From Rotten Politics To Rotting Flesh; Gregg Pemberton, Chairman Of The DC Police Union Joins Us Live

From Rotten Politics To Rotting Flesh; Gregg Pemberton, Chairman Of The DC Police Union Joins Us Live

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Charleston's Morning News on ninety four to
three WSC Now back to Kelly and Blaze.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Washington, DC, issuing President Trump over National Guard troops being
deployed to the city. The lawsuit argues Trump has run
rough shot over a fundamental tenet of American democracy that
the military should not be involved in domestic law enforcement.
This comes after a federal John jeruled earlier this week
that the Trump administration's deployment of National Guard troops in

(00:32):
California was illegal. According to a senior official familiar with planning,
the administrations working on an extension that could keep the
troops in the nation's capital through December. That looks like
it's going to happen. Trump has also suggested he plans
to deploy the National Guard to other cities like Chicago
and New Orleans. The deployment to Chicago could come as
early as today.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
Wow, that's going to make for an interesting weekend in Chaiitown.
In Chicago. I heard one of their elders speak, I
forget what they call alderman. I think, yes, I believe
so who said, well, we're okay with ice and getting
more law enforcement here, but we don't want the National Guard.
It's like it's just because Trump sent them right exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
And you know, and this a lot of people are like, well,
I thought Trump was just extolling the virtues of Muriel
Bowser for going along with him. So now this lawsuit,
well it's coming from the Attorney General of Washington, DC,
and she had actually worn the Attorney general to tread lightly,
and it looks like he did not heed her advice.

Speaker 3 (01:37):
Well, probably because of the circuit judge in the DC
area that they are notorious for getting judge shopped in
that area because they're left leaning and a very useful
tool for those trying to thwart this administration on like
every level we go through every day, the amount of
lawsuits in every way, whether it's immigration, security, law enforcement.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
Well, let's also explore this statement and the part of
it that says that the military should not be involved
in domestic law enforcement. Well, what happens when martial law
is declared after rioting or a natural disaster or whatever
it may be. What happens they deploy the National Guard.
And because you have looters, you have all of these,

(02:25):
so to keep law and order, they literally deploy the
National Guard. And so I so I'm kind of I
think this is at odds with reality when it says
that the military should not be involved in domestic law enforcement. Now,
of course we don't want, you know, armed troops in
most cases patrol in the streets. But it happens after riots,

(02:47):
It happens after hurricanes and floods and everything else. Yes, yeah,
unrest or when you know there's been evacuations or things
like that, and there's businesses and homes that are ripe
for the picking, for looters and thieves and everything else.
So it's not like this is something new, deploying the

(03:08):
National Guard to keep law and order.

Speaker 3 (03:10):
Don't you find it interesting they're now demonizing the National Guard.
Before it was demonizing law enforcement. Now Democrats are embracing
law enforcement. When they were trying to cancel cops before.
Now they're like, no, okay, we want more cops, but
not the National Guard.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
It's just well, because they're trying to walk a thin line,
because they know they're on the wrong side of the line.
I heard somebody describe it this way. They're like, take
any eighty twenty issue, and by eighty twenty issue, they
mean where eighty percent of people agree, twenty percent of
people disagree. The Democrats have been on the twenty side
of the eighty twenty issues all through this Trump presidency.

Speaker 3 (03:48):
Oh well, yeah, they're the hypocrisy, you know Olympics that
they continue to go through, and me, what's next. He
needs to have them flip the script on defending firearms next,
because he's been there now defending you know, illegals, criminals.
I mean, they're just on the wrong side.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
They've actually that script has already been flipped. Actually, and
we'll get to that story about the trans you know,
this talk of making it more difficult for transgender people
to purchase weapons. That flips the script because now the
argument is, well, they experience more violence than cisgender people

(04:31):
and they need to defend themselves. So to your point,
it already happened. We'll get into this story next that
I was just talking about.

Speaker 3 (04:41):
In Today's Top Stories. On a Friday edition of the show,
It's eight fifteen, Good morning.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
Nationwide student walkouts are being planned for today in response
to the Annunciation Catholic school shooting in Minneapolis. It's been
organized by several groups, including Students Demand Action. The students
say they are protesting gun violence and demand action from
elected officials to protect students in schools, in places of worship.
A transgender shooter open fire on a school mass, killing children,

(05:09):
two children and injuring twenty one others on August twenty seventh.

Speaker 3 (05:14):
You know, it's not really reported and talked about enough
that the Minneapolis Catholic school shooting capped off twenty four
violent hours in that city. And now you've got Governor
Tim Walls in Minnesota pushing for more gun control when,
by the way, Minnesota has numerous it's people control, but
gun control laws, none of which prevented the shootings that

(05:38):
culminated in the Catholic school attack.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
Well, I mean, speaking of Walls, he intimated the death
of President Trump the other day, and so there's news
coming and news will come, and he thinks he's being
a funny guy. He remember his wife who threw open
the windows and loved the smell of burning rubber when
the riots were going on in Minneapolis. So but I
think this even goes beyond that. I mean, it's mental

(06:02):
illness and who the hell forgive the pun walks into
a Catholic school mass and starts killing children. This transgender
was out of their mind. And there's talk that the
Department of Justice is considering limiting the ability of transgender

(06:24):
people to purchase weapons, and you know, labeling transgenderism as
a mental illness.

Speaker 3 (06:32):
Well, they have in other countries, in Britain, and frankly,
there's been in your social scroll you've likely seen this.
There's been many viral you know, takes on the Colorado
spring shooter being non binary, the Denver shooter identifying as trans,
the Aberdeen shooter identifying as trans, the Nashville shooter identifying

(06:53):
as trans. But you go and you look, and you
dig deep on the internet, and what do you find.
You find all kinds of articles from newsweek gone down.
Here's a social worker at Columbia University, you know, being
quoted in this article. Well, you know, four shooters over
three hundred mass shooting since two thousand and nine that
are transgender or non binary is just one point three percent.

(07:16):
So there's no mass issue here with regards to the
trans community.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
Well, if you google it, you'll get fact check after
fact check after fact check that, know, the trans community
is not violent. As a matter of fact, it's the
opposite of that that they experience more violence than the
CIS community, and I'm sick of all these stupid words.
So the CISC community is the straight community, okay, heterosexual

(07:42):
normal people, and that these trans experience more violence towards them.
But then if you dig deeper, there's a thing called IPv.
It's intimate partner violence. And then you look up the
rate of intimate partner violence among trans people, it's two
hundred and fifty percent higher than it is among SIS

(08:05):
people regular heterosexual couples.

Speaker 3 (08:09):
So basically domestic violence.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
Basically domestic violence. And so when they say that there's
more violence perpetrated upon trans people in all of these
fact checks, it would you would automatically think, well, I mean,
it must be that these transphobia people are just that,
you know, the transgenders are under attack by the rest

(08:35):
of us transphobic people, right, and it's not it's them
attacking each other.

Speaker 3 (08:41):
Well, and in these instances of these shootings, clearly attacking
other innocent people, and these children in this church and
so on, Nashville, Aberdeen, Denver, Colorado Springs. When it comes
to the mental illness designation versus the law enforce I
mean the firearms, this one's going to get interesting. I

(09:03):
wonder if Congress has to be involved, Like where is
this going to go?

Speaker 2 (09:07):
Well, go look at and this is where we were
in the last break where you had brought up about
flipping the script, and you're like, well, I wonder if
they're ever going to flip the script on like things
like you know, gun control and things. And this is
the case because they're already pushing back against this supposed
DOJ discussion that has only been reported by third parties,

(09:27):
so we don't even know if this is true or not,
or to what extent it's true. And they're already pushing
back saying because of all this violence that the trans
people experience, they have the right to defend themselves and
how dare you try to lip and limit their ability
to get a weapon? So there you go again, the
script is flipped. And I'm not for limiting their ability

(09:51):
to buy a weapon, but I am for somehow designating
mental oil illness in limiting those people's ability. But even
that sometimes can be used wrongly.

Speaker 3 (10:08):
Yeah, I've heard Trey GOUTI I think it was on
maybe about a week ago into last week. Like you said,
this week is dragging on, even though we only have
four days in it. But he was on Sean Hannity
during Your Ride Home three to six here on ninety
four to three WS and here he is an attorney
and prosecutor himself. He's out with a new book, Trey Gouty,
and he talked about the adjudicated mentally ill and how

(10:32):
the prosecutions of that have been a sticky wicket with
regards to the Second Amendment in the Constitution.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
Yeah, and also it affects healthcare, right because if you
go into a doctor and you say, Doc, I've been
depressed and say they give you some kind of medication
or something, well, now you're going to end up on
some kind of list and not be able to buy
a weapon. Right. And we've even seen cases of this
happen in some instances in the past.

Speaker 3 (10:59):
Let me tell you any veteran who uses the VA
and I'm talking about off the record conversations with some
of these veterans. It is suicide Awareness month, September is
and there are a lot of people who are honest
about what they're going through sadly because of what you
just described exactly.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
So it not only affects people's ability to well, it
affects their constitutional rights, It affects their ability to defend themselves,
and it also affects healthcare because now you're not going
to be honest with your doctor.

Speaker 3 (11:32):
Straight to Greg Pimberton, who's chairman of the DC Police Union. Boy,
you look at the headlines this morning, Greg, it's unbelievable
the DC. You've got Washington d c Suing the President
over the National Guard troops who say, now knew this
morning that they're going to be there through November. How
are you good morning, great, Thanks for having me. So
let's dig into this blaze. And I had been talking

(11:54):
about this for quite some time. Happy to see that
the DC Union was on the side of the Trump
administration with regards to them coming to DC and cleaning
up what has been a crime ridden city for quite
some time.

Speaker 4 (12:06):
Yeah, that's right. It's important to know how we got here.
So five years ago, our very liberal city Council passed
a boat load of radical legislation that was designed to
defund the police hamstring police officers. Make sure cops were
exposed to administrative, civil, and even criminal sanctions even when
they went out and did their job properly. In addition,
they made sure that they protected criminals and there was

(12:28):
nothing we could do to hold them accountable even when
they were convicted of committing violent crimes. So a surprise surprise,
over the past five years, we have had a mass
exodus the police officers out of our department and skyrocketing
crime rate. And as a matter of fact, we have
a sworn strength of four thousand police officers here in
the District of Columbia. However we only have three eighty,

(12:49):
leaving us with eight hundred vacancies for the position as
a swarrant officer. And no one should be surprised that
we needed help from the federal government to send in
these federal agents in the National Guard to get crime
under control because we just did not have enough officers
and the officers we did have were prohibited from doing
their job properly. So look, anybody with a shred of

(13:10):
common sense can see that if you have areas that
are plagued with crime and you send in police officers
and allow them to do their job, guess what criminals
get locked up in. Crime plummets And that's exactly what
we've seen over the past month and what we're hoping
is now we've seen that many congressmen and senators are
introducing legislation to undo what the city council did back

(13:30):
in twenty twenty. And that's the most promising aspect of
all of this, and hopefully we can get through this
and have some permanent fixes to keep the nation's capital safe.

Speaker 2 (13:38):
Yeah, Greg, so you know, it sounds like you have
a recruitment problem, and a lot of politicians have framed
this as a budgetary problem. Right, we need more money,
they always need more money. But this is a policy issue, right,
that has caused the recruitment problem that the police department has.

Speaker 4 (13:58):
You're absolutely right. So our the DC government's budgets has
an amount of money that is budgeted to hire up
to four thousand police officers that has been in the
budget for some time now. We just cannot get the
recruits in the academy. It's not an attractive place to
work because of those policy issues and because of the
way officers are treated here in the district. So we

(14:18):
have a hemorrhaging of officers both through resignations and early retirements,
and we have a very dismal outlook on applicants who
are applying to get into the academy, and that has
resulted in about one hundred or one hundred and twenty net
losses of officers per year. So it's not a budgetary issue.
This all comes down to how we treat police officers
and whether or not we allow them to do their

(14:38):
jobs properly well.

Speaker 3 (14:39):
And despite them talking about budget issues, I know that
the police department there in DC, haven't they been offering
thousands of dollars in bonuses and it hasn't even mattered.
Did they try to throw money at this with regards
to the policy failures.

Speaker 4 (14:54):
That's right. We have twenty five thousand dollars signing bonuses
once you're hired on the department. In addition to that,
they have a six thousand dollars housing allowance that they'll
pay for your rent once you come and move into
the city. That has not moved the needle at all
in terms of attracting new personnel. And the reason again
is that the narrative that's out there is that this
is not an attractive place to work. So hopefully with

(15:18):
this federal involvement and now that we have Congress and
the White House looking into these policies and understanding how
detrimental and devastating they've been to our nation's capital. They're
now taking action to undo that stuff. So listen, If
these bills can pass and we can get these underlying
pieces of legislation scuttle, I think we can be off
to the races and that that hiring will jump up

(15:39):
and those officers that are looking for greener pastors might
change their minds and stay here, and that ultimately that's
the goal. Because while we appreciate the federal assistance and
we appreciate the President's sending this in, we need it
to help we can do this job. We're a fully competent,
fully capable police department. We just need the number of
the proper number of police officers. We need the policies

(16:00):
in place so that we can do our job. And
if we can get those other two things, I think
we can make the nation's capital safe.

Speaker 2 (16:06):
Greg Speaking of narratives, what about the narrative that there
really isn't a crime problem, crime is going down, and
this is just the president creating some kind of crisis
to benefit it benefit from it politically.

Speaker 4 (16:21):
Yeah. Well, there's a lot of questions about that crime data,
and a lot of that is starting to come out,
and I think those narratives are unraveling. In twenty twenty three,
we had the most violent year on record in the
past twenty years. We had two hundred and eighty homicides.
We had nine hundred and sixty car jackings. The robberies,
the shootings, the stabbings were in the thousands, and since then,

(16:42):
in twenty twenty four, the police department reported a thirty
six percent drop in crime, and then in twenty twenty
five they reported another twenty five percent drop in crime.
But we knew that those numbers were suspicious because our
members are out on the street, we're running call to
call to call, and we're actually trying to document what's happening.
And so there are two issues that have cropped up. One,
the police department is now investigating command staff officials for

(17:05):
going into police databases and changing felonies to misdemeanors. And
our members are reporting that when they go to these scenes,
whether it's a shooting or a robbery or stabbing, that
management officials are coming to those scenes and directing them
to take reports for lesser offense. So a robbery becomes
a theft, you know, a shooting becomes an injured person
to the hospital. You know, different burglaries can become unlawful entries,

(17:29):
and so what's happening is over time they're manipulating these
stats so that it appears crime is going down, but
I can assure you that crime has not gone down.

Speaker 3 (17:37):
Yeah, redefining what crime truly is. So, if you're just
joining us live, Greg Pimberton, chairman of the DC Police Union,
what is your message given the fact that we could
see a rinse and repeat of what's happened in DC
in Chicago maybe as early as this weekend. You've heard
all the narrative making headlines from their mayor and governor.
Do you have any kind of message to the police

(17:59):
union in Choogo or any kind of contacts or communications
with them?

Speaker 2 (18:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (18:04):
John Katzar runs a police Fop Lodge seven for the
Chicago Police Department, and he's a great guy. He's been
representing his members for some time now, and I'm sure
he's going to welcome this assistance. The problem that the
administration is going to have is that, as you mentioned,
both Governor Prisker and Mayor Johnson are both going to
fight him on bringing that in and they're going to

(18:25):
litigate this issue and it's going to end up being
drug out through the courts. What I would say is,
I think the president is going to have much more
luck in places like Missouri and Louisiana where cities like
Saint Louis and New Orleans. While those are Democrat cities,
those states have Republican trifectas in their state legislature, and
those state legislators can do exactly what Congress is doing

(18:45):
in DC, which is to go into those cities and
repeal the bad law that has created these crime strikes.
And I think that's those are the places that they
should focus on. I would love to see them going
to Chicago and lower that crime rate that the city
is suffering horribly from violent crime. But I will say
it's going to be a legal challenge for the administration

(19:07):
to be successful there.

Speaker 2 (19:08):
Yeah, And you know, I mean, everybody wants to live
in a safe city, and we see the residents say
this over and over and over again. Greg Pemberton, Chairman
of the DC Police Union, We appreciate you shedding some
light on the truth here and what your police officers
are going through, the police officers that you represent, and
know that we're with you and that our hearts and

(19:30):
prayers are with you, and you're the officers that you represent,
and we certainly appreciate you taking the time this morning,
mister Pemberton, to join us.

Speaker 4 (19:38):
I appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (19:39):
You guys have a great day, all right, Thanks.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
Greg, Thank you. We'll talk again soon.

Speaker 3 (19:42):
What's that smell?

Speaker 2 (19:44):
The San Diego Botanic Garden says it's corpse flower is
in bloom and if you want to see and smell it,
time is ticking. The amorpho Phallus titanum is a rare
plant that blooms for about forty eight hours while in
bloom and emits a pungent, rotting flesh odor. That odor

(20:04):
draws in insects for pollination, and that can lead to
more corpse flower plants.

Speaker 3 (20:09):
So this this is a very interesting looking flower. I mean,
it looks like this huge in I can't say banana
because you know this thing kind of shooting out the
top of it. It's straight up and I don't know
how would you describe this. They're describing the smell as

(20:30):
like a dead rat or a moldy bath mat, or
maybe cabbages and death. I don't mean to laugh. Do
you think people go there and like get trigger. You
know sometimes when like I'm a sympathy crier, right someone
starts crying, my eyes will start watering, Like if someone
starts doing the like, I kind of feel like a

(20:53):
little sick in my stomach myself, and I'm like, oh,
I got to get away from this situation. I wonder
if people go gag at this.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
I'm sure they do. If it smells like a rotting
corpse or cabbage and what wasn't death, rotting cabbage and death.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
Moldy bath, matt dead rat or cabbages and death.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
Well you never know what might attract people. And obviously
they have it at the Botanic Garden because people are interested.
And I can't explain why you would be drawn to that.
Why would people buy farts in a jar? I mean
that was the thing for a little while, you know,
why would you do that? And I think that's interesting

(21:37):
that this story came up now because just a few
days ago. You know what a stinkhorn is?

Speaker 3 (21:43):
Is that a flower?

Speaker 2 (21:44):
Well, it's a fungus, I believe, oh dear. And you'll
see them in like natural areas. So it grows where
there's like decaying wood and things like this, And so
we were at our property the other day and my
wife has some cacked and some other things in a
little garden area and she's like, what is this. There's
bugs all over it, and it's like a pinkish, reddish

(22:09):
hard to describe, maybe like three inches tall and kind
of curves over on itself. I'm like, oh, that's a
stink flower. But you know, it's technically called a stinkhorn,
and they grow here in South Carolina. I've even seen
them in our backyard and same type thing. It emits
this horrible odor that attracts insects. And I have this

(22:32):
little natural area in the backyard that I keep totally natural.
So I put this six foot strip in where I've
got some palm trees and bamboo, and I just let
it go. I don't remove the leaves from it. I
don't put any poison in it. I don't. It's our
little nature preserve in the backyard. There's this six foot
strip along the back fence right, and they'll pop up

(22:55):
in there too because I don't clean up in there,
so there's decaying matter in there, and these stinkhorns will
pop up in there also. You might not even know
what it is.

Speaker 3 (23:04):
I want to see what it looks like. So it's
a tubular, so.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
Look it up and it does attract it. It performs
the same function is the corpse as the corpse flower does.
But well you may not have noticed. Like I said,
it'll live back in you know, thinking if you have
like a wood chips is mulch, or if you have
areas that you don't maintain, you'll see these things back

(23:28):
in there around this time of year.

Speaker 3 (23:30):
Oh wow, so they're just coming out the ground like that's.

Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yeah, they just pop up.

Speaker 3 (23:34):
This is weird looking.

Speaker 2 (23:36):
Yeah, they're kind of straight.

Speaker 3 (23:37):
I can't describe this very well without it. It's got
a bit of an interesting look to it. Kind of
looks like a body part in some of these image googles.

Speaker 2 (23:49):
Yeah maybe, I mean in person, it looks like it's
kind of kind of folds over on itself and it
has a pinkish red hue and you will see insects
crawling all over it. And if you're like, whoa. I
remember the first time I saw it.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
I'm like, what is that freaky looking?

Speaker 2 (24:07):
And somebody you told me, well, that's a stinkhorn, and
I misremembered and thought it was called a stink flower,
but the corpse flower is also called a stink flower.
So anyway, so does.

Speaker 3 (24:18):
The smell it cabbage and death. The stink horn.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
It has the same rotten flesh smellsh but I mean
it doesn't permeate all through the air, or at least
that's not been my experience. You got to get pretty
close and down to the ground in order to smell it.
I mean, it only pops up like three four inches,
So it's not like some huge thing, you know, emitting
all of this, all of these horrible odors. But interesting.

(24:45):
So if you see that, you know what it was.
Now you know, if you have a little pinkish red
thing growing up in your anywhere in your yard or
on your property, it's a stinkhorn.

Speaker 3 (24:55):
I had to make sure Blaze saw the image Googles
that I did from the stink horn.

Speaker 2 (24:59):
Yeah, you were like, it looks like a male body part,
and I'm like, not really, And then you showed me
the Google pictures. I'm like, whoa, Yeah, that looks exactly
like some kind of freaky fall alien, phallic whatever. So
if you google stinkhorn to see what we were talking about,

(25:19):
make sure you put in South Carolina and then you'll
get a more accurate depiction of what it looks like.
Because if you just put in stinkhorn, that is not
what I was talking about. But if you put in
stink horn sc they have one actually from Atistoe Island
that looks almost exactly like what I'm talking about.

Speaker 3 (25:40):
More cluster versus an offshoot. I don't know how to
pass that.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
Well, it was like a cluster of offshoots, but not
formed to like those other ones with a foreskin and whatever. Geez,
because Kelly kept saying, well, it looks like what I'm like,
I don't know who you've been hanging up on me.

Speaker 3 (25:59):
I'm like, a second, this is what if Google showing me.

Speaker 1 (26:04):
Thanks for listening to the Charleston Morning News Podcast. Catch
Kelly and Blaze weekday mornings from six to nine