stand down neighborhood street dealer that
Speaker 1: rises to their attention. The risk factors creates a reasonable, articulatable,
Speaker 1: legally defensible basis for contact, which means you're not being
Speaker 1: hunted by the cops.
Speaker 2: Do you understand the piece?
Speaker 1: I would have felt it I known that since I
Speaker 1: wasn't involved in none of this shit, they may not
Speaker 1: be coming up to me. You've already calmed my nervous
Speaker 1: system down right. There's another story about a young man
Speaker 1: who was recovering after a gunshot and in this Life
Speaker 1: coach Nigga from a youth advocate program approached him and
Speaker 1: Jalen said, this is This man said, he just han't
Speaker 1: been in the wrong part of West Baltimore at the
Speaker 1: wrong time. Now, most of us who grew up like this,
Speaker 1: that's true. He wasn't especially receptive to this first life
Speaker 1: coach at all.
Speaker 2: He said, I thought there was a catch.
Speaker 1: I thought I'd have to pay them back in the future,
Speaker 1: because when the police do it to you, that's exactly
Speaker 1: what it is.
Speaker 2: You got to pay them back later.
Speaker 1: But this person is funded by the city to just
Speaker 1: be a life coach. I ain't asking you to snitch
Speaker 1: on nobody. I ain't asking you to make yourself put
Speaker 1: yourself in danger. Outside is somebody who under stands what
Speaker 1: it's like to live out here. This life coach says,
Speaker 1: it's about follow up. Today, they might say get the
Speaker 1: fuck out of here. Tomorrow, they might be wanting some services.
Speaker 1: It might be something tragic that happens and they need change.
Speaker 1: Like I said, my mother's not smiling no more. I
Speaker 1: need a way to pay my mama's life bill. Can
Speaker 1: you help me with that? Here's what's crazy. Yes, I
Speaker 1: can help you with that. We have services. Why because
Speaker 1: I'm talking to the other departments. Right on the law side,
Speaker 1: here's a prevention. They dismissed thirty four percent of non
Speaker 1: violent charges. I was a non violet offender. It was graffiti.
Speaker 1: Just make me pay the fine. Like it's fine. I
Speaker 1: got pay the fine. I don't care. Right, you have
Speaker 1: like a nickel bag of weed in your pocket. You're
Speaker 1: looking at five years. The shit is not working. That's
Speaker 1: over policing. But if the district attorney look at you
Speaker 1: and say, nigga's some weed man, get the fuck out
Speaker 1: of here, Go take care of your mama. Matter of fact,
Speaker 1: I want you to talk to this brother over here.
Speaker 1: You're gonna help get your plumber's license. Oh so there's
Speaker 1: job placement. Right.
Speaker 2: There's all that, and then finally evaluation.
Speaker 1: Listen, you got a carrying adult, You got services available
Speaker 1: to you. And you know if somebody in this program,
Speaker 1: if any of these law enforcement, these city people act
Speaker 1: the fuck up, there are consequences. That is Pillar three.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna link all this stuff to you. There's a
Speaker 1: four year evaluation, and you will get fucking fired. If
Speaker 1: I know that if you treat me right, something gonna
Speaker 1: happen to you, I might think a little different. Listen,
Speaker 1: the heat stopped working, so my heat start working. But
Speaker 1: if my stomach is full, and the bills are paid,
Speaker 1: and there's after school programs that go to and I
Speaker 1: know these old people around me aren't gonna trust me
Speaker 1: when I tell them stuff when I'm dealing with situations
Speaker 1: that may or may not be out of my control.
Speaker 1: When I got big homei'es pressing me to do this,
Speaker 1: and there's somebody I could trust that I could talk
Speaker 1: to that's not gonna turn me into a snitch. Because
Speaker 1: you ain't telling the cops just to get them to
Speaker 1: give me information about a crime that happened over there.
Speaker 1: That's not what's happening right now. You are trying to
Speaker 1: prevent the violence. You're not trying to catch a criminal.
Speaker 1: You're trying to prevent criminality, and it's at a fifty
Speaker 1: year low. But sure, go ahea and send a national guard.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Listen, obviously this ain't the system. I won't but it's
Speaker 1: the system we got.
Speaker 2: This is not ideal.
Speaker 1: You would never see me shill for no police department
Speaker 1: or mayor, but cities like Philly in Baltimore are proven. Nigga,
Speaker 1: If you just care and you spend money on trusted
Speaker 1: sources and provide resources, the crime it drops itself.
Speaker 2: Seems so simple. But you know what do we know?
Speaker 1: We're just black people and all this tells me what
Speaker 1: we already knew. It was never about crime, ever, because
Speaker 1: there's research that shows what actually works in reducing crime.
Speaker 1: What this about? You just think we're you and you're
Speaker 1: a white supremacist. You just want a white world and
Speaker 1: you think it's cool to have military in our streets.
Speaker 2: Don't get me wrong. You didn't invent that. You was
Speaker 2: in Trump.
Speaker 1: You know how I know you ain't invent that because
Speaker 1: there's an amendment in the Constitution that says that we
Speaker 1: don't want to live in a world where the military
Speaker 1: is on every corner.
Speaker 2: But apparently you do. It's clearly not about crime. It
Speaker 2: could happen. Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 2: coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Find sources
Speaker 2: for it could happen here, listed directly in episode descriptions.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening,