How The First Police Went From Gangsters, To An Army For The Rich

Episode Transcript
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Listen to Sacred Scandal on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to
Behind the Police, a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
back to Behind the Police, Behind the Bastard's special mini

(01:46):
series about you know, the police in America. Uh, some
of the most persistent bastards in our nation's long and
bastardful history. I'm Robert Evans Uh, the host and the
researcher and writer, and my guest today is Jason Petty,
better known as hip hop artist Propaganda prop How are

(02:06):
you doing today? What Up? What Up? What up? Socially
and emotionally prepared for this train? Did you like how
professional my introduction was? That was some NPR ship. Here's
the thing, bro, like you're you are unmatched in intros
and transitions. There's nothing like this. I want to be
the voice. I want to retrain yourself talk voice and

(02:30):
just continue to say you nailed it even when you didn't,
just even when I didn't, beautiful. I will continue to
point out when you suck it up and praise you
when you don't like now, wonderful intro, Robert, very professional,
thank you, thank you, way better than that time I
just shouted Hitler. That was that was a train wreck. Yeah,

(02:51):
I don't know what to do with that one. Have
you ever walked by like a wall of chords and
just felt then like I'm going, especially like that stage
somewhere in festivals, Yes, no, or like I'm gonna yank
them all out. It's gonna happen, and it's like I'm
holding my hand away, like I I can't be backstage.

(03:14):
I'm ann yank one of these out. I feel like
that was like you and like the Hitler thing to
where you're just like, yeah, don't say it, don't say it,
don't say it. Oh my god, I want to say. Yeah.
You can't script an introduction, right, like that's the first
rule of of of broadcast as you can never script
inn intro, So we're left with me winging it. So Propaly,
yesterday we talked about the origins of American policing with

(03:35):
a focus on like the slave patrols, and that is
the thing like online since kind of this whole uprising
against the police began. That's the thing everyone's been focusing
on that, like police came out of slave patrols, and
that is very true for a huge chunk of American policing.
Today we're going to talk about the other chunk, because
it was not just slave patrols, Because a sizeable chunk
of American policing came out of a desire to suppress

(03:56):
folks number one that we today would call white, but
at the time of the people with money didn't really
consider to be white. Um. But also more than anything,
it came out of a desire to police labor, like
the working class. So today we're going to kind of
hit that other side of the of the where cops
come from, uh divide. Um. Yeah, there's a lesson in intersectionality, guys,

(04:20):
it is right now. Yeah. And and like all good
lessons and intersectionality it comes from it includes uh, people
being racist when that's directly in the opposition to their
needs and an actual benefit. Yeah, a deep seated oppression, yeah,
and an oppression that's taken advantage of by the ruling

(04:40):
class in order to continue to Yeah. Yeah, yeah, and
we're going up and off to you know, they free
up there. You know yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the North,
the North. I mean it was better than the Confederacy.
But that's like saying, yeah, like vomiting in the toilet
is better than vomiting on your friends floor, which like, yes,

(05:04):
but it's both are non ideal. Straight. Yeah. So, um,
you may not know this, but President John Fitzgerald Kennedy
designated the week of May fifteen to be National Police Week.
I don't think we celebrated it this year. Yeah. I
was like, I've never heard that. Yeah, it must have
missed that one. Um. During his speech announcing this, he
stated that police officers had been protecting Americans since the

(05:27):
birth of the United States. Now, we of course know
that this is untrue. The first formal police department was
started in Boston in eighteen thirty eight. And you know,
slave patrols existed earlier, but they share weren't protecting people. Now.
One of the inciting incidents that led to the creation
of the Boston Police. Um. Who AGAINA, that's the first
police department was the Broad Street Riot. And the basic

(05:47):
story of the Broad Street Riot is that a funeral
procession of Irish immigrants in eighteen thirty seven ran into
a volunteer firefighting company of US born Protestants who are
on their way back from fighting a fire. And obviously
now I think most people just like, oh, you know,
Protestants and Catholics, they're all just sort of like, you know,
relatively mainstream Christian denominations. But yeah, it was like it

(06:08):
was like a huge deal when JFK became the first
Catholic president. People were like, is he gonna sorry, yeah,
I was gonna say, yeah, that's how like open to
diversity and melting pot we are as a country that
like it was a scandal that this fool was at
Catholic Yeah. I got like, yo, that's the that's just
the other room for the same house. Yeah. Yeah, if

(06:32):
you really want an idea of like how funked up
America has been about diversity, Like people were like not
even a decade away from putting a man on the
damn moon and JFK came to power and people were like,
is he going to take secret pope orders? Oh yeah,
And the news flash to every Protestant was like, you know,
we was all Catholic until five years ago. I don't know,

(06:54):
you know that, but it was all Catholic. Yeah, uh
it was it's one so yeah, Um, Catholics and Protestants
back then had some real issues with one another. So this,
this Irish funeral procession like runs into the middle of
this Catholic or a Protestant firefighting company, and the two
just start beating the ship out of each other, and
all of this spills out into a riot that eventually

(07:15):
involves one fifth of Boston's population, which is like fifteen
thousand people, which is still a pretty good sized riot today. Um. Yeah,
so ethnic tensions being what they were, the riot quickly
turned into erase riot, and Protestants burned and looted the
entirety of the heavily Irish Broad Street neighborhood, just like
Jesus would call him. Yes, he was a big fan

(07:37):
of burning and looting, just burning, you know, you turned
that he was like, hey, he flipped over the tables.
He flipped over the Tipple tables, but those weren't like
his homies tables anyway. Yeah, and what he didn't he say,
burned the other cheeks something like that, So I may
be missing yeah yeah, so yeah, very very taking their
religion seriously here. Um. So in decades prior um to

(07:58):
the Broad street riot. Richants had been forced to finance
their own guards to secure the transportation of their goods.
Establishing police, which were paid more by the commonwealth shifted
the burden for protecting capital off of capitalists and onto
the community. But even prior to the establishment of the
first police departments, law and order in the United States
was primarily a for profit endeavor and not a manner

(08:18):
of public safety. Um, the broad street right was kind
of used as an excuse for, like, why we need
a police force. But the tensions had been building, and
like frustration had been building, like, oh, we gotta pay
to take care of our own ship from you know,
the merchant class. So this was kind of an opportunity
for them to get people on board. Now, as we
covered in the first episode, most policing in the English
speaking world prior to the eighteen hundreds was primarily a

(08:40):
community affair. Enforcement of the law was done by members
of the community who tended to rotate through shifts keeping
order in their own towns. Public spirit is generally the
term used as what was like the primary method of
social control in those days, rather than centralized authority, And
that is kind of the thing that like I was
just in the Seattle Autonomous Ze whatever you want to
hall it, you know, may not be really an autonomous zone.

(09:02):
I don't think they've actually kind of firmly decided yet
because the police got back in briefly. But like, public
spirit is the primary manner of social control there. There's
no centralized organization, there's no like even mass kind of
votes because people are so distributed there, but there is
kind of a broad public spirit of like what if
we don't have cops here? Right, that's kind of the
ideal idea. Um And that was kind of the way

(09:24):
that it worked for a very long time, um in
in particularly like English speaking chunks of the of the world. UM.
But but not just that. Um. So, yeah, this system
began to fade out as like, you know, as the
kind of industrial age dawn, and distinct communities that had
been like more or less like somewhat isolated at least

(09:45):
homogenized into cities and sprawling urban areas like now you know,
we say London, but back in the day it was
like a bunch of towns and then a much smaller London.
And then as they all turned into like this big
fucking metropolitan area. Um, this public spirit fades. So historian
hind Pringle writes that by the seventeen hundreds, the legal
system had formalized enough that it's architects were quote confident

(10:05):
that they could by a system of incentives and deterrence,
rewards and punishments, bribes and threats so exploit human greed
and fear that there would be no need to look
for anything so nebulous and unrealistic as humans or as
public spirit. So that's kind of like the real dawn
of of formalized law enforcement is is things get big
enough and these people are like public spirit, you can't

(10:26):
really rely on it to do what I want it
to do. And I'm the guy with the money, So
we need to build a system of deterrence and rewards. Yea, yeah,
it's scans. Yeah, yeah, it's scans. So gradually the yeah,
it keeps scans. And I was also going to say,
as a side note, the and I hate I hate

(10:49):
the very principle of what I'm about to say. Sure,
but at the old folks in the charts would say
it's true anyhow. Uh, I absolutely love like the Irish
like culture just because it's just so irreverent and like

(11:13):
they just don't take themselves serious. Everything is sarcastic, Yeah,
drinking and going to sing at parties. And I'm just like,
it's just it's just your normal slang, like a ball back,
how you doing, Like you call your homeboy a ball bag.
That's a scrotum, fam and that's what you refer to
your friends as you throw to your friends and scrotums

(11:35):
all ball back And it's like, look, I respect that
so much. I just so I respect him. They're just
ready to fight at any moment. Yeah, drink a lot,
you know what I'm saying. And then when you got
to America, you created your own hood, like just the
South Boston, just southy Irish pissy, don't even don't even

(11:57):
mess with your like your grandmother ready to scrap. Like
I respect that so much. Yeah, I love this is
my favorite place to visit Ireland. I love the like
what you're talking about, like this idea that even with
like your elected leaders, like you should kind of be
able to shout at him, right, That's yeah, there's a
bit of that in England too, Like this idea that
like we had a thing here and it happened in

(12:19):
Minneapolis with Mayor Fray where like he had to go
out to this crowd and like when he said something
didn't like this crowd of thousands like told him to
go the funk home. And we had that in Portland
with our mayor. Like he showed up in the middle
of this crowd to take questions and everyone just told him, like,
you had the cops shoot at us a bunch, and
we don't like that, and you're a bad mayor. And
everyone just got to like yell at the mayor. And
that's how it ought to be with all elected officials.

(12:41):
They should have to stand in the middle of a
crowd of their voters and get heckled when they funk up.
It's it's like, yes, every elected official should have to
do some sort of like open mic like stand up,
just dive bar where you have to feel that he dude.
My first few years of touring, like the he of
being like, okay, listen, it's it's almost it's it's eight

(13:05):
fift you know what I'm saying. Everybody's just pregame in
trying to figure out who they're gonna hit on later,
and I have to go up and wrap for fifteen
minutes and try to convince this room to pay attention
to me for I got ten minutes. Often commissions like
that is the best school of hard knocks as like
a live performer that anyone could ever. I feel like

(13:27):
every mayor should have to do that. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely,
like this the public the whole public spirit thing. Obviously
there's a lot of more people now where there's a
more complexity you need, you need more than just public spirit.
But this idea that like if everyone just kind of
hates this dude, like he should have to stand in
the middle of them and I try to convince them
that they're wrong or at least just take the fucking

(13:48):
fire for all right, if you could take that fire
and or win some of us over, I would be like,
you know what, Okay, maybe I was wrong, but maybe
I was wrong about this dude. Yeah yeah, anyway, anyway
back to the fucking cop so um. Gradually, the profit
motive became the central motivating force behind law enforcement. So
kind of public spirit moves aside for we just pay

(14:09):
people to do this ship um. And the change started
at the level of the constable. Traditionally, constables had been
unpaid members of the community who took turns at the job.
But most citizens came to dislike taking their turn as constable,
especially since each turn involved a one year, unpaid period
of working to enforce laws that were often very inpopular
because there was like centralized state authority. It just there

(14:31):
wasn't like super organized law enforcements like the king or
whoever would make like a law that people didn't like,
and then you would take your turn, and you have
to enforce that law, and that doesn't make you popular, um,
which was an issue with the system who was making
the laws. So over time, deputies began to realize that
the power of their office held other opportunities for profit.
According to a paper on the development of private police

(14:52):
by Stephen Spitzer of Northern Iowa University and Andrew School
of the University of Pennsylvania, quote once in office, the
deputies soon found that prof it could be gained from
selling protective and investigative services or demanding rewards and fees
in return for recovered goods. Deputies often made such a
profitable trade of their offices that many were prepared to
serve for nothing. So this goes from like this ugly

(15:12):
job that you take because you have to to a
job that you know because you kind of find a
way to you kind of find you kind of find
side hustles in your position allows you to exploit and
then it it becomes really profitable even though there's not
a salary for the gig, and so you kind of
freelance police at this point, right like that's the gig.
So this suited early local governments in England and her

(15:33):
colonies pretty well because these these governments and these people's
like just because of an aspect of the culture, felt
a deep resistance to the idea of paying for a
salary and police force. Individual constables who were successful in
their jobs could sell their services to the highest bidder,
augmenting their official duties with what was essentially private security work.
The system made it over to the North American colonies

(15:53):
during the first decades of the eighteen hundreds. New York
City police officers were noted as being more quote private
entrepreneurs in public servants. The same was true in Boston
before and after the formal establishment of their police department
Spitzer in school rite quote. Since the main concern of
the victim was restitution. They function then as personal injury
lawyers operate today on a contingency basis hoping to get

(16:15):
a large part, perhaps half of the proceeds. So cops
would kind of hang around like a like a bad lawyer.
They would wait to see, Oh, somebody just got robbed,
somebody just got beaten up, somebody's store got broken into,
and then they would show up and be like, hey,
if I get that stuff back and I have half
of it? Like that was Those were the first cops,
like in the North and stuff. Yeah, before there's like
really police departments, you know, so like okay, so when

(16:36):
you it's so crazy when you think of it in context,
which is like the best thing to do as somebody
that really wants to understand humans, it's like, can you
blame them for being like, you know, maybe maybe we
should centralize this what if Like yeah, kind of like
maybe we should come up with some sort of department
that maybe above this. Yeah that sucks, you know what

(16:59):
I'm saying. So you're like, it's it's maybe it's I
don't know, maybe it's a bad, bad idea of the
way we're doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's definitely like you
you you kind of transition away for everybody taking turns
as the cops to like cops being basically mercenaries and
people are like mercenaries kind of suck. Got a fan
of this strike. Two guys like yeah, you know, yeah,

(17:21):
so it's yes, you're you're absolutely right, Like you can't
totally blame people for being like, well, what if we
tried to like make this a more official thing. Yeah,
like we can identify him and it's not just like
it's not just like my neighbor Dave down the street
that I just trust is full Like I don't trust Dave.
You know what I'm saying. Yeah, you know, it's a
shady son of a bit. It's kind of shady man. Yeah, yeah,

(17:43):
so yeah, yeah, this was Yeah. Most police in this
period worked as actually not even uniformed thugs, um, just
kind of thugs protecting the businesses and streets that paid them,
or as private detectives hunting down stolen goods or other
criminals on a contingency basis. The system provided no real
benefit for the average person and only marginal benefit for
the capitol holding class. See this was back before the

(18:04):
dawn of the industrial economy, and people weren't used to
the idea of just working all of the time because
that was their job. Farm labor was seasonal, and skilled
laborers usually didn't work more than they needed to in
order to live comfortably. Law enforcement officers kind of work
the same way. So these people would take enough jobs
to maintain a decent lifestyle, and then when they had
enough money, they'd stop working. So suddenly the constably were like, yeah,
I'm not gonna do anything for the next couple of months.

(18:25):
Like I'm good. I had a big case, like sorry,
you need help, but like why would I work right now?
I don't need to and I'm not gonna work if
I don't need to. Um. Yeah, So to make matters worse,
at least for the business owning class. Uh, the way
bounties were structured actually discouraged police from catching criminals. Historian
James F. Richardson Rights and his History of the New

(18:46):
York Police quote the police reports published in the newspapers
in these years are filled with accounts of instances in
which the property was returned with financial rewards for the
police officer, but in which the criminal was not brought
to justice. The officer received a larger fee or reward
for covering the stolen property then he would have received
for bringing the criminal in Often the arrangement was consummated
even before the robbery or burglary took place. An officer

(19:08):
would be privy to a crime, and after its commission,
would endeavor to recover the stolen property in return for
a liberal reward. Part of the reward within go to
the thief. It's a share. She this is the shadows.
So like you you need to tell me, by design,
the cop was crooked, Like just it's just baked into

(19:28):
the I am instead of like listen to what listen
what Professor Evans just taught to you. You know what
I'm saying, I am incentivized to cheat. It is better
for all of us if I just cheat, and y'all think,
and that's what's crazy about. Like here's here's what like
with just just pure unchecked capitalism does to your brain,

(19:53):
is you would think, oh, yeah, it's just it's just competition.
You know what I'm saying, Like, hey, man, hey dude,
if you get my stuff back, I just want you
to know, like I'll pay you more if you get
my stuff back. You were good at your job. I'm
just gonna pay you more for it. It's like, well,
I don't know, man, maybe there's a way I can
get both. Yeah yeah, yeah, what if I just work
with the guy that's going to steal your stuff like that,

(20:14):
the stuff he wants money, Yeah, we all win and
that situate you got you stuff back. I mean it's money,
like it just yeah, yeah, yeah, it's great. It's like
a tax on rich people by I don't know, not
necessarily poor people. Well maybe the thieves were, but like, yeah,
that's whatever. So up until the mid eighteen hundreds, policing
in the cities of the American North had been a
fundamentally reactive endeavor. Officers went off in response to specific

(20:37):
criminal acts, rather than seeking to prevent set acts. You know,
there were some exceptions sometimes people will be like, well,
let's hire some officers to like watch this neighborhood where
we have a bunch of shops or whatever. But generally
it was pretty reactive. Um and as the first major
metropolitan police departments were established in the eighteen thirties and forties,
this started to change. These new police departments focused on
the dangerous classes. You remember here the first episode. Yeah,

(21:02):
dangerous classes were largely made up of poor immigrants who
were seen as being fundamentally criminal. The idea began to
spread that by patrolling, surveilling, and deploying force against these populations,
police could stop crime from occurring. Now, whether or not
someone counted as a member of a dangerous class had
an awful lot to do with whether or not that
person also counted as white. The full subject of what

(21:25):
whiteness meant in the North in this period of time
is much too complicated for series that's already going to
be complicated. What is important to understand is that a
lot of groups, again that we all lump in as
white today, weren't really white yet during the mid eighteen hundreds.
This included, at varying points, Germans, Italians, Jews of all
national origins, and of course the Irish. Now again, as

(21:45):
I noted in the last episode talking about this, is
is complicated to a fact that a lot of modern racists,
or at least kind of people who like to deny
the suffering of black people will claim that like, oh,
it was it just as bad for the Irish, And
it absolutely was not, but also anti Irish big treat
was still a motherfucker, Like there was a lot of
that going around. No one's yeah it's from from from
as someone from the black community. I'm like, okay, no

(22:07):
one's arguing that the Irish who are not not treated unfairly.
It was they went through. It's not come on, it's
it was not the same. It's like, you know, I like,
I am ade, you know, sis gender heterosexual male. And
when my wife got pregnant, no part of me said

(22:32):
we're pregnant. Yeah, that's just like I can't stand when
husbands say that, yo, we're pregnant. I'm like, nigga, no,
we're not. You you understand what I'm saying. She is
doing it while I'm in there with her, and you
know you are not. I remember standing on the side
of the room when my wife was about to go
and labor, being like, women are magical superheroes because there

(23:01):
I don't know a single male on earth that could
do this. So I'm like, no, no, man, it is
not the same. Okay, it's not the math same. We
are not pregnant. Shut your mouth. All I gotta do
is go get weird ice cream and Dorito's. That's my job.

(23:21):
Go get somebody cream and Doritos. She is cooking a human.
We are not pregnant. So in the same way, I'm
like look okay, yeah, we're both going through this experience.
I'm tired too, I gotta get up and you know,
feed this child is three in the morning. I'm tired,
But I am not the child's food source. The milk
ain't coming out of my boob is coming out of

(23:41):
her boob. It is not the same. Just it's and
it's like, that's not a disk. I'm not It's just
it's just not the same. Like, let it not be
the same, you know. Yeah, it's okay that different groups
suffer in different ways. It's the same place that Yeah,
we we can, we can. We can explore the ways
in which you suffer. Ring is unique and also the
ways in which it has common roots of origin without

(24:04):
conflating thing. I'm not going to play the oppression Olympics.
Like that's what I'm not going to do, not playing
the opress anyway. Yeah. Um, we're talking a lot about
how police departments developed out of the desire for the
capital holding classes to publicly fund the protection of their ship,
but also the increasing populations and racial mixtures of American
cities had a big impact on it too. Race riots
became increasingly common in the eighteen thirties and forties as

(24:26):
long as well as other riots. There were just a
shipload of riots in this period of time, and all
this unrest helped sell the growing middle class on the
idea of police departments. Policing also opered offered an opportunity
for non white groups of white people like the Irish,
to gradually gain social acceptance. The first Irish policeman in
the United States is generally believed to be have been
a Bostonian dude named Barney mcginniskan, which is an incredibly

(24:49):
wow Barney mcginniskan cheese. It's like they made him in
a lab at it a cartoon. Yeah. So Barney mcginniskan
was hired in eighteen fifty one, and a local alderman
was infuriated by this on the grounds that it would
create a dangerous precedent irishman. He continued commit most of

(25:10):
the city's crime and would receive special consideration from one
of their own wearing the blue Now. Mcginniskan's career lasted
only three years. When the nationalist, anti Catholic No Nothing
Party took over the Massachusetts legislature. The Irish would not
make major inroads into northern police departments until their population
grew large enough that the Democratic Party realized they could

(25:30):
guarantee Irish votes by giving irishman jobs on police departments.
And that's why there's kind of a stereotype of the
Irish police officer today. Like the patty wagon went from
being a wagon that you throw Irish people onto on
their way to jail because they're all criminals to just
like a term for a cop car because all cops
are Irish like that. That that change happened over the course,

(25:51):
and it was kind of it wasn't the only thing
that had to do with this, but it was kind
of a part of Irish people sort of becoming white,
you know, as they kind of take up scitions helping
to enforce the social order and stop being kind of
on the fringes of it. Yeah, that's the thing that
says rebellion type stuff. Okay. Yeah, So one thing all
scholars seem to agree on is that these early police

(26:13):
departments were uniformly corrupt and violent. Local police party ward
leaders who were like local politicians in charge of the
neighborhoods and ship tended to appoint the police officers in
charge of their neighborhoods in society being what it was
back then, these ward leaders often also owned the local
cavern and ran the local gambling and prostitution rackets. So
if you were like, if you were like the equivalent

(26:34):
of like a local like senator or whatever, or an
alderman or some ship city council member, you would also
own the bar in your area, and you would run
like the prostitution and gambling rackets, and you would also
run the police. Like That's kind of how it worked,
and so everybody was it was just a bunch of
gang bosses. Yeah, gang yes, yeah, And that's you know,

(26:55):
that's not that different from the way the ancient rome
worked too, to be honest, like pretty similar. Yeah. Yeah.
So these ward leaders controlled both the police and the
gangs um and both the police and gangs mostly of
local youths who would help organize voter drives and would
intimidate people into making the right choices on voting day.
The first police departments then were just one of several

(27:17):
violent tools available to these early political bosses in the
big cities of the north and you know, kind of
the middle of the country. It wasn't really the middle.
It would have been like the fringe at that point,
but like whatever, you get what I'm saying, we get it. Yeah.
Police salaries were also augmented by bribes paid by the
owners of illegal businesses. And I'm gonna quote again from
Dr Gary Potter here, in this system of vice, organized violence,

(27:38):
and political corruption, it is inconceivable that the police could
be anything but corrupt. Police systematically took payoffs to allow
illegal drinking, gambling, and prostitution. Police organized professional criminals like
thieves and pickpockets, trading immunity for bribes or information. They
actively participated in vote buying and ballot box stuffing. Loyal
political operatives became police officers. They had no discernable qualifications

(28:01):
for policing and little if any training in policing. Promotions
within the police departments were sold, not earned, police drink
while on patrol. They protected their patrons vice operations, and
they were equipped to use peremptory force. Yeah yeah, yeah,
all scans. Yeah. What's funny to me is too is
like when you from the street level. Part of the

(28:25):
like outrage is when that cop all of a sudden,
just one day, decides tag like an upright citizen. Yeah,
you know, and and so if if you know, it's
like any other relationship to where it's like, Okay, you
and your brother, your little sister, like you're all scumbags,

(28:47):
you're all stealing, you're all you're all sneaking out, and
then one day your brother goes, you know, mom, Robert's
been sneaking out all week. You're like, what the so
you serious? Yeah? You serious? Bro? Like what are you
talking about? You know why I snuck out to steal
you some weed? You know what I'm saying? So like yeah, anyway,

(29:10):
So it's like when you when you look at it
from that perspective, like why somebody would in turn being like, man,
you know what, I ain't got no time and I
got no mercy for y'all. I don't treat you no
different than anybody else, is because you don't act no
different than anybody else. Yeah, it's fucking uh yeah, it
is weird that like in this period to most people

(29:31):
would have looked at like a dude who was like
a fucking a pimp or uh yeah, like as the
same way they with a cop, like you guys are
two sides of the same fucking coin. Yes, And then
they yeah this and we'll talk in a later episode
we will get to sort of the media operation that
was kind of helped to form what are what up
until very recently, we're sort of the modern kind of
mainstream consensus on police officers as like upstanding members of

(29:54):
the community and ship yea um, but like yeah, for
a very long time, they were just seen as another
are kind of thug, Like yeah they're gay, Yeah, they're gay. Yeah. Now.
Samuel Walker, a professor and expert on the history of
police accountability, says that during this period, municipal police were
used as delegated vigilantes by the empowered classes of the
new United States. That's an interesting term. Now. They were

(30:18):
men entrusted with power by those in power to use
violence against again, the dangerous classes who were seen as
fundamentally criminal. Interestingly enough, Walker seems to believe this idea
of having delegated vigilantes grew into a central aspect of
American identity. Quote many of the worst abuses of official
criminal justice agencies represent a form of delegated vigilantism. The

(30:41):
public has tended to condone, if not encourage, police brutality
directed against the outcasts of society or the mistreatment of
inmates in penal institutions. So this thing that we all recognize.
I think I don't have to go into detail about
this idea that like we should have delegated vigilantes. It's
okay if we have people we all agree should be
sucked up that some people go fuck them up. Like

(31:02):
this really central aspect of American culture starts in this
period with this idea of like the police as delegated
vigilantes to damage the dangerous classes. Wow, yeah, you know.
And then yeah, it's the idea of like something built

(31:25):
in it's like in the very construction of the concept.
Like it's a lot of times I compare this too
when you try to tell somebody that, like, hey, your
story about like the founding of our nation wasn't It's
not as like pretty as you think it was. Just
you know what I'm saying, When you try to like start,
you're missing some paragraph. Guys, it's like how earth shattering,

(31:50):
and just like I have to reconstruct reality. So like
so when you so when you fast forward and we go, no,
most of your most of our founding fathers slave owners.
They they were not at all Christians. I don't know
where you get this founding on Christian thing from you
know what I'm saying, Like, that's earth shattering. So I
think like like this one, this this series is gonna
be that for people. When you're they're just like, well

(32:11):
then is the sky blue? Can I trust my eyes
with my hands? And like like the weird this is
multiverse level reality shattering for people. You know what I'm saying,
when you go back as far as you go on, yeah, yeah,
I hope. So, I mean it's it's pretty it's interesting.
It's interesting to me because like if you, if you,

(32:34):
if you really sort of like dig into this idea
of delegated vigilantism. Um, it's kind of a central thing
that Americans believe in. Um. You you You're You're led
to some uncomfortable kind of patterns or pathways of thought
because like so one of the most popular methods used
today even to justify the violence of the police is

(32:55):
the supposed criminality or deviance of the people that the
police are victimizing. UM. And I it's interesting to me
that you can draw you really can't draw a direct
line between the delegated vigilantism that started in the eighteen
hundreds fucking Batman and the right wing reaction to the
murder of Trayvon Martin. Yeah, like, who he's a hero.
I mean it was the guy shouldn't have been back
there anyway. Yeah, it's exactly. Oh my god, it's Batman's Batman.

(33:21):
I never thought of it because I'm always like, because
I'm more of the trailer, Like I'm the seventeen year
old kid with a bag of skittles cutting through a backyard,
you know what I'm saying, just trying to get home.
So my dad has been mad, you know what I'm saying.
And if some dude is like following me, my thought
is I better beat this fool to a pulp because
it's scary, because I just don't want to, you know

(33:42):
what I'm saying. So, like, I never thought of it
as like, oh, this fool thinks he's Batman. Damn, this
fool thinks he's the fucking he's the vigilante hero that
Oh my god, I'm gone the city from scumbcum shoes.
It's the same. Oh my gosh. Yeah, it's white fucking
cops have punisher patches on their fucking cars, and it's

(34:03):
why every all sorts of people a fucking punished Like
it's it's this core, very core, even maybe even more
core than this, like nebulous love of freedom that we
have is like this. There should be people who beat
the funk out of people I think are bad, Like
it's just an origin story DNA strand. Okay, Uh want
to take an advert real quick? Yeah, you know who

(34:26):
won't beat the funk out of people who don't deserve
it and a misplaced desire for vigilante justice. These disembodied
products that are keeping the lights on kind of constitutionally
incapable of of violence as as products. Yes, on autonomously,

(34:47):
that's not the word I'm looking for. Ontologically, that's not
the word I'm I don't know. Okay, we're done. We're
rolling some ads. Yes. Gangs to Chronicles podcast is a
weekly conversation that revolves around the underworld and criminals and
entertainers to victims, crime and law enforcement. We cover all

(35:08):
facets of the game Gainst the Chronicles. Podcast doesn't glorify
for motilicit activities. We just discussed the ramifications and repercussions
of these activities because at the wall, if you played
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Our Heart Radios number one for podcasts, but don't take
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(35:33):
Here's to the great American settlers. The millions of you
have settled for unsatisfying jobs because they pay the bills,
and uh, you just kind of fell into it, and
you know, it's like totally fine, just another few decades
or so and then you can enjoy yourself. Of course,

(35:53):
there is something else you could do. If you've got
something to say. You could, I don't know, start up
by cast with Spreaker from my Heart and unleash your
creative freedom and spend all day researching and talking about
stuff you love and maybe even earn enough money to
one day tell your irritating boss as you quit and

(36:15):
walk off into the sunset. Hey I'm no settler, I'm
an explorer. Spreaker dot com. That's spr e a k
E R. Hustle on over today. This is Roxanne Gay,

(36:35):
host of the Roxanne Gay Agenda, The Bad Room and
this podcast of your Dreams. Now what is the Roxanne
Gay Agenda, you might ask? What? It's a podcast where
I'm going to speak my mind about what's on my mind,
and that could be anything. Every week I will be
in conversation with an interesting person who has something to say.

(36:56):
We're going to talk about feminism, race, writing in books,
an art, food, pop culture, and yes, politics. I started
show with a recommendation. Really, I'm just going to share
with you a movie or a book, or maybe some
music or a comedy set, something that I really want
you to be aware of and maybe engage with as well.

(37:17):
Listen to the Luminary original podcast, The Roxanne Gay Agenda,
The Bad Feminist podcast of Your Dreams every Tuesday on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you
get your podcasts. All right, and we are returned. So

(37:40):
the system of American policing would have its next major
evolution in the late eighteen hundreds as a result of
the growing like union movements, So obviously like the Lady,
teen hundreds is kind of the period in which Americans
really start to unionize. There had been unions in the
United States, I think the first one was seventeen seventy eight,
but their existence had been fairly scattered and a kind
of minimal consequence until eighteen sixty six, when the National

(38:02):
Labor Union formed to convince Congress to limit the work
day for federal workers to eight hours. B the eighteen eighties,
union membership had spread widely across the private sector, and
union strikes were constant across the big cities of the North.
From eighteen eighty to nineteen hundred, New York had more
than five thousand strikes involving more than a million workers.
Chicago had seventeen hundred and thirty seven, and I think

(38:24):
more than half a million workers. So I called these strikes,
and I think modern historians call these strikes, and modern
people would recognize them as strikes. But at the time, politicians,
business owners and like the wealthy classes called them riots. Uh,
And they turned. There's still fairly new police departments to
the task of breaking up these riots. They turn, Yeah, yeah,

(38:44):
that's the where riot police starts. Like all these people
don't want to work more than eight hours a day,
Better have the cops beat the ship, like yo, yeah, man,
I before I did music full time, like I taught
high school for a todd nine graators, you know, and uh,
I just knew instinctually, you know, I was a young teacher,

(39:06):
and you know, I'm like, before I thought neither, I
thought seniors. And I'm like, I'm four years older than you,
So I'm not gonna like, I'm not gonna send you
to the office, like that's stupid. Like I'm not gonna
try to act like some sort of boss here. I
just figured it was real simple. I performed better for teachers.
I liked, yeah, it's just simple. So I'm just like, yeah,

(39:28):
so I just felt like this, you know, my best
the best way to have classroom management is if these
kids like you. Yeah, it's the It's the thing that
I said that made so much sense when I was
in Rojava in northeast Syria, which is the idea that
like kind of the basic the stuff that we would
consider like the core of law enforcement, which is like
patrolling around a neighborhood making sure ship's fine, Like that's

(39:49):
often done by like local counsels heavily made up of
like old folks like fucking grandma and stuff, because like, yeah,
you don't want to don't want to be acting like
a fucking piece of ship in front of your grandma,
like grandma, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, straighten up,
fly right, Grandma come around the corner, you know, So
I did. Yeah, that's that's the prince. So I just
I've never understood how the boss and I mean I

(40:12):
got I got like an assistant and you know, management
and stuff like. That's always people on my pay roll,
and I just never like, why would they work? Why
would I who want to work for somebody they don't like? Yeah,
you know what I'm saying. Like, so if you just
if you run things like I just it just seems
so logical to me that you it's like to for

(40:36):
bag security purpose. Even if I'm just go that like
I'm just trying to secure this bag. I feel like
my employees should feel like I like them. Yeah. Maybe
that's why I'm not a kajillionaire because yeah, there's something
I don't get caring about what people think. Yeah, man,
I'll never account being accountable to feeling like I don't

(40:58):
have to be the smartest guy in the room all
the time. That's why I hired an accountant, because you
better need this. Yes, shout off with my accountant to
thank you, Sean. So right, yeah again, so riot police
kind of get started to break up these fucking um
these these what are essentially strikes are definitely strikes. Um.
And you know, this was a really good deal for

(41:20):
the owners of businesses because since the police departments were
now funded by the state, they got to break up
strikes against their businesses without spending you know, their own
money to do it. And as Dr Potter notes, the
use of delegated visual anties to break up strikes confused
the issue of workers rights with the issue of crime.
So people might be sympathetic towards workers who are striking

(41:41):
for a better deal, but they're not sympathetic towards criminals
who are rioting. So you frame a strike as a riot,
then you have a freer hand and just beat the
ship out of everybody involved. All these things. They're just thugs.
They had drugs on them. Yeah, yeah, definitely got it.
So early police broke up strikes in the same way

(42:02):
we're familiar with riot cops breaking at protests today unspeakable violence.
But they also had subtler methods of achieving the same end,
public order arrests, which were essentially police declaring someone's behavior
a crime for a non specific reason and then arresting them.
These gave police a way to break up union meetings
and gatherings before they could turn into strikes. In Chicago
during this period, eight percent of all arrests were public

(42:26):
order arrests of workers. Yeah. Yeah, so the infraction is
y'all standing around. Yeah, yeah, exactly, that's that's the that's
the okay, Yeah you're loitering. Yeah, you just know you're
going to jail. Yeah, yea allowed to stand here. Yeah. Again,
you can make some comparisons to all the states that

(42:48):
put in curfews and then suddenly said now it's illegal
to be out after five. So if you're out after five,
we can funk you up. Did you see it once?
I forget. I think there was a few of them
out here in California. One of the one of the
cities was like things you and do after the curfew,
go to the store, go to the groceries, pick up
your children being stuck in traffic. Things you can't do

(43:08):
after after curfew. Gather in large groups in front of
city hall. Yeah. I was just like, oh, work, okay,
So yeah, really like, oh we're okay, too much free
speech going on here. You gotta stop that ship. Yeah,
carry cardboard signs you can't do after got it? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
great first amendment we have. So between eighteen seventy and

(43:32):
nineteen hundred, nearly a million workers were jailed for public
order offenses. And just Chicago. Now, a lot of cities
also made use of what we're called tramp acts. These
criminalized traveling without having a visible means of support. So
if you were moving around in the city or the
world and you didn't weren't you didn't have money, clearly
like you didn't clearly have a job, um, you were

(43:54):
committing a crime. So in other words, it was illegal
in a lot of cities to be an unemployed, poor
person who left their home. So when workers would go
on strike and would lose their jobs for going on strike,
they were then breaking the law because they were outside
in the city and doing something besides looking for a
new job. What the I know, right, Land of the Free,

(44:15):
Like maybe serious? How good? Lord? Pretty good? Pretty good? Yeah?
And again like the arrests are of these people. So
if you're talking about like the police protecting people, who
are they protecting? Who are they serving? It's not most
of the people. Yeah anyway, yeah, yeah. Tramp acts were

(44:38):
of course not applied to members of the middle class
or wealthy individuals. It was only illegal to be out
and not laboring if you were a member of the
dangerous classes. Meanwhile, good citizens, respectable citizens, these were all
regular terms used, which again we're all kind of terms
for fully white citizens with money and property. Yeah, these
people were increasingly able rather than being increasingly pressed by

(45:00):
the police, those folks were increasingly able to call on
the police when they felt uncomfortable or afraid. The very
first alarm boxes were set up in major cities during
this period of time. And these were similar to the
dedicate you know in like on a college campus there
will be like very well lit like police phones that
like you presumably if you're getting sexually assault or something,
you'd like run over to it and call the cops. Um.

(45:20):
This this was the same basic idea, um, And they
were set up started being set it up in cities
in this area, particularly in like parts of cities where
they were like businesses and you know, upper upper income
housing and stuff. Um. And but they were locked, so
you couldn't most people couldn't actually use the alarm boxes,
but local businessmen and wealthy people were all given keys
because the police existed to be their on call personal security.

(45:46):
She oh my gosh, like just all allowed in the open. Yeah. Yeah,
there's not a lot of not a lot of I
don't know, masks on it and stuff. So it doesn't
even seem convenient. Like if I'm not, if I'm rich
and I'm being robbed, you think I got time to
like figure out which key to this is. Yeah, And

(46:06):
I don't think it was mostly them being robbed. I
think they would see like, oh, there's a bunch of
fucking Italians hanging out in this corner. I'd better get
the cops over here to kick their asses, Like I don't.
I don't want Italians on my street corner, and like
they're carrying ing you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're all
there's more than one of them. A gang must be
a gang. So yeah. Thanks to the advances of technology
that allowed alarm boxes to exist, property owners were able

(46:29):
to call on the police department, which was funded by
everyone's taxes, in order to protect their private wealth and increasingly,
just to kind of protect their sense of comfort. So
policing tools developed. With the need to break up strikes
and riots, patrol wagons began taking to the streets. This
allowed police to easily travel in large groups and easily
arrest large groups of people. Police on horseback also started

(46:51):
to appear, because horses were seen as the most effective
way to break up a group of protesters. Officers began
carrying long night sticks because breaking an activists skulls was
an increasing part of their job. Yeah. Throughout the later
half of the eighteen hundreds, early police departments were faced
with the question of whether or not officers should be
uniformed and given firearms. Sir Peel, the father of police work,

(47:13):
the guy who created the London Metropolitan Police, was pretty
stringently against cops packing heat. American police, though, began carrying
guns independently by virtue of arming themselves years before such
equipment became standard. So decades really before police departments are
giving everyone a gun. Cops are just kind of buying
their own guns because it is America. Yeah, and you

(47:35):
know what, you're right, it's effective if it's just like
it's like drinking again, it's like drinking bleach y. Yeah,
I mean it'll cure. I mean I'm pretty sure it'll
You won't. Yeah, you won't die from coronavirus. You if
you drink enough bleach. If you drink enough bleach, just like,
you know what, if you really want to send everybody home,
you know what, you're right, beat the ship at them

(47:57):
with billy clubs and guns. You're right, that will in
the protest. So the US police departments first started a
kind of like in an organized way, issuing arms to
police in like the eighteen forties, um. And when this
started to happen, the American public was extremely skeptical of
the idea because again, we are a freedom loving people,
and the idea that police would be allowed to deploy

(48:18):
deadly force at will against citizens was extremely unpopular. At first.
People are like, what the funk are you talking about? You? Like, again,
these people, we all understand, these people are basically the
same as thugs. And you want to you want to pay,
have the state pay for them to have guns. Now, Like,
that's not a great idea. Yeah, yeah, But as Dr
Gary Potter writes, quote, the value of armed paramilitary presence

(48:40):
authorized to use indeed deadly force served the interests of
local economic elites who had wanted organized police departments in
the first place. The presence of a paramilitary force occupying
the streets was regarded as essential because such organizations intervened
between the property and elites and property less masses who
were regarded as politically dangerous as a class. Now, these

(49:03):
propertied classes also considered it essential that police be uniformed
so that respectable citizens could identify them when they needed help,
and so that they would create an obvious, visible presence
to clamp down on unrest by the dangerous classes. Now, again,
uniforms would appear kind of scatter shot in different police departments,
and not for never for all of the police, but
for like some units and stuff would be uniformed for

(49:24):
a period of time. Many officers resisted uniforms because again
they're basically criminals, and it made them into a target.
The very first like uniformly uniformed, like everybody wears a uniform,
and that's that's part of the definition of what this
this group is. The very first police force for that
to be standard in was the Pennsylvania State Police. This

(49:45):
is in the United States at least, so the Pennsylvania
State Police the first explicitly fully uniformed police force we
have in this country. Now. The Pennsylvania State Police were
formed in nineteen o three in the wake of the
Great Anthracite Coal Strike of ninete you know too. For reference,
the strikers were fighting for a pay increase, a reduction

(50:05):
from ten to eight hours a day in their work day,
and a fairer system for weighing coal. This strike caused
the price of coal to skyrocket right as winter hit,
which put enormous pressure on the state government and on
the federal government to put Pennsylvania's minds back to work,
because Pennsylvania's like the fucking the coal basket. Um. Yeah,
So the Great Anthracite Coal Strikers were opposed by a

(50:25):
mix of Pinkerton's who were essentially a mercenary police force.
We'll talk more about him a bit later, and the
Coal and Iron Police. Now, the Coal and Iron Police
was a five thousand man army run by the coal
companies in Pennsylvania but empowered and funded by the State
of Pennsylvania to basically do whatever they had to do
to break strikes. This generally involved terrific violence, and over

(50:46):
the course of the Great Anthracite Coal Strike, the Coal
and Iron Police gunned several people down. But the strikers
were able to put pressure on mine owners for a
hundred and sixty three straight days, and they eventually gained
You know, modest concessions and they didn't get a raise
in an eight hour work day, but they got a
ten percent raise in a nine hour work day, so
you know, take what you can. Yeah, oh this was okay. No,

(51:08):
I was gonna ask the question, but I answered it myself.
I mixed it with like I thought, maybe that was
like the railway company guy that like started a city
and had a Yeah, that's something else. Okay, never mind
that is happening during this period, you know you're having
and that the coal and iron police are kind of
the same thing, Like they're these communities are all miners
and using state partially ely state funds, the mine companies

(51:30):
establish a police department to keep their minds in order
and really to keep their workers from striking. So the
Pennsylvania State Police was established after the Great Anthracite Coal
Strike or Anthracite Strike whatever, because the state was governed
by mine owners and their friends and the state wanted
a dedicated paramilitary unit to violently suppress future strikes. The
coal and iron police weren't good enough at their jobs.

(51:51):
So this is where we get the first uniformed police
department in US history. Is specifically, like we didn't kill
enough people last time. We needed like a four that
can really funk with people who go on strike. So
in our last episode we discussed the fact that police
departments in the American South evolved out of slave patrols,
which were essentially a counter insurgency force. That similar evolution

(52:12):
at least occurred elsewhere in the United States, even outside
of the South. In eighteen ninety eight, the United States
went to war with Spain, one of the least justified
wars in our long history of unjustified wars. But because
Spain was at the time also a terrible colonialist empire,
the US wound up fighting them for control of the Philippines.
Now Spain had controlled that massive islands quite brutally, and

(52:33):
the US continued this tradition, murdering as many as two
thousand civilians battling the insurgency that followed our occupation of
the Philippines. Much of this murdering was done by the
Philippine Constabulary, the occupation force our government put in place
over those islands, and back in the United States, the
Pennsylvania State Police were formed directly an imitation of the

(52:53):
Philippine Constabulary. So yeah, the the and this is still
the state Police in Pennsylvania today. They started out as
people looking at Okay, you remember when we killed we
committed that quasi genocide in the Philippines. What if we
take all of that advice, use it to make the
Pennsylvania State Police and have them sunk up anyone who
goes on strike. That's where the Pennsylvania State Police come from.

(53:14):
What the okay god Like, oh yeah, so Pennsylvania residence.
The next time you see a Pennsylvania State Police car,
be like, hey, man, granddad's an asshole anyway. Yeah, yeah,

(53:36):
So the Pennsylvania State Police were formed as an all white,
all native meaning you know, born in the United States force.
So that's what you mean by native. Yeah, exactly, white
people born in the US, as opposed to white people
who immigrated here, right, Like that's what they mean. Yeah, okay, buddy, yea.
So the singular purpose of the Pennsylvania State Police was

(53:56):
to break the strikes that increasingly popped up in Pennsylvania's
coal fields near the turn of the century. Mine workers
tended to be a mix of Irish, German, and Eastern
European immigrants. A lot of checks were in this kind
of like mining population also a lot of Russians and
kind of people we don't call Russians today, but we're
Russians back then because Russian was bigger um and it
was only logical to the rich white mine owners and
their friends in government that the same tactics that worked

(54:18):
on undesirable races in Southeast Asia would also work on
undesirable races right here in the United States. It was
seen as critically important than to stop the Pennsylvania State
Police from developing any kind of rapport from the people
they controlled. The state police lived in special barracks is
outside of the mining towns, and this was done to
avoid any kind of social intermingling. The only time these

(54:39):
people should see the folks that were policing is when
they were cracking their fucking skulls the road horses to
allow them to more effectively trample strikers. In nineteen o six,
five thousand Windburg, Pennsylvania miners went on strike against their employer,
the Berwin White Coal Mining Company. Berwin White was anti union,
and the largely Slovak miners of wind Burr wanted to
join the United Mine Workers. Of a mayor account, the

(55:00):
Pennsylvania Police responded by riding into town, murdering three adult
miners and one young boy, by firing wildly into crowds
and brutally trampling anyone who fell down and letters home
to their families. The immigrant miners referred to the Pennsylvania
State Police as Cossacks. Do you know what the Cossacks were?
I mean, they're still around, Like, where have I heard

(55:21):
that word? It's um, it's an ethnic group in Russia,
but it was during the period of the Czar. These
were like basically kind of like these tribes of horse
mounted warriors who the Tsar used as his shock troopers. Primarily,
like they fought in wars, but like their biggest job
was fucking up riots and protests and comedics and genocide occasionally. Yeah.
So these people who are like used to the Czar

(55:43):
sending in his Cossacks when there's unrest to murder people.
They come to the US and they see the Pennsylvania
police murdering them and they're like, oh, these are like
the same fucking things as the Czar's shock troopers. Yeah. Yeah,
the risk you know, coming across the whole ocean before
airplane just to get this, what are we even doing

(56:03):
like it was different here. Yeah. Yeah, I'm like, Yo,
this ain't like the five will American you know American
tale story I thought was. I thought there was no
cats in America. You know what I'm saying. This supposed
to be better when we get here. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
y'all came by choice. So that's the part where I'm
just like, why didn't you all look at each other
and be like, you know what, guys, this was a

(56:25):
bad call. Beer's worse too, beers. So on a related note,
while doing my research, I came across a January article
in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette about Pennsylvania State Police. In
case you're curious about how the Pennsylvania State Police is
doing to day, this article points out that in two
thousand two, following a New Jersey scandal overr state troopers

(56:46):
engaging in racial profiling, the Pennsylvania State Police began collecting
racial data on their traffic stops and sending it to
the University of Cincinnati for analysis and to its credit.
To their credit, the data revealed that the Pennsylvania State
Police were not exhibiting in racial bias and who they
pulled over. So that's nice. However, the data did show
that they were exhibiting hell of bias when it came

(57:06):
to who they searched. Troopers were two to three times
as likely to search black or Hispanic drivers as white drivers,
even though black and Hispanic drivers were vastly less likely
to have contraband on their persons than white drivers. Now
and again, this is pretty true across the nation, but
it was specifically true for the Pennsylvania State Police. They're
like three times as likely to search you if you're
black or Hispanic, but white people are the ones actually

(57:29):
bringing all the drugs in. So when this data was
made public, the Pennsylvania State Police ended their relationship with
the University of Cincinnati because the University of Cincinnati show
that they were being racist as hell. Uh. And the
Pennsylvania State Police is now the largest of only eleven
statewide law enforcement agencies in the nation who do not
collect racial data during stops. Wow, so that's good, good

(57:51):
on you. Okay there it is Pennsylvania State Police. Yeah,
if I can, if I can draw some logical like
ties with this one, like you know why and brown
people are less likely to have contraband on them is
because we more likely to be searched. That's just as reels.
It's real simple, you know, like you know, so we're
not gonna have it on us, right also and and

(58:15):
I a little a little tangent on this, but like
your and it's so crazy that like it's it's all
out of this fear of these you know, this dangerous class.
But like the truth is, we're probably not gonna rob
that Chad or Tyler or Hunter or Karen because the

(58:40):
police will come if we rob you. So the truth
is you're actually more safe than the rest of us
because because if one of us die, if one of
us get robbed, please don't care, you know what I'm saying.
But but I know the police come in if if

(59:02):
Karen has issues. So it's such a like this like
this this bias that like is just a reality of
our life, you know. In some ways, again, I get
how it's worked. If we're talking sheer pragmatism in favor

(59:26):
for this white ruling class, which is why we called
it privilege. If you can't follow along, you know what
I'm saying, Like it's but it's just it's but it's privileged,
but not how you think it's. Like it's it's different.
It's not it's not the way you set it up for. Yeah, yeah,
it's this thing. It's like there was that video going
around of I don't know a week or so ago

(59:47):
and maybe a wee get into the protests when like
those I think it was in l A. This like
big group of like white people all like recited a
thing renouncing their white privilege, and I'm like, it doesn't
work like that. You can't just it's guys. Thanks, Like, yeah,
I'm sure you feel good. But like now, if you
were to get rid of the l A p D,
then you actually have reduced your white privilege. That's that's

(01:00:08):
a step then you have. Yeah, I'm like you could
just like use it for good, you know. Like there's
that I'm saying. Yeah, it's so funny. It's like we're
like man, some some some somebody somebody's And it sucks
to say it because I'm like, I am deeply and
intimately involved with and love white progressive circles. I am involved,

(01:00:32):
These are my friends, is in my family, you know
what I'm saying. Um, But it's so funny to watch
them like simultaneously do the most and nothing at all
at the same time. You know what I'm saying, like
that's such a such a grand statement to be like
I'm denouncing my privilege, but that literally does nothing for me.

(01:00:53):
So like it's like it's it's I can't It's like
I don't know, I don't know what to tell you guys,
Like I just just you know, treat us fairly and
help us to fund the police. That's all. Like, you know,
you ain't gotta what fun you what we wearing a

(01:01:14):
kintake cloth for, Like, just make some good laws, makes
some good laws. Just makes some good laws or remove
bad ones either helps, just just one of in things.
Thank you appreciate it. I see you're we're here, we're listening.
I see it. Can you just like make some laws though,
you know, unfuncked the fun a little bit. Yeah anyway, Yeah,

(01:01:35):
that feels like a good note to take a break on.
I'm just saying, speaking of unfucking the funcknus. You know
what what fuck the funcknus? More is these product Executive
producer Paris Hilton brings back the hit podcast How Men Think,

(01:01:56):
And that's good news for anyone that is confused by men,
which is basically everyone get an inside look at what
goes on in the mind of men from the men themselves.
It's real talk, straight from the source. How Men Think
podcast is exactly what we need to figure them out.
It's going to be fun and formative and probably a
bit scary at times, because we're literally going inside the

(01:02:19):
minds of men. As much as we like to think
all men are the same, they're actually very different. Each week,
a celebrity guest host provides honest advice in his area
of expertise. When I agreed to do this reboot, I
had a few conditions. No sugarcoating, no mind games, and
absolutely no man splaining. Men are hard enough to understand

(01:02:41):
without the mind games. Listen to How Men Think on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts. I'm Tanya Sam, host of the Money
Moves podcast powered by Greenwood. This daily podcast will help
give you the keys to the Kingdom of financial stability,
wealth and abundance. With celebrity like Rick Ross, Amanda Selle's
Angela Ye, Roland Martin, JB. Smooth, and Terrell Owens. Tune

(01:03:05):
in to learn how to turn liabilities into assets and
make your money move Subscribe to the Money Moves podcast
powered by Greenland on the I Heart Radio app or
wherever you get your podcasts, and make sure you leave
a review. I'm Jake Halbern, host of deep Cover. Our
new season is about a lawyer who helped the mob

(01:03:27):
run Chicago. We controlled the courts, We controlled absolutely everything.
He bribed judges and even helped a hit man walk
free until one day when he started talking with the
FBI and promised that he could take the mob down.
I've spent the past year trying to figure out why
he flipped and what he was really after. From my perspective,

(01:03:48):
Bob was too good to be true. There's gotta be
something wrong with this. I wouldn't trust that guy. He
looks like a little scum, big lawyer, stool bidging you
looked like what he was or at. I can say
with all certainty I think he's a hero because he
didn't have to do what he did, and he did
it anyway. The moment I put the wire around the
first time, my life was over. If it ever got out,

(01:04:09):
they would kill me in a heartbeat. Listen to deep
Cover on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts. We're back and we're talking
about for good. And one way you can use your
privilege to good for good is I don't know, if
you're listening and you happen to have purple heart plates

(01:04:31):
and you have a bunch of friends who have to
drive substances somewhere, maybe you ought to be the one
driving the substances because the police aren't going to give
a shit about you. That's what I'm saying. That's what
I'm saying. Yeah, veterans for drug smuggling. Is that, yes, yes,
record that. Like, I'm not trying to go hard. I'm
not trying to go hard at my wife progressives like

(01:04:54):
I appreciate all in the costs. It's just I just
want to say that, Okay, this is fun day. So yeah,
it's worth considering, within the broader context of the development
of US law enforcement that the cops did not always
site enthusiastically when cap with capital when it came to
struggles over labor. We previously did a two part episode
on the Battle of Blair Mountain, which was a massive
coal strike that ended it in an enormous, pitched battle

(01:05:16):
that included aerial bombardment, machine guns, and thousands of combatants
on both sides. One of the great Union heroes of
that whole mess was Sheriff sid Hatfield, who gunned down
several mercenaries from the Baldwin Felts detective agencies. Many strikes
did take place in small communities out in the middle
of nowhere, and law enforcement in those places was much
more kind of rooted in public spirit, these old attitudes
of what law enforcement should be, than kind of the

(01:05:38):
new attitudes about law enforcement. And in those cases, you know,
cops who were sort of like elected or brought up
within the community and felt like a part of it,
and the community was all Union law enforcement would regularly
side with the strikers in those situations, or it would
at least feel too frightened of their neighbors to enthusiastically
back the mind companies. And this was enough of a problem.
This wasn't everywhere, but it was enough of a problem.

(01:05:59):
That's Starting in the eighteen seventies, capitalists also began using
private police as strikebreakers with increasing frequency, and no private
police agency did a better job of this than the Pinkerton's.
You know about the Pinkerton's. We're talking some Pinkerton's now
I do know about the Pinkers. Yeah, we're talking about
some motherfucking Pinkerton's. She's yeah, we're gonna have to do
a whole two partner probably in the Pinkerton's at some point.

(01:06:20):
But but you can't talk about the history of US
law enforcement talking about some motherfucking Pinkerton's. Yes, yeah, the
cock sucking Pinkerton's to pull pull from fucking deadwood. Yum,
So here it goes. Allan Pinkerton was born in Glasgow, Scotland,
in eighteen nineteen. His father was a policeman of the
for profit freelance Variety and he was killed on the job.

(01:06:41):
So Alan grew up dirt poor, laboring from an early
age to help keep his family fed. He became an
activist in his youth, agitating for democratic reform in Great Britain,
and he was violenced by the state for speaking out
against it. By eighteen forty two, he had been forced
to flee the country with his wife. The pair wound
up living in Dundee, Illinois, and Allan set up barrel
making business. In eighteen forty seven, year old Allan Pinkerton

(01:07:04):
traveled out to an uninhabited island to look for wood
that he could make into more barrels, because that was
his thing. He found a campsite there, and the camp
site was abandoned but clearly fresh. And because he was
a born and bred cop, this guy was like kind
of in his fucking bones a cop. H Allen decided
not to mind his own damn business. He returned to
that night and hid nearby until the camp's occupants, a

(01:07:24):
group of counterfeiters, returned. Alan instantly went to the sheriff
and reported them, and the gang was arrested. So not
my kind of dude, but like fundamentally a cop, like
emotionally a cop. So counterfeiting was a massive problem for
business owners in the yearly United States, and the local
merchants made Pinkerton into a hero for busting this group.
He started getting offers to investigate other crimes, and very

(01:07:46):
quickly Allan Pinkerton had become the go to man for
busting counterfeit coin operations in Illinois. He was soon deputized
by the sheriff of Kane County, Illinois, and in eighteen
forty nine he became the city of Chicago's first full
time detective. By eighteen fifth, Alan founded Pinkerton's Detective Agency.
In less than twenty years, it had expanded to include
branches in New York and Philadelphia. Allen quickly expanded outside

(01:08:09):
of just detective work. He created Pinkerton's Protective Police Patrol,
a group of uniformed night watchmen that local businesses could
hire to protect their shops. Pinkerton men, some of whom
were women, also acted as undercover cops, often feeding information
on criminal syndicates directly to regular police. The Pinkerton's grew
to become a legendary force in the Old West, helping

(01:08:30):
to hunt down criminals like Jesse James, and there is
some moral complexity years This isn't an easy story because
while Alan Pinkerton was absolutely just a total fucking cop,
he was also a really staunch and consistent abolitionist. Part
of what drew him to hunt down Jesse James was
the fact that James had been an enthusiastic Confederate soldier. Pinkerton, meanwhile,
had worked for the Underground Railroad and had helped to

(01:08:52):
guard Abraham Lincoln. But even when pinkerton targets were clearly
bad people like James, their methods were often still unaccountably brutal.
The Pinkerton Agency actually rated Jesse James's house. It was
basically like a no knock raid that they carried out,
and they fucked up and attacked during a time when
James was not present, and instead, during the raid they
blew off his mother's arm and murdered his eight and

(01:09:13):
a half year old younger brother. Um like, yeah, this, this,
this is a fucking no knock right, yeah, so again,
even when they picked the right bad guys, they wound
up murdering an eight year old. She's not great. Not great.
So later in life, Allan Pinkerton hit upon the brilliant
idea of writing semi fictionalized accounts of the most famous

(01:09:33):
detective cases in Pinkerton history, and these books became some
of the very first true crime stories in the history
of literature. But while the agency was famous for tales
of sleuthing and daring do while confronting bandits and bank robbers,
the bulk of the Pinkerton Agency's business came from protecting
capital by fighting labor. The first Pinkerton strike breakers were
hired in eighteen sixty six when miners in Illinois went

(01:09:55):
on strike and the mining company needed protection for their scabs,
which are the people like the company rings in to
work the minds when the workers refuse. Now, over the years,
the Pickerton has developed a standard set of procedures, with
armed men escorting scabs into factories and mines while Pinkerton
guards and towers aimed machine guns at strikers to keep
them away. Alan Pinkerton died in eighteen eighty four, and

(01:10:16):
his son took over the agency and doubled down on
strike breaking. By eighteen nine two, the Pinkerton's had helped
to break seventy seven strikes. Now, after eighteen nine two,
though the agency really stopped doing as much over at
strike breaking. They shifted more into industrial espionage and infiltrating
labor movements rather than confronting them with guns. And the
reason for this was because of a vicious battle that

(01:10:38):
took place in the town of Homestead, Pennsylvania. Here we go, Yeah,
the Homestead strike, So we go. Homestead was a steel
town built around and for a huge steel plant owned
by the Carnegie Steel Company. You know, you've all we
all here know the Carnegie Foundation. We hear about them
in like PBS and ship. Yeah, this is where that
money comes from. So in eighteen ninety there of rolled

(01:11:00):
steel products that started to fall and the manager of
the Homestead plant, a dude named Henry Frick, decided to
cut wages. Neither his wages nor his boss are Andrew
Carnegie's wages were to be cut, of course, and in fact,
to maintain their wages, they had to take the company
losses out of their workers pockets, and they decided the
best way to do that was to destroy the Amalgamated
Association of Iron and Steel Workers, which was at the

(01:11:22):
time the nation's largest craft union. Now here's where it
gets interesting, because Andrew Carnegie was, you know, one of
the good ones if we're talking about millionaires, Like that's
how a lot of people would have viewed him at
the time. Um, he was vocally pro labor, Like he
made public statements in favor of labor and saying that
unions had a reason to exist. And this was in
keeping with his reputation as a philanthropist, you know, a

(01:11:42):
millionaire you could trust. But of course, the instant his
profits were threatened, Carnegie had no time for the union
anymore and resisted, uh like efforts, Yeah exactly. So like
he's he's like, yeah, unions are fine when the money
is good, but when his money has threatened, unions gotta go.
That's Andrew carneg Yeah, it sounds about right, sounds about right.

(01:12:03):
So in the in the spring of eight two, Carnegie
instructed Frick to push company workers to make as much
steel as possible before the union contract expired that June,
because the union contract expired and then they were gonna
have to negotiate a new one, and the union didn't
want to make less money, but Carnegie wanted to pay
them less. So if the union had failed to accept
the new terms that Carnegie and Frick offered, Andrew was

(01:12:25):
just going to have the plant managers shut the factory
down until the laborers were lented. He wrote to Frick,
we approve of every anything you do. We are with
you to the end. Now Carnegie wasn't physically with Frick,
how of course, he was off at one of his
many palaces. This one was in Scotland, just kind of
chilling um. So Frick was left to figure out how
to confront labor on his own. And I'm going to
quote now from a write up on the strike and

(01:12:46):
PBSS American Experience Series with Carnegie's carte blaunch support, Frick
moved to slash wages. Plant workers were responded by hanging
freaking effigy. The union fought not just for better wages,
but also for a say in America's new industrial order.
Though Carnegie and Frick had brought unions to heal at
their other mills, Homestead remained untamed. Workers believe that because
they had worked in the mill, they had mixed their

(01:13:08):
labor with the property of the mill. Explains historian Paul Krauss.
They believed that in some way the property had become theirs,
not that it wasn't Andrew Carnegie's, not that they were
the sole proprietors of the mill, but that they had
an entitlement to the mill. And I think, in a
fundamental way, the conflict at Homestead in two was about
these two conflicting ideas of property. Now, on June, Freak

(01:13:29):
announced that he would no longer negotiate with the union.
Now he would only deal with the workers individually. Leaders
had amalgamated were willing to concede on almost every level
except the dissolution of their union. On June, despite the
union's willingness to negotiate, Frick closed down his open hearth
and armor plate mills, locking out thirty eight hundred men.
So there's a lot that's interesting here. One of them

(01:13:50):
is that like a lot of these guys, you know,
these guys aren't super educated, they haven't read you know,
their marks or whatever, but they kind of recognized this
idea of like, oh, you know, not that worker. They
weren't like workers should own the means of production, but
they were like workers should co own the means of production. Yeahatly,
that's kind of the idea. These guys kind of come
to of their own accord. Now, the union men desperately

(01:14:12):
tried to contact Andrew Carnegie once a Frick closed the plant,
because again they thought he was a good guy, like
he'd said that unions were okay. They thought that he
just didn't understand what was really happening because he was
so distant, and if they if they could let him
know how bad things for the were for them and
how bad Frick was treating them, then he would back them.
But of course Andrew Carnegie didn't give a shit about
these people. He was on vacation and he had no

(01:14:34):
time for them. He did, however, have time for Frick.
He advised Frick that now was their time to destroy
the union, believing that his workers would surely give it
up if it meant keeping their jobs, even it reduced salary.
His workers disagreed. Only seven hundred and fifty homestead men
had belonged to the union before all this happened, but
three thousand of the plants thirty eight hundred workers agreed
to strike once Frick closed the doors. Now to combat them,

(01:14:56):
Frick built a fortress to keep them out, including a
twelve foot high, three mile long fence topped with barbed wire.
Deputy sheriffs were sworn in to man the fence with rifles.
But those sheriffs and their families lived in Homestead, and
when three thousands of their neighbors marched on Fort Frick,
as it was known, all these deputy sheriffs were like,
I'm not I'm not gonna kill all these people I
live with. Like, that's that seems like a bad call.

(01:15:19):
So they laid down their arms and left. Now workers
then occupied the plant and effectively took over the entire
town of Homestead for the very first time in American history.
Laborers had quite literally seized the means of production. Now
Andrew Carnegie was not a fan of this. He didn't
take it lying down. Well, he actually probably was lying
down in Scotland, but he hired a bunch of armed

(01:15:40):
Pinkerton's to not take it lying down. For so, the
Pinkerton's three d and some out of them got on
a bunch of a couple of barges and attempted an
aquatic landing at Homestead, essentially a sort of capitalist Normandy,
or more accurately Gliboli. The heavily armed Pinkerton's expected this
to be like any of the other dozens of strike
they broken. You know, they might have to gun down

(01:16:01):
a few people, but these dirt poor factory serfs surely
would not be able to compete with their modern Winchester rifles.
Three mercenaries with modern guns were sure to be enough
to break Homesteads resistance. And again Carnegie and Frick had
underestimated the men of Homestead, as one leader recalled to
be confronted with a gang of loafers and cutthroats from
all over the country coming here there as they thought

(01:16:22):
to take their jobs. Why they naturally wanted to go
down and defend their homes and their property with their
lives with force if necessary. Course, yeah, and defend their
lives the men of Homestead did. When the Pinkerton's landed,
they were warned not to step off their barge. When
they ignored that warning, people started fucking shooting at them,
and a huge gun battle began. And yeah, yeah, yeah

(01:16:43):
that movie. Where's that movie? I know there might be
a movie about it. They probably there should be. More so,
the Pinkerton's used their steel barges as floating bunkers, firing
out at a crowd of Homestead citizenry. The homesteaders had
shipped for guns, mostly a handful of hunting rifles and
old muskets, but they had a lot of those, and
they also had a twenty ound cannon that they got
from somewhere. They had dynamite, which they tossed like grenades.

(01:17:04):
A local hardware merchant donated all of the ammunition in
his store to the crowd, and for twelve hours the
gun battle raged on. By six am the next day,
more than five thousand spectators from Pittsburgh had shown up
to watch from the river banks. At eight am, Yes,
like a live movie. Yeah, we gotta go see the war.
There's a war going on. Next. All, Yeah, I guess

(01:17:26):
I'll take a look. Yeah. By eight am, the Pinkerton's
had tried to land again. Workers fired their cannon and
attempted to scuttle the barges by ramming them with both
a burning raft and a burning railroad car. None of
this quite worked. Yeah, they were. They were really given
it a shot. They committed just like, look, look, yeah,

(01:17:48):
we can't shoot through these barges, but we can throw
giant flaming things at the barges and that'll probably funk
them up a bit. Now. None of this sunk the barges,
but the sheer of fire from the crowd was terrifying
to the Pinkerton's who cowered inside. One recalled the noise
that they made on the shore was awful, and it
made us shake in our boots. We were pinned in

(01:18:09):
like rats, and we went at the fighting like desperate
wild men. All of the men were under the beds
and bunks, crying and trembling. Another Pinkertons werecalled. It was
a place of torment. When men were lying around, wounded
and bleeding and piteously begging someone to give them a
drink of water, but no one dared to get a drop,
although water was all around us. It was a wonder
we did not all go crazy or commit suicide. The

(01:18:31):
Pinkerton's tried to surrender four times, and each white flag
they rose up was shot down by a sniper on
the board, Like we're not done shooting it, you guys yet, friendship. Yeah. Eventually,
though the crowd did except the Pinkerton's surrender. The mercenary
cops were led onto the shore, beaten and clubbed and
pelted with stones as they were taken to the local

(01:18:52):
jail and eventually sent out of town by train. Three
to eight Pinkerton's were killed, along with a similar number
of strikers, and dozens and dozens of people were wounded.
It was a victory for the laboring folks of Homestead,
but sadly, not one that lasted. Frick next asked the
governor to send in the militia, and since the state
government basically existed to serve the desires of wealthy mine
owners and the like, the government said yes. The strikers

(01:19:14):
knew better than to try to do battle with the
militia who had machine guns, and so they surrendered. Yeah. Yeah.
Homestead was put under martial law Carnegie was able to
move in his scab workers. And of course this is
where things get morally complex again because the scab workers
Carnegie picks were a lot of them were black, UM
and in fact these were like the very first black
steel workers in the state. UM. And this led to

(01:19:35):
a horrible race riot, as two thousand white union men
assaulted fifty black families and a number of people were
badly injured in the resulting gun battle. And this is
a regular story throughout the labor movement, is like, our
workers are on strike, black people, we can bring them in,
we can pay them less, um and like it'll it'll
like they don't like there's not a solidarity between these

(01:19:56):
poor black and these poor white people, UM for obvious reasons,
because poor people real shitty to poor black people. But
like it provided an opportunity for people at Carnegie. Yeah, yeah,
who desperately needed work. And yeah, yep, yep, not great.
It's complicated, complicated history here. By November of eight two,

(01:20:16):
the Amalgamated Union was finished. Strike leaders were charged with
murder and a hundred and sixty union men were charged
with lesser crimes. Now, local juries did refuse to convict
them because again the juries were made up of the
people who had taken part in this uprising. But this
was the end of unionization in Homestead for a while.
Once victory was well and truly achieved, Carnegie cabled Frick
Life worth living again, first happy morning since July. To celebrate,

(01:20:39):
he immediately cut wages, expanded the workday a twelve hours,
and fired five hundred people. Good stuff. Good stuff. But
after Homestead, the Pinkerton's were never quite the same, and
it would be fair to say that the whole experience
made the agency a lot less willing to go engage
in physical aggression. But the agency still exists to this
day and still works as a private least force for

(01:21:00):
the rich and powerful. In two thousand and eighteen, when
workers for Frontier Communications went on striking West Virginia and
Normal Virginia, the company hired the Pinkerton Agency, now part
of Securitas, a massive Swedish corporation. Pinkerton basically acts as
a rentable FBI for mega corporations dealing with labor disputes.
I'm gonna quote now from a write up in The
New Republic. Okay, wait before you quote this, Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(01:21:22):
did you say, West Virginia and regular Virginia. I sure
did that? Is I say this as a statement of fact.
I attribute no value, good or bad to this statement.
But West Virginia is a time warp. I'm like, West

(01:21:49):
Virginia is currently a hundred years ago. Yeah, it's certainly
not regular Virginia. Yes, So when you said that, and
it's something that you know, I'm gonna group text with
a tow different touring artists, like we're all just homies,
but we all talked about like yo, I feel like
West Virginia is back to the future, Like it's the
Internet hasn't been invented in West Virginia, Like we don't

(01:22:09):
what why is this state forty years ago? Yeah? Yeah,
it's a trip to me anyway. So West Virginia and
regular Virginia. Just I I almost feel vindicated that I'm
not I'm not the only person me and my eight
friends and the only people that feel like, yeah, I
understand what's happening in West Virginia right now. Like I

(01:22:30):
feel like everyone who has driven from regular Virginia to
Western Virginia immediately had the realization like, oh, I'm not
in regular Virginia any This isn't Virginia anymore. I don't
even know why it's both called. Yeah, should change our
name because this is this is not the same North Carolina,
South Carolina. A few differences Carolinas, but you're Carolinas, Virginia,

(01:22:51):
West Virginia. That's a different planet. I mean, I'll say
there's a big South Dakota North Dakota split. But also
why the two there's like nine people in both states?
Come poppy seeds? Is nine people poppy seeds in Dakotas? Yes,
all right, we've anyway, I just read the quote. I
just had to acknowledge regular Virginia. That's how I feel.

(01:23:17):
That's how I feel. Yeah. So, in the modern day,
the Pinkerton Agency, basically and it's just called Pinkerton, now
acts as a rentable FBI for megacorporations fucking over their workers.
And I'm gonna quote now from a write up in
The New Republic. Pinkerton is hardly the only firm to
advertise such services, but its history sets it apart, and
the company embraces its legacy with one called to Pinkerton,

(01:23:37):
you gain access to our global networker resources, providing boots
on the ground when and where you need them. It
promises a securitis aid for the firm, lists labor demonstrations
as among the risks it can monitor. Trouble can happen
anytime anywhere. A narrator in tones tones tone is just
so treating and I had a physical response to that,

(01:23:58):
like any Uh. The Pinkerton promise is attractive to some
Silicon Valley firms. The Guardian reported on March sixteenth that
Facebook and Google have both retained Pinkerton to monitor staff
for leaks. Among other services, Pinkerton offers to send investigators
to coffee shops or restaurants near a company's campus to
eavesdrop on employee conversations. Olivia Salon reported, Pinkerton's still out there,

(01:24:21):
still fucking with labor. Yeah, just just rich boy hall monitors. Yeah,
what if they relaxed, bro? Yeah, you know how you
know how little accountability the FBI has currently? What if
it just had none? Okay, guys, stay with me here,
FBI that we could pay to do whatever we want. Yeah. Yeah,

(01:24:47):
Like you know how that FBI agent who was doing
a backflip at a club and accidentally shot that guy
when his gun fall out. You know who he got
in trouble. What if there was even less accountability than that.
I almost I almost forgot that happened. Yeah, oh my
wild that happened. Yes, good lord. Wow. So Prop, we're
at the end of another episode, another chapter in police history.

(01:25:11):
UM I haven't as of yet finished writing the third episode.
But we're gonna talk something about the KKK. We're gonna
talk some about lynchings. We're gonna talk some about how
the police departments stopped lynchings by just deciding to torture
black people instead. It's not gonna be it's not pretty good. Yeah,
talking about l APD recruiting Southern people from post gym. Yeah,

(01:25:33):
we're gonna have to talk about that something. Yeah. We
have a lot more to talk about, but for now,
what we should talk about is your plug doubles. Yes, uh,
PROP hip hop dot com. Uh, that's all the poetry
in the in the music and the art and the
uh the coffee paraphernalia and the podcasts um hood politics

(01:25:59):
and the red ouchpod couches me and my wife hood
politics exactly what it sounds like. I'm basically taking all
that you know about politics and just explaining them in
street terms. Um. As to a lot of ways. I
just I really just want people to like realize your
politicians aren't smarter than you. You just you you think

(01:26:21):
you're you think you don't belong at the table. But
what I'm trying to tell you is what this whole
episode in series has proven. They just people and they
just gang banging. They're just gang bang it. So if
you understand, if you accept that your politicians are gangbangers
in all, this is just gang life, you can understand politics.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the thing. Like that Nobody

(01:26:44):
Speak video that like it did real well, it's like,
you know, this is like all these people, these are
just different gangs, and we decide this gang gets all
the respect. This is basically it. You know, when when okay,
so when we all know, I mean, I like, really
name a Republican politician that actually likes Donald Trump? Like

(01:27:05):
y'all don't like him, but I get it. He's from
your hood. So since he's from your hood, you keep
your mouth shut in public. That's just that's why nobody's talking.
That's why he told the lines like from my hood.
I can't. I mean, he's eat from my hood. I
get it. Yeah, don't you don't you sell a shirt
that says, uh, yes, you ever a shirt that politics

(01:27:27):
is just gang banging or something like that. Yeah, politics
is gangbanging in nice suits. Yeah, that's the T shirt.
Oh and I actually I'm gonna help your plug. I
ordered the worst year ever T shirt. It's not here
yet store, and they'll get it at that Synergy. I
like the one. Here's a shirt that store that says
Republican Democrat. I'll awake. I was like, okay, I need that.

(01:27:50):
I need that immediately. I do want to what we're
talking about gangs and what they are in reality. I
wanted to have you ever heard of Smedley Butler? Prop
I want to talk about Smedley Butler for just a second.
Before he put down put Smedley Butler was a major general.
He's one of the highest decorated soldiers in US history.
Home did one two Medals of honor Um for gallantry

(01:28:13):
under fire, and became a hardcore anti capitalist in in
his his later days. I want to quote from like
two different speeches of his. I spent thirty three years
and four months in active military service as a member
of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps.
I served in all commissioned ranks, from second lieutenant to
major general, and during that period I spent most of
my time being a high class muscle man for big business,

(01:28:36):
for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I
was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. She's yeah, She's yeah,
Smedley Butler, Smedley Butler, you said you said that, you
said the quiet thing out loud. Yeah, and it's and
it's like and it's the obvious. Yeah. Day, alright, alright, dude,

(01:28:58):
we got some Smedley in here. We'll can be back
to cops in part three. Have a great one, everybody,
Thank you again, prop and thank you. See you all
next week with more of the Police. Not the Band,
Not the Band Behind the Police is a production of
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(01:29:20):
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