On this episode of the podcast, Joe and Joe are joined by Michael Rhodes, a former Marine and former sergeant in the Baltimore Police Department. They discuss the Orlando shooting, the lack of gun control in the United States, and the corruption that has plagued the department for years. They also discuss the mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, who is now running for re-election, and what it means for the future of the police department and the country as a whole. Joe also talks about the recent mass shooting in Orlando and why he thinks gun control is the only thing that can ever be done to stop mass shootings like this from happening in the first place. Joe also gives his thoughts on the recent shooting in Aurora, Colorado, and why gun control should be prioritized in the wake of mass shootings in the U.S. and around the world. And Joe talks about why he doesn t think the current mayor should get a shot at the job of being the next Mayor of Chicago and why it s a good thing that he s running for the position of someone who s actually good at it. Joe and Michael discuss the recent shootings in Orlando, Colorado and why they think gun control needs to be implemented in America and why we should all be concerned about gun control. Thanks for listening, Uncle Tom! Thank you for listening and for supporting the podcast. -Joe and Michael! -The Best Fiends Podcast -Your Support is greatly appreciated! and we ll be back next week with a new episode of Uncle Tom's Unfiltered. in the next episode of "Uncle Tom's Uncle Tom" on the podcast! Thanks Uncle Tom and Joe's Uncles, Joe, too! Joe, Joe & Michael, and Joe, thank you so much for listening to Uncle Tom, you're a great guy! XOXO, and we'll see you soon, Joe. . and thanks for checking out the podcast and supporting Uncle Tom. and Joe and Mike Rhodes, too, too much love you, Tom, and your support is much appreciated, and much much more. XO, Joe! xo Thanks, Joe Wood, and good night, Joe & Joe, and Mike, and Good Luck, and God bless you, Love ya. xO, -Auntie Tom, too Much Love, Mike Rhodes - Thank you, Mr. Tom,
00:00:23.000For the Marines who agree with that, okay, you were a Marine, former Sergeant in the Baltimore Police Department, and you came on the podcast a while back and exposed some pretty eye-opening...
00:00:38.000information about how the the whole system sort of works in this sort of a kind of a closed loop in in Baltimore where the same neighborhoods are having the same kind of crime in the same sort of scenarios over and over again and that was a really important podcast for me and it was a really important podcast for a lot of people that listen to it because they got exposed to The inner workings of police departments by someone who was...
00:01:07.000I was really happy how honest you were about all of it, about the thrill of chasing people and all of the cool stuff about it.
00:01:18.000And we scheduled this podcast quite a while ago.
00:01:22.000And it's kind of crazy that you're coming in the weekend after these insane shootings in Orlando.
00:01:28.000And I'm absolutely not happy that that happened, but I'm happy, as happy as I could be, that you're here while this is all going down.
00:01:43.000These moments, these insane moments that happen, it seems like every few months or so, some new insane moment happens where some person, usually a man, blows a fucking fuse and winds up killing a ton of people.
00:02:00.000I don't know what if anything, and I'm hoping maybe you'll have some insight, what if anything could ever be done to stop something like this?
00:02:10.000Well, this is where we get into the Mike Rhodes, the dirty liberal thing.
00:02:17.000And we're going to start talking about gun control because I don't know what else we can talk about.
00:02:22.000Your only other option is to continue a cycle of more and more force upon one another.
00:02:29.000So what we know for sure, without a doubt, that the path we're on, it is only a matter of time before this record is broken.
00:02:38.000So what we're doing will result in that.
00:02:41.000But we have this anti-intellectualism in America that just won't take that evidence and apply it to what we know is going to be the end result.
00:02:52.000We have countries that have done gun control.
00:03:14.000Yeah, so you could think of it as that.
00:03:16.000A lot of people don't categorize those as mass shootings, because you think of mass shootings as someone going into a crowded place and killing a bunch of civilians, or innocent people, I should say, whereas they think of those kind of shootings in the hood as rival gangs,
00:03:33.000people competing over drug dealing territory, things along those lines, which is Another point, because you were running for—you wanted to be the head of police of Chicago.
00:05:41.000Another thing which you could solve easily, so his friend's wife or something got number one on the lieutenant's test, which is extremely qualifying, so to say.
00:05:55.000And As soon as the information comes down, that he actually was the one that was developing the test, had the answers, and then she gets this super high score out of nowhere.
00:06:07.000That's when everybody says, oh, come on.
00:06:54.000So that would require a mayor that's willing to give in to the people that have pushed hard enough to say, look, I'm going to relinquish control of my essential armed wing, and I'm going to give it to the people.
00:07:17.000Well, what they've tried to do in some areas, like in New Jersey in particular, is force these people to integrate more into the community, make them walk the beat, which is, like, you don't hear about that anymore.
00:07:30.000Now everyone's in a car, and you're driving around in this closed-up vehicle, whereas before, everybody was walking around, and you were sort of like, oh, there's Officer Mike.
00:07:39.000You know, he's a part of the community, and it became normal to see these people.
00:07:44.000They developed friendships with the people that were in their neighborhood that they were patrolling, and it sort of ingratiated them more.
00:07:51.000I think having a bunch of people that you don't know patrolling your streets with guns in a car, just driving around and, you know, hardly ever getting out unless they're arresting somebody.
00:08:29.000It was just being thrown in to get drug arrests.
00:08:32.000I didn't know anybody or meet anybody.
00:08:33.000It was still those same pushing to get somebody, put them in a prison cell, do the paperwork, go back out and do it again.
00:08:40.000So what we really need is to change the incentives and disincentives so that no matter what the role, we're still going towards that objective that actually serves you.
00:09:31.000The police shouldn't be glorified revenue collectors just arresting people for the taxes lost on loose cigarettes, and that's what killed Eric Garner, right?
00:09:51.000I'm really glad that you brought up that instance in New York.
00:09:55.000So what that is, is direct evidence against what the head of the FBI has said, Comey, who's coming and he's pushing this Ferguson effect.
00:10:04.000So the idea around, they're saying, oh, we have crime going up in these different neighborhoods because there's this Ferguson effect that the cops are laying back so they're not being as proactive.
00:10:13.000And because they're not being as proactive, then they're not locking people up so stats are going up.
00:10:18.000And we know that if you have a theory and there's one situation that says your theory's complete crap, well, your theory's complete crap.
00:11:23.000All those things contribute to crime, 100%.
00:11:26.000And when you fuck with people over loose cigarettes or any sort of nonsense, petty crime that nobody gives a shit about, that kind of stuff is not good for anybody.
00:11:35.000It's not good for the relationship the police have with citizens.
00:11:38.000It's not good for the perception of the citizens, of the way they view the police.
00:11:43.000It makes them view the police as these thugs.
00:12:08.000They are funded and, you know, so you have a mayor in Baltimore.
00:12:13.000The mayor directs the police department's way, no matter what city you're in.
00:12:18.000And what that person is doing is they're serving those rich people.
00:12:22.000They're serving the mass voters of the area who just have that mentality still that they want those animals caged and to pen them in and to keep them there.
00:12:32.000So as long as it doesn't affect us, then who cares?
00:12:57.000This incorrect understanding of how that affects the people that these cops are interacting with, and that it actually does probably create more crime.
00:13:07.000And then on top of that, I think there's also the problem with those people that are in those poor communities could just as easily be you or I. If we were born into those situations, and we're talking about giving people an opportunity to get out, giving people a possibility to get out.
00:13:24.000And do better and improve their situation, their standing in life.
00:13:29.000Well, if they're getting fucked with all the time, that's not going to happen.
00:13:32.000If they're in a terrible, poverty-laden, crime-laden community, Good luck with that.
00:13:42.000And I think it's real convenient for people to be outside of that and look at those folks and go, well, those people need to stop doing crime.
00:13:49.000What you need to do is just lock them all up.
00:13:51.000Well, that doesn't seem to make sense.
00:13:54.000It seems much more likely that the best way to handle that is to lock them up less.
00:14:00.000And to sort of somehow or another try to calm that area down.
00:14:06.000I mean, whether it's through some universal basic income idea, which I've been paying a lot of attention to that lately and trying to explore those ideas and see if I can wrap my own...
00:14:17.000They're going to call me a socialist and you're talking about minimum...
00:14:46.000So I'm not the person to do the numbers, but when I think about it like objectively as far as from a social stance When people have less problems, when bills are paid easier, when they're more relaxed as far as where food's coming from,
00:15:03.000where basic needs are covered, they're less likely to commit crime.
00:15:08.000So it just makes sense that you would have to spend less money on law enforcement, less money on prisons, less money on jails, and that perhaps that could translate.
00:15:19.000There was a great article written by some prominent libertarian who wrote this piece about universal basic income.
00:15:28.000The idea is essentially giving people $13,000 a year.
00:15:31.000That if you give Americans essentially $1,000 plus a month, and that if you did that, you would take care of a shitload of problems that we have in inner cities and crime and all this.
00:15:43.000And he sort of outlined it and made a pretty interesting case for this idea.
00:15:51.000But, of course, you've got a lot of people that want to go on and on about welfare babies and people that are juking the system and buying cigarettes with food stamps and things along those lines.
00:16:04.000But it's like this callous sort of approach to dealing with really poor people in really bad neighborhoods.
00:16:10.000And one of the things that you brought up about Baltimore that made it so disturbing was that black people had to buy houses in these areas.
00:16:19.000They would not sell houses in certain areas to black people.
00:16:40.000So things that you're talking about, and like that sociologist that has that study, we know these things.
00:16:46.000So what you're observing is things that the scholarly community has known for a long time and is trying to get these things out there so that people understand this.
00:16:58.000It's not even a matter of how much is this going to cost, because we're already spending the money, and we're spending a lot more.
00:17:06.000This book, this is why I brought it with me, because I just finished...
00:17:44.000So what they do is so they don't chase things.
00:17:47.000So you get stuck in this idea that you can't escape this neighborhood because we have so many blockades in the way.
00:17:56.000There are stories that go through, they track like a hundred and some people, parents having kids in these neighborhoods and moving them out and what happened to them.
00:18:04.000And the two biggest pushers for the success of any kid in these cities was that they had An identity project, which means they're finding their passion and what they're going to go towards because they don't know these passions.
00:18:20.000They don't know that a photographer like Devin Allen, a friend of mine in Baltimore, can come out and do things for their community and can actually achieve that dream.
00:18:30.000So once they see it and it's possible and you start taking the hurdles down, like the hurdles of where they live and the hurdles of the arrest for the bag of weed or for, like you said, the...
00:18:42.000The talking yourself into jail because the cops messing with you every single day and you're saturated with police in these neighborhoods.
00:18:47.000You start taking down these barriers and these kids excel.
00:18:51.000And that goes completely against the narrative that we're hearing that these kids don't have motivation and they can't push out.
00:18:58.000Eighty percent of these kids that grow up in the city never touch the streets or have anything to do with it.
00:19:04.000They're getting high school degrees at four or five hundred percent the rate of their parents.
00:19:09.000It's just that what we keep doing is we keep getting them behind and they're still fighting super hard, but we're still throwing more and more hurdles in their way.
00:19:17.000So the money that you're talking about, how much it costs for these disconnected youths, this is all in prisons?
00:19:27.000This is just the lack of their productivity from achieving what they can achieve and what it's costing us to then take care of what the fallout is in just that microcosm.
00:19:40.000We're not throwing in, locking up everybody else.
00:19:49.000Well, this is one of the subjects that's come up over and over again on this podcast because I've always tried to figure out What it is that keeps people from trying to socially engineer these environments and make them better for the people that live there.
00:20:06.000Like, we're always concentrating on all these other countries.
00:20:08.000We're concentrating on, you know, helping Afghanistan and, you know, rebuilding Iraq and all the stuff that we do, humanitarian efforts all over the world, right?
00:20:20.000So what we end up doing is we have this idea that we're rich and often white and we're going to come in and we're going to like have the handout or we're going to give them what we want or we're going to show them the right way.
00:20:36.000The answer is to ask what they want and provide the structure and platform for that to take place.
00:20:43.000So when these smart people that haven't been in there, they'll look at stats and they'll look at the paperwork and they'll say, oh, we just need to move people out and relocate them.
00:20:55.000The idea was, all right, well, we'll put them in this big tower and we'll have resources around them and everything will be fine.
00:21:01.000And we're making sure they have their own police department so everything will be...
00:21:04.000We'll be good, but then the police start locking everybody up, and you get into that cycle again because you're not giving the identity project even to adults where you can say, whether it's comedy or whether it's photography or no matter what,
00:21:19.000you have to have that goal, that vision, because all they see Is that their future is in dealing or in a prison cell, and they keep being told that if they do the right things, they can move on.
00:21:31.000But when they do the right things, our sometimes good intentions put up the roadblocks that prevent them from doing that.
00:24:05.000I mean, when the guy talks about it, he's like smoking cigarettes and freaking out because it was just 10 years of his life and it was just too much.
00:24:53.000It would certainly depend on the situation, but I can't help but keep coming back to the fundamental idea that our criminal justice system is based on punishment.
00:26:02.000I mean, for the families of someone that they victimized, they don't want this person to come out better.
00:26:07.000Not even all victims feel that way, though.
00:26:10.000There are plenty of murder victims who their parents have gone and asked for leniency for the person or asked to not give them the death penalty.
00:26:24.000But we have to look beyond that because when your sister gets in a fight and kills your neighbor who's your friend or something like that, you're not asking for the death penalty because it's close to you.
00:28:12.000So there are wardens out there that are progressive and are thinking of these things.
00:28:16.000So that shouldn't really be on the warden, huh?
00:28:19.000There should be some sort of a standard nationwide where we should look at it as a culture, as a society, as a civilization and say, hey, you know, what should we be trying to do to try to make these people better people?
00:28:30.000And you do that when you arrest them, though.
00:28:32.000So what we say now is when he goes and shoots or when someone rapes, we're not looking at it as that failure.
00:28:39.000So if you were running this business and a facet of your business failed, Then you would want to have an analysis and you would want to say, alright, let's do a regression and figure out what went wrong.
00:28:50.000And you would want to fix that for the next time.
00:28:54.000We just go, alright, throw that one away and continue path as normal.
00:28:58.000We shouldn't be so focused when we arrest somebody to figure out...
00:29:03.000How we're going to throw them away for the longest, we should be figuring out why it happened so we can prevent it for the next person.
00:29:10.000But it doesn't seem like we actually care about solving the crime.
00:29:14.000We're just keeping these wheels turning.
00:29:16.000So if you commit murder, then I want to know why.
00:29:19.000I want to know the scenarios that led you up to that.
00:29:21.000Because the only way that I can actually prevent that is not minority report.
00:29:25.000It's finding out what that hurdle was, that moment that you said, fuck this, and finding ways to prevent that as much as possible or reduce it for other people.
00:29:33.000And a lot of it must have to do with the developmental period that you go through when you're a young person and what you're exposed to as a small child.
00:29:42.000And that stuff becomes so deeply ingrained in a person's mind to try to reverse that.
00:29:50.000Boy, it's so much harder than to try to raise someone correctly the first time.
00:29:57.000It's coming of age in the other America.
00:29:58.000I mean, they talk about these things where that's one of the predictors is how much exposure to violence that these kids have had when they were going between the ages of zero and ten.
00:30:08.000And so when they got them out of the city and they gave them opportunities, then they got exposed to less violence.
00:30:15.000The really crazy thing in this study is that we found out that the kids that were in the city that didn't get help, they also fought their way out at actually a higher rate.
00:30:25.000So we did these nice things and we have to tweak it, but like our nice things that we did actually didn't pan out in the same results as kids that were just fighting on their own.
00:30:37.000So they had these housing voucher programs where the idea was to take people out of those neighborhoods and put them into nicer neighborhoods where they would be exposed to less things and they would have neighbors around that did things and that was very beneficial when that happened.
00:30:53.000But about an equal percentage of those kids went back, ended up being in the low-income areas and get involved into the streets.
00:31:00.000And then the ones that fought themselves out on their own ended up at a slightly higher percentage actually getting out and being exposed to less because of their own individual efforts and the control group trying to get out of there.
00:31:39.000Of the kids raised in Baltimore in this study ever spent, and these are in the worst neighborhoods, it's East and West Baltimore, ever spent a moment on the streets doing any criminal activity.
00:32:07.000It's like, how much effort is actually being done to try to fix this?
00:32:11.000I mean, how many people are actually thinking about it?
00:32:13.000How much money is actually being spent to try to fix this?
00:32:16.000It seems like there's so many problems in the world that to concentrate on bad neighborhoods or crime-ridden neighborhoods It's so low on the list of things the world's worried about.
00:32:39.000In Baltimore, for example, there's this patented thing that...
00:32:44.000A professor from Morgan State, Lawrence Brown, is really into this and tracks it all down.
00:32:50.000But there's a white L. We call it the white L in Baltimore.
00:32:53.000It goes down through the rich neighborhood and comes across to the other rich neighborhoods by the bay.
00:32:57.000And then there's the black butterfly, which comes off to the sides, east and west Baltimore, and it looks like butterfly wings dispersing out poverty and black people in the city.
00:33:06.000This is in every single aspect that you're going to find.
00:33:11.000Where the money goes for schools, where the bus routes are, where the free bus is.
00:33:17.000Like the white neighborhoods have a free bus, and the black neighborhoods have to pay for their bus.
00:33:23.000So we have all these things that no matter what you think of, this white L and this black butterfly come to fruition on where resources are allocated and what problems are.
00:33:33.000How is that possible that white people don't have to pay for the bus and the black people do?
00:34:18.000Dealing with prison guard unions and police unions that are trying to keep business as usual because that keeps people employed.
00:34:28.000Well, that's a significant portion and you're seeing that with the NRA and you're seeing that with the police unions and, like you said, the correctional unions.
00:34:36.000And see, even them, they don't have these bad intentions.
00:34:59.000As long as we have money in politics, you can't get away from that.
00:35:02.000Well, the most transparent example of that is marijuana.
00:35:05.000We've shown time and time again with a million different studies that marijuana is not dangerous, or if it is dangerous, the danger that it poses is so minimal, it's so small, that consenting adults should be able to do whatever the fuck they want with it.
00:35:21.000And yet, prison guard unions and police unions still lobby to keep the drug laws exactly the same way they are, because that ensures You're going to need a certain amount of guards.
00:35:30.000You're going to need a certain amount of police officers.
00:35:50.000We're going to keep it this way, even though it's completely illogical, even though we know the history of it.
00:35:54.000And we're going to do it simply because people want to keep their jobs.
00:35:58.000Instead of trying to figure out what other jobs these people can do.
00:36:03.000Like, shouldn't there be a way you could take some of these people that are prison guards or police officers and give them a job with a commensurate income that's involved in helping communities?
00:36:18.000I mean, how many guys that are cops...
00:36:21.000We're also into martial arts or into fitness or into something else or, you know, anything where they could teach people in these communities, set up community centers and give people high-paying jobs to establish really good environments for development and for growing and give people a chance to be exposed to maybe one of these things that could be these paths that you were talking about.
00:36:43.000Yeah, I mean, obviously I'm going to have zero objection to that.
00:36:46.000I mean, that's a great way of going about it.
00:37:17.000So we know without a doubt that that's the case.
00:37:20.000But what we can do is, so say you still want to do that, and we don't have to change them that far to get them away from the drug war, even though that's probably the biggest chunk that's fucking everything up is the drug war.
00:37:47.000If you have, you know, the kilograms of cocaine coming over the border, if you fight it with force, you know, you fight the supply side, then you get a 10 gram, a kilogram reduction.
00:37:56.000But if you spend that same million dollars on the demand side, educating people, you have a reduction of 100 kilograms.
00:39:12.000And yet we continue With this anti-intellectualism and denial, it runs throughout our society in America.
00:39:22.000Speaking about the guns, we're dealing with the same thing where it's just constant.
00:39:27.000We have evidence, we can prove things empirically, and we still just continue to do the opposite for reasons I just can't get my mind wrapped around.
00:39:36.000I feel like I'm fighting denial and it's been like a year.
00:39:41.000That I'm fighting this denial and talking on radio shows constantly.
00:39:45.000But yet, you know, a couple months ago, we pull up the internet and the FBI director is pushing the Ferguson effect.
00:40:10.000You know, if you look at the statistics of how many Americans have guns, how many rounds of ammunition there are, how many armed people there are in this country, and then you look at how many crimes there are, how many gun shootings there are, it's relatively small.
00:41:02.000But the issue, what they try to say, and I'm not picking the team here, but what they try to say is that what we're dealing with is just massive numbers of people.
00:41:13.000The number 300 million is so hard for the average person like you or I to wrap our head around what that means in terms of the volume, the sheer volume of people, and how many guns there are out there.
00:41:26.000There's as many guns as more guns than there are people in this country, which is even more insane.
00:41:34.000The people that own these guns for the most part are law-abiding citizens that don't do anything wrong.
00:42:31.000And the second is that that number is acceptable.
00:42:36.000So what you're trading in there is what are you getting?
00:42:40.000So if you have an equation where they can have these guns, so what are you benefiting and what are you losing?
00:42:45.000Tell me what as a society we benefit from handguns and rifles.
00:42:52.000Well, the people that have been able to protect themselves against dangerous crime, the people that have been able to stop people from breaking into their homes, stealing their property, harming them physically, or protecting their loved ones.
00:43:03.000So when you talk about ratios, There's 30,000 handgun crimes in America every year, right?
00:44:54.000And on one side of this equation, we have 30,000 handgun victims.
00:44:57.000We have a society that's gripped by fear.
00:45:00.000We have dudes that can go get an AR-15 and days later light up a nightclub and do a hate crime.
00:45:06.000We know that that's going to happen, and we know that as the future progresses, that this 103 casualties of this shooting is going to be superseded by a bigger shooting that's going to happen, because we've got to break the records, right?
00:45:19.000And we're going to have more and more guns that keep coming in and keep coming.
00:45:22.000So that's on the right-hand side of the equation.
00:45:24.000And on your left-hand side of the equation for having guns, the argument is, well, I like them.
00:45:30.000Well, there's also the argument that a well-armed society is a polite society, and that if there were people that had guns in that nightclub, they would have been able to prevent that crime by taking that guy out.
00:48:11.000And the assault weapons are going to keep you having better aim.
00:48:13.000They're going to keep you having a higher magazine capacity.
00:48:16.000It's going to be a little more reliable weapon.
00:48:18.000But a hunting rifle with a 10 magazine clip, that's a.223, and it's a semi-automatic, is going to do the exact same level of damage that we're talking about.
00:48:26.000So my position on gun control is extremely simple.
00:48:29.000You want your guns for these other things, like, say, hunting.
00:48:37.000Everything that's on the pro-gun side that they want to achieve can all be accomplished by shotguns and bolt-action rifles.
00:48:47.000Well, yeah, I see that argument, but I also see the argument that hunters would use in that situation that if you limit the amount of rounds that a guy can have in his gun or the ability to fire off rounds quickly, you're limiting their ability to make a quick follow-up shot on an animal that would kill that animal.
00:49:06.000Yeah, and so if you have somebody that's that dedicated, right?
00:49:10.000I don't have a problem with that, personally.
00:49:12.000So if you have somebody, we want to establish this high standard.
00:49:15.000So say we have this super high standard where this guy, he can get his big gun that he uses and is well trained on and he's gone through a super long process of backgrounds and he's all checked out.
00:50:20.000Yeah, that's the whole problem is the concealment that you can just pop it out and use it You don't know who has what and so everyone becomes a threat because you have this small Death device on you that anybody can do anything and it's just like we got to go back to that equation like what is on the other side of the equation of 30,000 handguns and 300 and plus mass shootings per year the other side of that equation is is That ridiculous idea.
00:50:46.000I mean, if you can figure out something for me other than I like collecting guns and I think they're cool and it's my right, then I'm willing to hear it.
00:50:53.000I just don't hear an argument beyond that.
00:50:57.000Well, the only argument is that a person who is not a criminal and a person who doesn't have any ill will in their hearts and just enjoys firearms should be able to have them just like you should be able to have a truck that you could just drive through a fucking crowd of people with if you wanted to.
00:51:13.000Yeah, but so the argument there that you can have the truck and the truck is capable of harm.
00:53:47.000So Princeton did a study where they tracked 19,000 cases.
00:53:51.000Of laws that were going on and going through Congress.
00:53:55.000So what they found out is that public opinion on whether a law gets passed or not, for instance, gun control, which over 80% of NRA members agree with increased gun control and background checks and things like that.
00:54:08.000We don't get it passed, Congress, at all.
00:54:11.000It doesn't have any bearing on public opinion.
00:54:14.000It doesn't have any bearing on whether a law gets passed.
00:54:16.000But if you have donors that care about a law getting passed, then it's going to get passed.
00:54:21.000And even when public sentiment is completely against the law being passed, if the donors want the law passed, they still have a 30% chance of getting the law passed.
00:54:29.000I think what the NRA is trying to do...
00:54:33.000They're trying to prevent the slippery slope.
00:54:36.000They're trying to establish laws and keep them in place, establish rights that are already in place, right?
00:54:43.000Keep them in place because they worry that if you start increasing background checks, if you start ramping up any sort of restrictions on gun owners, that it's a slippery slope that they'll never get back.
00:55:31.000Why, then, would we all want to protect this so much?
00:55:36.000Well, the NRA's position is that liberals, Democrats, whatever, they want to take away your right to own a gun.
00:55:46.000The NRA does not want that, so they spend all their money, they do all their lobbying, they do everything they can to stop any new restrictions from passing.
00:55:58.000And to stop anyone who is trying to take away guns.
00:56:23.000But at one point in time, I did enough research and enough understanding that my ultimate goal is that we have a safer society and that we protect people.
00:56:34.000But the way we protect people empirically is to not have these guns.
00:56:39.000Nobody has the gun crime that we have.
00:56:41.000Nobody in the entire world as a developed country has the gun crime and incarceration rate and everything that we do.
00:56:48.000We are the worst example in the developed world of how to do this.
00:56:52.000Every other example is a better example than what we do.
00:56:57.000But we're continually trying to stay into this same mold that we know is failing.
00:57:27.000I don't want to get, like, rude with people, but the idea that you want to go fucking shoot something, I just don't give a shit about that when you see the destruction close to you.
00:57:37.000It's suddenly Gabby Gifford can go for gun control after it touches you.
00:57:43.000Whenever it touches you, suddenly we start to care.
00:57:47.000If right now a masked gunman comes and starts shooting up the rest of this building and they kill Jamie, we're all going to care a hell of a lot more.
00:59:00.000So let's make them more valuable so they're not worth $200 on the street so that a disrespect beef or a drug war beef can lead to that shooting.
00:59:11.000I want to have you sit down with someone who's a gun proponent.
00:59:34.000I'm going to do this, please, because he needs to give me that pushback that other people need to hear, and if he's right on a position, I will absolutely change.
00:59:42.000Okay, well, we're definitely going to set that up then.
00:59:45.000I'm going to bring in Justin, because Justin's very articulate, and don't be intimidated, because he is a giant.
00:59:50.000He does have a thousand fucking guns or something like that.
00:59:55.000And he is, like I said, a firearms enthusiast, but also a really nice guy that has no criminal record, never done anything wrong, and very articulate, very smart, very well-read.
01:00:06.000But he's going to say that people like him should have the guns, right?
01:00:20.000So I wouldn't argue if he's going to say he needs, you know, we need this elite members of society, like SWAT teams or something like that, that can handle these situations.
01:00:36.000Like, if they can handle it and they're professionally as him, you're not going to get pushback from society because nothing's even going to happen.
01:00:41.000But what I'm saying is that he's not doing anything wrong, and it's something he enjoys.
01:01:04.000I definitely see when something like this happens in Orlando and some crazy fuck can go in and just shoot up a nightclub and kill all these people.
01:01:53.000And there were two Marines on base, on the college campus, with weapons.
01:01:58.000And they didn't engage because they said, hey, look, I was only going to make the situation worse.
01:02:04.000The cops weren't going to know who I am if I had my weapon out.
01:02:07.000I could have missed and done something else.
01:02:09.000And two guys that were in their actual right state of mind that were armed decided that engaging was more dangerous.
01:02:17.000And it's actually empirically more dangerous that if you engage, you're more likely to die and you're going to shoot somebody else or the situation's not going to be resolved.
01:03:45.000You can't even understand what's going on.
01:03:46.000You have to be well-trained in that environment and understand, like, cops aren't even in there the first time they get in a real gun battle because they shoot with earplugs in and everything.
01:03:55.000The first time they're shooting their gun, they're hearing the sound and everything else.
01:03:59.000So, yeah, I mean, you got those people.
01:04:00.000Like, everybody that I was in the Marine Corps with...
01:04:03.000Doing FAST Team, I don't think they're going to get any gun crimes and I think they can handle situations, but these are a certain segment that needs to live up to a high standard.
01:04:14.000Well, not only that, those are people that have been trained and they've developed this understanding of firearms that's so deep, most people just don't get to that.
01:04:23.000It's like the average person who watches a UFC fight and thinks they can kick someone's ass.
01:04:27.000And then if you fought against a trained martial artist, you're fucked.
01:04:31.000Like, you really don't know what you're doing.
01:04:32.000That's kind of the same thing when you compare someone who really, like my friend Justin, really understands firearms, versus the average person who goes and buys a gun and thinks, well, I'm safe now.
01:05:14.000I can tell you, you can have a gun on you right now, and we can set this up in the morning, and I can tell you, walk around your day as normal.
01:05:21.000At some point in time today, I'm going to take that gun away from you.
01:05:34.000So then why are you actually think you're safe that you have that gun on you?
01:05:39.000You're just as long as you're Fighting against the inferior opponent or you're in this situation where you have distance and you have all these things, just like in an MMA fight, it's not going to go as you fucking planned it.
01:07:43.000So, like, a big thing with policing is you don't get into, like, jujitsu kind of wrestling matches because of that gun, right?
01:07:53.000Because no matter what fight you're in, there's always a gun there.
01:07:57.000And it's the same thing with non-cops, right?
01:08:01.000You don't want to get in a fight as a cop because if the evidence shows, statistically, that if they get that gun from you, they're going to use it on you.
01:08:30.000You literally are making yourself more at risk.
01:08:33.000I mean, the statistics are clear on this, that if you bring a gun to this fight, The odds are against you even higher now.
01:08:41.000Because most people that bring, even if you bring a knife to a fight, a significant portion of those people get the knife taken away from them and get used on them.
01:08:48.000I can't tell you how many cases we've been where you're trying to figure out a stabbing call and come to find out, you know, they tried to do the stabbing.
01:08:57.000But they got that shit taken from them and they got stabbed themselves.
01:09:00.000So once you introduce that, that potential, you're more dangerous.
01:09:05.000But this is again, you're talking about non-trained individuals and it sort of brings us back to the responsibility that you need.
01:09:13.000I just don't want to fight hard on those really trained people.
01:09:24.000So if these people want to earn that privilege, so be it.
01:09:28.000But it becomes a problem, doesn't it, when a really fucking crazy person earns that privilege?
01:09:33.000I mean, if someone hasn't done anything yet criminal, I mean, there's been several people that have committed mass shootings that didn't do anything before they did that shooting.
01:09:42.000I mean, yeah, so you're still left with those.
01:09:44.000You've still decided as a society that on that side of the equation, you're willing to accept that amount, even though it's a lesser amount.
01:11:02.000And again, the idea that we keep the Constitution and the Bill of Rights exactly intact, some shit that was created hundreds of years ago before any of the variables that we have to deal with in society today, whether it's variables about privacy, electronic communications,
01:11:17.000whether it's variables about the power and the ability that guns have...
01:11:24.000I mean, we're dealing with a totally different world.
01:11:26.000They made this shit back when people had muskets.
01:11:29.000And, by the way, they had just gotten done fighting off a totalitarian regime and had expanded and become their own country.
01:11:37.000Second Amendment of the United States Constitution reads, a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
01:11:52.000The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
01:11:58.000Yeah, but a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
01:13:08.000Pull that up again so I can see that, please.
01:13:11.000I mean, look, it's kind of weird arguing about this, because if we had to do this over again, I mean, this is obviously something that was established, as we said, a long time ago.
01:13:21.000If we had to do this over again, if we had established new amendments or new rights...
01:13:34.000That means everything after that is in regards to a well-regulated militia.
01:13:37.000So if I said, and then Joe, and everything in that sentence would be about Joe, it's a prepositional phrase.
01:13:43.000I mean, that's exactly what they mean.
01:13:45.000Well, a well-regulated militia, meaning that there's a bunch of militia, meaning regular people, civilians, gathering together to form some sort of a makeshift army.
01:15:59.000Okay, so I'll give you, let's say we give you the right of the people is what they mean is that the people can hold the arms until they're needed to form this militia.
01:17:05.000Yeah, it seems like these cocksuckers that wrote that shit, they've made it so weird.
01:17:11.000Right, but even if you can get them, They certainly weren't talking about AR-15s, and they weren't envisioning a government with 5,000 nuclear weapons.
01:17:53.000You probably would, but you will have some people that are willing to comply.
01:17:56.000But you are saying that your friends and brothers and sisters that are in the armed forces are going to turn their guns on their friends and family.
01:18:30.000Don't you think you'd make the same argument that a small amount of non-compliant people would be the ones that the military would have to go against?
01:18:37.000Yeah, I mean, I guess if you have that kind of scenario, sure.
01:18:40.000But if they're literally, say they were to come take all the guns, and they were going to do it by force.
01:18:45.000You're also saying this huge force, for one, the military's not allowed to operate on our soil.
01:18:58.000Yeah, but look, I mean, when you look at the tanks and some of the fucking military vehicles that they're using in some of these riot drills...
01:19:10.000Well, militarization of police is a separate argument.
01:19:13.000Well, it is a separate argument, but it becomes military then.
01:19:16.000I mean, you're talking about war machines.
01:19:18.000Sure, that's something that clearly wasn't envisioned, and so I would rather you didn't open up that can of worms.
01:20:32.000Right, and you're talking about people who are criminals shooting other criminals, and that's one of the arguments that anti-gun control people use against people that talk about how many people get shot.
01:20:44.000When you look at the numbers of people that get shot in this country, they're also calculating the number of people that are shot by law enforcement officers.
01:22:15.000He's gonna argue that until the end of the day.
01:22:17.000He's one of those people you can put the evidence in front of him day in and day out and he'll just move the goalposts and move the goalposts and no one's interested in having an argument with somebody who's just gonna continually move goalposts.
01:22:36.000I'm halfway looking through something, but I got this from the Washington Post, this article that starts with the year of 1,000 people nearly being shot by police.
01:22:47.000It says right here, they sought to compile a record of every fatal police shooting in the nation as of 2015, something no government agency had done.
01:22:55.000It started after Michael Brown's shooting.
01:22:57.000That's when they started looking into it.
01:23:42.000in the majority of cases which police shot and killed a person who had attacked someone with a weapon or brandished a gun, the person who was shot was white.
01:23:55.000In the majority of cases in which police shot and killed a person who had attacked someone with a weapon or brandished a gun, the person who was shot was white.
01:24:02.000But a huge disproportionate number, three in five of those killed after exhibiting less threatening behavior, were black or Hispanic.
01:24:10.000So meaning they valued the life less of people who were black or Hispanic.
01:24:14.000They were quicker to shoot them with less threatening behavior than they would with white people.
01:24:19.000Regardless of race, in more than a quarter of the cases, the fatal encounter involved officers pursuing someone on foot or by car, making chases one of the most common scenarios in the data.
01:25:24.000Well, that's the counter to overpopulation.
01:25:27.000That when they look at the charts and graphs that when you're in industrialized nations, when they become more closer to the first world, they have less children.
01:28:30.000A lot of chiefs are starting to push this out again, which is the violent repeat offender, where they have people with...
01:28:37.000So they do like this predictiveness that these are the people that are likely to get shot or likely to do shootings or something like that.
01:28:45.000So we want to focus all of our enforcement efforts on them to get them on anything.
01:30:15.000So we have one more cars, and we're following behind him.
01:30:19.000And we're in this area where you have one district to the left, to the west, the southwest.
01:30:25.000You have the western district to the north, and you have the southern to the left.
01:30:27.000So they call it the tri-district, but we're kind of in this area where our communications are going to be weird, because these are all different channels.
01:33:04.000Some guy comes out of the woods from behind the shopping center.
01:33:08.000It's a fucking cop from the Southwest who heard us on the radio playing clothes cop.
01:33:13.000So the guy throws the gun and he tries to throw it up onto the roof of the building, but it like pathetically just hits the building and falls down.
01:33:34.000And so at that moment, unbeknownst to me, all those districts were like all coordinated.
01:33:40.000It was like this moment of serendipity and policing.
01:33:44.000Southern District Patrol came up and got one of the guys and like Western Patrol got one of the guys and Southwest Commander was in the area was there and the drug unit was there helping me.
01:33:53.000And we caught every single person, bring them back.
01:34:01.000Fucking people we were looking for by mere coincidence half the gang that we were looking for to go into the bar robbed the store That was next to our guy in Covert, and we started our case there, which ended up being completely successful because we had this huge jumpstart of just dumbass luck.
01:34:22.000That does sound like dumbass luck, because you called 1031 instead of 1033. You forgot to put the car in park.
01:34:53.000And those are the situations where you get into these shootings.
01:34:57.000Right, where you could have easily shot that guy who was running with the gun, and that's what the statistics show happens a lot of the time.
01:35:04.000That would have dramatically affected me, dramatically affected him, and everyone around.
01:35:10.000But what this kid was doing in the end was being part of a drug deal, trying to do robberies, trying to fucking eat and survive.
01:36:04.000You don't see other countries like this, where this all could have just went bonkers because we're trying to respond to a situation in a way, go after people and put them in cells because we have these guns everywhere and they're fighting for these resources,
01:36:20.000but that's where we have to stop and say, why are they here?
01:37:14.000Yeah, so that's why it's a circular logic.
01:37:15.000But no, because the criminals are still criminals, even if the guns are legal.
01:37:20.000Everyone's not a law-abiding citizen that has a gun if you give a gun to a criminal.
01:37:25.000Right, but if you don't have the law in place to make it criminal, and that's the thing, we're saying, well, only bad guys will have guns if we outlaw them all.
01:40:35.000They were talking about how what really happened was so many people got addicted to OxyContin because of prescription drug companies pushing that shit where people, you know, people have like little small minor injuries and they're prescribing drugs.
01:40:50.000Pills that are opiates and highly addictive.
01:41:35.000All right, so let's talk about what happened as the year has gone on.
01:41:39.000After I left here, obviously people picked up and had that, you know, the Joe Rogan effect that everybody always talks about.
01:41:47.000After they talk to you, other people start to pay attention.
01:41:50.000And I went back to Baltimore and this dude sends me an email and says they arrange it through Leap that he's gonna come visit me and he wants to talk about a movie.
01:42:09.000And we talk about some of these ideas, a very good movie idea that he has, trying to kind of put some of these things into an emotional appeal that people can understand and comes close to them.
01:42:20.000But what that did was, is it pushed me to get more involved in Baltimore so I could...
01:42:49.000And I don't know if he's going to do it yet or not, but he's like this big star in France and thinking about doing a sequel to a movie he made called Lehane, which really talks about these kind of things in France.
01:43:00.000France had very similar hypersegregation problems and ghettoization 20 years ago and ended up having riots.
01:43:09.000And that's what he's kind of doing like a 20 year reunion of that.
01:43:14.000But getting involved in Baltimore and meeting everybody, I really have been like in a school of understanding of what the cities need and what people are trying to fight for and what the Black Lives Matter movement really means.
01:43:35.000I had a lot of those same preconceived notions of being a white hero kind of thing where you go and you help and you're bringing your skills down and you don't realize the things you're saying and how you play into privilege and things like that.
01:43:56.000My walls against Muslims got torn down because I ended up meeting Muslim activists who were really using religion to do the right things, you know, the good things.
01:44:11.000Getting involved in the movement to the point where we're having these groups and we're doing things like having panel discussions and we did like stop and frisk for people so that they would see what it was like to actually have somebody come up on you and search through your pockets and we've been doing documentaries,
01:44:31.000we've been doing protesting where there's a, I met this lady Twanda Jones Her brother was killed by Baltimore police officers a couple years ago, and she's been protesting every single Wednesday for two and a half years, fighting for her brother Tyrone West,
01:44:47.000and I guess that's why they do it on Wednesdays.
01:44:49.000And he was beaten to death by Baltimore cops, like literally beaten to death.
01:44:55.000And we wanted to have things like where we say, why don't we have people protesting good?
01:45:00.000Why has it always got to be like burning down the CVS or something like that?
01:45:47.000That being a cop, you lock them up and you put them into the cell, or you take them to court and the case goes or whatever, and you don't think about that.
01:46:00.000And then I got involved in the communities and I saw the other side.
01:46:04.000I saw what it was like for a guy that came back from being in prison and in solitary confinement for three years and having no hopes of Resources, like not getting him jobs and having to fight just to get anything because he had that record.
01:46:19.000You get to see that, you know, those people you locked up, like they have families who were profoundly affected by everything that happened and they're gone for these years.
01:46:28.000And it's just, it's been a really like...
01:46:33.000I get a like aggressive and when we're talking about these conversations about guns and like cuz those deaths on that other side of that equation That shit became real as can be to me like those are people now that I know and I know the Families of the of people who were on the other side of that and it's really pushing that that's what we We need to just really do.
01:46:54.000We gotta stop being these tribal creatures that can only see those fellow humans that are right with us, that we associate as being our team.
01:47:40.000I mean, like I saw it evidentially, but to see it in person, like the work that, so the photographer Devin Allen, you can pull up Devin Allen.
01:47:53.000He took a picture of my daughter from a protest that's going to be in.
01:48:00.000He's doing this project now where he took the Time magazine cover shoot.
01:48:04.000So if you ever saw the Time magazine during the uprising where it says 1968 and it's crossed out and says 2016 because he took that picture as a young black kid that used to be a drug dealer who picked up a camera as his identity project kind of thing.
01:48:19.000He didn't know what an identity project was at that time.
01:48:21.000I didn't know what an identity project was at that time.
01:48:23.000But he picked up the camera and started taking pictures, and he got that picture.
01:48:27.000And he's well-known now, but what he did was, is he took that, and now he used the publicity from all that, and he gets...
01:48:52.000He collects cameras from around the world, brings it in, and now he runs a thing going through in Sandtown, Winchester, where Freddie Gray was killed.
01:49:01.000He takes those kids in and teaches them photography and gives them that project so they have something they can grip upon on and they have something they can build up on.
01:49:10.000But what's sad about that is that this is Devin, who has no resources, who is the kid who was a drug dealer, who has everything bothering him, and he is investing in those communities and trying to provide those things to give people that identity where they can climb out of it And they can see that vision of being a contributing member to society,
01:49:34.000and that's what we all have to do to give back these neighborhoods.
01:49:37.000That's part of the way of fixing it, is that when people want to help, you literally have to go down there and say, how can I help, and do things like that?
01:49:46.000Because what he's revealing is that we all have a skill.
01:50:04.000We all have these skills and that's like how we help.
01:50:07.000If you want to be somebody that helps these cities, you go down there and you help supply that identity.
01:50:13.000I could just see how many white knights are saying, I'm going down to the hood right now and I'm going to help.
01:50:21.000I'm gonna just find them fucked up, no pants, missing teeth.
01:50:25.000So at Penn North, we created this thing that, well, they created this thing called the Safe Zone.
01:50:31.000And what that is, is it was all worked out with everybody.
01:50:33.000You got to treat everybody like humans.
01:50:35.000They worked out with the drug dealers and everything that's going on.
01:50:38.000And they participate in keeping this area of the city completely safe so that everybody can come down there.
01:50:44.000And if you go to Baltimore, you want to be a white knight, you come down to Baltimore, reach out to an activist, and you want to help, it's not dangerous.
01:50:53.000And there are plenty of people that will help you and guide you through on what you can do to contribute to make our society a more whole place.
01:51:01.000Well, obviously, Baltimore is on the other side of the country.
01:51:03.000There's got to be places around here that need some sort of a similar situation.
01:51:41.000But if you could kind of break it down for us.
01:51:44.000Well, the first thing we have to do is we have to give that power away.
01:51:49.000And I think that's a condition that I have to have in order to take the job.
01:51:53.000Now, I have a friend who was actually a driver when we were in Chicago who was a cop.
01:51:59.000And he told me that what's going on in Chicago was that they had some pretty high-level drug dealers and gang leaders, and then they caught those guys and imprisoned them.
01:52:09.000And when they imprisoned them, it created a power vacuum.
01:52:12.000And in that power vacuum, over the last few years, you're seeing significant ramp up in crime.
01:52:17.000Or people try to take over these areas that were under control by other people.
01:52:22.000Similar to what happens when you see, when we take over countries like Libya.
01:52:28.000Creates this power vacuum and now you have a case to almost, you say, well, it's worse without Gaddafi than it was with him.
01:52:36.000That's sort of what this guy was telling me about Chicago.
01:53:05.000The theory that I've started to recognize is that, actually in this study, the Stephanie DeLuca study, they talk a lot about how...
01:53:18.000These kids are really more passionate now, and they're exposed to more, and you can see that their work ethic is actually higher than it was.
01:53:27.000We think that they're not working, but they're achieving things at three to four hundred percent of what their parents achieved.
01:53:36.000And so if you don't have any other options around, You have a more ambitious population that's now doing drug dealing and taking over territory.
01:53:44.000What do you mean by they're achieving things three to four hundred percent more than their parents have?
01:53:48.000Right, so you have, so the average in, I want to go like in the 90s, for high school diplomas and college for residents of a neighborhood like Sandtown or these East and West Baltimore neighborhoods,
01:54:03.000worst that you can imagine in your head as far as resources go, These kids are actually achieving, so say their parents got 10% high school diplomas.
01:54:17.000These guys are getting 40% high school diplomas.
01:54:20.000Their parents were getting, you know, 2% college degrees.
01:54:24.000These guys are at like 25, 30% college degrees.
01:54:27.000So they're really excelling, but they're not achieving because of all these other barriers, as you know.
01:54:35.000A black guy with a college degree is slightly less likely to be employed than a white guy with a high school diploma and a criminal record.
01:54:44.000So even they're getting these promises that if they play by the rules, then they'll get these things at the end, just like poor white America in West Virginia is.
01:54:54.000And what happens, though, is they see these examples with social media or whatever, and they're understanding that if they push hard and they achieve these things, then they'll get these rewards.
01:55:08.000But they're not getting these rewards.
01:55:11.000So if you have a more ambitious population and they're turning to drug dealing and to crime, well, it's just as likely that they're also more ambitious and dedicated to their criminal endeavors as they were to their college achievements.
01:56:02.000It would seem like crime, the percentage of people taking crime are probably still about the same, or the amount are the same, but the population has grown.
01:56:12.000So you have a lot, lot less crime percentage-wise than you ever have before.
01:56:17.000But if your criminals are that much better, they're still going to be ambitious.
01:57:41.000Now, what can be done, what would you have done, had you got that position?
01:57:47.000Well, so the first thing I have to do, here's my model.
01:57:51.000And my fundamental model is, is think if you had a business and you have a board, you know, you have your board of trustees or whatever you want to call it.
01:58:01.000I want to be a civilian leader of the police department like a CEO. And I want to have like officially 49% of the power of the agency.
01:58:09.000And then we have like seven people on this panel who come from the city who live in these neighborhoods.
01:58:14.000I'm not sure precisely how we pick them out.
01:58:17.000We can't appoint them because then they just become cronies.
01:58:20.000We have some issues with voting that we may have to work out the details on.
01:58:25.000But the ultimate principle is that we would have the majority of that board would be from the poorest of the neighborhoods around.
01:58:31.000So you would create a board and what would be the picking criteria to create this board?
01:58:38.000Would it be you and other police officers?
01:58:49.000I don't have that thought completely out there.
01:58:52.000But the majority has to come from the poor populations, covering the base of whatever is good for the weakest among us is good for the strongest among us.
01:58:58.000And then those boards, while I run the agency, I can only argue to them.
02:00:20.000It's my job to serve them and carry out what they want to achieve.
02:00:23.000So I will work at achieving what they want to achieve and establishing the milestones and incentives that they think are better for their neighborhood because they may do things which could dramatically have impacts like such as hiring.
02:00:37.000Like, so right now, guys won't hire because they have a drug complaint or something like that, or they have a prior arrest record.
02:00:43.000Well, I think if you get all those poor neighborhoods together, they're gonna say, look, We know that's bullcrap.
02:00:50.000That arrest doesn't stop you from being a good cop.
02:02:13.000Well, Colorado's a perfect example where the money was so good with the plan that was initiated, where they're making more money from taxes with marijuana than they ever did with alcohol, which is bananas.
02:02:27.000Beyond the money, you have a reduction in crime and in juvenile usage of marijuana.
02:02:53.000You're talking about a different drug when you're talking about Chicago.
02:02:56.000You're talking about heroin, you're talking about cocaine, you're talking about methamphetamine, you're talking about MDMA. These are different drugs and they have health consequences as well.
02:03:06.000So the legalization or the prohibition What they have right now is obviously not working.
02:03:15.000The real problem would be if they decided to not enforce the drug laws and they decided to in some way, you know, air quotes, legalize these drugs.
02:03:26.000What would take place is you're going to have some blame be placed on some deaths.
02:03:33.000On your new laws, and that's going to be paraded out in front of you.
02:03:38.000You're responsible for the death of this young girl.
02:03:40.000She never tried heroin, but because it was available at 7-Eleven, she started snorting it, and now she's dead.
02:04:03.000So, while, yeah, heroin is a terrible drug, but what makes heroin so bad is its lack of purity and the environment in which you get it.
02:04:13.000Well, also the addictive properties of it, which is why OxyContin, even though it's pure and very measurable, still has a terrifying effect.
02:05:01.000I want it moved into just no different than alcohol.
02:05:05.000Well, the problem with the doctor handling is that's what happened in Florida.
02:05:08.000And what happened in Florida is they developed this environment where they didn't have a database, where the doctors and the pharmaceutical companies were all in cahoots.
02:05:18.000And they said, look, let's just sell the shit out of this.
02:06:18.000So cannabis or something like that, we need to put in a model similar.
02:06:22.000And we have things in like Portugal, where what Portugal does is they just decriminalize it so they don't put people in prison cells for possessing it.
02:06:31.000And if you want to still go after the dealers as a half measure, you know, like that's a half measure I'd have to swallow that I don't completely believe in.
02:06:40.000Me and you, if you're the panel and I'm the CEO, we can work these things out and come to a position where we're like, okay, let's try this.
02:06:49.000And if you want to go by the incrementalism, then we see that that's okay.
02:06:53.000Just like in Colorado, already is proven that the cannabis model is fine.
02:06:59.000So we can start with the cannabis model and move that in.
02:07:02.000And then we can say, all right, well, let's put cocaine into this model.
02:07:57.000And that doesn't count drunk driving, alcohol-related violence, and all the other things that go along with it.
02:08:04.000The problem with making heroin or cocaine, with decriminalizing it, but then going after the dealers, is then, well, okay, if these people get hooked on it, where are they going to get it then?
02:08:34.000So we have to keep focusing on education.
02:08:37.000If those people that got hooked on Oxy and became heroin addicts, if they had the education that this was the path they were going to go on...
02:08:45.000You gotta believe that a significant percentage of them wouldn't have gone that path.
02:09:13.000Drinking too much can excessive alcohol use led to approximately 88,000 deaths and 2.5 million years of potential life lost What does that mean?
02:09:25.000I guess like you're saying drunk driving in the United States 2.5 million years of people's lives That's a weird fucking statistic from 2006 to 2010 Shortening the lives of those who died by an average of 30 years.
02:10:45.000And Ibogaine, which is being used in treatment facilities all throughout South America and Mexico with massive positive results, is illegal in this country for no apparent reason.
02:10:57.000I've heard that the people that do that are just like, that's it.
02:11:00.000As soon as they take it, they're like, I don't want it anymore.
02:12:17.000My personality, I'm too type A, aggressive, you know, I'm good with a substance, a compound that sort of like calms that down and mellows me out and gives me a different perspective.
02:12:34.000I enjoy it and I think it's good for people.
02:12:45.000I think we need to feel more vulnerable.
02:12:47.000I think feeling more vulnerable is better for you because it enhances a sense of community and friendship and love in a lot of ways and it bonds people together.
02:12:59.000I think this idea that you're an individual, that you're a lone rebel out there kicking ass and taking names, you're doing it all by yourself, that's all eroded instantaneously by cannabis.
02:13:42.000I've never really tried them, but I've seen their effect on other people, and I've read about their effects, and it's not what I'm looking for.
02:14:18.000I think that alcohol for some people is a Is an escape from the reality that they find themselves in and they don't know how to get out.
02:14:27.000And I think education, like we were talking about before, allowing people to have access to the stories and the consequences that other people have experienced from taking that drug will help them.
02:14:41.000What kept me from doing coke when I was young was having friends that had problems with it.
02:14:48.000I was like, fuck, I don't want to be like that guy.
02:14:50.000I don't want to have that happen to me.
02:14:51.000I see what's happening to this person.
02:14:53.000Some people don't get exposed to that.
02:14:55.000And instead, before they know it, they're already in it.
02:14:58.000They're trying it when they're 15. Next thing you know, they like it too much.
02:15:01.000Next thing you know, they're looking forward to doing that.
02:15:04.000Because it provides some sort of an escape from the pressure of the consequences of pursuing a dream, of chasing down life, or of not having a direction.
02:15:49.000I think we're, in a lot of ways, we're a prisoner to the needs of the past.
02:15:54.000And the needs of the past were we were very goal-oriented.
02:15:57.000You had to go out there, be able to pick the right amount of foods that you could eat, you had to hunt the animals or catch the fish, and that was the goal.
02:16:05.000And we were very goal-oriented in that way.
02:16:07.000You had to go out there and do that, you had to work hard, and then through those goals you had this feeling of satisfaction.
02:16:12.000Well, when you're just getting food and it comes to you when your job involves doing something that's not rewarding in any way, shape, or form, and this is what you have to do to get that food, you've sort of taken out all the natural reward systems that our bodies are designed to sort of gravitate towards.
02:16:30.000And unless you find a passion, unless you find an art or a craft or a trade or some sort of a thing that excites you mentally and stimulates your creativity and stimulates your ambition, you're left lost.
02:16:44.000And there's a lot of people that are just left lost and unfulfilled and unsatisfied.
02:16:49.000And I think those types of people gravitate towards alcohol and a lot of other drugs as an escape.
02:16:55.000And that's a part of the problem with society was how we view drugs.
02:17:14.000I don't know how you can argue that, but it, like, ties all together.
02:17:18.000So, I know you sound like liberal, I mean, you plurally, sound like liberal hippies when you, like, start putting all these things together, but these things really do tie in together.
02:17:29.000So you have the alcoholism because people aren't finding their identities.
02:17:33.000So we should be doing things to, like, help people create identities if we want a safer environment, right?
02:17:39.000So it's not about taking those people and put them into prisons.
02:17:42.000As you articulate it, it's about finding that passion or educating them to do something.
02:17:48.000And so if you want to help, or police or whoever want to help, you have to be addressing those kind of issues.
02:17:58.000One thing we've noticed throughout human history is that when things are really tough and there's no resources, the leaders of the oppressed, so say it's really easy to use black segregated neighborhoods right now.
02:18:22.000So the masculine members of a society that can't achieve something, they turn to making everything about masculinity and dominance and accepting of that lower realm, and they start to treat intelligence and education as effeminate or weak.
02:18:44.000And so that plays into the culture of where you have the guns, and everybody has the disrespecting culture, and this is my corner kind of culture.
02:18:54.000So we have those kind of benefits that are a factor also in leveling the playing field for everybody and contributing.
02:19:02.000So one of the things that we're doing right now is we're building a studio like this in Baltimore, and it's called Radio Revolver, and that'll be my shameless plug.
02:19:55.000But I'm just saying, if you have eight people, really, it's like, you ever heard that expression, one boy, one boy's work, two boys, half boy's work?
02:20:08.000Meaning that like if you have two young kids together and they're working on something, they're just gonna start talking shit and it's not gonna get done.
02:20:51.000So, uh, in high school at 17 of murdering his ex-girlfriend, uh, a classmate at Woodland High High School.
02:20:58.000The evidence, regardless of whether somebody wants to argue about whether he actually did it or not, the evidence is extremely clear that you do not have the evidence to put this individual in jail.
02:21:23.000And this is an example of how you use your privilege and sensationalism.
02:21:28.000So I was sensationalized by what I said before, right?
02:21:32.000By the cops hitting people and all the things they did.
02:21:36.000And probably what I'm most proud of is that I instantly switched from that sensationalism to how we fix things and what the reform measures are.
02:21:44.000And we don't even talk about that sensationalism anymore.
02:21:46.000But don't you think the sensationalism was important because it brought you to people like me?
02:21:52.000So the successfulness of turning that around into something productive, part of that is this radio revolver.
02:21:58.000So if you have privilege and you have an advantage or something, what you have to do is you have to build platforms for other people.
02:22:06.000Build structure so that other people can rise, not just for yourself.
02:22:10.000And the idea behind this is we'll have the network, so it ended up being turnkey.
02:22:15.000It's in a room that anybody can come in at any time.
02:22:18.000And if the community members, we already have them tied in, I think we're going to have a problem with who we cut out versus who we're going to let in.
02:22:26.000And we're creating the entire infrastructure under one umbrella for them to come in and have their voices heard and get their message out there.
02:22:35.000They can build a video, like a TV show type of thing.
02:22:39.000And none of this is ever going to cost any of them anything.
02:22:42.000And if they succeed and we end up getting to a point where we're in the red, then we just start taking all the profits and distributing them out to whoever proportionally has the podcast that does the best or whatever.
02:22:53.000But the point of that is that is going to enable at least 10 to 20 identity projects.
02:23:01.000So somebody else has to come in and do the other end of that.
02:23:04.000Take whatever you have and do that same kind of thing.
02:23:09.000If you have money, then we can take the money and we can do something good with that.
02:23:13.000If you have that skill, then you can come into a place like we're building or a place like Penn North and pass that on.
02:23:18.000That is really what we have to do as an individual level.
02:23:22.000And if so, I would always love it if people would help me out with radio revolvers so we can get that finished.
02:23:27.000So what you're going to do is you're going to put together a podcast, and through that podcast, you're going to have people tell their stories, you're going to expose the rest of the world to the plight of these inner cities, and the positive stories about people rising out of them,
02:23:45.000and your friend the photographer, and a bunch of other people that you're going to get exposed to.
02:23:49.000I think one of the most important things for a young person is to believe that they can somehow or another be successful.
02:23:56.000I remember when I was young and we were poor, I always identified with being a poor person and I never thought that I would be anything other than a poor person because I would see people that were wealthy and they always felt so different than me.
02:24:32.000Nothing in comparison to the extreme poverty that a lot of people face but I still remember feeling really insecure and really disconnected from successful people.
02:24:44.000I think that mindset is very difficult to overcome.
02:24:50.000It's very difficult to believe that you can achieve something.
02:24:52.000It's very difficult to believe that you can rise from, no matter where you are, if you continue to work and you continue to pursue your goals and you can avoid all the pitfalls of negative aspects of society, you can Do better.
02:25:06.000You can do better and you can feel satisfied in that.
02:25:08.000And to give people these opportunities to see people who have done the very thing that you're aspiring to do is massively beneficial because it gives them sort of like a little bit of a blueprint.
02:25:20.000Yeah, I mean, and that's exactly the point.
02:25:22.000When you say these things, I mean, you may as well just be me saying them.
02:26:07.000And one of the most positive aspects of doing this podcast is running into people that I've met that said, hey man, I've been doing stand-up comedy for three years now.
02:26:56.000It feels awesome to talk to people that have looked at this little sort of blueprint that I've laid out and said, look, anybody could do this.
02:27:04.000Like, whatever patterns that you're following because the people that you're around are in these negative patterns, you don't have to follow those patterns.
02:27:11.000It's one of the beautiful things about social media and the beautiful things about the internet is you can kind of choose what you follow.
02:27:19.000And just follow negative stuff all day long.
02:27:21.000You could concentrate on negative bullshit, and you could be one of those people who goes on Twitter and just bombs on people and shits on people all day.
02:27:30.000And that's gonna be your point of focus, but you're not gonna get any better at anything doing that.
02:27:44.000But you can take a choice to not do that.
02:27:47.000And a lot of times you need to see that someone else has done that in order to help you do that.
02:27:52.000I hope you're inspiring others because you're kind of inspiring me right now, like thinking about how many identity projects that you led, even though they were maybe not even obvious to you.
02:28:03.000Because you've gone and used this platform to do these things.
02:28:06.000I think it's highly honorable of you that you use this platform so that I can talk about these things, about BLM, Black Lives Matter, and about police reform and things like that.
02:28:15.000That's like the typical, like, prototype of what...
02:28:18.000What we're talking about, you were doing great work by doing that.
02:28:23.000Well, it's helping me a lot, too, honestly.
02:28:25.000I mean, I think everyone's life is a constant journey.
02:28:29.000Unless you just stay sedentary and you don't go anywhere and you don't take any new data.
02:28:34.000Your life is all about re-evaluating the way you think, or evaluating it, or enhancing it, or adding to it, or removing some negative aspects of the way you think.
02:28:44.000And one of the best ways that I've found to do that is expose myself to interesting people like you, or like any of the other people that I've had the pleasure and the opportunity to talk to on this podcast.
02:29:16.000And one of the reasons why he likes to write is it makes him solidify his own thoughts.
02:29:23.000He thinks about his own thoughts and it really sort of like...
02:29:26.000It allows him to really kind of examine them and go in depth as to how he really truly feels about something and really get a cleaner perspective instead of just...
02:29:39.000I think a lot of people, me included, I've been guilty of this in the past, we operate on momentum.
02:29:44.000We just get a path, you're on it for some whatever reason, and then you're just sort of stuck.
02:29:49.000And you just sort of behave that way and think that way, and you don't ever examine it.
02:30:34.000Was I not respecting the power of these thoughts and these conversations?
02:30:39.000Most likely a combination of all those things.
02:30:42.000But through the personal growth that has been afforded me by the podcast, it's helped me As much as it's helped anybody, it's helped me tremendously.
02:30:56.000And having these kind of conversations with people like you are a giant part of that.
02:31:06.000I can't sing your praises enough for having that kind of mentality and being the alpha male that is vulnerable and lets other people see that it's okay.
02:31:43.000Well, the Young Turks, what they've done is they've developed this sort of alternative media platform that's outside of the mainstream media, but it has arguably as much impact.
02:31:55.000When you look at what they've been able to do on YouTube, and they're one of many.
02:31:58.000You know, there's a lot of people that are pushing unusual ideas on the internet.
02:34:17.000It's Maywood Photography, M-A-E-W-O-O-D. Oh, that's my phone, I'm sorry.
02:34:25.000So, what were the cops like when they were arresting them?
02:34:28.000They're like, I'm sorry, this is bullshit, we got arrested, or were they being dicks?
02:34:32.000Some of them were still being texted, unbelievably, considering it was when you see this crowd.
02:34:38.000So they were treating you like an actual criminal, even though it's pretty obvious you're trying to campaign against something that's something that nobody really thinks is a good thing, money and politics.
02:37:19.000That it was just like they were keeping us in like animal pens it felt like so we would just be like penned off like they took us to a different place and had like like fences like portable fences and they would like put you like so it's not like you really couldn't get out you could get out if you wanted to I guess I could have if I really wanted to I wasn't going to go for an escape charge This is so silly.
02:37:44.000This seems like a dumb way to handle it.
02:38:03.000So, I mean, that's an example of another thing.
02:38:05.000I mean, you can go and you can participate in these things.
02:38:07.000So, if that is a passion of yours, I think that's another identity thing that we have.
02:38:13.000You can go and put these groups, there's all these groups out there, and you're saying that these people feel lost and they're turning to other things.
02:39:42.000Again, part of the thing that we're going to do is we just take advantage of me and the publicity.
02:39:48.000So the first one is going to be a joint project with Undisclosed, who is affiliated with Serial, Story, and all.
02:39:57.000And that one's going to be Misconduct, which is going to be one of the series we have.
02:40:01.000So there's going to be multiple podcasts.
02:40:03.000One of them is going to be Misconduct, and then you'll have the photography one, or you'll have a public health one, like Doc Lawrence Brown is going to do a public health one.
02:40:11.000So you're essentially building a whole station.
02:40:15.000And so everybody that wants in, as long as you learn what you're doing and everything, you'll be able to have your voice heard in whichever manner you want.
02:40:21.000That's a great idea because this is one of the easiest ways to get a message out.
02:40:26.000And a message that, you know, when you hear someone talk, man, and you hear their words and you get to know them through the hours and hours of conversations, you get to know them in a really deep, intimate way.
02:40:49.000And it's going to be The Killing of Freddie Gray.
02:40:52.000So what we're going to do for that is go through the story.
02:40:57.000And when we first go through the story, the first episode will start...
02:41:01.000And we'll start telling what happened.
02:41:03.000Like, so these cops are in this neighborhood and Freddie Gray is in this.
02:41:06.000And then we go, but wait, why does it look this way?
02:41:09.000And then so somebody like Doc Brown will come in and we'll go over through the history of segregation, how the neighborhoods are formed the way they are, why the cops are all white, why the citizens are all black, and we'll go explain that story.
02:41:24.000And then the next episode, I'll start over again, start telling the story, and when we'll hit the next hurdle, which will be something like, well, why are they going after him for the drugs?
02:41:35.000So then we'll break down the history of the laws and why that is done the way it is, what policing philosophies have led to this, until we finish out the entire story and everybody can understand the nuance to what happened behind the murder of Freddie Gray.