Full Comment - A former NYC captain’s insights into stopping Canada’s crime wave

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00:01:29.860 Crime. It's an issue that we're all dealing with across Canada. Whether you're in Edmonton,

00:01:39.740 Halifax, Port of Peek, Nova Scotia, perhaps. Whether you're in Vancouver, its suburbs,

00:01:45.220 Winnipeg, or here in Toronto, where I am, crime has become a major factor. Hello,

00:01:50.260 welcome to the Full Comment Podcast. My name's Brian Lilly, your host. Before we get to our guest,

00:01:55.260 I want to remind you that you can, and we do encourage you, to subscribe to Full Comment on

00:02:00.580 whatever app or device you're listening to the podcast on. Leave a review, share it on social

00:02:05.500 media with friends, and help spread the word. Crime is an issue that is dominating politics in

00:02:11.500 Toronto right now. As I said, it's an issue across the country. We've seen crime rise since about 2014,

00:02:18.240 2015 in most major centres, but also minor centres as well. When you speak to police chiefs and

00:02:25.080 police officers across the country, one word continues to come to mind on what's happening

00:02:30.080 and why this rise has been going on for so long, and that word is fentanyl. Part of the opioid crisis,

00:02:37.180 you could say. Now, how do we deal with it, and are we dealing with it properly? That is an issue of

00:02:43.620 intense debate in different parts of the country. Whether it's the federal liberals coming up with bail

00:02:48.760 reform proposals that most, regardless of political stripe, most provincial premiers, city mayors,

00:02:55.920 police chiefs have all said, go in the wrong direction. It's an issue when you're talking about

00:03:00.520 the mayor's race that's happening in Toronto right now, where people say they just don't feel safe on

00:03:05.840 the TTC due to random attacks on Toronto's subway system. So how do we deal with crime? That's something

00:03:13.000 our next guest can help us with. Billy Gorda was a New York City police officer, rose to the level

00:03:18.460 of captain before taking on a career in journalism, first as a writer, a journalist, and then an editor

00:03:24.820 with the New York Post, where he covered crime. But before he went into journalism, he helped bring in

00:03:30.960 a new era of tracking crime and stats. Billy joins us now from New York. Billy, thanks for the time.

00:03:38.520 I'm delighted to be here. So you've spoken to my colleague, Brad Hunter, several times. You and

00:03:45.880 Brad used to work together at New York Post, and you've said that the decision to deal with crime

00:03:50.820 is a political one. What do you mean by that? Well, the police in general are supposed to be an

00:03:59.420 apolitical organization, and it is the most political job out of any non-political job there is.

00:04:04.960 The mayor... What? Okay. Politics is not supposed to enter into policing, but it's all entirely

00:04:13.760 political. Okay? Whatever happens, the police commissioner here in New York, and I can't speak

00:04:18.720 to other jurisdictions, but here in New York, the police commissioner answers directly to the mayor.

00:04:22.640 So when the mayor calls him across the street to City Hall and says, fix that, guess what? It gets

00:04:27.580 fixed. If the mayor doesn't call, then everything just goes on as it does. So now, of course, the mayor

00:04:35.900 has political pressure from donors and big businesses and everything else, so he's getting

00:04:40.160 political pressure for re-election money and re-election, and that translates down, and it always

00:04:47.460 goes that way. So when the mayor tells the chief of police or whoever it is, fix it, they find a way to

00:04:53.960 fix it. You know, we like to say that our police service, our courts, we're not political like

00:04:59.660 you are in the United States. Oh, we're very different. But our Supreme Court is entirely

00:05:04.240 political, just as the American Supreme Court is, sometimes more so, I would argue. And our police

00:05:11.460 services, well, you know, politicians will say, well, I don't direct them. But suddenly, you know,

00:05:17.860 if there's a protest that is being held by a group that is friendly to the politician in charge,

00:05:25.800 well, you know, you can let them get away with certain things. But if it's a protest

00:05:29.720 that the politician is opposed to, or they're opposed to the politician, suddenly things are

00:05:34.740 very different. So we've all seen that. But how does this translate into something that we're dealing

00:05:41.720 with right now? We've got shootings on the rise in this country, we've got in Toronto, and I apologize

00:05:47.860 to our listeners outside of Toronto, but the Toronto Police Service, they have a very good data portal for

00:05:55.960 keeping track of crime and the violent crime, the major crime incidents, every measurement is up

00:06:04.400 in this year, aside from homicide, homicides down, and that's great. But when we're talking about

00:06:10.860 assault, robbery, sexual assault, break and enter, auto theft, and the major crime index is up 21%.

00:06:19.480 You've got, you know, theft over $500 up almost 40%. Auto theft up 35%. Assaults up 18%. These are

00:06:30.640 things to be concerned about. So how does that idea of yours that that it's political whether to

00:06:36.540 address these things translate onto onto that side?

00:06:41.380 Okay, so what happens is, in the NYPD, there was an old saying among the cops, and it's that nobody

00:06:46.700 ever got hurt by doing nothing. So a lot of cops are willing to just do the status quo, keep the status

00:06:53.760 quo, answer their radio runs, do their job as necessary, write a couple of summonses here and there,

00:06:59.780 and let it go. The idea to get involved and to say, all right, this guy's shady, I'm going to do so,

00:07:07.500 I'm going to look at him, or how fast I respond to something, or what I do, that's all, that's all

00:07:13.960 individual based. But the thing is, is that what are the bosses doing? You know, if a guy's just

00:07:20.760 treading water, which is what cops will do without being prodded, well, then you get that, then you get

00:07:27.040 this. You know, and I also want to point out where you said the homicides are down, but robberies and

00:07:32.180 violent assaults are up. Well, they're just homicides that didn't last, they're homicides

00:07:36.080 in waiting. They just didn't last long enough, you know, or the guy didn't say the extra thing

00:07:40.520 and get himself shot. So those things are very, very important, because they're the precursors to

00:07:45.560 homicide, you know, outside of, you know, I'm mad at you and I shoot you. But, you know, you rob somebody

00:07:51.020 and they get a tussle, and then you get shot, well, that's the homicide. So these are the things

00:07:56.660 that have to be interrupted. These are the things you have to keep order on. And these are the things

00:08:00.120 where, you know, you have to have cops in the subway, you have to have cops on the street, and

00:08:04.180 they have to do something. You know, just having a cop there is not enough. You know, actually,

00:08:11.280 having a cop there does help a little. But, you know, because you never know what you don't,

00:08:15.020 you never know what you've prevented. But on the other hand, you know, you got to do something.

00:08:19.060 We have this issue on our transit system. You talk to the head of the transit union,

00:08:27.320 who represents bus drivers, subway drivers, transit workers across the country, they say,

00:08:33.360 it doesn't matter where you are, assaults against transit operators are up. And so just using the

00:08:40.540 example of the subway where I am, we had a policy put forward by the management of the Toronto Transit

00:08:52.660 Commission saying, yeah, don't get too involved. In fact, they put out a memo a couple of years ago,

00:08:58.520 basically warning their security operators, they're basically special constables, they're not

00:09:03.400 full Toronto constables, they're special constables. They basically warned them, if you arrest someone,

00:09:10.760 you will be investigated. The last step should be arresting someone. And you've got to use every

00:09:16.720 de-escalation tool to make sure that there is a different outcome. Well, eventually, the guys just

00:09:24.140 said, okay, well, it's easier not to do anything. As you were saying, nobody ever got hurt by doing

00:09:29.120 nothing. So is that what you're talking about when you say, you know, like cops protect it or

00:09:35.800 support it? Well, if you decide to do something, and you go out and that deal, and you go out and

00:09:44.460 you start to fight crime, there are going to be mistakes and things are going to happen that aren't

00:09:48.860 to plan. But nobody, nobody bats a thousand. Okay, cops out to get involved. There's violence,

00:09:57.980 there's adrenaline, there's all kinds of crazy stuff going on. But you know, everybody expects

00:10:03.080 it to be wrapped up neat with a bow and everybody and nobody's hurt and everybody comes away feeling

00:10:07.440 good about themselves. It doesn't work that way. Welcome to the real world. Okay, police work when

00:10:13.200 you're at the coalface, it's a dirty job. And you've got to get in. If you're mixing it up,

00:10:20.720 people are going to get hurt. And cops have a duty to protect other people, a duty to protect

00:10:26.260 themselves. Yes, they have a duty not to not to take the extra dig at a guy or to kick him when

00:10:30.900 he's down or to kneel on him. But, you know, the idea that it's all going to be just so genteel.

00:10:39.000 It's a fairy tale. It's ridiculous. 0.99

00:10:42.100 You were with the NYPD during a couple of interesting things. One, there was something 0.88

00:10:47.380 called Comstat. And I'm going to ask you to explain that in a moment. But also this broken

00:10:52.280 window theory. You know, you think back of, well, I think back, you know, when I was a

00:10:58.560 kid, the stories of New York crime were legendary. Now, of course, it turns out that our crime

00:11:05.920 was up in the mid 70s and 80s as well. And it might have had something to do with demographics

00:11:12.100 and baby boomers and a lot of young men who suddenly stopped being young men and doing stupid 1.00

00:11:16.940 things. So that might be part of it. But the crime in New York was legendary. And you brought 1.00

00:11:21.820 in this broken window theory. Does that still work? Was that oversold? What do you think

00:11:30.400 of that now that you've had years to look back on it, both as a journalist and now as a retiree

00:11:36.960 of sorts?

00:11:38.620 Well, broken windows is not necessarily full stop about crime. Windows is about neighborhoods

00:11:43.940 that when they start to fall apart and conditions get bad, well, and conditions get bad on everything

00:11:49.940 and stores close and lights don't get fixed. And all these things happen that can contribute

00:11:57.060 to crime, but it also just kills the neighborhood. So it just drives it down. And then you have

00:12:03.760 a lovely crime ecosystem, if you will. But it's, you know, the idea is, is that, you know,

00:12:12.820 if you take care of the little things, the big things will start to take care of themselves.

00:12:16.440 Now, you mentioned constant. So yeah, let's back up there. Let's explain what the broken

00:12:21.680 window theory is for people that don't know it.

00:12:24.360 Well, that was essentially it. It's like, when a neighborhood starts to go to pot, if you

00:12:29.320 don't fix these things, if there are broken windows, that people just feel it's okay, it's

00:12:34.520 possible just, or it's, it's acceptable just to continue it. So, you know, there's an empty

00:12:40.960 lot. People start to throw garbage in and people start dumping stuff. And, you know, and it

00:12:45.020 starts to fester. It starts to expand. And now there's broken windows. Now there's stores

00:12:52.200 closing. And it affects the economics of the neighborhood. It affects the demography of

00:12:56.780 the neighborhood insofar as, you know, there's no investment. It's more poor people. And we

00:13:02.260 know there has to be a, there's a higher level of crime amongst poor people. So you just wind 1.00

00:13:08.920 up with the, with the, the spiraling, spiraling downward. And you get crime that way, but it's

00:13:16.820 not necessarily one for one for crime. There's a broken window that means someone's getting

00:13:20.360 shot. It's not, it's not that way. It's, it's a little more complex than that.

00:13:24.540 So it's about the holistic view of the neighborhood. Make sure that things are fixed so that the

00:13:32.680 neighborhood is healthy and thrives.

00:13:35.000 Right. And go ahead.

00:13:38.380 So this was, but this was used by the NYPD. Was it Mayor Giuliani brought it in when he was

00:13:45.660 there?

00:13:46.460 No. Well, we started as something similar with that, to that point of view earlier with the

00:13:51.700 community policing, with the idea of cops who go into the neighborhood and say, Hey,

00:13:55.940 what's going on? What's wrong? And it was signed to a specific area. I mean, I, I had concerns

00:14:01.480 about the implementation because what you had is you had cops go in, uh, try, you know, the

00:14:09.160 lowest level trying to fix the bigger problems, you know? So if there's this empty lot there,

00:14:13.840 they go to sanitation, this garbage strewn lot, they go to sanitation and say, Hey, can we

00:14:18.700 clean this up, you know, and get the neighborhood together? Let's all clean this up.

00:14:21.700 And bring sanitation in. Well, you know, I mean, sanitation is supposed to be doing that 0.73

00:14:25.500 on their own. Uh, you know, so now you get the cops involved in all kinds of other things

00:14:29.920 outside of actual policing.

00:14:33.180 Which is one of the things that we hear is a problem now. And, uh, one of the, uh, the

00:14:38.660 lines that, uh, the defund the police movement uses, they say, well, you know, police shouldn't

00:14:43.540 be social workers. Police shouldn't be mental health workers. So, uh, let's take those jobs

00:14:48.740 away from them, but then also take some of their budget away from them and give it to these other,

00:14:53.200 uh, other avenues. And, and I can, theoretically, I can see some merit in, in those ideas. The cops

00:15:00.600 shouldn't be the first responders to everything. They just unfortunately end up being the first

00:15:06.320 responders to, to everything.

00:15:07.540 And why is that? Because, why is that? Because people are cheap. The cops are already paid for, 0.99

00:15:12.260 and they work 24 hours a day. So if you want mental health responders, you know, you want,

00:15:17.580 you want to have a core of mental health nurses, mental health, you know, psychiatrists, all of this

00:15:23.680 stuff, you want to do all of that 24 seven and staff it and have them respond, go ahead. But I promise

00:15:28.680 you, it's going to be, uh, uh, a lot less effective and a lot more expensive than the police. You send the

00:15:35.180 constant to everything because they're already paid for and they're already working. Otherwise,

00:15:39.340 you know, you got to pay for it. Nobody, and nobody wants to pay for it.

00:15:43.280 Well, one of the people that's running, uh, in our current Toronto, uh, mayoralty race is a former

00:15:49.740 police chief. And he argues like, why are the cops on 24 seven, but mental health support runs nine to

00:15:56.880 five. He said, trust me from my years as being a cop. A lot of the people that need mental health

00:16:02.740 support, it's between five and midnight. So you got to have somebody around.

00:16:07.240 And then what happens is, is that we send in our mental health support team. And when things get

00:16:12.980 hairy, what do they do? They call the police. So the whole thing is, the whole thing is just a,

00:16:19.280 just ridiculous just because you have to say now my thing with all of it, with most of these things.

00:16:26.140 And again, back to everybody being cheap is a lot of this stuff could be, uh, I'm not saying fixed,

00:16:32.480 but ameliorated with, uh, uh, a really, really robust training system, but training is expensive.

00:16:40.500 You know, I have to develop curricula. I have to venues. I got to take cops off the line to do this.

00:16:44.760 I got, you know, so it's, it's so much bigger, you know, and you want to have interactive training

00:16:49.820 where instead of I'm sitting here in a classroom doodling, you know, while somebody's saying

00:16:53.860 something important, I'm actually doing some hands-on training here. So when you have the, when,

00:16:59.340 when you just, without the training, you know, you got, you get what you get, you know? And I think

00:17:06.380 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

00:17:10.860 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,

00:17:31.780 but you got to pay for it. You can't just say, okay, well, we'll leave it to the professionals

00:17:36.140 at nine to the, the mental health professionals at nine to five. And then we'll let the cops cover

00:17:40.760 the, the, the, the bad hours. Well, the bad hours is when the, the bad stuff happens. That's why

00:17:45.640 they're the bad hours. Uh, Billy, I want to ask you about, um, uh, Comstat. This is a computerized

00:17:55.720 program that, uh, you know, groundbreaking in its day. Looks like NYPD still uses it. How did, uh,

00:18:04.760 looking at stats and, and analyzing them help deal with New York's crime problem when you were,

00:18:11.600 uh, still an NYPD captain? Well, to be honest, Comstat really wasn't the technological revolution.

00:18:19.120 Everybody says it was, I mean, when you look at it, it's really, when we started it 30, almost 30

00:18:23.640 years ago, it's really, really, as I say, it's more will than skill. But the thing is, it's,

00:18:28.300 it's an accountability system. It's really nothing more than that. It's like, now we have the numbers

00:18:33.500 all together. So I can ask people like, what about these numbers? If the police commissioner

00:18:38.340 had, you know, was, was calling you on the phone, you're a police commander. And I says, Hey,

00:18:43.580 um, you had 76 robberies yesterday. What are you doing? You're going to pay attention to those

00:18:49.640 things. You know? So this is just a faster way of doing it. And, and the meetings were,

00:18:55.920 now you stand in the air and it's like the police commissioner is asking you like, what are you doing

00:18:59.660 about the robberies? What are you doing about this? What are you doing about that? And you have to

00:19:03.320 have answers. And what happened then is because what happened, we started with the numbers that

00:19:07.620 we started having meetings to discuss the numbers and we had, uh, computers, pin maps and all of

00:19:13.300 that. And it just developed over time. It wasn't like snap your fingers. So, uh, but when you're

00:19:19.860 called out on it, you have to have the answers. And what happened early in the, the Bill Bratton

00:19:24.800 era, the, he was the police commissioner was that some guys just didn't make it. Some guys

00:19:29.760 weren't interested. Some guys weren't able for it. Some guys got promoted and promoted and

00:19:34.380 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

00:19:43.200 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

00:19:52.480 sudden next thing, you know, people saying that's a police commissioner approved theory.

00:19:57.240 So basically Comstock was taking the information that was there, making it readily available to

00:20:03.600 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

00:21:15.000 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.

00:21:27.460 Should the public get to know more about what's going on in, in their community? Because we, you know,

00:21:32.820 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,

00:21:45.800 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

00:21:58.500 services? I believe all information is good. How you interpret it is your business, but I believe

00:22:04.600 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 0.99

00:29:59.160 kid is to shoot her because, you know, it's good. She's going to have a horrible life, horrible 1.00

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

00:30:43.020 with me, that haunt me.

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 1.00

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

00:33:09.420 miserable. It's the same, it's the same job.

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,

00:34:39.800 on the mark? What do you think?

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 1.00

00:36:00.480 in this society, pretty stupid idea. Well, I'd have to agree with that. And I've made that 0.99

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 0.77

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 0.72

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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00:38:32.400 I'm Brian Lilley.

Full Comment - April 17, 2023

A former NYC captain’s insights into stopping Canada’s crime wave

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