December 19, 2023 • 37 mins
Mia talks with Raven, a Chicago journalist with Jynx Press, about how ShotSpotter fails as a way to detect gunshots and how Chicago cops use it to commit crimes.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
It's it's another Chicago episode. It's it could happen here,
the podcast where Things Fall Apart. I'm your host, Neil Wong.
This is this is another episode about Chicago police departments
who occupy a city groaning under its tyranny, and with
you to talk about some absolutely bad shit at Chicago
(00:28):
police stuff and also how Brandon Johnson our mayor is
also shit? Is Raven the Chicago journalist from Jing suppress.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Hi is our mayor? Ever not shit?
Speaker 2 (00:43):
You know, No, it's always shit. It's never got bad.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
It's never not bad, and it's always like, you know,
the progressive darling who ran on promises and then slowly
breaks them and you know, breaks every one of hearts
over time.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Yeah, I will. I will say Brandon Johnson wasted absolutely
no time on the heartbreaking part, like he really he
really just wanted to rush that shit out. So there's
a lot of there's a lot of Brandon Johnson stuff
that we could talk about and we will want eventually
we're gonna do the episode on the bigrant camp in
(01:22):
the fucking the migrant camp and the toxic waste dump.
But that that's gonna happen next year. Right now, we
want to talk about a different, utterly insane Chicago thing. Well,
this is actually a thing in other cities too. I
wanted to talk about shot Spotter, So I guess to
start with, can you explain what shot spotter is for
(01:44):
people who don't have it in their city or don't.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Know, Well, it's in i want to say, like one
hundred and thirty different cities across the country, so a
lot of people probably do have it. But it's a
gunshot detection system. So basically just you know, through a
bunch of fancy tech stuff which we won't get into
and I'm not even going to pretend to understand, you know,
(02:07):
that side of it. It's there are these audio sensors
that are installed all around the city, right and in
predominantly black and brown neighborhoods. You know, they're specifically in Chicago.
There's actually a lawsuit currently up and coming filed by
the MacArthur Justice Center over the fact that they are
(02:28):
primarily installed in black and brown neighborhoods and not on
like the North Side. And yeah, it's just a bunch
of fancy little stuff that detects noises that are supposed
to be gunshots, right, so any loud popping or bringing sound,
you know, could could potentially set them off.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Yeah, And unfortunately, as anyone who's ever been in a
city and had a car backfire knows, people are just
indescribably dogshit at telling what is a gunshot and what
is not a gunshot exactly exactly.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
And I mean there's so much evidence too, like there
been I mean are here in Chicago, Like our Office
of the Inspector General wrote like a whole report about
all of shots ours failures. But there's a bunch of
other research out there across the country about how inaccurate
this is. And you know, it's generating tens of thousands
(03:26):
of also like unjustified CPD deployments, like because when the
alert goes off, the cops get deployed, and you know,
it doesn't tell you anything about uh, even if there
was a gunshot, like who fired a gun? You know,
all that's telling you is in this area, you know,
(03:47):
this was determined. So you can imagine like all of
these you know, police encounters happening in response to these alerts,
like all the shit that could go wrong.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Yeah, and it's CPD, right, like the police Department's motto
was shoot first, don't ask questions later. So this is
a this is an absolutely terrible idea. It's just sending
all of these cops on random, wild goose chases. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Yeah, well, and it's what happened was I mean, most
people probably remember the Adam Toledo shooting. Those cops, you know,
were initially assigned to patrol that area because it was
designated as a violence box, you know, and.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
ShotSpotter brought them to the.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Alley like where this thirteen year old kid was, you know,
shot and killed by police because another and older man
was with him and fired a gun and then handed
him the weapon.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah, and that's another that's another one of the problems
with the technology, which is that even if it does
detect a gunshot, the thing that detecting a gunshot does
and send it to the police is send a bunch
of like absolutely unhinged murderers to a place and like
make them incredibly paranoid and then you know, have them
(05:08):
in like deal with the situation mode. And what Chicago
cops do when they're in deal with the situation mode
is they take out a gun, They shoot a thirteen
year old and kill them.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah. Yeah, and the you know, the officer that shaw
him too, had had this one like rarely talked about
in the media. I think, I don't know, it just
wasn't something that came up much when that was all happening,
But like that officer had a weird incident that was
recorded on bodycam like a little bit before he shot
(05:36):
and killed out Toledo. I don't remember if it was
like months before, I don't know the timeline, but it
was fairly close to that or he like pulled someone
over at a traffic stop and was just acting really
jumpy and strange. Uh. And it was kind of investigated
as like, you know, an undosified traffic stop and and
and nothing happened with that. But it's just an example
(05:57):
of like how there were potentially warning signs because this
guy was also like a war veteran, you know, and
jumpy to begin with. And so yeah, you're sending these
guys into these areas who are already ready to go
off at a trigger.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Right Yeah, And you know, and there's like there's no
actual good outcome of this because like I guess, arguably
the best possible outcome is the cops show up there's
nobody there enters out to have been a false alarm.
But that means we're paying the cops an unbelievable amount
of money to do nothing, and that's the best outcome, right.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
And the way the alerts work also too, is like
unless the police file a complaint that an alert was false,
like a false alarm, it's automatically flagged in the system
as like a positive because there's all this algorithmic stuff
that happens, like with the shot slutter detection, where like, yeah,
(06:58):
the system detects it, but then also it goes to
like their I don't know, their whole system like researchers
or whatever to kind of put it all together and
like package a report about what happened. And so unless
the police complain and are like, oh, you know, this
one was false, or this was a this one was wrong,
this was a firework, a car back firing, and of
course like CPD is not.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Doing that, yeah, because and I mean and I mean
this is one of the problems with the system just inherently,
even if you think that on some level of the
technology could work, is that both the company's shots spotter
and the police have an enormous inherent incentive to make like,
at very least pretend that every single one of these
detections is real, because if you're a police officer, right,
(07:41):
and you can point it, Oh, hey, look at how
many shots are being fired around the city all the time.
You know you need to give us more funding. This
is incredibly useful for them. If your ShotSpotter, you don't
want everyone to know that your system detects like a
bird dropping an acorn out of a tree next to
your sensor or whatever, Like, you don't actually want people
to know that your your system brings up false positives
(08:03):
all the time and it is actually basically completely useless, right, Yeah,
and so the incentive structure is just bad. It's just
it's only going to produce bad results.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Yeah. Well, and it's kind of like somebody, I don't
I forget where I read this, but somebody likened it
to if you had an informant working for you and
they were wrong nine times out of ten, would you
still use them?
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Well, CPD would like to easy to.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Be fair, but like if you were a journalist and
you had a source that lied nine times out of ten,
you know, or was wrong nine times out of ten,
would would you call them back? Would you trust that source?
You know?
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Well? And the other thing too is this isn't even
it's not even just like this is an informant, right
because you know shot spot is wrong and anomous percentage
of the time. But the thing is you don't have
to pay informants eight million dollars a year, which is
what we're paying for this dog shit shots fire system.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Wah. Well, and I mean the company itself also like
they're so embedded with what's going on, like with police departments.
You know, they're Shotsbater is leveraging their own money to
try to like win police contracts that include ShotSpotter. You know,
they advise different police departments on how to respond to
(09:23):
requests about ShotSpotter. So it's like it's not just like
this this I don't know, this mutual tool that's just
like out there that they're just using. It's like Shostswater
has a vested interest in, uh, strengthening the police and
vice versa.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Yeah, and then it gets into one of these very
very I mean it's a very common thing for the cops, right,
but one of these unbelievably messed up spirals where like yeah,
like everyone everyone involved has you know, the the cops
want want more power. These guys want more money, and
the more money you give them, the more money they
have to then turn around again and put back into
(10:01):
the political system. You can can you buy more power,
which they can again turn into more money every single
time another contract comes up, right right.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
On, which they just they just did. Brandon Johnson just
gave them more money in their contract.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Yeah, and we should talk about this because Okay, so
Brandon Johnson ran a weird campaign in respect to the police,
in the sense that he didn't really run a he
didn't run an anti police campaign. I guess like his
campaign was pretty pro police, but it also originally had
(10:35):
things like taking cops out of schools, and very specifically,
he ran on canceling the ShotSpotter contract, which is the
thing that everyone in like people in Chicago who aren't
who don't live in like cop neighborhoods, basically like, it's
pretty popular to cancel this contract because it's it's millions
of dollars a year going to nonsense that just throws
cops everywhere. And then he got into office and his
(10:56):
budget still has the ShotSpotter shit in it, so uh,
electoralism win yay.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
I mean it wasn't explicit. It was an explicit campaign promise.
Like it wasn't just like, oh, we were hoping that
he would do this because he's like our big movement guy.
It was like he explicitly made it. Part of his
platform was ending the contract of ShotSpotter, and now he
is not. And there's there's some time left before the
(11:28):
budget hearing. I think it's like, I don't know, like
fifty five days. I might be off by a few
days there, but there's only around, you know, two months left,
and since he's been elected, so like the other thing,
I mean, this is like the shady part too, is
like since he's been elected, he's been asked whether he'll
extend the contract and he's just like refused to answer.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Which is a really great politician stuff, Like you know,
you you know that your politicians being completely normal and
nothing everything is above board when they just straight up
refuse to answer questions, only good things ever result from that.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Yeah, and it's been There's been like a lot of
similar sort of just like I don't know, lack of
transparency kind of incidents with him over the last however,
longest been since he's been elected. God has been a
long year. It's kind of like there's this pattern now.
(12:26):
So yeah, I mean there were people who kind of look,
he was never like the abolitionist, like I'm going to
abolish the police, mayor, and like I get that. I
think a lot of people get that. But there's a
pretty big departure kind of between how he's approaching policing
(12:51):
and what. Yeah, a lot of movement people or leftists
or abolitionists want you know, every encounter with a cop
is a potential for violence, right, And he's coming at
it more from the side of like, well, we just
need to rebuild trust in the police, and the community
(13:11):
just needs to you know, like we're just going to
rebuild trust and we're going to get these bad cops out.
We're gonna have only good cops left and then everything.
I don't know what the logic there is personally, but
the you know, the logic is that we'll just have
good police encounters then. And it's just like this refusal
to acknowledge that like policing itself is a problem.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Yeah, we are on year fifty of the mayor says
we need to restore trust in the police. We'll get
rid of the bad cops and everything. Like year fifty,
we are on what number of torture scandals are we on?
Since people first started saying this, Like, I, it's just.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Right, we shouldn't be laughing at torture. But it's like, yeah,
it's like every I don't know, every month there is
a new Chicago police scandal. I really cannot keep track.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Yeah, and okay, so we're gonna we're gonna talk about
one of those scandals. But first, uh, we're gonna talk
about ads. I was gonna do like a you know
what else is a scandal, but I don't know. It's
really late. I've been up for an outrageous number of
hours and we are back. So okay, speaking of Chicago
(14:34):
police scandals, there's a lot. I mean, the CPD is
always having scandals because Chicago cops are just evil. But yeah,
do you want to talk about the specific shot spotter
one that we're having right now?
Speaker 4 (14:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (14:52):
I mean, well, there are there are other Chicago police
shot spotter scandals, but no, the more this most recent
story you know that just came out. Uh. There's a
political journalism site, slash Blog. They're also our homies and
we've done a lot of work with them called people
Stabric and they wrote, you know, an analysis of some
(15:16):
videos that they obtained of what is like essentially a
CPD gang. I mean everybody's heard of, like the LAPD
gangs were not everybody, but I'm sure a lot of
listeners have followed the story out of out of la
with like the Sheriff's deputies gangs just roaming around and
(15:36):
committing horrible acts against people, and you know, in these
sort of like cruise of bad cops and and this
is definitely not the first instance of something like that
happening in Chicago, but you know, there were just a
there was a lot of video evidence against these guys.
One of them has been indicted. I don't know if
(15:58):
the other three have, but yeah, they were just driving
around basically terrorizing this community. You know a lot of
just unlawful stops, stopping people on the street, shaking them
down for cash, drugs, and a lot of guns. And
they were filing false reports about found guns, so like
(16:22):
they would stop somebody, take the gun and then log
it as like a gun that was found. And you know,
in one instance they said that they were a mile
away from where a shot spotter alert had gone off,
and claimed that they looked around and just happened to
(16:43):
find a gun on the ground. They had taken the
gun from a woman, you know it. They didn't find
it on the ground, but they were able to use
the fact that there was a shot spotter alert that
went off in that area as like a way to
cover their tracks.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Basically, Yeah, and this is something so we talked about
on the show, like, oh god, was that like two
years ago? Maybe it was a year ago. A while
back we talked about on this show. The Chicago's used
to have this police nic called Special Operations Session SOS,
(17:20):
which was disbanded after it was revealed they were doing
literally the same thing, which is they would go up
to people to rob them. And one of Chicago has
one of these scandals about once. It like once a
decade there's like a big one of these, and we're
kind of due for one. We haven't had a really
big one of these. Specifically, there's an entire section of
(17:41):
the CPD that's just a burglary or a drug ring.
So I suspect we're gonna find out more about this
stuff because it's it's about time that another one of
these turns up. But yeah, I mean they were just
like just rolling up on people. It just go give
me your gun, and then driving away and saying don't
(18:03):
tell anyone, which is really.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Really Yeah. Well, I'm like also for seemingly no reason
in like some instances like there, I mean, we look,
we can't know all of their motivations for everything, and
a lot more is gonna come out, I'm sure, like
in the court proceedings, but it's like, were they trying
to have the gun retrieval statistics and or were they
(18:33):
trying to do something else? You know, they were like
a tactical team, so I presume. I mean, I think
it's the case that like there are certain gun retrieval
statistics that CPD wants to mate, but you know, the
other stuff like obviously taking cash from people, you know,
like there's other things they were doing, you know, and
they've always been look there, I'm not going to allege
(18:54):
anything that isn't proven in the specific instance, but I
will say that there have always been rumors about Chicago
police officers specifically taking things like guns to like sell back,
you know, to gangs basically, and same with drugs, right.
You know, these guys were logging some of them at least,
(19:17):
but what if there were ones that they weren't logging, Like,
we don't know. I mean, this is just what we
know happened and what was caught. And I mean they
were dumb enough to like have some of this caught
on their body. Campus like they were turning their cameras
off for like some parts of these stuffs, but like
not others, or like the camera would be on and
(19:37):
there's like you know, cash and drugs and then like oh,
the camera goes off, and it's like, well, any logical
person can deduce what may have happened here, like what
turning your camera off?
Speaker 4 (19:48):
Right?
Speaker 3 (19:50):
And so yeah, they've always been rumors about kind of
like what these crews driving around are like ultimately doing
with this kind of stuff, And I think it just
it varies on them. But I would also add, you know,
the what you mentioned the special operations section. You know,
we only recently learned through like a Sun Times investigation
(20:11):
into all the Chicago cops who were on the oast
Keepers membership role. Oh and a number of those guys
were in soos actually, So that's a fun little.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Fact also, yeah, that's another one of the another episode
in the Endless Parade of Chuhago Police Department scandals is like, yeah,
a bunch of these are in far right militias, which
is this is this really interesting? So we did an
episode pretty recently that I was talking about David Graber.
One of one of the one of the points that
(20:45):
he makes in this essay on Batman and the problem
of constituent power, which is a wild thing to be
citing in a police thing, but you know, one of
the points that he makes is one of the one
of the sort of key like fascist convergences. Is this
cooperation between the police, the far right, and organized crime
and the CPD. Is this incredible nexus of it, right,
(21:07):
I mean it's literally the same person is all three
of these things at the same time. It is a
cop who is in a far right militia who is
also like literally just doing organized crime at the same time.
It's really Yeah, you used to have to sort of
(21:28):
like make metaphors, and you no longer have to do that.
The metaphor just is real. You're just physically describing the event.
It's really something.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Yeah, I mean, when you really think about it, I
think policing in and of itself is just like a
cult like anything else. And it makes sense that like
the same people who would gravitate towards like militia groups
and like white suphremacist groups, any any like I don't
know group or people kind of have those like hardline
(22:02):
beliefs about the world. And then it's also just like
a lot of these guys are like especially the ones
on like taskal teams, They're all like fucking like traumatized
war veterans, you know, they all have kind of these
long backstories of like military service and just like to
get onto like special ops or like the tactical leading
(22:24):
you know, et cetera, they tend to look for people
with military experience, not always, but like frequently. And so
there's also that intersection there two of like militarism and
abroad and then like policing at home, right.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Yeah, and that's a really common thread. I mean just
in like across the entire world. This is a thing
where like the police office, like the police groups that
are the most likely to go completely rogue and either
just start murdering people randomly or turn into organized crime
things like are these special operations units. There was like
in twenty twenty, they were these huge protests, like anti
(22:59):
police protests in Nowigerior that were specifically about trying to
get one of these special operations like police special operation
things like abolish because Special Operations guys just kept shooting
everyone and this, you know, like every single like this
happens just everywhere in the world that these it is like,
you know, I mean, obviously normal cops also do crime,
(23:19):
and we talked also another episode about some kind of
normal cops. You did a cartel and like the the
twenty tens, but the special operations groups go off the
rails at a rate that is staggering, which you would
think you would think someone in government would look at this,
like even if you're a pro police person, you would
look at this and go, wait, maybe it's a bad
(23:41):
idea to have specifically formed these units that every single
time turned into a cartel. But no, no, thet ever
do this because the point of cops is not to
not form cartels.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
Well, I think also too, there's like a very uh,
I don't know, I guess neoliberal line of thinking about
like policing and how like we really really need like
the tactical high skill kind of units. Right, Like there's
always like we're giving the cop. We're always giving the
cops more money, and that's for training. Training is a
(24:16):
big justification for why we're always giving you the more money.
But so there's like you know, skills and sort of technology,
and like I think as we're dealing with i don't know,
like mass shootings and like all this really horrible stuff
just like going on around us at all times too. Now,
it's like it's a really I think easy way to
(24:36):
justify policing to people is like honor the guise of
these like tactical units or units with like a lot
of firepower to deal with like really really bad guys.
Quote right, Like you know, maybe those people might be like, oh,
we've like fewer copstrolling our neighborhoods. You know, we're kind
of we get like, you know, black lives matter or whatever,
(24:59):
but they're like, but we really need to you know,
have the big guns ready for when something that comes
to our neighborhood. And so I think that's also like
a sticking point for a lot of people on the
on the way to like actually thinking about abolishing the
police too, is like what would we do without these units,
the guys with like all these skills and all these
(25:19):
crazy weapons to like help us if if if a
bad guy comes. And of course the guys like the
bad guys are those guys like guys.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Well, and there's the moors cynical side of it too,
which is like, you know, if you're if you're the
mayor of Chicago, it's like, well, someone has to shoot
the black panthers, right, Like you need to have guys
whose job it is to like when when you know,
when like revolution stray move it's started up, you need
like someone has to start shooting those guys. So yeah,
(25:52):
so I want to go back to talk a bit
more about the like shot spot and the budget stuff
that's been happening, because so the current budget has what
is it, I think it like doubles the annual raises
(26:14):
of that that cops were getting. Is that the right number?
Speaker 3 (26:18):
I don't know if it doubles, but I read that
it was actually wait, yeah, so it's it's five percent,
up from like two point five. Yeah, it's double. It's
also the largest package of raises for any city employee
union in modern history. I mean, I'm directly quoting a
better government analysis. But but but yeah, no, like literally
(26:39):
it is. It is an enormous It is an enormous race.
And here's the thing. The cops were thrilled with this contract.
Uh the hat of fop John Cavazzara, who is just
like a racist, misogynistic, horrible, just like garbage dump of
a person, you know, was thrilled with with this contract.
Was thrilled at this being passed, you know. And that's
(27:01):
like number one sign that your mayor sucks is when
like the cops are thrilled about something he did like this.
Uh so so yeah, I mean it's it's a huge
amount of money. There's there's a bunch of other stuff
in it, like you know, salary grade changes and like
stipends for stuff and bonuses and uh there's some changes
(27:24):
to like the bodyborn camera policy too, which are kind
of concerning. But but ultimately it's like, yeah, Brendon Johnson
is now the fund the police mayor, Like I don't
know how you can say that he's not when you
when you look at this, like this is just handing
the cops more money.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
Yeah, and Chicago cops are already just unbelievably dog shit
overpaid chiggle. Teachers are unbelievably underpaid. Yeah, so you know,
I mean we are. We are once again paying a
bunch of people to rob us. It's truly, it's it's good.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Yeah. And and they they get a lot of time
off too. I mean, look, they have they have a
ton of benefits. There's a ton of things, you know,
privileges and things that that the cops get. But it's
kind of like he he could have given them slightly
less money, Like it was almost this contract almost feels
(28:22):
like the way I've seen some people describe it is
it almost feels like an act of like goodwill towards
the cops, like and almost like I was like, I'm
giving you this thing that you really want in the
in the hopes of like I don't know, I don't
know what he's trying to get out of it. I mean,
I don't know what what the motivation is. But it's like,
you could have done you could have done less, and
(28:45):
you're going for like a lot, So what's what's the
deal there? And you know, the new superintendent too, is
like hugely concerning. He picked a guy who's uh like
an expert in surveilling. To me, cities ahead of like
the DNC coming next summer, the former head of the
(29:06):
counter Terrorism Bureau. You know, Like, it's just it's a
lot of really disappointing moves, and I think a lot
of people were really hoping to see I guess a
more abolitionist kind of streak. But the ultimately he's like
(29:26):
he ran as a liberal, Like we knew this was coming,
but there was like almost like taking advantage I guess
of like movement groups to sort of get get the
power behind him during the campaign. But look, our alternative
was also like an evil, like lying, maniacal Paul Vallas.
(29:48):
So it's just like a shit sandwich. It's like bad
choices all around, right.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Yeah, and I mean not just is Chicago, I mean
it's Illinois. Electoral politics in general is a choice between
the guy he gives the police more money and the
other guy who gives the place more money. So yeah,
it's not good exactly. Again, it really seems like we're
going to get more shot spotter of this technology that
(30:14):
is wrong over ninety percent of the time. So it's great,
it's really well, it was a few months left.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
I mean hopefully, look, hopefully this is I don't know,
there's arguments to be made for and against harm reduction,
I guess, and whether it's like a worthwhile goal, but
maybe there's still like a shot at like at least
getting this part scratched out. I mean, there is, like
I said, like this big lawsuit and if nothing else,
(30:45):
you know, perhaps he and his administration could be concerned
about just like you know, the bad press around it
if it's included and so many people are opposing it.
But this is also an administration that like didn't care
about the bad press that came with like saying, we're
building a detention camp on polluted land.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Yeah, well look look like this is this is this
is the thing that that the fight over the police
budget is distracting from, which is that we defined a
second toxic waste dump to build the migrant concentration cap on.
So you know, progressive, progressive values are getting are happening
either way.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
Look, I frequently said all mayors are bastards, corny, but
I think you just it's fine, Look, it's fine to vote.
I guess if that is your staying, just don't convince
yourself that once you leave the voting booths that like
(31:59):
the struggle is over because whatever happens, like this person,
this authority figure in charge, is your enemy. Like it
doesn't matter how nice he is, it doesn't matter how
many jokes he cracks, like whatever you're trying to like
resist or like liberate, Like this person is going to
stand in your way just by virtue of being the mayor.
(32:24):
Like it's baked into like what that is. So I
think it's just a matter of being like clear eyed
about that rather than like convincing yourself that you can
somehow like co run the city like with the government.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Yeah, I mean I'm gonna, okay, I'm gonna take a
shot at a city on the other side of the world.
But fuck it, I'm still mad about this. Okay. So
the the the nominal best case scenario for this inside
an electoral framework was when Barcelona and Camu, which is
this sort of left wing platform in Barcelona and I
(33:00):
made of a bunch of ex anarchists, I like managed
to get managed to get a sort of a semisable
majority of the city council and then the first time
they got their mayor elected, the first thing that that
fucking mayor did, like a week indo office was she
knew where all the squats were in Barcelona, and the
first thing she fucking did was she knew which immigrant
squat didn't have enough community support behind them to stop
(33:22):
them from getting evicted, and she had them evicted. So
you know, this is what happens when you put activists
in charge. They they do a more efficient job of
being the kind of insurgency. So oh my god, yeah,
this is this is this is what you're getting into.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
Oh my god. Well yeah, and I mean then it
also becomes like its own smoke screen, you know, like
just using the fact that like, oh I was elected
by activists, or like I was elected by movement people,
so like you know, I'm on your side, and just
using it as like a shield against like remove and
(34:00):
being like, well, I know this looks bad, but like
you guys know, like I'm I'm your guy, Like I'm
one of you, like like just trust me, Like we're
doing this for the for the right reasons. It might
look bad, but because I'm your guy, you know, it's okay.
I mean, it's the same thing with like uh Biden
and the and the border wall.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Now I think ironically our episode on that is going
to be the episode that comes out right before this,
so oh wait, sorry, sorry, two episodes. Sorry, there'll be
two episodes before. Yeah. Oh and and the two episodes
after well is also going to be border wall shit.
So yeah, border wall bad. Fuck Biden for border wall.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
But it's like it's Brighten's border Wall. He's doing all
this shit. And then you know, it's just if it
was Trump, we know what the response would be from
supposed progressive.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Yeah, don't don't let people like put a code of
paint on a turd and hand it to you and
be like, no, it's good.
Speaker 4 (34:59):
Actually we don't have to do this, right, But I mean,
also the border Wall, God, do you remember there was
a brief flash of time.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
In October when when Brandon Johnson and his team announced
they were going to visit the border wall and then
it only lasted like twenty four hours, seventy two hours.
I don't know when, but at some point then they
like very quickly reversed the decision when they realized like
how bad that would look as we have like like
(35:34):
at that time, there were thousands of people in police
like thousands of migrants to it who had traveled here
and staying on police station flours and there was like
they were gonna have this publicity stone want I went
to visit the border wall and then they changed their
minds about it, and we're like, oh, yeah this is
probably a bad idea. But it's become this this like
(35:56):
Pilgrimage site. I mean, like I know, AOC went there.
It's like liberal diferent like go there to be like,
oh this is so terrible and then they like, you know,
just kind of let Biden make it worse.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Yeah, so this this has been that this has turned
into the liberal groups elected on big promises make your
life worse episode.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
Well this has been.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
It can happen here. You could find us in the
places where can people find you?
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Uh, just you know on the Hell site, which I
know you're back on now.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Unfortunately unfortunately.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
Yeah, you know, we have drinks Press dot org per
site and then yeah, Twitter, Instagram, all that stuff.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Yeah, so go check out the Drinks Press people. They do,
they do great work. And yeah, cops, bad cops, bad.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
Cops, always bad cops, keep being bad.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can
find sources for It could happen here, Updated monthly at
coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
Also media.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
It's it's another Chicago episode. It's it could happen here,
the podcast where Things Fall Apart. I'm your host, Neil Wong.
This is this is another episode about Chicago police departments
who occupy a city groaning under its tyranny, and with
you to talk about some absolutely bad shit at Chicago
(00:28):
police stuff and also how Brandon Johnson our mayor is
also shit? Is Raven the Chicago journalist from Jing suppress.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Hi is our mayor? Ever not shit?
Speaker 2 (00:43):
You know, No, it's always shit. It's never got bad.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
It's never not bad, and it's always like, you know,
the progressive darling who ran on promises and then slowly
breaks them and you know, breaks every one of hearts
over time.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Yeah, I will. I will say Brandon Johnson wasted absolutely
no time on the heartbreaking part, like he really he
really just wanted to rush that shit out. So there's
a lot of there's a lot of Brandon Johnson stuff
that we could talk about and we will want eventually
we're gonna do the episode on the bigrant camp in
(01:22):
the fucking the migrant camp and the toxic waste dump.
But that that's gonna happen next year. Right now, we
want to talk about a different, utterly insane Chicago thing. Well,
this is actually a thing in other cities too. I
wanted to talk about shot Spotter, So I guess to
start with, can you explain what shot spotter is for
(01:44):
people who don't have it in their city or don't.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Know, Well, it's in i want to say, like one
hundred and thirty different cities across the country, so a
lot of people probably do have it. But it's a
gunshot detection system. So basically just you know, through a
bunch of fancy tech stuff which we won't get into
and I'm not even going to pretend to understand, you know,
(02:07):
that side of it. It's there are these audio sensors
that are installed all around the city, right and in
predominantly black and brown neighborhoods. You know, they're specifically in Chicago.
There's actually a lawsuit currently up and coming filed by
the MacArthur Justice Center over the fact that they are
(02:28):
primarily installed in black and brown neighborhoods and not on
like the North Side. And yeah, it's just a bunch
of fancy little stuff that detects noises that are supposed
to be gunshots, right, so any loud popping or bringing sound,
you know, could could potentially set them off.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Yeah, And unfortunately, as anyone who's ever been in a
city and had a car backfire knows, people are just
indescribably dogshit at telling what is a gunshot and what
is not a gunshot exactly exactly.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
And I mean there's so much evidence too, like there
been I mean are here in Chicago, Like our Office
of the Inspector General wrote like a whole report about
all of shots ours failures. But there's a bunch of
other research out there across the country about how inaccurate
this is. And you know, it's generating tens of thousands
(03:26):
of also like unjustified CPD deployments, like because when the
alert goes off, the cops get deployed, and you know,
it doesn't tell you anything about uh, even if there
was a gunshot, like who fired a gun? You know,
all that's telling you is in this area, you know,
(03:47):
this was determined. So you can imagine like all of
these you know, police encounters happening in response to these alerts,
like all the shit that could go wrong.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Yeah, and it's CPD, right, like the police Department's motto
was shoot first, don't ask questions later. So this is
a this is an absolutely terrible idea. It's just sending
all of these cops on random, wild goose chases. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Yeah, well, and it's what happened was I mean, most
people probably remember the Adam Toledo shooting. Those cops, you know,
were initially assigned to patrol that area because it was
designated as a violence box, you know, and.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
ShotSpotter brought them to the.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Alley like where this thirteen year old kid was, you know,
shot and killed by police because another and older man
was with him and fired a gun and then handed
him the weapon.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah, and that's another that's another one of the problems
with the technology, which is that even if it does
detect a gunshot, the thing that detecting a gunshot does
and send it to the police is send a bunch
of like absolutely unhinged murderers to a place and like
make them incredibly paranoid and then you know, have them
(05:08):
in like deal with the situation mode. And what Chicago
cops do when they're in deal with the situation mode
is they take out a gun, They shoot a thirteen
year old and kill them.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah. Yeah, and the you know, the officer that shaw
him too, had had this one like rarely talked about
in the media. I think, I don't know, it just
wasn't something that came up much when that was all happening,
But like that officer had a weird incident that was
recorded on bodycam like a little bit before he shot
(05:36):
and killed out Toledo. I don't remember if it was
like months before, I don't know the timeline, but it
was fairly close to that or he like pulled someone
over at a traffic stop and was just acting really
jumpy and strange. Uh. And it was kind of investigated
as like, you know, an undosified traffic stop and and
and nothing happened with that. But it's just an example
(05:57):
of like how there were potentially warning signs because this
guy was also like a war veteran, you know, and
jumpy to begin with. And so yeah, you're sending these
guys into these areas who are already ready to go
off at a trigger.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Right Yeah, And you know, and there's like there's no
actual good outcome of this because like I guess, arguably
the best possible outcome is the cops show up there's
nobody there enters out to have been a false alarm.
But that means we're paying the cops an unbelievable amount
of money to do nothing, and that's the best outcome, right.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
And the way the alerts work also too, is like
unless the police file a complaint that an alert was false,
like a false alarm, it's automatically flagged in the system
as like a positive because there's all this algorithmic stuff
that happens, like with the shot slutter detection, where like, yeah,
(06:58):
the system detects it, but then also it goes to
like their I don't know, their whole system like researchers
or whatever to kind of put it all together and
like package a report about what happened. And so unless
the police complain and are like, oh, you know, this
one was false, or this was a this one was wrong,
this was a firework, a car back firing, and of
course like CPD is not.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Doing that, yeah, because and I mean and I mean
this is one of the problems with the system just inherently,
even if you think that on some level of the
technology could work, is that both the company's shots spotter
and the police have an enormous inherent incentive to make like,
at very least pretend that every single one of these
detections is real, because if you're a police officer, right,
(07:41):
and you can point it, Oh, hey, look at how
many shots are being fired around the city all the time.
You know you need to give us more funding. This
is incredibly useful for them. If your ShotSpotter, you don't
want everyone to know that your system detects like a
bird dropping an acorn out of a tree next to
your sensor or whatever, Like, you don't actually want people
to know that your your system brings up false positives
(08:03):
all the time and it is actually basically completely useless, right, Yeah,
and so the incentive structure is just bad. It's just
it's only going to produce bad results.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Yeah. Well, and it's kind of like somebody, I don't
I forget where I read this, but somebody likened it
to if you had an informant working for you and
they were wrong nine times out of ten, would you
still use them?
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Well, CPD would like to easy to.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Be fair, but like if you were a journalist and
you had a source that lied nine times out of ten,
you know, or was wrong nine times out of ten,
would would you call them back? Would you trust that source?
You know?
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Well? And the other thing too is this isn't even
it's not even just like this is an informant, right
because you know shot spot is wrong and anomous percentage
of the time. But the thing is you don't have
to pay informants eight million dollars a year, which is
what we're paying for this dog shit shots fire system.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Wah. Well, and I mean the company itself also like
they're so embedded with what's going on, like with police departments.
You know, they're Shotsbater is leveraging their own money to
try to like win police contracts that include ShotSpotter. You know,
they advise different police departments on how to respond to
(09:23):
requests about ShotSpotter. So it's like it's not just like
this this I don't know, this mutual tool that's just
like out there that they're just using. It's like Shostswater
has a vested interest in, uh, strengthening the police and
vice versa.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Yeah, and then it gets into one of these very
very I mean it's a very common thing for the cops, right,
but one of these unbelievably messed up spirals where like yeah,
like everyone everyone involved has you know, the the cops
want want more power. These guys want more money, and
the more money you give them, the more money they
have to then turn around again and put back into
(10:01):
the political system. You can can you buy more power,
which they can again turn into more money every single
time another contract comes up, right right.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
On, which they just they just did. Brandon Johnson just
gave them more money in their contract.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Yeah, and we should talk about this because Okay, so
Brandon Johnson ran a weird campaign in respect to the police,
in the sense that he didn't really run a he
didn't run an anti police campaign. I guess like his
campaign was pretty pro police, but it also originally had
(10:35):
things like taking cops out of schools, and very specifically,
he ran on canceling the ShotSpotter contract, which is the
thing that everyone in like people in Chicago who aren't
who don't live in like cop neighborhoods, basically like, it's
pretty popular to cancel this contract because it's it's millions
of dollars a year going to nonsense that just throws
cops everywhere. And then he got into office and his
(10:56):
budget still has the ShotSpotter shit in it, so uh,
electoralism win yay.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
I mean it wasn't explicit. It was an explicit campaign promise.
Like it wasn't just like, oh, we were hoping that
he would do this because he's like our big movement guy.
It was like he explicitly made it. Part of his
platform was ending the contract of ShotSpotter, and now he
is not. And there's there's some time left before the
(11:28):
budget hearing. I think it's like, I don't know, like
fifty five days. I might be off by a few
days there, but there's only around, you know, two months left,
and since he's been elected, so like the other thing,
I mean, this is like the shady part too, is
like since he's been elected, he's been asked whether he'll
extend the contract and he's just like refused to answer.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Which is a really great politician stuff, Like you know,
you you know that your politicians being completely normal and
nothing everything is above board when they just straight up
refuse to answer questions, only good things ever result from that.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Yeah, and it's been There's been like a lot of
similar sort of just like I don't know, lack of
transparency kind of incidents with him over the last however,
longest been since he's been elected. God has been a
long year. It's kind of like there's this pattern now.
(12:26):
So yeah, I mean there were people who kind of look,
he was never like the abolitionist, like I'm going to
abolish the police, mayor, and like I get that. I
think a lot of people get that. But there's a
pretty big departure kind of between how he's approaching policing
(12:51):
and what. Yeah, a lot of movement people or leftists
or abolitionists want you know, every encounter with a cop
is a potential for violence, right, And he's coming at
it more from the side of like, well, we just
need to rebuild trust in the police, and the community
(13:11):
just needs to you know, like we're just going to
rebuild trust and we're going to get these bad cops out.
We're gonna have only good cops left and then everything.
I don't know what the logic there is personally, but
the you know, the logic is that we'll just have
good police encounters then. And it's just like this refusal
to acknowledge that like policing itself is a problem.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Yeah, we are on year fifty of the mayor says
we need to restore trust in the police. We'll get
rid of the bad cops and everything. Like year fifty,
we are on what number of torture scandals are we on?
Since people first started saying this, Like, I, it's just.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Right, we shouldn't be laughing at torture. But it's like, yeah,
it's like every I don't know, every month there is
a new Chicago police scandal. I really cannot keep track.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Yeah, and okay, so we're gonna we're gonna talk about
one of those scandals. But first, uh, we're gonna talk
about ads. I was gonna do like a you know
what else is a scandal, but I don't know. It's
really late. I've been up for an outrageous number of
hours and we are back. So okay, speaking of Chicago
(14:34):
police scandals, there's a lot. I mean, the CPD is
always having scandals because Chicago cops are just evil. But yeah,
do you want to talk about the specific shot spotter
one that we're having right now?
Speaker 4 (14:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (14:52):
I mean, well, there are there are other Chicago police
shot spotter scandals, but no, the more this most recent
story you know that just came out. Uh. There's a
political journalism site, slash Blog. They're also our homies and
we've done a lot of work with them called people
Stabric and they wrote, you know, an analysis of some
(15:16):
videos that they obtained of what is like essentially a
CPD gang. I mean everybody's heard of, like the LAPD
gangs were not everybody, but I'm sure a lot of
listeners have followed the story out of out of la
with like the Sheriff's deputies gangs just roaming around and
(15:36):
committing horrible acts against people, and you know, in these
sort of like cruise of bad cops and and this
is definitely not the first instance of something like that
happening in Chicago, but you know, there were just a
there was a lot of video evidence against these guys.
One of them has been indicted. I don't know if
(15:58):
the other three have, but yeah, they were just driving
around basically terrorizing this community. You know a lot of
just unlawful stops, stopping people on the street, shaking them
down for cash, drugs, and a lot of guns. And
they were filing false reports about found guns, so like
(16:22):
they would stop somebody, take the gun and then log
it as like a gun that was found. And you know,
in one instance they said that they were a mile
away from where a shot spotter alert had gone off,
and claimed that they looked around and just happened to
(16:43):
find a gun on the ground. They had taken the
gun from a woman, you know it. They didn't find
it on the ground, but they were able to use
the fact that there was a shot spotter alert that
went off in that area as like a way to
cover their tracks.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Basically, Yeah, and this is something so we talked about
on the show, like, oh god, was that like two
years ago? Maybe it was a year ago. A while
back we talked about on this show. The Chicago's used
to have this police nic called Special Operations Session SOS,
(17:20):
which was disbanded after it was revealed they were doing
literally the same thing, which is they would go up
to people to rob them. And one of Chicago has
one of these scandals about once. It like once a
decade there's like a big one of these, and we're
kind of due for one. We haven't had a really
big one of these. Specifically, there's an entire section of
(17:41):
the CPD that's just a burglary or a drug ring.
So I suspect we're gonna find out more about this
stuff because it's it's about time that another one of
these turns up. But yeah, I mean they were just
like just rolling up on people. It just go give
me your gun, and then driving away and saying don't
(18:03):
tell anyone, which is really.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Really Yeah. Well, I'm like also for seemingly no reason
in like some instances like there, I mean, we look,
we can't know all of their motivations for everything, and
a lot more is gonna come out, I'm sure, like
in the court proceedings, but it's like, were they trying
to have the gun retrieval statistics and or were they
(18:33):
trying to do something else? You know, they were like
a tactical team, so I presume. I mean, I think
it's the case that like there are certain gun retrieval
statistics that CPD wants to mate, but you know, the
other stuff like obviously taking cash from people, you know,
like there's other things they were doing, you know, and
they've always been look there, I'm not going to allege
(18:54):
anything that isn't proven in the specific instance, but I
will say that there have always been rumors about Chicago
police officers specifically taking things like guns to like sell back,
you know, to gangs basically, and same with drugs, right.
You know, these guys were logging some of them at least,
(19:17):
but what if there were ones that they weren't logging, Like,
we don't know. I mean, this is just what we
know happened and what was caught. And I mean they
were dumb enough to like have some of this caught
on their body. Campus like they were turning their cameras
off for like some parts of these stuffs, but like
not others, or like the camera would be on and
(19:37):
there's like you know, cash and drugs and then like oh,
the camera goes off, and it's like, well, any logical
person can deduce what may have happened here, like what
turning your camera off?
Speaker 4 (19:48):
Right?
Speaker 3 (19:50):
And so yeah, they've always been rumors about kind of
like what these crews driving around are like ultimately doing
with this kind of stuff, And I think it just
it varies on them. But I would also add, you know,
the what you mentioned the special operations section. You know,
we only recently learned through like a Sun Times investigation
(20:11):
into all the Chicago cops who were on the oast
Keepers membership role. Oh and a number of those guys
were in soos actually, So that's a fun little.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Fact also, yeah, that's another one of the another episode
in the Endless Parade of Chuhago Police Department scandals is like, yeah,
a bunch of these are in far right militias, which
is this is this really interesting? So we did an
episode pretty recently that I was talking about David Graber.
One of one of the one of the points that
(20:45):
he makes in this essay on Batman and the problem
of constituent power, which is a wild thing to be
citing in a police thing, but you know, one of
the points that he makes is one of the one
of the sort of key like fascist convergences. Is this
cooperation between the police, the far right, and organized crime
and the CPD. Is this incredible nexus of it, right,
(21:07):
I mean it's literally the same person is all three
of these things at the same time. It is a
cop who is in a far right militia who is
also like literally just doing organized crime at the same time.
It's really Yeah, you used to have to sort of
(21:28):
like make metaphors, and you no longer have to do that.
The metaphor just is real. You're just physically describing the event.
It's really something.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Yeah, I mean, when you really think about it, I
think policing in and of itself is just like a
cult like anything else. And it makes sense that like
the same people who would gravitate towards like militia groups
and like white suphremacist groups, any any like I don't
know group or people kind of have those like hardline
(22:02):
beliefs about the world. And then it's also just like
a lot of these guys are like especially the ones
on like taskal teams, They're all like fucking like traumatized
war veterans, you know, they all have kind of these
long backstories of like military service and just like to
get onto like special ops or like the tactical leading
(22:24):
you know, et cetera, they tend to look for people
with military experience, not always, but like frequently. And so
there's also that intersection there two of like militarism and
abroad and then like policing at home, right.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Yeah, and that's a really common thread. I mean just
in like across the entire world. This is a thing
where like the police office, like the police groups that
are the most likely to go completely rogue and either
just start murdering people randomly or turn into organized crime
things like are these special operations units. There was like
in twenty twenty, they were these huge protests, like anti
(22:59):
police protests in Nowigerior that were specifically about trying to
get one of these special operations like police special operation
things like abolish because Special Operations guys just kept shooting
everyone and this, you know, like every single like this
happens just everywhere in the world that these it is like,
you know, I mean, obviously normal cops also do crime,
(23:19):
and we talked also another episode about some kind of
normal cops. You did a cartel and like the the
twenty tens, but the special operations groups go off the
rails at a rate that is staggering, which you would
think you would think someone in government would look at this,
like even if you're a pro police person, you would
look at this and go, wait, maybe it's a bad
(23:41):
idea to have specifically formed these units that every single
time turned into a cartel. But no, no, thet ever
do this because the point of cops is not to
not form cartels.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
Well, I think also too, there's like a very uh,
I don't know, I guess neoliberal line of thinking about
like policing and how like we really really need like
the tactical high skill kind of units. Right, Like there's
always like we're giving the cop. We're always giving the
cops more money, and that's for training. Training is a
(24:16):
big justification for why we're always giving you the more money.
But so there's like you know, skills and sort of technology,
and like I think as we're dealing with i don't know,
like mass shootings and like all this really horrible stuff
just like going on around us at all times too. Now,
it's like it's a really I think easy way to
(24:36):
justify policing to people is like honor the guise of
these like tactical units or units with like a lot
of firepower to deal with like really really bad guys.
Quote right, Like you know, maybe those people might be like, oh,
we've like fewer copstrolling our neighborhoods. You know, we're kind
of we get like, you know, black lives matter or whatever,
(24:59):
but they're like, but we really need to you know,
have the big guns ready for when something that comes
to our neighborhood. And so I think that's also like
a sticking point for a lot of people on the
on the way to like actually thinking about abolishing the
police too, is like what would we do without these units,
the guys with like all these skills and all these
(25:19):
crazy weapons to like help us if if if a
bad guy comes. And of course the guys like the
bad guys are those guys like guys.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Well, and there's the moors cynical side of it too,
which is like, you know, if you're if you're the
mayor of Chicago, it's like, well, someone has to shoot
the black panthers, right, Like you need to have guys
whose job it is to like when when you know,
when like revolution stray move it's started up, you need
like someone has to start shooting those guys. So yeah,
(25:52):
so I want to go back to talk a bit
more about the like shot spot and the budget stuff
that's been happening, because so the current budget has what
is it, I think it like doubles the annual raises
(26:14):
of that that cops were getting. Is that the right number?
Speaker 3 (26:18):
I don't know if it doubles, but I read that
it was actually wait, yeah, so it's it's five percent,
up from like two point five. Yeah, it's double. It's
also the largest package of raises for any city employee
union in modern history. I mean, I'm directly quoting a
better government analysis. But but but yeah, no, like literally
(26:39):
it is. It is an enormous It is an enormous race.
And here's the thing. The cops were thrilled with this contract.
Uh the hat of fop John Cavazzara, who is just
like a racist, misogynistic, horrible, just like garbage dump of
a person, you know, was thrilled with with this contract.
Was thrilled at this being passed, you know. And that's
(27:01):
like number one sign that your mayor sucks is when
like the cops are thrilled about something he did like this.
Uh so so yeah, I mean it's it's a huge
amount of money. There's there's a bunch of other stuff
in it, like you know, salary grade changes and like
stipends for stuff and bonuses and uh there's some changes
(27:24):
to like the bodyborn camera policy too, which are kind
of concerning. But but ultimately it's like, yeah, Brendon Johnson
is now the fund the police mayor, Like I don't
know how you can say that he's not when you
when you look at this, like this is just handing
the cops more money.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
Yeah, and Chicago cops are already just unbelievably dog shit
overpaid chiggle. Teachers are unbelievably underpaid. Yeah, so you know,
I mean we are. We are once again paying a
bunch of people to rob us. It's truly, it's it's good.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Yeah. And and they they get a lot of time
off too. I mean, look, they have they have a
ton of benefits. There's a ton of things, you know,
privileges and things that that the cops get. But it's
kind of like he he could have given them slightly
less money, Like it was almost this contract almost feels
(28:22):
like the way I've seen some people describe it is
it almost feels like an act of like goodwill towards
the cops, like and almost like I was like, I'm
giving you this thing that you really want in the
in the hopes of like I don't know, I don't
know what he's trying to get out of it. I mean,
I don't know what what the motivation is. But it's like,
you could have done you could have done less, and
(28:45):
you're going for like a lot, So what's what's the
deal there? And you know, the new superintendent too, is
like hugely concerning. He picked a guy who's uh like
an expert in surveilling. To me, cities ahead of like
the DNC coming next summer, the former head of the
(29:06):
counter Terrorism Bureau. You know, Like, it's just it's a
lot of really disappointing moves, and I think a lot
of people were really hoping to see I guess a
more abolitionist kind of streak. But the ultimately he's like
(29:26):
he ran as a liberal, Like we knew this was coming,
but there was like almost like taking advantage I guess
of like movement groups to sort of get get the
power behind him during the campaign. But look, our alternative
was also like an evil, like lying, maniacal Paul Vallas.
(29:48):
So it's just like a shit sandwich. It's like bad
choices all around, right.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Yeah, and I mean not just is Chicago, I mean
it's Illinois. Electoral politics in general is a choice between
the guy he gives the police more money and the
other guy who gives the place more money. So yeah,
it's not good exactly. Again, it really seems like we're
going to get more shot spotter of this technology that
(30:14):
is wrong over ninety percent of the time. So it's great,
it's really well, it was a few months left.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
I mean hopefully, look, hopefully this is I don't know,
there's arguments to be made for and against harm reduction,
I guess, and whether it's like a worthwhile goal, but
maybe there's still like a shot at like at least
getting this part scratched out. I mean, there is, like
I said, like this big lawsuit and if nothing else,
(30:45):
you know, perhaps he and his administration could be concerned
about just like you know, the bad press around it
if it's included and so many people are opposing it.
But this is also an administration that like didn't care
about the bad press that came with like saying, we're
building a detention camp on polluted land.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Yeah, well look look like this is this is this
is the thing that that the fight over the police
budget is distracting from, which is that we defined a
second toxic waste dump to build the migrant concentration cap on.
So you know, progressive, progressive values are getting are happening
either way.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
Look, I frequently said all mayors are bastards, corny, but
I think you just it's fine, Look, it's fine to vote.
I guess if that is your staying, just don't convince
yourself that once you leave the voting booths that like
(31:59):
the struggle is over because whatever happens, like this person,
this authority figure in charge, is your enemy. Like it
doesn't matter how nice he is, it doesn't matter how
many jokes he cracks, like whatever you're trying to like
resist or like liberate, Like this person is going to
stand in your way just by virtue of being the mayor.
(32:24):
Like it's baked into like what that is. So I
think it's just a matter of being like clear eyed
about that rather than like convincing yourself that you can
somehow like co run the city like with the government.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Yeah, I mean I'm gonna, okay, I'm gonna take a
shot at a city on the other side of the world.
But fuck it, I'm still mad about this. Okay. So
the the the nominal best case scenario for this inside
an electoral framework was when Barcelona and Camu, which is
this sort of left wing platform in Barcelona and I
(33:00):
made of a bunch of ex anarchists, I like managed
to get managed to get a sort of a semisable
majority of the city council and then the first time
they got their mayor elected, the first thing that that
fucking mayor did, like a week indo office was she
knew where all the squats were in Barcelona, and the
first thing she fucking did was she knew which immigrant
squat didn't have enough community support behind them to stop
(33:22):
them from getting evicted, and she had them evicted. So
you know, this is what happens when you put activists
in charge. They they do a more efficient job of
being the kind of insurgency. So oh my god, yeah,
this is this is this is what you're getting into.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
Oh my god. Well yeah, and I mean then it
also becomes like its own smoke screen, you know, like
just using the fact that like, oh I was elected
by activists, or like I was elected by movement people,
so like you know, I'm on your side, and just
using it as like a shield against like remove and
(34:00):
being like, well, I know this looks bad, but like
you guys know, like I'm I'm your guy, Like I'm
one of you, like like just trust me, Like we're
doing this for the for the right reasons. It might
look bad, but because I'm your guy, you know, it's okay.
I mean, it's the same thing with like uh Biden
and the and the border wall.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Now I think ironically our episode on that is going
to be the episode that comes out right before this,
so oh wait, sorry, sorry, two episodes. Sorry, there'll be
two episodes before. Yeah. Oh and and the two episodes
after well is also going to be border wall shit.
So yeah, border wall bad. Fuck Biden for border wall.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
But it's like it's Brighten's border Wall. He's doing all
this shit. And then you know, it's just if it
was Trump, we know what the response would be from
supposed progressive.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Yeah, don't don't let people like put a code of
paint on a turd and hand it to you and
be like, no, it's good.
Speaker 4 (34:59):
Actually we don't have to do this, right, But I mean,
also the border Wall, God, do you remember there was
a brief flash of time.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
In October when when Brandon Johnson and his team announced
they were going to visit the border wall and then
it only lasted like twenty four hours, seventy two hours.
I don't know when, but at some point then they
like very quickly reversed the decision when they realized like
how bad that would look as we have like like
(35:34):
at that time, there were thousands of people in police
like thousands of migrants to it who had traveled here
and staying on police station flours and there was like
they were gonna have this publicity stone want I went
to visit the border wall and then they changed their
minds about it, and we're like, oh, yeah this is
probably a bad idea. But it's become this this like
(35:56):
Pilgrimage site. I mean, like I know, AOC went there.
It's like liberal diferent like go there to be like,
oh this is so terrible and then they like, you know,
just kind of let Biden make it worse.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Yeah, so this this has been that this has turned
into the liberal groups elected on big promises make your
life worse episode.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
Well this has been.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
It can happen here. You could find us in the
places where can people find you?
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Uh, just you know on the Hell site, which I
know you're back on now.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Unfortunately unfortunately.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
Yeah, you know, we have drinks Press dot org per
site and then yeah, Twitter, Instagram, all that stuff.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Yeah, so go check out the Drinks Press people. They do,
they do great work. And yeah, cops, bad cops, bad.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
Cops, always bad cops, keep being bad.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can
find sources for It could happen here, Updated monthly at
coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
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