A former NYC captain’s insights into stopping Canada’s crime wave
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Summary
Billy Gorda is a former New York City police officer who rose to the rank of captain before taking on a career in journalism, first as a writer and then an editor with the New York Post, where he covered crime and statistics.
Transcript
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Crime. It's an issue that we're all dealing with across Canada. Whether you're in Edmonton,
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Halifax, Port of Peek, Nova Scotia, perhaps. Whether you're in Vancouver, its suburbs,
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Winnipeg, or here in Toronto, where I am, crime has become a major factor. Hello,
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welcome to the Full Comment Podcast. My name's Brian Lilly, your host. Before we get to our guest,
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I want to remind you that you can, and we do encourage you, to subscribe to Full Comment on
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whatever app or device you're listening to the podcast on. Leave a review, share it on social
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media with friends, and help spread the word. Crime is an issue that is dominating politics in
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Toronto right now. As I said, it's an issue across the country. We've seen crime rise since about 2014,
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2015 in most major centres, but also minor centres as well. When you speak to police chiefs and
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police officers across the country, one word continues to come to mind on what's happening
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and why this rise has been going on for so long, and that word is fentanyl. Part of the opioid crisis,
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you could say. Now, how do we deal with it, and are we dealing with it properly? That is an issue of
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intense debate in different parts of the country. Whether it's the federal liberals coming up with bail
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reform proposals that most, regardless of political stripe, most provincial premiers, city mayors,
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police chiefs have all said, go in the wrong direction. It's an issue when you're talking about
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the mayor's race that's happening in Toronto right now, where people say they just don't feel safe on
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the TTC due to random attacks on Toronto's subway system. So how do we deal with crime? That's something
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our next guest can help us with. Billy Gorda was a New York City police officer, rose to the level
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of captain before taking on a career in journalism, first as a writer, a journalist, and then an editor
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with the New York Post, where he covered crime. But before he went into journalism, he helped bring in
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a new era of tracking crime and stats. Billy joins us now from New York. Billy, thanks for the time.
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I'm delighted to be here. So you've spoken to my colleague, Brad Hunter, several times. You and
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Brad used to work together at New York Post, and you've said that the decision to deal with crime
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is a political one. What do you mean by that? Well, the police in general are supposed to be an
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apolitical organization, and it is the most political job out of any non-political job there is.
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The mayor... What? Okay. Politics is not supposed to enter into policing, but it's all entirely
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political. Okay? Whatever happens, the police commissioner here in New York, and I can't speak
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to other jurisdictions, but here in New York, the police commissioner answers directly to the mayor.
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So when the mayor calls him across the street to City Hall and says, fix that, guess what? It gets
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fixed. If the mayor doesn't call, then everything just goes on as it does. So now, of course, the mayor
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has political pressure from donors and big businesses and everything else, so he's getting
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political pressure for re-election money and re-election, and that translates down, and it always
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goes that way. So when the mayor tells the chief of police or whoever it is, fix it, they find a way to
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fix it. You know, we like to say that our police service, our courts, we're not political like
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you are in the United States. Oh, we're very different. But our Supreme Court is entirely
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political, just as the American Supreme Court is, sometimes more so, I would argue. And our police
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services, well, you know, politicians will say, well, I don't direct them. But suddenly, you know,
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if there's a protest that is being held by a group that is friendly to the politician in charge,
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well, you know, you can let them get away with certain things. But if it's a protest
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that the politician is opposed to, or they're opposed to the politician, suddenly things are
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very different. So we've all seen that. But how does this translate into something that we're dealing
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with right now? We've got shootings on the rise in this country, we've got in Toronto, and I apologize
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to our listeners outside of Toronto, but the Toronto Police Service, they have a very good data portal for
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keeping track of crime and the violent crime, the major crime incidents, every measurement is up
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in this year, aside from homicide, homicides down, and that's great. But when we're talking about
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assault, robbery, sexual assault, break and enter, auto theft, and the major crime index is up 21%.
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You've got, you know, theft over $500 up almost 40%. Auto theft up 35%. Assaults up 18%. These are
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things to be concerned about. So how does that idea of yours that that it's political whether to
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address these things translate onto onto that side?
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Okay, so what happens is, in the NYPD, there was an old saying among the cops, and it's that nobody
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ever got hurt by doing nothing. So a lot of cops are willing to just do the status quo, keep the status
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quo, answer their radio runs, do their job as necessary, write a couple of summonses here and there,
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and let it go. The idea to get involved and to say, all right, this guy's shady, I'm going to do so,
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I'm going to look at him, or how fast I respond to something, or what I do, that's all, that's all
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individual based. But the thing is, is that what are the bosses doing? You know, if a guy's just
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treading water, which is what cops will do without being prodded, well, then you get that, then you get
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this. You know, and I also want to point out where you said the homicides are down, but robberies and
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violent assaults are up. Well, they're just homicides that didn't last, they're homicides
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in waiting. They just didn't last long enough, you know, or the guy didn't say the extra thing
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and get himself shot. So those things are very, very important, because they're the precursors to
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homicide, you know, outside of, you know, I'm mad at you and I shoot you. But, you know, you rob somebody
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and they get a tussle, and then you get shot, well, that's the homicide. So these are the things
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that have to be interrupted. These are the things you have to keep order on. And these are the things
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where, you know, you have to have cops in the subway, you have to have cops on the street, and
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they have to do something. You know, just having a cop there is not enough. You know, actually,
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having a cop there does help a little. But, you know, because you never know what you don't,
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you never know what you've prevented. But on the other hand, you know, you got to do something.
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We have this issue on our transit system. You talk to the head of the transit union,
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who represents bus drivers, subway drivers, transit workers across the country, they say,
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it doesn't matter where you are, assaults against transit operators are up. And so just using the
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example of the subway where I am, we had a policy put forward by the management of the Toronto Transit
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Commission saying, yeah, don't get too involved. In fact, they put out a memo a couple of years ago,
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basically warning their security operators, they're basically special constables, they're not
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full Toronto constables, they're special constables. They basically warned them, if you arrest someone,
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you will be investigated. The last step should be arresting someone. And you've got to use every
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de-escalation tool to make sure that there is a different outcome. Well, eventually, the guys just
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said, okay, well, it's easier not to do anything. As you were saying, nobody ever got hurt by doing
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nothing. So is that what you're talking about when you say, you know, like cops protect it or
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support it? Well, if you decide to do something, and you go out and that deal, and you go out and
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you start to fight crime, there are going to be mistakes and things are going to happen that aren't
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to plan. But nobody, nobody bats a thousand. Okay, cops out to get involved. There's violence,
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there's adrenaline, there's all kinds of crazy stuff going on. But you know, everybody expects
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it to be wrapped up neat with a bow and everybody and nobody's hurt and everybody comes away feeling
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good about themselves. It doesn't work that way. Welcome to the real world. Okay, police work when
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you're at the coalface, it's a dirty job. And you've got to get in. If you're mixing it up,
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people are going to get hurt. And cops have a duty to protect other people, a duty to protect
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themselves. Yes, they have a duty not to not to take the extra dig at a guy or to kick him when
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he's down or to kneel on him. But, you know, the idea that it's all going to be just so genteel.
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You were with the NYPD during a couple of interesting things. One, there was something
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called Comstat. And I'm going to ask you to explain that in a moment. But also this broken
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window theory. You know, you think back of, well, I think back, you know, when I was a
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kid, the stories of New York crime were legendary. Now, of course, it turns out that our crime
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was up in the mid 70s and 80s as well. And it might have had something to do with demographics
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and baby boomers and a lot of young men who suddenly stopped being young men and doing stupid
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things. So that might be part of it. But the crime in New York was legendary. And you brought
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in this broken window theory. Does that still work? Was that oversold? What do you think
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of that now that you've had years to look back on it, both as a journalist and now as a retiree
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Well, broken windows is not necessarily full stop about crime. Windows is about neighborhoods
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that when they start to fall apart and conditions get bad, well, and conditions get bad on everything
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and stores close and lights don't get fixed. And all these things happen that can contribute
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to crime, but it also just kills the neighborhood. So it just drives it down. And then you have
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a lovely crime ecosystem, if you will. But it's, you know, the idea is, is that, you know,
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if you take care of the little things, the big things will start to take care of themselves.
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Now, you mentioned constant. So yeah, let's back up there. Let's explain what the broken
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window theory is for people that don't know it.
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Well, that was essentially it. It's like, when a neighborhood starts to go to pot, if you
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don't fix these things, if there are broken windows, that people just feel it's okay, it's
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possible just, or it's, it's acceptable just to continue it. So, you know, there's an empty
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lot. People start to throw garbage in and people start dumping stuff. And, you know, and it
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starts to fester. It starts to expand. And now there's broken windows. Now there's stores
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closing. And it affects the economics of the neighborhood. It affects the demography of
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the neighborhood insofar as, you know, there's no investment. It's more poor people. And we
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know there has to be a, there's a higher level of crime amongst poor people. So you just wind
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up with the, with the, the spiraling, spiraling downward. And you get crime that way, but it's
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not necessarily one for one for crime. There's a broken window that means someone's getting
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shot. It's not, it's not that way. It's, it's a little more complex than that.
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So it's about the holistic view of the neighborhood. Make sure that things are fixed so that the
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So this was, but this was used by the NYPD. Was it Mayor Giuliani brought it in when he was
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No. Well, we started as something similar with that, to that point of view earlier with the
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community policing, with the idea of cops who go into the neighborhood and say, Hey,
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what's going on? What's wrong? And it was signed to a specific area. I mean, I, I had concerns
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about the implementation because what you had is you had cops go in, uh, try, you know, the
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lowest level trying to fix the bigger problems, you know? So if there's this empty lot there,
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they go to sanitation, this garbage strewn lot, they go to sanitation and say, Hey, can we
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clean this up, you know, and get the neighborhood together? Let's all clean this up.
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And bring sanitation in. Well, you know, I mean, sanitation is supposed to be doing that
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on their own. Uh, you know, so now you get the cops involved in all kinds of other things
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Which is one of the things that we hear is a problem now. And, uh, one of the, uh, the
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lines that, uh, the defund the police movement uses, they say, well, you know, police shouldn't
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be social workers. Police shouldn't be mental health workers. So, uh, let's take those jobs
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away from them, but then also take some of their budget away from them and give it to these other,
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uh, other avenues. And, and I can, theoretically, I can see some merit in, in those ideas. The cops
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shouldn't be the first responders to everything. They just unfortunately end up being the first
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And why is that? Because, why is that? Because people are cheap. The cops are already paid for,
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and they work 24 hours a day. So if you want mental health responders, you know, you want,
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you want to have a core of mental health nurses, mental health, you know, psychiatrists, all of this
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stuff, you want to do all of that 24 seven and staff it and have them respond, go ahead. But I promise
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you, it's going to be, uh, uh, a lot less effective and a lot more expensive than the police. You send the
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constant to everything because they're already paid for and they're already working. Otherwise,
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you know, you got to pay for it. Nobody, and nobody wants to pay for it.
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Well, one of the people that's running, uh, in our current Toronto, uh, mayoralty race is a former
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police chief. And he argues like, why are the cops on 24 seven, but mental health support runs nine to
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five. He said, trust me from my years as being a cop. A lot of the people that need mental health
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support, it's between five and midnight. So you got to have somebody around.
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And then what happens is, is that we send in our mental health support team. And when things get
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hairy, what do they do? They call the police. So the whole thing is, the whole thing is just a,
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just ridiculous just because you have to say now my thing with all of it, with most of these things.
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And again, back to everybody being cheap is a lot of this stuff could be, uh, I'm not saying fixed,
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but ameliorated with, uh, uh, a really, really robust training system, but training is expensive.
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You know, I have to develop curricula. I have to venues. I got to take cops off the line to do this.
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I got, you know, so it's, it's so much bigger, you know, and you want to have interactive training
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where instead of I'm sitting here in a classroom doodling, you know, while somebody's saying
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something important, I'm actually doing some hands-on training here. So when you have the, when,
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when you just, without the training, you know, you got, you get what you get, you know? And I think
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for the most part, and I'm going to say this, you know, I'm as big a critic of the, of the, of police
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as anyone, you know, what you get is actually pretty good and pretty good value for money.
00:17:16.540
But we're basically too cheap, uh, to, uh, to pay for what's, what we need, what you need
00:17:23.180
or what you want. You know, what's the, you know, line up, take what you want, then pay for it,
00:17:28.060
says God, you know, take what you want. You know, do you want to do that? That's fine,
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but you got to pay for it. You can't just say, okay, well, we'll leave it to the professionals
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at nine to the, the mental health professionals at nine to five. And then we'll let the cops cover
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the, the, the, the bad hours. Well, the bad hours is when the, the bad stuff happens. That's why
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they're the bad hours. Uh, Billy, I want to ask you about, um, uh, Comstat. This is a computerized
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program that, uh, you know, groundbreaking in its day. Looks like NYPD still uses it. How did, uh,
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looking at stats and, and analyzing them help deal with New York's crime problem when you were,
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uh, still an NYPD captain? Well, to be honest, Comstat really wasn't the technological revolution.
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Everybody says it was, I mean, when you look at it, it's really, when we started it 30, almost 30
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years ago, it's really, really, as I say, it's more will than skill. But the thing is, it's,
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it's an accountability system. It's really nothing more than that. It's like, now we have the numbers
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all together. So I can ask people like, what about these numbers? If the police commissioner
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had, you know, was, was calling you on the phone, you're a police commander. And I says, Hey,
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um, you had 76 robberies yesterday. What are you doing? You're going to pay attention to those
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things. You know? So this is just a faster way of doing it. And, and the meetings were,
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now you stand in the air and it's like the police commissioner is asking you like, what are you doing
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about the robberies? What are you doing about this? What are you doing about that? And you have to
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have answers. And what happened then is because what happened, we started with the numbers that
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we started having meetings to discuss the numbers and we had, uh, computers, pin maps and all of
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that. And it just developed over time. It wasn't like snap your fingers. So, uh, but when you're
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called out on it, you have to have the answers. And what happened early in the, the Bill Bratton
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era, the, he was the police commissioner was that some guys just didn't make it. Some guys
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weren't interested. Some guys weren't able for it. Some guys got promoted and promoted and
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promoted because they were good at this. You know, all of a sudden it's like, no, I have the
00:19:38.300
answers. And some of those guys, you know, other, other priests and commanders would take those
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answers and start to implement them because the police would say, uh, everybody pay attention to
00:19:47.960
what he's doing. Or he would say, and yesterday's meeting, Billy Gorda said this. And then all of a
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sudden next thing, you know, people saying that's a police commissioner approved theory.
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So basically Comstock was taking the information that was there, making it readily available to
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not just the commissioner, but to, uh, you know, different, uh, aspects of the police service so
00:20:10.180
that people could be held accountable. It's only an accountability system. The, the, the numbers
00:20:14.900
really weren't readily available because there were different numbers and they came out at different
00:20:18.880
times. And, um, like that nobody wanted to use preliminary numbers because it would look bad.
00:20:24.080
And all of a sudden it's like, I don't care. I want the numbers is what came down from on high.
00:20:29.960
And again, what comes down from on high people respond. So, uh, uh, then all of a sudden now we
00:20:38.320
have numbers and, you know, sometimes the preliminary, sometimes you get to say, listen, that number might
00:20:42.980
be spurious. We might've screwed that number up. So, um, them, not us, because we made sure that
00:20:49.920
they couldn't, uh, we, they had to sign off on the numbers, the prison commander, so they couldn't
00:20:53.980
blame us for it. But, uh, it was just a matter of like, this is what I want. This is, and this is
00:21:00.660
what we're going to do. And again, you know, whether that came from the hall or Brighton came up with it
00:21:06.240
himself or whichever, there you go. People respond. We've got some hard to come by stats
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nationally in Canada. Um, in fact, they come out years later. Uh, some police services don't put
00:21:20.860
out any stats. Toronto puts out really solid stats. They're updated once a week. They're public.
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Should the public get to know more about what's going on in, in their community? Because we, you know,
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we'll, we'll have the feeling that crime's going up, but you can't quantify it. You can't say,
00:21:40.260
yeah, it is going up in here's where, or look and say, well, actually it feels like it's going up,
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but it's not. We don't have that in most of the country to be able to say what's actually happening
00:21:52.060
on the ground. Should that sort of thing just become the standard operating procedure for police
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services? I believe all information is good. How you interpret it is your business, but I believe
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it should be available to everybody. This is what we're doing and this is what it is. Um, I, you know,
00:22:11.320
I think that part of the role of journalism is to, uh, interpret the numbers for people and to hold the
00:22:19.720
police department accountable in, in that area or in other areas, you know, because what happens is,
00:22:24.840
uh, my mother's 88 and my mother's like, oh, crime is up in the city. Crime is up in the city.
00:22:29.980
It's like, my, you've got a short memory, you know, crime is nothing. So I mean, compared to what it
00:22:36.960
was, but the thing is, is that because now changes in the media, uh, crime coverage tends to be cheaper.
00:22:44.220
So if somebody has a video of something happening, that becomes news and that's a big thing and people
00:22:50.220
watch it. And plus you could put an ad on the front of it. So that's how we cover crime. You know,
00:22:55.940
when I look at, at crime coverage in, uh, in the, the, the media outlets, it's all about what's the
00:23:01.800
cheapest way we can do this. And it's a couple of sentences and a, and a, and a video or pay or a,
00:23:06.820
uh, a surveillance camera picture. Well, I look, I'm, I'm, uh, looking back over the major crime
00:23:15.080
indicator overview that the Toronto police services publish. Uh, and in 2014, there were 30,800
00:23:23.680
incidents reported last year, there were 41,500 incidents reported the highest over the last
00:23:30.600
decade that tells me crimes up. And then you can break it down into, well, was it assaults? Was it
00:23:37.340
auto theft? Was it murder? Was it, um, uh, sexual assault, all these things. It allows you to say,
00:23:43.560
okay, what's happening? And you know, how do you deal with it? I, I think the information is good.
00:23:49.480
You're right. There's a lot of cheap stuff out there, but having the information, uh, lets us,
00:23:54.300
uh, back up what sometimes our gut feelings. I couldn't agree more. I believe the information
00:24:00.420
should be readily available to everybody. I think the police, the, my, my gripe with journalism is
00:24:05.520
that you want some context on this, you know, because again, my mother reads the paper and, and it's
00:24:10.420
like crime is out of control. But really, it's not because it used to be out of control. So, uh,
00:24:17.320
you know, I think everything has to be taken in the context of bigger things, but yes, that's very
00:24:22.600
important. Everybody should know what's going on. Everybody should know where it's going on.
00:24:26.140
All right, Billy, you've been on both sides. You've been a cop, you've been a journalist.
00:24:29.220
We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, I want to ask you about that. And also,
00:24:32.400
uh, what lessons we can learn from the crack era that would apply to the fentanyl area.
00:24:37.540
Yeah. We'll talk about that when we come back. I said off the top of the show that, uh, fentanyl
00:24:42.780
and the opioid crisis is a big part of what is driving our current wave of increased crime,
00:24:50.180
at least in Canada. Uh, but the idea that drugs are a major problem in crime is not a new one.
00:24:56.080
And if you live through the eighties or the early nineties, then you'll remember crack. Maybe you
00:25:00.080
remember Washington mayor, Marion Barry. Maybe you remember what Toronto mayor, Rob Ford in 2014.
00:25:05.900
Uh, crack was at one point, the highly addictive substance that drove crime.
00:25:12.540
One ask you, Billy Gorda, um, were there lessons that you learned from that area that we could apply
00:25:18.500
today? Because when I talked to, uh, police chiefs, uh, and, and beat crops across the country,
00:25:24.160
they say, well, you know what? This stuff is very profitable. Um, shootings are up mainly among
00:25:31.020
gang members because, uh, they want to protect their stash because this stuff is so lucrative.
00:25:35.880
And whereas they might've used a knife before now or their fist. Now they use guns. That's part of
00:25:41.420
it. But also I think the, the minor crimes are up because people are trying to, to feed that
00:25:45.740
addiction. So all sounds very similar to the crack era. What could we learn from that, that time?
00:25:51.400
That's a lot more like the heroin era than the crack era, you know, cause then that, you know,
00:25:57.760
I'd be looking for people looking for money to feed their addiction. Burglaries tend to be up.
00:26:02.480
Um, and I, you know, I don't know that much about fentanyl cause I'm out of the game,
00:26:06.800
but it seems to me that if they're cutting everything and putting it in cigarettes and
00:26:10.940
cutting it with people are worried about drug fentanyl and other drugs tells me that it's so
00:26:15.540
widespread. I don't know what the, I honestly don't know what the profit margins are. Um,
00:26:20.340
it just seems to me to be, if they're giving it away and throwing it away into other stuff,
00:26:25.280
you know, sure. You want to feed the addiction and take the hit, but they're not going to,
00:26:27.980
your addicts aren't going to last long. So, uh, you know, I'm not, I'm not certain on,
00:26:32.740
I can't speak to the economics of it all, you know, but you have to, as far as it goes,
00:26:38.120
it's like, you have to, you have to be there. You gotta get them. You know, I'm not necessarily
00:26:43.640
a big drug enforcement guy. I always wonder, I really wonder whether if we, if we,
00:26:49.700
legalized all, all drugs, whether that would be, uh, uh, whether that would be the answer.
00:26:56.000
I don't know that the addiction rates are going to change. I don't know if that they've ever
00:26:58.540
changed because we have to go back to loud and them and, and morphine and opium and whatever,
00:27:04.040
whatever we had before that, you know, I'm not certain addiction rates would change because
00:27:08.060
I know fentanyl is legal. I'm not trying it. You know? So I, you know, that goes back to your
00:27:13.040
point to Portugal tried that, but they, uh, they've legalized all kinds of drugs, but they've,
00:27:18.520
they've brought in addiction treatment alongside of it. Um, your comment about we're too cheap to
00:27:24.060
pay for what we want, uh, here, we just are legalizing things and not offering any addiction
00:27:29.060
treatment or any supports and it's horrible outcomes. Right. Well, because, you know, again,
00:27:35.480
I'm not a sociologist, but you know, the idea of like, uh, well here in New York mental health is
00:27:40.960
your big numero uno problem far and above all of it, but you can't address mental health without
00:27:46.980
addressing, get, without getting the house, but place to live. You know, I, I, I'm in a supportive
00:27:51.620
housing and with supportive housing comes some sort of, uh, uh, occupational therapy comes with
00:27:57.460
all kinds of other things and in a small group setting, because what happens is you say, we're
00:28:01.440
going to build this gigantic, uh, you know, uh, uh, hotel for, uh, for, for homeless and mental
00:28:07.980
health. People are going to go nuts, but if you have a small, say 20, 20, 30 people, you could
00:28:14.100
probably jimmy that into most neighborhoods, you know, without too much screaming. Yeah.
00:28:18.880
You're going to get screaming, but you know, but the idea is, is that, you know, if you don't address
00:28:23.720
the whole thing, you know, just one corner of it, you know, you wind up, you, you wind up with not
00:28:30.300
addressing the rest of it. And that's where it falls apart. And the other thing I'd like to point
00:28:34.920
out is everybody wants to blame the police for everything and it's fine. You know, the cops are used
00:28:38.960
to it. But the fact of the matter is, is that, uh, uh, child protective services are an utter failure
00:28:46.040
here in the city. Mental health services, forget it. The worst, you know, department of homeless
00:28:50.820
services, what are, what do they do? How do they take a paycheck and go home at night? You know, I
00:28:55.460
mean, really, you know, so, you know, the cops do what they can, but you know, no one made them
00:29:00.640
the, uh, the answers to everything yet they are. Billy, uh, if someone that's been on both sides,
00:29:09.180
what's the, um, what, what are some of the crazier stories that you've seen either the stories you've
00:29:15.580
covered as a journalist or, uh, or that you witnessed as a, as a police officer? Well, I mean,
00:29:22.560
that's hard to say, you know, I mean, mostly the ones you remember now, remember, I, I joined the
00:29:26.840
police department in 1980 and I made Sarge at five years later. So it's like, you know, these are,
00:29:31.640
these are old, old things, but things that bother you the most, I have to say, uh, are the kids and
00:29:36.680
the wanted cruelty, you know, when kids, you know, I, I, the one that always sticks with me is, is I
00:29:42.740
found the kid abandoned under 18 months old, abandoned under a staircase because the mother
00:29:47.660
and her boyfriend were out, you know, out smoking crack. You know, I take the kid to the hospital
00:29:53.000
and, and I mean, I have to change her diaper and it's like the kindest thing I could do for this
00:29:59.160
kid is to shoot her because, you know, it's good. She's going to have a horrible life, horrible
00:30:04.820
childhood and a horrible life. And it's just going to be a compound tragedy all in all in all. And
00:30:11.080
that's the thing that eats at you is the thing is just that the horror of it all, the crazy stories.
00:30:17.080
Yeah. You know, they're, they're fun and all of that, but that, that, the ones that stick with you
00:30:21.120
are the kids and the wanton cruelty. That just, that just eats you alive.
00:30:26.460
I was, uh, when I was in Montreal, it was a mostly crime reporter, a lot of crime in Montreal,
00:30:32.160
a lot of colorful characters in Montreal. Uh, but it was the, um, it was the homicides that
00:30:37.700
involve families or the sexual assaults that involve families. Those were the ones that stuck
00:30:45.260
And, and those are the, for the police, those are the hardest kind to, uh, to prevent and get
00:30:50.740
involved with, you know, no one knows what goes on behind closed doors. And when people,
00:30:55.440
when, when, when, if, if, if the last, if the first contact you have is someone's dead,
00:31:01.520
well, that's bad. And even the other contacts, you know, what's happening in the meantime,
00:31:06.740
who's doing something, who, what are the courts doing? What are the, uh, you know, everybody,
00:31:11.840
the, the answer to everything is get an order of protection. Well, an order of protection,
00:31:14.920
unless it's made out of Kevlar, bulletproof material, it's worthless. Cause if a guy's not afraid
00:31:19.340
of, of jail for beating you up, he's not afraid of, of another contempt of court charge on top
00:31:23.520
of it. So the, the intervention and, and, and the, uh, the, the, uh, victimization, those
00:31:34.340
things have to be, those things have to be dealt with. And unless again, unless the police
00:31:40.960
knock on every door and off of marriage counseling, which I wouldn't be surprised if they made them
00:31:45.720
do that, it's just, it's, it's, it was, everyone has a division of family services or whatever
00:31:53.100
they want to call it, but what are you servicing? You know, it's all, it's all after the fact.
00:31:57.820
It's all, you know, if you get beat up, call us, but it's like, you know, how do we, how do
00:32:02.680
we get people that, that have some, that don't get beat up? How do we treat, teach people not
00:32:08.020
to get beat up? And that this is not acceptable. And that's a societal problem again.
00:32:12.560
You worked for years at the New York post. What was the, uh, the major difference in
00:32:17.880
shifting from being a cop to, to being in the media?
00:32:21.220
Well, I'm, you know, I, I've made this point many times. It's in many ways on a street cop
00:32:27.400
reporter, a street reporter, it's the same job. Find out what happened, write a report.
00:32:32.760
I used to say that I was, I was an internet journalist before there was, before there was, uh, before
00:32:38.460
there was the internet was that big because, you know, you know, something happens, it's
00:32:43.380
a triple homicide and the chief is calling and he wants to know what happened now. He
00:32:48.020
doesn't want to know. He doesn't want to read about it in a report that you're going to type
00:32:51.540
out. He'll get it on his desk tomorrow, like a newspaper. He wants to know what happened
00:32:54.540
right now. Tell me what's going on. So in some ways, you know, you're out there, you're out
00:33:00.080
there in shitty weather. Uh, you're out there in, in, uh, uh, you know, drinking lousy coffee.
00:33:06.000
You're on this, you're sitting on one side of the barrier or the other side of the barrier
00:33:13.720
Were you critical of the police when you were, uh, on the media side?
00:33:18.700
I was critical of the police when I was in the police, which is why I was not in the
00:33:21.980
police, which is why I didn't become a chief of police. So yeah, you know, I mean, um, you
00:33:28.880
know, there's so much odd obfuscation. There's so much they don't tell you. There's so much
00:33:35.040
you have to read between the lines. Um, you know, when the police have a natural tendency
00:33:39.660
to protect themselves, I suppose, as most people do. And, you know, you're going to
00:33:44.280
start to pick at things. You know, I would tell the police reporters when I was, I was
00:33:48.000
the crime editor for a while and it was like, there's more to this. You got to ask me this
00:33:53.580
question. This is not, this is not, doesn't make sense to you like that.
00:33:57.600
I always say that you, you've got to listen to what they're telling you, but look for what
00:34:02.560
they're not telling you. Without a doubt, because, you know, you know, the, the job
00:34:08.860
is the, is to protect the department. The problem is the department is the cops, you
00:34:14.960
know? So, you know, you're not protecting them by, you know, you're protecting the reputation
00:34:19.900
basically of the chiefs and therefore the commissioner and therefore the mayor. But, you
00:34:24.700
know, you're not helping the rank and file because there's so much screwed up stuff that
00:34:28.220
goes on that, um, you know, some of this needs to be told.
00:34:32.380
What, what do you think of the, the push to defund the police misguided or misstated, uh,
00:34:42.280
Insane. Um, you know, let's get rid of the cops, send in the violence interrupters, whatever
00:34:49.100
they are. Okay. Um, the idea that if cops do it and screw up, uh, what are relatively
00:34:57.640
untrained people are going to, how are they going to, how are they going to do any better
00:35:02.440
than this? I'll give you an example is Trump's arraignment, right? Uh, last week. Okay.
00:35:09.160
Cops came out in force. You have people on one side, people on the other side. There's
00:35:14.480
a propensity for violence on either side. Guess what happened? Nothing. Okay. Why? Because
00:35:19.620
the cops were there, they were ready for it and nobody wanted, and nobody wanted to go,
00:35:23.720
nobody wanted to go to jail that night. That's what you do. That's, that's, they, if you're
00:35:29.400
pardoned the expression, they police the demonstration. So you have to police things and to do it without
00:35:35.120
the police or to do it in the half measures. And again, send untrained people to do these
00:35:39.640
things. You know, if the other agencies did their job, maybe the police would have a lot
00:35:43.400
less to do. Maybe you could cut cops. I'm not, I don't necessarily know that more numbers
00:35:49.040
equals better policing, you know, better policing equals better policing. And we have to decide
00:35:53.740
what that is, but you know, you know, let's get rid of the cops is really pretty, at least
00:36:00.480
in this society, pretty stupid idea. Well, I'd have to agree with that. And I've made that
00:36:06.060
point in several of my Toronto Sun columns as we're dealing with candidates who have voted
00:36:11.920
to, um, candidates for mayor who voted to defund the police, to disarm the police, um, you know,
00:36:19.260
send you to respond to a shooting without any, any sort of weapon, not just guns. Uh, it all
00:36:25.740
seems like madness to me, but it is, um, you know, the, the idea of the moment.
00:36:29.560
Well, you know, everybody wants to jump on a bandwagon and it sounds great and maybe it
00:36:35.620
gets you some votes, but in, in, in long term, it's, it's just, it's just ridiculous. And in
00:36:41.300
a violent society, you have to be able, you know, you have to be able to, uh, to, it's
00:36:46.340
the threat of violence and the threat of arrest that, that brings people in line. I'm sorry,
00:36:50.580
but it's a, it's a hard world. You know, it's just not, we're not going to happen that
00:36:54.960
way. Any parting advice for us as we, uh, we deal with our, our increase in crime here
00:37:00.580
in Canada? Me, and I always told my reporters, and I believe this when I was, when I, and I
00:37:06.680
preached it when I was in the police department, look for the bosses. Okay. Who, you know, to
00:37:12.620
me, the most important job in the world perhaps is the police sergeant. What are they doing?
00:37:17.160
Are they making the cops work? Do they make better cops? If you make better
00:37:20.400
sergeants, they're going to make better bosses up the line and they're going to
00:37:23.100
make their cops better. To me, the whole thing revolves around the police sergeant
00:37:27.360
and you got to empower them and you're going to make sure they do their jobs. But
00:37:30.940
the whole thing is accountability. You know, if everybody's doing their job, stuff
00:37:35.280
gets handled. Also, don't look, nobody bats a thousand. Okay. Uh, you know, things are
00:37:41.740
going to happen. Things are going to screw up things. And, and there's going to, there's
00:37:44.940
probably, I'm certain there's going to be misconduct and it's certainly there's going
00:37:48.580
to be, you know, uh, but in a violent world, you get violence. Um, you know, some of these
00:37:56.680
things you have to accept. Billy, thanks for the time today. Oh, not at all. Good talking
00:38:02.400
to you. The full comment is a post media podcast. My name's Brian Lilley, your host. This episode
00:38:07.980
was produced by Andre Proulx with theme music by Bryce Hall. Kevin Libin is the executive
00:38:12.980
producer. Again, remember you can subscribe to full comment on Apple podcasts, Google,
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