February 22, 2023 • 32 mins
The War on Drugs killed Breonna Taylor. Clayton and Greg sit down with journalist Radley Balko to talk about how the War on Drugs has steadily eroded our Constitutional rights and led to the militarization of the police. They zero in on the practice of no-knock warrants and discuss how deadly and unnecessary they are. Special attention is paid to the case of Breonna Taylor and how she was a tragic and innocent victim of America’s decade-long War on Drugs.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Clayton. I'm gonna start this episode with a statement and
not a question. The War on Drugs killed Brianna Taylor.
That's a powerful statement. On March thirteenth, twenty twenty, Louisville
police officers rated Taylor's apartment looking for drugs allegedly stashed
by a former boyfriend. You know what happened when Brianna Taylor,
she was just sort of lumped in, you know, it
(00:27):
was almost like a sort of an afterthought, We'll go
ahead and raid her house. Du N Walker, who was
in the apartment and dating Taylor at the time, fired
one shot at police. Louisville police officers fired more than
thirty shots, many blindly, into the apartment. Taylor was struck
and killed the mere fact that she was sort of
(00:49):
adjacent to a drugs I mean, this is you know,
this is how we justified collateral damage in war. No'm
not grave. This becomes a nation issue because of a
Senate stafford in his early twenties named Don Santarelli, and
he proposes it as a wedge issue, Like wait a minute,
hold on, that's where it came from. He just made
a suggestion that we should bust into people's houses and
(01:12):
they went with somebody who had no police That's crazy.
You'd be stunned how much laws made by twenty two
year olds. That's crazy. I'm Greg Glaud and this is
the War on Drugs telling how you doing today? Man?
(01:34):
Good about yourself? Greg? Doing well? Doing well? Yeah? Uh
read something the other day and the title of the
article was the War on Drugs killed Brianna Taylor and
you know Brin Taylor for those um who don't know,
because I mean there's been so many just tragedies since
since then. As a shame we get lost in you know,
(01:55):
the tragedy of which is which? But yeah, and it
kind of crazy, like it's just it happened so often. Yeah,
it cannot getting them to this stuff, like you really can't.
But well, really the thrust of the article was just
saying that, you know, they were able to break into
her house, coming there at the middle of the night,
her boyfriend sleeping next to her, and it turns out
(02:15):
it was on a no knock warrant for some small
connection that she had with a former kind of friend
boyfriend drug dealer that she was not helping whatsoever on
drugs and his house was a you know, miles away
and it was for a small amount of drugs. Even
if they found anything, didn't find anything. Bryan Taylor's dead. Yeah,
you lost somebody close to you, somebody lost a family member,
(02:36):
that was somebody in the community that was, you know,
contributing to society. Yeah. Yeah, there was no knock warrants.
Those that's a that's that's a real kind of dangerous
thing in the community because it's it's just an excuse
to kick in somebody's door, Like I mean, that's that's
(02:56):
essentially what it is. Like, there's no people can't respond
to the police because you haven't announced yourself as the police.
You haven't, you know, And I don't understand the value
in a no knock warrant. It seems like it's more
of a dangerous situation for the officers, right, yeah, because
if this person is selling drugs, then the person that
(03:18):
they probably worried about is other drug dealers, right and
you know who kicks indoors without stating this is the
police and flashing lights other drug dealers. So yeah, Omar
is the only one from the wire that ever announced
himself that we're about rob right with a whistle, You
know what I'm saying, Like he comes up whistling farmer
(03:40):
in the daily you know what it is like the
police don't even give you that much of a warning
with the no knock like yeah, yeah, maybe that should
be the law to play the ice cream music or
something like you gotta turn your music up. But yeah,
I mean, and Branda's story, as tragic as it was,
is you know, not something that's rare in our It's
not uncommon. Now it's a little bit too common, I think. Yeah,
(04:03):
I mean there's countless stories of people, you know, officers
getting the wrong address and barreling into someone's house. I
mean we've seen that a million times. We saw that
in was that Henry County? Yeah, yeah, outside Atlanta. Yeah,
And like you talked about with like police, I mean
there's places that don't do this at all in the
United States. I mean, Florida has has not allowed for
nor Knox for for years in statute, and like they're
(04:25):
doing just fine. Um, it's it's not necessary. But the
reason that you're able to do these things is because
the War on drugs. The vast majority of no knock
warrants and swat units and all this stuff is to
execute drug ring. Yeah, a lot of this stuff, like
when you make it the War on drugs, which this
podcast is about, it's a war, so it is. That's
(04:47):
what you're seeing. You're seeing police having to be more
like soldiers and looking at citizens as enemy combatants. Almost. Yeah,
and you know we're gonna talk to um Radley Alco
who's an amazing investigative reporter, has an awesome book called
Rise of the Warrior Cop. And what I love about
it it shows like cops didn't always act like this,
(05:09):
Like they didn't have these tactics of swat team units
and military gear that literally is coming over from Iraq
and Afghanistan in our war zone. Yeah, and it's coming
right to local law enforcement with little to no training, accountability,
oversight and all these things. And the trigger at every
point when you see this expanded police power that makes
(05:29):
them more like the military. It's all drug related. It's
the fear of the drug war and it allows for
this government expansion and it's kind of terrifying, and it
happens so slow you don't realize it, and then these
tragic consequences have you're like, wait, we didn't always do
it this way. We didn't have to always do it
this way? Why are we doing this right? And yeah,
I like it because I'm glad to hear what he
(05:50):
has to say because it's kind of it makes me
feel like I'm not crazy because we're seeing how far
it's come. But even in my lifetime I've seen it
doesn't seem like the SWAT team does what they used
to do. Seemed like the SWAT team used to be
called in dangerous situations when things, you know, when nobody
else could do. Now it seems like SWAT Team is
(06:11):
strictly for serving no knock war rufen. Yeah, like, yeah,
SWAT used to We used to watch those movies like
in the eighties nineties, like Liam Neeson would be in
it or Arnold Hostages, Yeahstages. We got a dude and
the sniper rifle on the scope and you got the
negotiating dude, don't take the shot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And
(06:34):
now it's just dope fiends and they're they're just right,
like that's who we're going on right with m fors
and A. Yeah. So yeah, I'm I can't wait to
get into with Radley about like all this stuff, like
the history of it. I mean, the nerd of me
just loves that stuff. But it really does show you
how we got here and it doesn't have to be
this way, and what other places do and what can
we do and what are the reforms that can you know,
get us away from these devastating consequences like Grinn and
(06:57):
Taylor and people need to hear it. Yeah, so let's
get in to it. Excited Bradley, Welcome to the War
on Drugs. Thanks thanks for having me. Yeah, we're glad
to have you. Yeah, this is awesome. Yeah, I'll kind
of kick it off here. You know, we all heard
the story of Brianna Taylor that it was a no
(07:17):
knock garade based upon very scant evidence of drug activity
at her house. It was an old boyfriend or a
friend that used to have packages delivered to her house
because his would get porch pirated and hers were able
to be protected. You know. They came in at you know,
midnight or whatever. It was one o'clock, her and her
boyfriend lawful, you know, firearm owner, and people are barreling
(07:37):
into their house. What do you expect? And then he
was shot and killed or she was shot and killed,
and he was charged with murder at first, and then
I believe those were all dropped. But it seems like
these types of tactics no knock garades and warrants not
only are incredibly dangerous for the people that are being
rated on, also for the police officers as well. Can
you talk a little bit about kind of the rise
of these type of tactics. Where does no knock warrants
(07:58):
come from? Has that just always been how it's been
just kind of talk about that, and then kind of
the combination and connection with the War on drugs and
how that's kind of raisen at the same time of
these type of military tactics. Sure, before I get into
the history, I mean, one thing that I think we
need to mention about the Brenna Taylor raid is, you know,
if you buy into the war on drugs and you
buy into the idea that they have to do these
kinds of raids, which I don't buy into either, you know,
(08:20):
they had enough evidence for the guy that they were
after in this case, right, there was overwhelming evidence. The
reason why they raided Brionna Taylor as well. I think
is important to note in a discussion like this. You know,
in order to fight a war, you have to do
humanize your enemy, right, you have to make them sort
of look like worthless. You have to you have to
sort of instill in the public the idea that these
(08:41):
people aren't worse, sort of the basic dignity that we
give to other human beings. And the fact that you know,
what happened with Brionna Taylors, which she was just sort
of lumped in. You know, it was almost like a
sort of an afterthought that was gonna we'll go ahead
and raid her house too, since while we're at it,
and like the idea that you know, you're gonna be
breaking somebody's door down in the middle night and subjecting
them to these volatile tactics, subjecting them in any people
that happened to be in the home that you know,
(09:03):
just the mere fact that she was sort of adjacent
to a drug. I mean, this is you know, this
is how we justify collateral damage in wars, right, that's
how we justify killing citizens wars. Well, we had to
bomb you know, this bridge and there happened to be
citizens on it, you know, Oh well, you know, I
mean it's a tragic, but it had to be done.
And you know, it's important to remember that the no
knock grade for the first sort of couple decades of
(09:25):
its existence as a as an actual sort of policy.
This is not something that police chiefs were clamoring for
or sheriffs wanted. Um you know again, police were reluctant
to use it, and when the places where it was passed.
But then Nixon runs in nineteen sixty eight and he
makes um, you know, drugs and the drug war a
huge priority of his campaign. He's it's this you know,
(09:46):
pretty blatant racist appeal to sort of white fear of
black crime or suburban fear of urban crime. And so
you know, as part of that campaign, he has a
number proposes a number of policies like doing away with
cash bail, um, a lot of really some insane things
about that sort of indefinite attention. And at one point
they wanted to sort of arrest the attorneys for you know,
(10:08):
suspected drug dealers. But one of the big policies was
the no not great. It was this idea that you know,
we're going to show how tough we are in drugs
by we're gonna let cops just kick down doors to
to you know, go in and seize the drugs. And
I mean the interesting thing about this, you know, I said,
this is not something that law enforcement wanted. Um, this
is not something they were clamoring for. So this becomes
a national issue because of a guy, a Senate stafford
(10:30):
in his early twenties named Don Santarelli, and he proposes
it as a wedge issue like this is this is
going to be something that we can do to appeal
to Middle America. You know, most people don't think of
themselves that the kind of people who are going to
be wrongly rated by police officers. Wait a minute, hold on,
that's where it came from. He just made a suggestion
that we should bust into people's houses and they went
(10:51):
with somebody who had no police That's crazy. You'd be
stunned how much law is made by twenty two year
old just say it like about this. Yeah, man, it's yeah.
This whole city's run by like people making thirty thousand
dollars a year. Where it's nuts. Yeah. I read interviewed
centrally from my book, and you know today he says
this is one of the biggest mistakes of his career.
And he's he's very sort of mournful, almost for the
(11:14):
way that this tactic has been sort of used and
abused over the years. Um. You know, but it's part
of this successful campaign. And Nickson gets elected and in
I believe its seventy or seventy one, Congress passes this law.
They pass two laws. One is a bill that authorizes
no knock grades for federal narcotics officers, and the other
(11:36):
is one that legalizes no knock grades for police officers
in Washington DCS. Congress has jurisdiction over the District of Columbia.
And they're two very different reactions. In DC, DC at
the time actually had a pretty progressive police chief named
Jerry Wilson. I interviewed him for the book as well,
and Wilson hated this idea. Um. And you know, when
I asked him why he didn't want to implement this idea,
(11:57):
this no knock graide idea, he said some things that
I think are pretty profound. Um. First, he said, you know,
nobody goes into drug dealing to kill cops, right they Uh,
any drug dealer knows that to be kill a cop,
you're going to be lucky to survive the next five
or six seconds. It doesn't do business. Yeah, business. Yeah,
it's bad for business, You're gonna be it's bad for life. Right,
(12:20):
You're you're probably gonna be killed, or you're gonna go
to prison for the rest of your life. You're gonna
be executed. Um. The other thing he said is, you know,
the main justification for no knock grades other than say
the police is that they need that evidence in the
house to get a prosecution. Right. And if you wait
and give the person time to destroy the evidence, um,
then uh, you know that person's going to be to charge, right.
(12:44):
And from his perspective, it's like, you know, the amount
of drugs that you can flush down the toilet or
dispose of, you know, in the in the whatever twenty
thirty seconds that the police ought to give you before
breaking in, you know, um, you know, that's not a
significant quantity enough that it merits justifies the risk that
comes with a no knock rade and the kind of
violation of civil liberty. Yeah, you're not a kingpin, You're
(13:06):
not El Chapo. If you got it down in two flush, yeah,
And if the purpose of the drug wars to get
the drugs out of the the streets, you know, those drugs
aren't on the streets. Anymore. Right there, they're flushed. Yeah, yeah,
you know, his officers refused to to implement it, and interestingly,
crime actually goes down in DC over the next couple
of years as it goes up and the rest of
the country. I don't think his decision not to do
(13:28):
no knock rades it's the reason crime went down, but
it certainly didn't make things worse. But the federal level,
it's very different. Um So Nixon had also set up
these strike forces, which were federal narcotics officers teaming up
with local police. And these guys just go crazy. They
start kicking down doors left and right. They're they're raiding
places without warrants, they're lying on warrants, and they're raiding
(13:49):
the wrong houses, and people are getting terrorized, and some
people are getting killed. You know, since then there's a
trail of bodies. You know, I write about a botch
no knock that ended up with an innocent person dying.
You know, I would say they're probably four or five
of those a year, at least, lots more where people injured,
lots more where cops are killed or injured. And we
see this in the Brionna Taylor case. So the warrant
for the search warrant for the raid on Brionna Taylor's
(14:10):
own was illegal. It had this cut and paste boilerplate
language that they'd used in all the other search warrants
in that investigation. And I think it's a very sort
of underappreciated aspect of the case, which is that this
is kind of standard policy. I mean, the police police
departments across the country are routinely violating the Supreme Court's
ruling and nobody really cares. Um. You know, I found
in Little Rock a few years ago, I did a
(14:31):
review of about one hundred search warrants over a year
and a half period in Little Rock, a hundred no
knock warrants, and I found I think it was ninety
to ninety five percent of them had verbatim word for word,
cut and paste in the no knock section. And you know,
I actually interviewed the judges who signed those warrants, and
they didn't think they had done anything wrong. They could
They did no idea why it was even you know,
(14:52):
asking about this, and it's sort of like they were
signing illegal warrants. They were violating the law. And yet
because there are no consequences for any buddy involved, the judges,
the prosecutors, the police. It's just become sort of routine
for police to do this. And that's what happened in
Brenna Taylor's case. Yeah, that's that's unbelievable, and that she's
kind of just looked at as the same as someone
who actually was a suspected trafficker or whatever else and
(15:13):
just the exact same on that same footing. And to
your point, it's that almost dehumanizing of everyone. It's too general,
just boilerplate. These are the people that are in a
different subcategory of human beings more or less, and we
can do whatever we want. Yeah, there's there's no consideration
for their for their humanity. And you know the other
thing about Brown and Taylor's case, there was a criminologist
(15:34):
at the University of Eastern Kentucky who part of his
grad student thesis, he was allowed to sort of inbed
himself in the Louisville Police department and he talked about
how he went on a lot of these raids and
he was sort of in the car watching it, and
over and over again he saw them. The battering ram
hit the door at the very time the same time
that they announced that they were pleased, right, and this
(15:54):
is a you know, brazen violation of Supreme Court. Again,
the police thought called those knocking announce rates right, even
though they'll whole purpose of knocking announces to give the
people inside notice and let them avoid this violence by
coming to the door. Yeah, if your second knock is
a battering ram, you didn't really not. We have a
(16:15):
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(17:54):
one of the things that we are discussing on this
podcast quite a bit is how the War on drugs
was never about drugs, and it was about all these
other things. And one of the themes that I really
see in your book is, you know, from the sixties
to the Nixon eras, through Reagan and Bush and Obama
and all throughout, drugs are used kind of as a
(18:15):
reason to expand military kind of reduce some of the
constant protections from the Fourth Amendment and all these other things.
Can you kind of talk a little bit about that
history of militarization through the eyes of the War on
drugs a little bit, or are just generally there? Yeah,
I think that's an important question. I think there are
two aspects to police militarization. The first is the stuff, right,
(18:36):
the guns, the armored personnel carriers, the helicopters, the bayonets,
ballistics gear, all of that, and that you know, that
stuff is all problematic, you know, for various for very
obvious reasons, which is this is stuff that was designed
for use on a battlefield that's being used in domestic policing,
you know, on American streets in American neighborhoods against America
(19:00):
and citizens. But the other side, I think, which is
sort of unappreciated and maybe overlooked a little bit, is
the mindset, militaristic mindset, and the two kind of go
hand in hand. Right. If you have a if you
take a domestic police officer and you dress him in camouflage,
you dress him like a soldier, you train him like
a soldier, you arm him like a soldier, and you
(19:20):
tell him, you know, he's fighting a war, whether it's
a war on drugs or crime or terrorism or know
anything else. You know, we shouldn't be surprised if they
start to think of themselves as soldiers and think of
their job as the job of a soldier, and so
the mindset though, I think, you know, we've increasingly seen
this sort of US versus them mentality in policing has
(19:40):
driven a lot at the top by politicians who kind
of have you know, described the war on drugs and
very warlike, sort of militaristic terms. Yeah. I always think
about like when I used to put pads on for football,
like in high school, Like it changes your mentality ready
to hit. Yeah, Like I don't care if I'm at
like the Dunbar High School, you know, powder puff football
(20:01):
game for a homecoming, like I'm going through some people. Yeah, Like,
you know, it just change your mentality. And if you're
like doing flag football, like you're a different person. Like
of course that's going to change that analoviously, that changes
your perception as a citizen, Like these aren't my neighbors anymore,
These aren't community police. These are occupiers in a way.
I mean, I think just intuitively, there's it's going to
have a profound effect, right. Um. I mean you know
(20:23):
I've often, um, sort of joked about this on social media.
But when you see, you know, an officer in a
city trusting camouflage, Um, there's no you know, there's no
practical reason for that, right, I mean, you're not You're
not raiding woods in the middle of New York right then,
and moreover, it tends to be very conspicuous. They're not
trying to hide from anything. Right. The whole point is
to send a message. I mean, that's why they wear it, right. Um.
(20:46):
And again you know this, the problem with this is that, um,
police officers aren't soldiers right there. They're supposed to be
peace officers. Their job is to protect our constitutional rights,
whereas the soldier's job is basically to to kill people
and break things to annihilate a foreign enemy. Very different
primary objectives, right, And for a long time this country
have done a good job of separating those two and
(21:06):
keeping them apart. But I think that the War on drugs,
what it's done, probably one of the more destructive things
that's done, is has blurred that line between police and
soldier and it's while we've done a good job of
keeping soldiers out of domestic policing, where we've kind of
dropped the ball as we've allowed our domestic police to
become more and more like soldiers. Yeah, and Raley, one
thing I always kind of discuss is the you know,
(21:27):
the relationship between violent crime and the drug war. Can
you talk a little bit about that connection between militarization,
drug war and an actual just violent crime occurring, Like
how much violence in this country happens because of drug
prohibition and the war that we're you know, putting out
on on narcotics. Well, I mean, if you if you
go back to the prohibition era and you look at
(21:49):
the homicide rate, I mean there's a spike the moment
alcohol is broken into the Bolstad Act, and then it
drops the moment that it's it's repealed. So that's you know,
that's pretty striking. And if you look at the homicid
rate over a longer period of time, there's a spike
right at about the time Nixon declares war on drugs
and implement his policies and during the regular administration. Um,
So you know, I do think there's a Yeah, there's
(22:10):
clearly every time you sort of well, when you prohibit
drugs for the first time, you're going to see a
spike because you know, you're you're taking a legal activity
and pushing it underground. Um. You know, I would make
the joke you don't very often see people murdered in
a michelobe deal gone back exactly yea Corona boys are
coming over. Yeah right. I mean, if you two alcohol
(22:32):
distributors have a beef, they go to court and saddle
to two drug dealers have a beef, it's a whole
different matter, right. Um. But you know, also just you know,
in general, when you then when you sort of crack
down on drugs, then you just you disrupt the sort
of established black market. So then people start fighting for
turf again. I mean, we saw this in Mexico when
the US government for some of the Mexican government to
(22:53):
take a more militaristic approach to the war on drugs.
It disrupted the black market. And you saw this just
just massive heart wrenching sort of escalation and homicides across
from Mexico. And you know, the really perverse thing about it,
I know, getting a little bit off topic here, but
you saw politicians justify this by saying, basically, I mean
everybody from Hillary Clinton to Bush's drugs are that, you know,
(23:16):
these tens of thousands of murdered Mexicans were sort of
the price that we had to pay to stop Americans
from getting high, right. I Mean it's just like we
want to talk about the humanization. I mean, it's just
this utter sort of disregard for human life. Yeah, and
kind of switching to something a little bit different, but
on the same topic as you know, recently, you know,
Joe Biden just asked, you know, you know, pardoned everyone
with low level drug possession, kind of a more symbolic
(23:40):
approach and then also potentially rescheduling. And we've seen, you know,
thirty five states have some sort of form of legal
marijuana across the country. I think it would shock people
and Clay this song. We've talked about how much marijuana
still is a major contribute to the drug war, criminal
justice and kind of interactions between police and citizens. You know,
(24:01):
can you talk a little bit about like how marijuana
is still able to be you know with this Yeah,
with the smell of marijuana coming from a car like civilized,
which is which is crazy too because it can be
used for anything, like you can if you can smell
marijuana with both of my windows up while I'm doing sixty. Yeah,
you were a RoboCup. You are like, yeah, and they
(24:22):
use it for everything. Well, what it amaze me is
they you know, they can pull a car over because
they smelled you know, marijuana that was you know, locked
in the trunk right of the car, or they can
smell marijuana that you know, gave rise to a demeaning
roadside search where they go through every single bag and
throw everything out on the ground and they don't find anything.
And yet nobody, nobody, you know, clearly they didn't smell marijuana,
(24:45):
and yet nobody nobody says anything. It's like, oh, the
officer was mistaken, Oh well move on. And then you're
able to use everything there because it was a or
even if you don't, you just subjected somebody to a
humiliating search. You know, their ships like spread out all
over the interstate, and the cops like, all right, see
you later, go on, you know, and they move on
to the next person. I mean, I wrote about a
story where one of these canine units just outside of
(25:08):
Saint Louis Collinsville, Illinois, um, you know, he pulled over
this guy and you know, the drug dog magically alerted
and they didn't find anything. And of course the cops
will say, well there was there must have been trained
to shake, you know, yeah, traces of And that guy
sued the guy that got pulled over, and he found
out that this cop was training. How he would train
his dogs. He would go to roadside motels and hotels
(25:30):
into the parking lot and he would rub pot on
the bumpers of some of the cars and then he
would take his dog through dog alerted and that's how
he trained his dog. Well, imagine if you're one of
those cars didn't get pulled over the next day, you know,
and the drug dog comes out and alerts, and now
you got to search, you know, I mean the drug
dog thing. I mean, we could do a whole episode
just on that. Man. I've never probably calls believed on
(25:52):
them like all the way, like no like, and even
the research shows they're only good for about like two
hours out of the day. Well also snah, so I
am too well as government work. Well, I mean, yeah,
these dogs are trained, dogs have great noses, but but
we've also bred into dogs for several hundred years. This
(26:13):
this innate desire to please us. And so if you're
a drug handler, you want a dog that's gonna please you.
And so the dog can read that and if he
if you're drug handler things there's drugs in the car,
the dogs are going to alert because it wants to
please the handler. And that's not taught out of them.
I mean I've talked to people who train drug dogs
and they've said told me, we could train that out
of dogs. So they only alert when they're actually drugs
(26:35):
in the car. Police departments don't want that. They want
dogs they're gonna alert that they are gonna alert whenever
the cop wants them to alert. It's amazing. Yeah, cop
get excited, the dog get excited. Ye, everybody's happy. Yeah. Radley,
we want to thank you for coming on. We really
appreciate it. Man. Pleasure. Um, what the work you're doing
is important, and let these people know how they can
(26:56):
support you, where they can find you and where they
can get more formed on what's going on. Sure. So
I'm an independent journalist now, so you can find my
work at the Watch, which is a substack. So if
you go to Radley Balco dot substack dot com or
just google my name and the watch or my name
and substack. You should be able to find it pretty easily.
I appreciate that. Yeah, everyone go check out Radley's work.
(27:18):
He is one of the foremost experts on this issue.
His book Rise of the Warrior Coop is terrific, something
that definitely got me more interested in my career to
do this. So yeah, thank you again, thanks for the invitation.
I appreciate it again, Thank you so much. Clayton wasn't
cheap to get so we had to cut a couple
of commercials. We'll be right back. Somebody gotta pay me.
(27:49):
The theme I kept seeing was drugs was an excuse
to kind of militarize the police. And so it wasn't
that we were concerned about drugs and safety. It was
this is an area that we can exploit to actually
increase the police force, increase this kind of presence, increases
police state. Yeah, I mean, once you get past automatic weapons,
(28:12):
I don't I don't know who you think they're dealing with,
Like you need that much military equipment and I think,
I don't know. It's it's scary because I think the
military probably has more protocol there's accountability, there's protocol, like
if you act up, you go to a military tribunal. Yeah. Yeah,
you know, like you could get courtmark, you could get yeah.
(28:34):
Like and I think with police, they're getting all that
equipment with none of that. There's no training requirements, there's
nothing like it. And in facts with them, it's called
the ten thirty three program. If you don't use it
within a year, you have to give it back. Oh
so you got to use it. You're incentivized to use
it in some way. So whenever something the next thing
that happens, whether it's you know, the high school football
(28:57):
game was out of control, yeah, put that right gear on,
get it on. Yes, you have to go out there,
don't smack anybody, but show them we got it. Yeah,
so we could keep it. Yeah, seriously, it's crazy. Um.
And you know when I mean, you're you're dude, I'm
a guy. Like, we're idiots. Um. All we do is
like we have new toys, we want to use them. Yes,
(29:17):
and so you're going to give these things to police forces,
they're going to use them. And you know, you you
have all this stuff lying around. What is the most
common thing you do? It's drug warrants, and we've seen
it a million times go horribly wrong, these middle of
the night swat style raids, no knock warrants, when they're
not knocking and announcing, and I mean, I think the
most famous one that we've seen Pascual Hers with Breonna Taylor.
(29:38):
It's a midnight raid. Their only evidence was that the
guy that there was their target had packages delivered to
her house at some point because they were on and
off again dating, and that was the justification to break
into our home at midnight without announcing themselves break into
(29:58):
because that's what it is like. If you announce yourself
as the police and you've got the place surrounded, you
probably have the upper hand. But when you just bust
through somebody's door, and if you say you're gonna have
the drug dealers, drug dealers worry about other drug dealers. Yeah,
he don't. And they don't announce themselves. They don't be like, hello,
(30:20):
this is the cartel, we're outside, where's our money? You know,
they just bust in and they start shooting. So now
you're blending to get how is that even safe for
the officers? It's not, And I think people forget that.
We look at like, Oh, that's the bad guys. These
the good guys. These are the bad guys. These are
the good guys. But everybody's a human being in this,
(30:43):
and that's stuff you don't even think about, like when
you talk about the War on Drugs. Make sure you
follow the War on Drugs podcast so you don't miss
any new episodes or any of our quick fixed bonus content.
And we'll be back next week with another episode of
War on Drugs. Until then, thank you for listening. Executive
(31:07):
producers for War on Drugs are Jason Flam and Kevin Wordis.
Senior producer is Michael Epstein. Editing by Nick Massetti and
Michael Epstein. Associate producer and mix and mastering by Nick Massetti.
Additional production by Jeff Cleburne and Anna mcintee. Be sure
to follow the show on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at
Lava for Good. You can follow Greg on Twitter at
(31:29):
Greg Glaude, and you can follow Clayton English on Instagram
at Clayton English. The War on Drugs is a production
of Lava for Good Podcasts and association the Signal Company
Number One. I'm your host, Clayton English, and I'm Greg Glaude.
And thanks for listening to the War on Drugs podcast
Clayton. I'm gonna start this episode with a statement and
not a question. The War on Drugs killed Brianna Taylor.
That's a powerful statement. On March thirteenth, twenty twenty, Louisville
police officers rated Taylor's apartment looking for drugs allegedly stashed
by a former boyfriend. You know what happened when Brianna Taylor,
she was just sort of lumped in, you know, it
(00:27):
was almost like a sort of an afterthought, We'll go
ahead and raid her house. Du N Walker, who was
in the apartment and dating Taylor at the time, fired
one shot at police. Louisville police officers fired more than
thirty shots, many blindly, into the apartment. Taylor was struck
and killed the mere fact that she was sort of
(00:49):
adjacent to a drugs I mean, this is you know,
this is how we justified collateral damage in war. No'm
not grave. This becomes a nation issue because of a
Senate stafford in his early twenties named Don Santarelli, and
he proposes it as a wedge issue, Like wait a minute,
hold on, that's where it came from. He just made
a suggestion that we should bust into people's houses and
(01:12):
they went with somebody who had no police That's crazy.
You'd be stunned how much laws made by twenty two
year olds. That's crazy. I'm Greg Glaud and this is
the War on Drugs telling how you doing today? Man?
(01:34):
Good about yourself? Greg? Doing well? Doing well? Yeah? Uh
read something the other day and the title of the
article was the War on Drugs killed Brianna Taylor and
you know Brin Taylor for those um who don't know,
because I mean there's been so many just tragedies since
since then. As a shame we get lost in you know,
(01:55):
the tragedy of which is which? But yeah, and it
kind of crazy, like it's just it happened so often. Yeah,
it cannot getting them to this stuff, like you really can't.
But well, really the thrust of the article was just
saying that, you know, they were able to break into
her house, coming there at the middle of the night,
her boyfriend sleeping next to her, and it turns out
(02:15):
it was on a no knock warrant for some small
connection that she had with a former kind of friend
boyfriend drug dealer that she was not helping whatsoever on
drugs and his house was a you know, miles away
and it was for a small amount of drugs. Even
if they found anything, didn't find anything. Bryan Taylor's dead. Yeah,
you lost somebody close to you, somebody lost a family member,
(02:36):
that was somebody in the community that was, you know,
contributing to society. Yeah. Yeah, there was no knock warrants.
Those that's a that's that's a real kind of dangerous
thing in the community because it's it's just an excuse
to kick in somebody's door, Like I mean, that's that's
(02:56):
essentially what it is. Like, there's no people can't respond
to the police because you haven't announced yourself as the police.
You haven't, you know, And I don't understand the value
in a no knock warrant. It seems like it's more
of a dangerous situation for the officers, right, yeah, because
if this person is selling drugs, then the person that
(03:18):
they probably worried about is other drug dealers, right and
you know who kicks indoors without stating this is the
police and flashing lights other drug dealers. So yeah, Omar
is the only one from the wire that ever announced
himself that we're about rob right with a whistle, You
know what I'm saying, Like he comes up whistling farmer
(03:40):
in the daily you know what it is like the
police don't even give you that much of a warning
with the no knock like yeah, yeah, maybe that should
be the law to play the ice cream music or
something like you gotta turn your music up. But yeah,
I mean, and Branda's story, as tragic as it was,
is you know, not something that's rare in our It's
not uncommon. Now it's a little bit too common, I think. Yeah,
(04:03):
I mean there's countless stories of people, you know, officers
getting the wrong address and barreling into someone's house. I
mean we've seen that a million times. We saw that
in was that Henry County? Yeah, yeah, outside Atlanta. Yeah,
And like you talked about with like police, I mean
there's places that don't do this at all in the
United States. I mean, Florida has has not allowed for
nor Knox for for years in statute, and like they're
(04:25):
doing just fine. Um, it's it's not necessary. But the
reason that you're able to do these things is because
the War on drugs. The vast majority of no knock
warrants and swat units and all this stuff is to
execute drug ring. Yeah, a lot of this stuff, like
when you make it the War on drugs, which this
podcast is about, it's a war, so it is. That's
(04:47):
what you're seeing. You're seeing police having to be more
like soldiers and looking at citizens as enemy combatants. Almost. Yeah,
and you know we're gonna talk to um Radley Alco
who's an amazing investigative reporter, has an awesome book called
Rise of the Warrior Cop. And what I love about
it it shows like cops didn't always act like this,
(05:09):
Like they didn't have these tactics of swat team units
and military gear that literally is coming over from Iraq
and Afghanistan in our war zone. Yeah, and it's coming
right to local law enforcement with little to no training, accountability,
oversight and all these things. And the trigger at every
point when you see this expanded police power that makes
(05:29):
them more like the military. It's all drug related. It's
the fear of the drug war and it allows for
this government expansion and it's kind of terrifying, and it
happens so slow you don't realize it, and then these
tragic consequences have you're like, wait, we didn't always do
it this way. We didn't have to always do it
this way? Why are we doing this right? And yeah,
I like it because I'm glad to hear what he
(05:50):
has to say because it's kind of it makes me
feel like I'm not crazy because we're seeing how far
it's come. But even in my lifetime I've seen it
doesn't seem like the SWAT team does what they used
to do. Seemed like the SWAT team used to be
called in dangerous situations when things, you know, when nobody
else could do. Now it seems like SWAT Team is
(06:11):
strictly for serving no knock war rufen. Yeah, like, yeah,
SWAT used to We used to watch those movies like
in the eighties nineties, like Liam Neeson would be in
it or Arnold Hostages, Yeahstages. We got a dude and
the sniper rifle on the scope and you got the
negotiating dude, don't take the shot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And
(06:34):
now it's just dope fiends and they're they're just right,
like that's who we're going on right with m fors
and A. Yeah. So yeah, I'm I can't wait to
get into with Radley about like all this stuff, like
the history of it. I mean, the nerd of me
just loves that stuff. But it really does show you
how we got here and it doesn't have to be
this way, and what other places do and what can
we do and what are the reforms that can you know,
get us away from these devastating consequences like Grinn and
(06:57):
Taylor and people need to hear it. Yeah, so let's
get in to it. Excited Bradley, Welcome to the War
on Drugs. Thanks thanks for having me. Yeah, we're glad
to have you. Yeah, this is awesome. Yeah, I'll kind
of kick it off here. You know, we all heard
the story of Brianna Taylor that it was a no
(07:17):
knock garade based upon very scant evidence of drug activity
at her house. It was an old boyfriend or a
friend that used to have packages delivered to her house
because his would get porch pirated and hers were able
to be protected. You know. They came in at you know,
midnight or whatever. It was one o'clock, her and her
boyfriend lawful, you know, firearm owner, and people are barreling
(07:37):
into their house. What do you expect? And then he
was shot and killed or she was shot and killed,
and he was charged with murder at first, and then
I believe those were all dropped. But it seems like
these types of tactics no knock garades and warrants not
only are incredibly dangerous for the people that are being
rated on, also for the police officers as well. Can
you talk a little bit about kind of the rise
of these type of tactics. Where does no knock warrants
(07:58):
come from? Has that just always been how it's been
just kind of talk about that, and then kind of
the combination and connection with the War on drugs and
how that's kind of raisen at the same time of
these type of military tactics. Sure, before I get into
the history, I mean, one thing that I think we
need to mention about the Brenna Taylor raid is, you know,
if you buy into the war on drugs and you
buy into the idea that they have to do these
kinds of raids, which I don't buy into either, you know,
(08:20):
they had enough evidence for the guy that they were
after in this case, right, there was overwhelming evidence. The
reason why they raided Brionna Taylor as well. I think
is important to note in a discussion like this. You know,
in order to fight a war, you have to do
humanize your enemy, right, you have to make them sort
of look like worthless. You have to you have to
sort of instill in the public the idea that these
(08:41):
people aren't worse, sort of the basic dignity that we
give to other human beings. And the fact that you know,
what happened with Brionna Taylors, which she was just sort
of lumped in. You know, it was almost like a
sort of an afterthought that was gonna we'll go ahead
and raid her house too, since while we're at it,
and like the idea that you know, you're gonna be
breaking somebody's door down in the middle night and subjecting
them to these volatile tactics, subjecting them in any people
that happened to be in the home that you know,
(09:03):
just the mere fact that she was sort of adjacent
to a drug. I mean, this is you know, this
is how we justify collateral damage in wars, right, that's
how we justify killing citizens wars. Well, we had to
bomb you know, this bridge and there happened to be
citizens on it, you know, Oh well, you know, I
mean it's a tragic, but it had to be done.
And you know, it's important to remember that the no
knock grade for the first sort of couple decades of
(09:25):
its existence as a as an actual sort of policy.
This is not something that police chiefs were clamoring for
or sheriffs wanted. Um you know again, police were reluctant
to use it, and when the places where it was passed.
But then Nixon runs in nineteen sixty eight and he
makes um, you know, drugs and the drug war a
huge priority of his campaign. He's it's this you know,
(09:46):
pretty blatant racist appeal to sort of white fear of
black crime or suburban fear of urban crime. And so
you know, as part of that campaign, he has a
number proposes a number of policies like doing away with
cash bail, um, a lot of really some insane things
about that sort of indefinite attention. And at one point
they wanted to sort of arrest the attorneys for you know,
(10:08):
suspected drug dealers. But one of the big policies was
the no not great. It was this idea that you know,
we're going to show how tough we are in drugs
by we're gonna let cops just kick down doors to
to you know, go in and seize the drugs. And
I mean the interesting thing about this, you know, I said,
this is not something that law enforcement wanted. Um, this
is not something they were clamoring for. So this becomes
a national issue because of a guy, a Senate stafford
(10:30):
in his early twenties named Don Santarelli, and he proposes
it as a wedge issue like this is this is
going to be something that we can do to appeal
to Middle America. You know, most people don't think of
themselves that the kind of people who are going to
be wrongly rated by police officers. Wait a minute, hold on,
that's where it came from. He just made a suggestion
that we should bust into people's houses and they went
(10:51):
with somebody who had no police That's crazy. You'd be
stunned how much law is made by twenty two year
old just say it like about this. Yeah, man, it's yeah.
This whole city's run by like people making thirty thousand
dollars a year. Where it's nuts. Yeah. I read interviewed
centrally from my book, and you know today he says
this is one of the biggest mistakes of his career.
And he's he's very sort of mournful, almost for the
(11:14):
way that this tactic has been sort of used and
abused over the years. Um. You know, but it's part
of this successful campaign. And Nickson gets elected and in
I believe its seventy or seventy one, Congress passes this law.
They pass two laws. One is a bill that authorizes
no knock grades for federal narcotics officers, and the other
(11:36):
is one that legalizes no knock grades for police officers
in Washington DCS. Congress has jurisdiction over the District of Columbia.
And they're two very different reactions. In DC, DC at
the time actually had a pretty progressive police chief named
Jerry Wilson. I interviewed him for the book as well,
and Wilson hated this idea. Um. And you know, when
I asked him why he didn't want to implement this idea,
(11:57):
this no knock graide idea, he said some things that
I think are pretty profound. Um. First, he said, you know,
nobody goes into drug dealing to kill cops, right they Uh,
any drug dealer knows that to be kill a cop,
you're going to be lucky to survive the next five
or six seconds. It doesn't do business. Yeah, business. Yeah,
it's bad for business, You're gonna be it's bad for life. Right,
(12:20):
You're you're probably gonna be killed, or you're gonna go
to prison for the rest of your life. You're gonna
be executed. Um. The other thing he said is, you know,
the main justification for no knock grades other than say
the police is that they need that evidence in the
house to get a prosecution. Right. And if you wait
and give the person time to destroy the evidence, um,
then uh, you know that person's going to be to charge, right.
(12:44):
And from his perspective, it's like, you know, the amount
of drugs that you can flush down the toilet or
dispose of, you know, in the in the whatever twenty
thirty seconds that the police ought to give you before
breaking in, you know, um, you know, that's not a
significant quantity enough that it merits justifies the risk that
comes with a no knock rade and the kind of
violation of civil liberty. Yeah, you're not a kingpin, You're
(13:06):
not El Chapo. If you got it down in two flush, yeah,
And if the purpose of the drug wars to get
the drugs out of the the streets, you know, those drugs
aren't on the streets. Anymore. Right there, they're flushed. Yeah, yeah,
you know, his officers refused to to implement it, and interestingly,
crime actually goes down in DC over the next couple
of years as it goes up and the rest of
the country. I don't think his decision not to do
(13:28):
no knock rades it's the reason crime went down, but
it certainly didn't make things worse. But the federal level,
it's very different. Um So Nixon had also set up
these strike forces, which were federal narcotics officers teaming up
with local police. And these guys just go crazy. They
start kicking down doors left and right. They're they're raiding
places without warrants, they're lying on warrants, and they're raiding
(13:49):
the wrong houses, and people are getting terrorized, and some
people are getting killed. You know, since then there's a
trail of bodies. You know, I write about a botch
no knock that ended up with an innocent person dying.
You know, I would say they're probably four or five
of those a year, at least, lots more where people injured,
lots more where cops are killed or injured. And we
see this in the Brionna Taylor case. So the warrant
for the search warrant for the raid on Brionna Taylor's
(14:10):
own was illegal. It had this cut and paste boilerplate
language that they'd used in all the other search warrants
in that investigation. And I think it's a very sort
of underappreciated aspect of the case, which is that this
is kind of standard policy. I mean, the police police
departments across the country are routinely violating the Supreme Court's
ruling and nobody really cares. Um. You know, I found
in Little Rock a few years ago, I did a
(14:31):
review of about one hundred search warrants over a year
and a half period in Little Rock, a hundred no
knock warrants, and I found I think it was ninety
to ninety five percent of them had verbatim word for word,
cut and paste in the no knock section. And you know,
I actually interviewed the judges who signed those warrants, and
they didn't think they had done anything wrong. They could
They did no idea why it was even you know,
(14:52):
asking about this, and it's sort of like they were
signing illegal warrants. They were violating the law. And yet
because there are no consequences for any buddy involved, the judges,
the prosecutors, the police. It's just become sort of routine
for police to do this. And that's what happened in
Brenna Taylor's case. Yeah, that's that's unbelievable, and that she's
kind of just looked at as the same as someone
who actually was a suspected trafficker or whatever else and
(15:13):
just the exact same on that same footing. And to
your point, it's that almost dehumanizing of everyone. It's too general,
just boilerplate. These are the people that are in a
different subcategory of human beings more or less, and we
can do whatever we want. Yeah, there's there's no consideration
for their for their humanity. And you know the other
thing about Brown and Taylor's case, there was a criminologist
(15:34):
at the University of Eastern Kentucky who part of his
grad student thesis, he was allowed to sort of inbed
himself in the Louisville Police department and he talked about
how he went on a lot of these raids and
he was sort of in the car watching it, and
over and over again he saw them. The battering ram
hit the door at the very time the same time
that they announced that they were pleased, right, and this
(15:54):
is a you know, brazen violation of Supreme Court. Again,
the police thought called those knocking announce rates right, even
though they'll whole purpose of knocking announces to give the
people inside notice and let them avoid this violence by
coming to the door. Yeah, if your second knock is
a battering ram, you didn't really not. We have a
(16:15):
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To learn more of visits stand together dot org. You know,
(17:54):
one of the things that we are discussing on this
podcast quite a bit is how the War on drugs
was never about drugs, and it was about all these
other things. And one of the themes that I really
see in your book is, you know, from the sixties
to the Nixon eras, through Reagan and Bush and Obama
and all throughout, drugs are used kind of as a
(18:15):
reason to expand military kind of reduce some of the
constant protections from the Fourth Amendment and all these other things.
Can you kind of talk a little bit about that
history of militarization through the eyes of the War on
drugs a little bit, or are just generally there? Yeah,
I think that's an important question. I think there are
two aspects to police militarization. The first is the stuff, right,
(18:36):
the guns, the armored personnel carriers, the helicopters, the bayonets,
ballistics gear, all of that, and that you know, that
stuff is all problematic, you know, for various for very
obvious reasons, which is this is stuff that was designed
for use on a battlefield that's being used in domestic policing,
you know, on American streets in American neighborhoods against America
(19:00):
and citizens. But the other side, I think, which is
sort of unappreciated and maybe overlooked a little bit, is
the mindset, militaristic mindset, and the two kind of go
hand in hand. Right. If you have a if you
take a domestic police officer and you dress him in camouflage,
you dress him like a soldier, you train him like
a soldier, you arm him like a soldier, and you
(19:20):
tell him, you know, he's fighting a war, whether it's
a war on drugs or crime or terrorism or know
anything else. You know, we shouldn't be surprised if they
start to think of themselves as soldiers and think of
their job as the job of a soldier, and so
the mindset though, I think, you know, we've increasingly seen
this sort of US versus them mentality in policing has
(19:40):
driven a lot at the top by politicians who kind
of have you know, described the war on drugs and
very warlike, sort of militaristic terms. Yeah. I always think
about like when I used to put pads on for football,
like in high school, Like it changes your mentality ready
to hit. Yeah, Like I don't care if I'm at
like the Dunbar High School, you know, powder puff football
(20:01):
game for a homecoming, like I'm going through some people. Yeah, Like,
you know, it just change your mentality. And if you're
like doing flag football, like you're a different person. Like
of course that's going to change that analoviously, that changes
your perception as a citizen, Like these aren't my neighbors anymore,
These aren't community police. These are occupiers in a way.
I mean, I think just intuitively, there's it's going to
have a profound effect, right. Um. I mean you know
(20:23):
I've often, um, sort of joked about this on social media.
But when you see, you know, an officer in a
city trusting camouflage, Um, there's no you know, there's no
practical reason for that, right, I mean, you're not You're
not raiding woods in the middle of New York right then,
and moreover, it tends to be very conspicuous. They're not
trying to hide from anything. Right. The whole point is
to send a message. I mean, that's why they wear it, right. Um.
(20:46):
And again you know this, the problem with this is that, um,
police officers aren't soldiers right there. They're supposed to be
peace officers. Their job is to protect our constitutional rights,
whereas the soldier's job is basically to to kill people
and break things to annihilate a foreign enemy. Very different
primary objectives, right, And for a long time this country
have done a good job of separating those two and
(21:06):
keeping them apart. But I think that the War on drugs,
what it's done, probably one of the more destructive things
that's done, is has blurred that line between police and
soldier and it's while we've done a good job of
keeping soldiers out of domestic policing, where we've kind of
dropped the ball as we've allowed our domestic police to
become more and more like soldiers. Yeah, and Raley, one
thing I always kind of discuss is the you know,
(21:27):
the relationship between violent crime and the drug war. Can
you talk a little bit about that connection between militarization,
drug war and an actual just violent crime occurring, Like
how much violence in this country happens because of drug
prohibition and the war that we're you know, putting out
on on narcotics. Well, I mean, if you if you
go back to the prohibition era and you look at
(21:49):
the homicide rate, I mean there's a spike the moment
alcohol is broken into the Bolstad Act, and then it
drops the moment that it's it's repealed. So that's you know,
that's pretty striking. And if you look at the homicid
rate over a longer period of time, there's a spike
right at about the time Nixon declares war on drugs
and implement his policies and during the regular administration. Um,
So you know, I do think there's a Yeah, there's
(22:10):
clearly every time you sort of well, when you prohibit
drugs for the first time, you're going to see a
spike because you know, you're you're taking a legal activity
and pushing it underground. Um. You know, I would make
the joke you don't very often see people murdered in
a michelobe deal gone back exactly yea Corona boys are
coming over. Yeah right. I mean, if you two alcohol
(22:32):
distributors have a beef, they go to court and saddle
to two drug dealers have a beef, it's a whole
different matter, right. Um. But you know, also just you know,
in general, when you then when you sort of crack
down on drugs, then you just you disrupt the sort
of established black market. So then people start fighting for
turf again. I mean, we saw this in Mexico when
the US government for some of the Mexican government to
(22:53):
take a more militaristic approach to the war on drugs.
It disrupted the black market. And you saw this just
just massive heart wrenching sort of escalation and homicides across
from Mexico. And you know, the really perverse thing about it,
I know, getting a little bit off topic here, but
you saw politicians justify this by saying, basically, I mean
everybody from Hillary Clinton to Bush's drugs are that, you know,
(23:16):
these tens of thousands of murdered Mexicans were sort of
the price that we had to pay to stop Americans
from getting high, right. I Mean it's just like we
want to talk about the humanization. I mean, it's just
this utter sort of disregard for human life. Yeah, and
kind of switching to something a little bit different, but
on the same topic as you know, recently, you know,
Joe Biden just asked, you know, you know, pardoned everyone
with low level drug possession, kind of a more symbolic
(23:40):
approach and then also potentially rescheduling. And we've seen, you know,
thirty five states have some sort of form of legal
marijuana across the country. I think it would shock people
and Clay this song. We've talked about how much marijuana
still is a major contribute to the drug war, criminal
justice and kind of interactions between police and citizens. You know,
(24:01):
can you talk a little bit about like how marijuana
is still able to be you know with this Yeah,
with the smell of marijuana coming from a car like civilized,
which is which is crazy too because it can be
used for anything, like you can if you can smell
marijuana with both of my windows up while I'm doing sixty. Yeah,
you were a RoboCup. You are like, yeah, and they
(24:22):
use it for everything. Well, what it amaze me is
they you know, they can pull a car over because
they smelled you know, marijuana that was you know, locked
in the trunk right of the car, or they can
smell marijuana that you know, gave rise to a demeaning
roadside search where they go through every single bag and
throw everything out on the ground and they don't find anything.
And yet nobody, nobody, you know, clearly they didn't smell marijuana,
(24:45):
and yet nobody nobody says anything. It's like, oh, the
officer was mistaken, Oh well move on. And then you're
able to use everything there because it was a or
even if you don't, you just subjected somebody to a
humiliating search. You know, their ships like spread out all
over the interstate, and the cops like, all right, see
you later, go on, you know, and they move on
to the next person. I mean, I wrote about a
story where one of these canine units just outside of
(25:08):
Saint Louis Collinsville, Illinois, um, you know, he pulled over
this guy and you know, the drug dog magically alerted
and they didn't find anything. And of course the cops
will say, well there was there must have been trained
to shake, you know, yeah, traces of And that guy
sued the guy that got pulled over, and he found
out that this cop was training. How he would train
his dogs. He would go to roadside motels and hotels
(25:30):
into the parking lot and he would rub pot on
the bumpers of some of the cars and then he
would take his dog through dog alerted and that's how
he trained his dog. Well, imagine if you're one of
those cars didn't get pulled over the next day, you know,
and the drug dog comes out and alerts, and now
you got to search, you know, I mean the drug
dog thing. I mean, we could do a whole episode
just on that. Man. I've never probably calls believed on
(25:52):
them like all the way, like no like, and even
the research shows they're only good for about like two
hours out of the day. Well also snah, so I
am too well as government work. Well, I mean, yeah,
these dogs are trained, dogs have great noses, but but
we've also bred into dogs for several hundred years. This
(26:13):
this innate desire to please us. And so if you're
a drug handler, you want a dog that's gonna please you.
And so the dog can read that and if he
if you're drug handler things there's drugs in the car,
the dogs are going to alert because it wants to
please the handler. And that's not taught out of them.
I mean I've talked to people who train drug dogs
and they've said told me, we could train that out
of dogs. So they only alert when they're actually drugs
(26:35):
in the car. Police departments don't want that. They want
dogs they're gonna alert that they are gonna alert whenever
the cop wants them to alert. It's amazing. Yeah, cop
get excited, the dog get excited. Ye, everybody's happy. Yeah. Radley,
we want to thank you for coming on. We really
appreciate it. Man. Pleasure. Um, what the work you're doing
is important, and let these people know how they can
(26:56):
support you, where they can find you and where they
can get more formed on what's going on. Sure. So
I'm an independent journalist now, so you can find my
work at the Watch, which is a substack. So if
you go to Radley Balco dot substack dot com or
just google my name and the watch or my name
and substack. You should be able to find it pretty easily.
I appreciate that. Yeah, everyone go check out Radley's work.
(27:18):
He is one of the foremost experts on this issue.
His book Rise of the Warrior Coop is terrific, something
that definitely got me more interested in my career to
do this. So yeah, thank you again, thanks for the invitation.
I appreciate it again, Thank you so much. Clayton wasn't
cheap to get so we had to cut a couple
of commercials. We'll be right back. Somebody gotta pay me.
(27:49):
The theme I kept seeing was drugs was an excuse
to kind of militarize the police. And so it wasn't
that we were concerned about drugs and safety. It was
this is an area that we can exploit to actually
increase the police force, increase this kind of presence, increases
police state. Yeah, I mean, once you get past automatic weapons,
(28:12):
I don't I don't know who you think they're dealing with,
Like you need that much military equipment and I think,
I don't know. It's it's scary because I think the
military probably has more protocol there's accountability, there's protocol, like
if you act up, you go to a military tribunal. Yeah. Yeah,
you know, like you could get courtmark, you could get yeah.
(28:34):
Like and I think with police, they're getting all that
equipment with none of that. There's no training requirements, there's
nothing like it. And in facts with them, it's called
the ten thirty three program. If you don't use it
within a year, you have to give it back. Oh
so you got to use it. You're incentivized to use
it in some way. So whenever something the next thing
that happens, whether it's you know, the high school football
(28:57):
game was out of control, yeah, put that right gear on,
get it on. Yes, you have to go out there,
don't smack anybody, but show them we got it. Yeah,
so we could keep it. Yeah, seriously, it's crazy. Um.
And you know when I mean, you're you're dude, I'm
a guy. Like, we're idiots. Um. All we do is
like we have new toys, we want to use them. Yes,
(29:17):
and so you're going to give these things to police forces,
they're going to use them. And you know, you you
have all this stuff lying around. What is the most
common thing you do? It's drug warrants, and we've seen
it a million times go horribly wrong, these middle of
the night swat style raids, no knock warrants, when they're
not knocking and announcing, and I mean, I think the
most famous one that we've seen Pascual Hers with Breonna Taylor.
(29:38):
It's a midnight raid. Their only evidence was that the
guy that there was their target had packages delivered to
her house at some point because they were on and
off again dating, and that was the justification to break
into our home at midnight without announcing themselves break into
(29:58):
because that's what it is like. If you announce yourself
as the police and you've got the place surrounded, you
probably have the upper hand. But when you just bust
through somebody's door, and if you say you're gonna have
the drug dealers, drug dealers worry about other drug dealers. Yeah,
he don't. And they don't announce themselves. They don't be like, hello,
(30:20):
this is the cartel, we're outside, where's our money? You know,
they just bust in and they start shooting. So now
you're blending to get how is that even safe for
the officers? It's not, And I think people forget that.
We look at like, Oh, that's the bad guys. These
the good guys. These are the bad guys. These are
the good guys. But everybody's a human being in this,
(30:43):
and that's stuff you don't even think about, like when
you talk about the War on Drugs. Make sure you
follow the War on Drugs podcast so you don't miss
any new episodes or any of our quick fixed bonus content.
And we'll be back next week with another episode of
War on Drugs. Until then, thank you for listening. Executive
(31:07):
producers for War on Drugs are Jason Flam and Kevin Wordis.
Senior producer is Michael Epstein. Editing by Nick Massetti and
Michael Epstein. Associate producer and mix and mastering by Nick Massetti.
Additional production by Jeff Cleburne and Anna mcintee. Be sure
to follow the show on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at
Lava for Good. You can follow Greg on Twitter at
(31:29):
Greg Glaude, and you can follow Clayton English on Instagram
at Clayton English. The War on Drugs is a production
of Lava for Good Podcasts and association the Signal Company
Number One. I'm your host, Clayton English, and I'm Greg Glaude.
And thanks for listening to the War on Drugs podcast
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