BHS - 7A – UCLA Campus Safety | Professors Join Student Protests

UCLA has created a high-level post to oversee campus safety after mob attack. Baby boomer professors join student protests, risking arrest and violence. California officials debate Prop 47 changes to curb crime. On the street, the answer isn’t so simple. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is a case study on what ’not’ to do if you are in contention for VP.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
You're listening to k PI AM sixforty the Bill Handle Show on demand on
the iHeartRadio app. You are listeningto the Bill Handle Show to Dons And
this is KIM six forty Bill Handle. It is a Monday morning. Just

(00:23):
got the news that Columbia has canceledits commencement and so there will be no
graduation where at least there'll be noceremony where people walk across in those robes
and those hats, which are verystrange. I think those go back to
medieval times, those hats with thetassel and all that. It's pretty important

(00:45):
to have that for many many people. You know, they are families that
fly in from all over and therewas stories last night on the news about
and this was on NBC at theend of NBC where they do and this
is good news tonight kind of thing. And it was the families that in
previous graduations that we're so proud oftheir son or daughter, first one in

(01:11):
the family to graduate college and theceremony meant so much, and the crying
and the just all of it,and all that's taken away by these protesters.
All of it. It's you know, they're certainly doing their job.
They're showing us. So, asI said earlier, I am going to

(01:32):
tell you away those pro those protesterswant to make a point, and I
mean really want to make a point. I'm going to give some advice to
you. Block the entrances of hospitals, particularly the ambulance entrances. You're going
to get the coverage you want.You will absolutely win that battle, that

(01:57):
pr battle. See, there arepeople that actually think you're doing okay by
screwing over those people that looked atcommencement as just a joyful experience. You're
taking that away from them. Now. I don't think you're going far enough.
I think the old let's block ambulancesin front of a hospital. Don't
you think that make a point evenstronger? Okay, So there's one.

(02:24):
So let me tell you what's goingon at UCLA. Another sidebar story.
At UCLA has probably become the mostcontroversial university college that has been engaged with
the protesters. And what UCLA hasdone is has created a new Chief Safety
Officer position oversea campus security oversee thecampus police department. So the police department

(02:53):
is now going to report to thisnew Chief safety officer. And so the
Chancellor announced that Rick Brazil I thinkis his pronounce his name, a former
Sacrament of police chief. And thisguy has reviewed law enforcement responses all over
the country, I mean, includingthe riots and Ferguson Valde Christopher Dorner that

(03:19):
several years ago, in a bunchof other cases. And so he is
the new guy, and he's goingto oversee even the police department chief.
This is what we're talking about campuspolice department chief John Thomas. A lot
of controversy there. Why well,because you've got police chiefs associations, and
the police associations are saying Thomas isnot at fault. It's the university it's

(03:43):
at fault, and others are sayingThomas is at fault. We know that
it took three hours. Now Thomashad told the university we can go in
in minutes, and he admits that, and it took three hours, and
the police said, we didn't havewe didn't have the manpower, We couldn't
go in. We had to wait. So who's ever at fault? And

(04:08):
is Neil pointed out a little bitearlier this morning, probably both are at
fault. So you go ahead andnow you deal with a new safety officer
to try to deal with this,and the real problem here was not just
dealing with the protesters. It wasthe counter protesters, the ones that were
on the Israeli side, probably outsiderswho have come in. There were any

(04:31):
students that did this, attacked theprotesters straight out attack them, threw in
firecrackers actually fireworks, and attack themwith chairs, with wood with It was
definitely an attack on those protesters.The protesters were not attacking the pro Israeli

(04:53):
protesters or counter protesters. I wantto point something else out too that I
noticed last night, and that isthe comparison that's being made. And I
made this comparison, but I didn'tthink this through. Is the demonstrations against
the war in Vietnam that were bythe end of the war were in the

(05:15):
hundreds of thousands. Look at anyvideo, any footage of those demonstrations,
Look at any photos of those demonstrations. How many demonstrators were in were in
masks cover their faces? None.You won't see them in masks. You

(05:36):
won't see them covering their faces,either behind COVID masks or just straight out
masks. Part of their key job, if you will, whatever the cafia
covering their faces. They don't wanttheir faces to be seen. They're just
that they don't have the guts tosay, hey, here I am.

(05:59):
There are a few that are encounteringthe police with the vast majority. Now,
we're gonna do what we're gonna dowith imity impunity, and we're gonna
make sure we don't get caught.At least the protesters in the anti Vietnam
protesters had no problem saying here's whoI am. Here is my position.

(06:20):
Just wanted to point that out.I'm not a big fan of the protesters
and why Well, because they're protestingand making other people's lives miserable. It's
not just First Amendment. And Ilove even the professor saying, oh,
it's all First Amendment. And Iheard some students who were part of the
protest interviewed saying all they're doing isstopping us our First Amendment rights. Well,

(06:43):
no, you're also getting in theway of people going to class,
you're also blocking entrances, you're alsotaking over administrative buildings. Why don't you
say that's wrong? Now, therecould be some that are saying that,
especially on the pro Palace any inside. I just haven't heard it. That's
all you know. You know what'san interesting thought, Bill is during the

(07:06):
Vietnam War, you had very littleopportunity or options to get your voice heard.
You had to do it by thesevery vocal public forward forums, right,
that's the only thing they have.Social media now is so large that
you could protest and get your voiceheard without having to stop or barricade a

(07:30):
building or stop people from driving.You have more options for your free speech
today than ever before, that's true, and you also have the option of
getting more people to those places toblock entrances, etc. I don't think
here's what's happened, and I thinkthey're shooting themselves in the foot or they're
in the ass. Is that theprotests themselves have become the story, not

(07:56):
what's going on in gaza there.I think they're just losing it my opinion,
because I hate them protesters. Here'swhere you out of protest exactly what
they do in New York, whereyou have demonstrations and counter demonstrations that are
on each side of the sidewalk whichis blocked off and says, here's where

(08:18):
you do it, guys. Youdon't block buildings. You can do whatever
you want, and it's well obviouslyI have my opinion, so part of
the protests movement, and this isan interesting story going back to when I
was in college. More university professorsare joining the demonstrations for two reasons,

(08:39):
but one support Gaza, the Gazans, the Palestinians, and to defend their
students right to protest. Now,a lot of these people in their sixties
and seventies were there during the VietnamWar protests. They were students, they
went to school. Now they're approachingretirement age, and this is their mindset,

(09:00):
and they're accusing the university as ofheavy handed, inconsistent crackdown on free
speech, which I don't get.I don't see that. I don't think
that any university said you can't protest. They just said you can't be on
private property, you can't have anencampment, you can't block buildings, you
can't overrun and occupy our administrative buildings. And as being conflated among the protesters

(09:26):
in a large part, a lotof these professors are conflating. For them,
free speech is sitting and setting upan encampment for them, free speech
is blocking entrances to schools. Forthem, free speech is I guess stopping

(09:46):
commencement exercisesm going forward and if anybodyis arrested for interfering with commencement or trespassing,
that's a violation of free speech.The the shame of it is is
that this is just going on allover the country, commencement ceremonies, University

(10:07):
of Michigan, Indiana University. We'reable to proceed. And this is and
I have to give the protesters andor the university some credit for this.
The commencement starts, you have someof the students in cap and gowns take
up the Palestinian flags, march around, start screaming about genocide, and then

(10:28):
allow the commencement to go on.As opposed to stopping it cold Well,
Columbia. They stopped at Cold scthere will be no commencement. And as
I said earlier, can you imagine, especially for immigrant families, And there
were stories last night on NBC specificallywhere you had in previous graduations family members

(10:52):
where this kid is the first oneto graduate college and mom and dad worked
jobs, three jobs, two threejobs to help their put their kid through
college and the commencement was stolen fromthem. Even more so, if you
talk to these students, it wasmore for mom and dad commencement than their

(11:13):
own stolen from them. We're notgoing to let you graduate or go across
that stage and get your diploma.I mean, come on, guys,
really, do you really think thathelps your cause? Matter of fact,
I'm gonna argue it hurts your cause. Although I don't know how many people

(11:35):
are talking about that. And atUCLA, as I just said, it
was a mess because the counter protesters. It took three hours to stop the
attack on pro Palaced Indian protests,so there's a police issue there. But
across the country you have protests stillcontinuing, and I what is it going

(11:58):
to help? I don't know.I don't think so. If they were
smart, and they're not smart,they would truly limit themselves to protesting where
the university allows or where freedom ofspeech can truly be exercised without getting in
the way of other people. Buttheir idea of protesting, and this happens

(12:20):
with protests. We're going to blockbuildings, We're going to stop you from
moving from A to B. We'renot going to let students into the school.
We're going to show you. We'regoing to show you by not allowing
the school to continue. You know, maybe I'm missing something or they want
to make such an impact that they'rejust going to do whatever it takes.

(12:43):
You know, in France with ita couple of years ago, every single
food truck that was being driven intothe city because obviously you need distributors coming
in food has grown outside the city. They stopped every single truck so people
couldn't eat. Well, there's agood protest, and that had to do
with working wages and they had todo with what they paid the truck drivers.

(13:09):
I mean, pretty insane, itreally is. All Right, we're
done at least with that one fora while. We'll probably come up plenty
more news over the week. We'llsee how where these protests go. All
right, let's go local here inCalifornia, and we're talking about and this
is something that we've seen over andover again, and that is retail theft,

(13:33):
and how is it being responded to. Well, how about changing Prop
forty seven. That's easy, rightfor elected officials, Let's just do it.
You ask business owners and residents inOakland and San Francisco where this really
hits not so easy at all.So what do we have rising crime?

(13:56):
Rate rates. Absolutely, property crimerate increased since twenty twenty. Absolutely now
compared to the nineteen eighties, nineteennineties, very low. That was crazy
time in the the eighties and thenineties. So what do we have what
has caused so much publicity? Whyare we so focused? Well, Neil

(14:20):
was saying, it's the internet,the smashing grabs. Everybody has a video
camera, call it a phone,and there's nothing that is in video today.
So if there is anything of interest, not even let's say no interest,
just a typical retail theft, it'sout there on the internet. You're
seeing it on YouTube, you're seeingit on Instagram, You're seeing it instantly

(14:45):
and all of a sudden. Theones that are more interesting, the smashing
grabs. How many smash and grabsa you think are out there relatively speaking,
especially the ones you see at Nordstrom, those big smashing grabs where dozens
of people show up. I mean, those are really rare. But that
is the fear that people have.So what do we do with Prop forty
seven? Prop forty seven lowering orraising the amount of money that it took

(15:11):
in terms of theft, making iteasier for people to steal and only get
tagged with misdemeanors. And in California, you get tagged with a misdemeanor,
you're just let out. I mean, you're photographed and you're out the door.
There are stories of people being caught, arrested for shoplifting and that afternoon

(15:31):
going back and shoplifting again, becauseit's such a revolving door. So we're
going to roll back Prop forty seven. And why because if we make it
easier to bust people and put themin prison, we're going to lower the
crime rate. The problem is thestudies have gone both ways. That is

(15:54):
the problem. And here's what progressiveDemocrats say. It's not the penalties,
it's the services that we're not providing. We need to rehabilitate. We have
to deal with people who steal inthe first place. Why are they stealing?
There's something going on. There's somethingthat we as a society have done

(16:18):
wrong so that these kids, theseyoung people, even older people are shoplifting.
I guess they're saying that people arenot inherently evil. There aren't a
group of people that are just evilno matter what you do, and they're
just thieves. No, no,everybody, this is the same crowd.
I mean when we go to theends of it, if I extrapolate all
the way to the end, everylife has value, which is why we

(16:41):
never want to engage in the deathpenalty. Well, it's a bunch of
crapple. There are plenty of livesthat have no value. There are plenty
of lives out there that ought tobe just squished down that you don't want
helping or you don't want being partof the food chain or part of the
gene pool. No, no,no, no, absolutely not. I've

(17:02):
often said that I think the deathpenalty should go all the way to those
who are convicted of graffiti, forexample. I'm okay with that. And
how young do you go with thedeath penalty. Well, you can't tag
anybody with a death penalty under eighteen. I think we've missed that by ten
years. I mean, we needstronger penalties. Well, okay, maybe

(17:26):
I'm going a little bit crazy here, but it has gone that way.
And it's you know, in thescience. I mean looking at the studies
and connecting it. It's all overthe place. Both sides can point to
studies. And I'm not just talkingabout anecdotal situations here. Oh, this
is what happens is how I feel. Now, No, this is actually
looking at it. They look atcriming. I got to tell you,

(17:48):
sociologists and cities and governments and nongi NGOs, non governmental organizations look at
crime. It's studied in schools andthey together cause and effect. It's all
over the place at this point.And one of the things that's levely about
California is we have a proposition system, a recall system, and there is

(18:12):
a prop that's going up in November. They already have nine hundred thousand signatures,
so it's going up to roll backProp forty seven, just roll back
a lot of its points, whichwill make it easier to convict and arrest.
But here's the other side of thepoint. There are so many sleeze

(18:34):
balls out there stealing and committing crimesthat the courts, California Supreme Court a
few years ago said, too manypeople in prison. You have to start
letting them go. What do youdo with that? So do we rehab
people and spend money? Oh,by the way, if you don't think

(18:56):
the cost of a rehabilitation program isn'tbeyond anything, you can imagine across the
board. I mean, there areno easy answers here other than you know,
maybe you just moved to a saferplace South Yemen, maybe Gaza City.
Maybe that's the answer. It's tough, it's you know, it's getting

(19:22):
I don't know if it's getting tougherto live here or not. Life used
to be so easy. And whenI was a kid, all we worried
about was communists and the bomb,Russia exploding a bomb right over your head.
Those are the big fears. I'lltake that over the crappy street crime
any day. Yeah. Yeah.And the drop drills as opposed to active

(19:45):
shooter drills. Ah wow wow.And then look at the look at photos
video of college students, the thoughtof protests in the fifties and early sixties.
You you wouldn't believe. Well,they were also Bobby socks ers and
everybody having a good time in college. Those are the bees these Okay,

(20:10):
hey, let me tell you alesson in politics that obviously South Dakota Governor
Christy nom has not heard of.By the way, Christy noam. She's
Republican. She's about three feet highand has a conical hat and a long
beard, and you can see heron most yards certainly in South Dakota.

(20:33):
All right, second term. Onceconsidered a top potential running mate of President
Trump, he's now looking at potentialsand she's gone. She's done. Why
is that? Well, one ofthe reasons is she wrote this book,
which is upcoming, and we've onlygotten galleys of it. No going back,

(20:56):
the truth on what's wrong with politicsand how we move America forward.
Does anybody who's running for office notwrite a book like that? Everything that's
wrong with everything, and I'm goingto tell you how to make it right.
It's become a problem because in thebook, she describes her decision to
kill a fourteen month old wirehair pointercricket who was not displaying the signs of

(21:19):
an ideal hunting dog. The dogwas untrainable. She also described right there
a shooting of a goat in thebook, also untrainable. And here's why
she put it in. She sayskilling of cricket to show how capable she
is of doing some of the moredifficult, gruesome jobs in life. Necessary.

(21:42):
Well, you can't talk about shootinga dog no way. Do you
know? When I do handle onthe law and I make jokes, some
guy calls up and say how horriblehis wife is and they're going through a
brutal divorce. I say, youknow what, just killer a shotgun and
blow her brains out, all right, Okay? And in the same show

(22:04):
someone will say about the barking dognext door, and gee, what do
I do? And here I've doneeverything, and I go, just poison
meat, you know, just comeon, you know, sometimes that's the
answer. Obviously, I'm joking.Do you know I get ten to one
emails about the dog that I doabout the wife. People are very upset.

(22:26):
So what's happening in Congress? Well, there is now the Congressional dog
Lover's Caucus that is attacking her.Wow, and she keeps on saying,
no, this was an aggressive dog. It massacre to local family chickens.
It attacked her. That's why Ishot her. Shot the dog at a
gravel pit, taking the dog toa gravel pit. But and she said,

(22:49):
hey, what handle You don't thinkthat the fact that she grew up
in a rural part of the country, on a ranch, in a farm,
that that does to play into thecourt. Sure he does, Sure
it does. South Dakota represented DustyJohnson said exactly that a Republican. I
get it that it is an unpleasantthought, but we put animals down all

(23:14):
the time. Yeah, I'm notarguing that. I'm not I'm not arguing
that. By the way, I'veput dogs down. Uh, and it
is Uh, that's no fun.What this is about is politics, and
she is running for national office,and for some crazy ass reason, her

(23:34):
advisors allowed her to put this ina book. I shot a dog.
What are you? Are you completelynuts? This is not a lesson in
whether the dogs should or should nothave been shot. This is a lesson
for are you actually running for nationaloffice? Are you insane? You cannot

(23:59):
be this. You cannot talk aboutshooting a dog under any circumstances. Why
because there are dog lovers out therethat you think? People are against the
death penalty because human beings are forsome reason, humanity is sacri saying,
and God doesn't want you to killpeople. Talk about killing a dog and

(24:22):
see what the Teddy Roosevelt? Whatwhat about Teddy Roosevelt? He was very
funny. I mean Teddy Roosevelt.You know, he was a comedian,
walks softly, carry a big stick. He hunted, He did hunt,
but he didn't want dogs that wouldn't. He didn't, he didn't hunt dogs.

(24:47):
Matter of fact, after he's gottenstrangely soft, you're gonna shoot those
dogs, damn it. You know, let's don't talk about I don't want
people shooting dogs. But I'm sayingthat this is a rural person who grew
up in a tough Her dad waskilled by farming equipment. I understand.
I understand that's not I don't wantthat to happen either, But I bet

(25:08):
you she she took that with me. You know, this is where we
lived, and maybe she's that.Maybe I'm not a fan because she happens
to be a far, far rightRepublican. Who is that more fair?
That's hard to So I'm going tolook at this and you know, go
ahead, shoot dogs all you wantand talk about it, and we'll see
how far you get in politics.All Right, We're done with that.

(25:30):
Kf I am six forty live everywhereon the iHeartRadio app. You've been listening
to the Bill Handle Show. Catchmy Show Monday through Friday six am to
nine am, and anytime on demandon the iHeartRadio app.