August 16, 2024 • 22 mins
KFI investigative reporter Steve Gregory comes on the show to talk about the arrests made in the death of actor Johnny Wactor. The show closes with this week’s ‘World in Review.’
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from kf I
am six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
And good morning everybody. Bill Handle here on a Friday morning,
August sixteenth. It is not a foody, foody Friday because
Neil Savedra is not here today. You'll be back on Monday.
He's filling in for Gary this morning. Also, quick word
about what's going on in the world of podcasts. As
you may know, I now am. I guess broadcasting? Is
(00:29):
that what your word? Podcasting? A podcast? I don't know
what the verb is. Dropping episodes anyway, it's every Tuesday
and Thursday. Yeah, Steve, Yeah, gave me the look.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Dropping dropping episodes. I have physiological issues.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Well it is, and I have two episodes. The first
one drops on Tuesday and then I dropped the second
one on Thursday. Every Tuesday and Thursday at nine o'clock.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
I should probably put a cold compresce on this, thank
you very much.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
And it is this week. By the way, yesterday was
Supreme Court cases that will blow your mind. All right,
so's and then next Tuesday we drop another episode and
do we.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
Know which win?
Speaker 1 (01:09):
It is?
Speaker 4 (01:10):
Next Tuesday? Tuesday?
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Oh, Elon Musk, the crazy Elon Musk and some things
you may not know about him. All right, the Johnny
Walker arrests. Steve Gregory has been covering it, and you
know what, I'm going to let you set it up
and explain who and what happened and how these guys
got arrested with sure.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Yeah, let's go back to May twenty fifth. That's when
Johnny Wackter was leaving his part time job as a
bartender in downtown Los Angeles. And he was an actor.
Everyone knows him as an actor, but he is like
hundreds and hundreds of actors here in this market that
have to supplement their income by doing other jobs. And
he was finishing his job as a bartender on that evening,
(01:50):
and as he walked to his car, he noticed a
few guys around it, and his car.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
Was jacked up. It was on Jack's already.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
They were trying to steal the cat converter, and he
approached him and confronted him, and without other than that
verbal confrontation, without provocation, someone turned around an open fire
on him, killing him un scene. The guys got into
a car and took off. Laped later identified the getaway
vehicles of black Infinity Q fifty Sedan come to find
(02:20):
out that was stolen, and then the search was on.
It was pretty high profile because it's just the way
this area is. Anytime the word actor is put in
front of someone who's died, been killed, or committed suicide,
we lose our minds and we give it a lot
of attention. And in this particular case, it got a
(02:40):
lot of public attention. Media were all over it, and
eventually the police kind of started focusing in on this
surveillance video that cropped up some time later. And in
this surveillance video is not only the car that I
talked to you about, but they also were able to
get a description of someone who had very prominent tatch
twos on their face, tattoo above the left eye went
(03:03):
on the right cheek. So as they started to work
their sources, because detectives have confidential informants, and when they
suspected this could be gang related, they immediately know where
to go and who to talk to, and they were
really working their sources. Eventually it narrowed it down to
the Florencia thirteen gang in South LA. Members of that gang.
(03:24):
Now that gang is notorious. It's being driven and run
by the Mexican mafia. So they initially got it narrowed
down to a few people, and as they were looking
at them, surveilling them, they eventually got warrants and they
served those warrants yesterday morning, and during the service of
those warrants they were able to make four arrests and
(03:45):
gather a bunch of evidence. Now, some of the evidence
that took officers to that scene included fingerprints on the
tire iron that was recovered from the scene of the shooting.
And three of the four that were arrested were booked
for murder and the other the fourth book for accessory.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
All right, so today with the database is if a
fingerprint is left, even a partial I understand, boom, it
comes up and someone's identified. That's new relative to what
computers can do.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Now you do as long as and this is I
don't think people understand this, as long as that person's
profile is in the system. You know, someone who's never
been never had a driver license, for instance, because it's
based on partially on that and other anytime you give
your fingerprint, now you're in a system. But if you've
never given any biometric data, you're not in a system.
And that's why people get freaked out, all just do DNA.
(04:35):
It's like, well, yeah, we've done DNA, and I'm sure
they've done DNA swabs at the scene of this particular crime.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
But someone has to be in the database.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Yeah, But if all it takes is a driver's license application,
that's everybody is in a database.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Well, yes, including IDs if you have a state ID,
and a lot of times you don't in this state,
you don't need a state ID for a lot of things,
and you may have lost your license it you know,
you never know. But in this particular case, they were
all in the system. I think all but one and
two of those that were arrested or eighteen are eighteen
years old and they're in jail on two million dollars bail.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Yeah, which clearly they're not going to make. And what
are the chances of a gang bang or a member
of this gang not having been in the criminal justice
system throughout his order life.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
Well, particularly if.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
They were in the system as a juvenile, that could
be different. And if they've never been arrested, then they're
not in the system unless they have it. Again, let's
they have a driver license. Most people do. Most everyone
has a driver license, but in this case. And I
want to be perfectly clear. Investigators focused in on this
gang and members of the gang, but they have not
confirmed that any of the ones booked yesterday are truly
(05:51):
in that gang.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
So this was not a tip. This was police work.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
Right.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
It's a combination of everything because remember they've been surveilling
the people for a while. So the four were booked yesterday.
There they might be in court as soon as Monday
to face charges. And I was told that more arrests
are coming and there this case may actually spin off
(06:16):
into something else that they didn't see, that they didn't
know it dropped in their lap.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
So more to come up, Okay, and just quickly for
if you just tuned in and we get people to
just tuned into segments. This is Johnny Walker is the
actor on Guiding Light. I thought it was General Hospital
Guiding Light. Really, I get him soaping the general hospital,
General Hospital?
Speaker 4 (06:39):
Thank you?
Speaker 2 (06:39):
He is General Hospital, thank you. Yeah, nothing to tell.
I don't watch the Yeah, I don't either. My favorite
one used to be The Young and the Hung, but
they don't do that anymore.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
What nothing, nothing, nothing, I just got my acid reflex
came back.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
Studio six forty great segue. Thanks Bill, You're welcome. Yes,
we are taping another episode today.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
In fact, we're taping a couple episodes today of college
students are coming in this morning and this afternoon and representing.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
See who do we have in today?
Speaker 3 (07:12):
I think we have ASU, Cal Lutheran and Cal State
Long Beach.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
All right, So talk about that because I'll tell you
that's going to be an award winner too.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
Talk about I'm telling you.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Right now, Steve, I know you, you know you get
I go to the Golden mics and I know you
have to bring a shopping cart and to point him
in the Golden mice.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
You win.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
But talk about the premise because there are some people
who have not listened to it and what you're getting
from it, or what we're getting from it by listening.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
So it basically is a platform for future journalists. College
and university journalists come together every week and we discuss
the issues of the day. But we do it through
the lens of a college journalist. So it's like a
Meet the Press or any one of those talking shows,
talking head shows, but the panels college journalists, and we're
(08:02):
getting them from all different sized campuses, private universities, public universities.
It's just been really fun in eye opening to listen
to their perspective on stuff. And because I haven't I
work around a lot of young people here. But it's
a little different than when I'm looking at the future
of journalism now. I will tell you up front, the
(08:23):
byproduct has been pretty interesting because there have been a
few haters that come out about the show. Some people
out there literally think that these kids ought to be
looking at things a certain way already at nineteen twenty
years old, not realizing the key word here a student
and they're still learning.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
My question is, you know, how are you going to
get conservative people? Because you remember when I was in college,
I mean everybody was, you know, left wing. I mean
it's said that's where liberalism really thrives when you're in college,
and then the old saw wait till you go out
there and start making a living, you become much much
more conservative. So how do you get a balance of people.
(09:04):
I assume you have to interview them, pretty we do.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
The vetting process is pretty thorough, we like to think.
So they submit their resume and then they submit names
of professors who can vouch for them, and then we
have them submit a sixty second audio or video clip
explaining why they think they should be on the panel.
Then if if they keep moving up these levels, then
we do a fifteen minute zoom interview with them in advance,
and then we talked to them. I never asked them
(09:28):
about their politics. I think that's irrelevant, but that comes
out obviously it does. And it's interesting because in one
of the discussions we had, one of the student reporters
literally said, I think everyone should know what my political
leanings are.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
Oh, isn't that interesting.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
I said why, And they get into it and they're like,
because I think it's transparent. I said, well, you're and
then I'm kind of like, Okay, that's fine, but I'm
nice and for me, no, I think it's irrelevant. It
should all come out in your reporting. If your reporting
is truly objective, no one should really know where you lean.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
I've known you for twenty five years give or take,
right or twenty years to this day. I don't know
what your political leanings are, and I want to have
no idea what your political leanings are.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
And I wouldn't ask, right, and I wouldn't tell you.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
So I'm asked all the time, and I said, I
don't discuss that stuff.
Speaker 4 (10:18):
I'm not even registered to vote in California. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
That was the other thing is you are so independent
you don't even vote.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Well, I don't vote here, And that's the big difference
because I don't want people I mean, because you can
look up people's voting record and that's something that's public record,
and I just don't think people need to know what
my political leanings are.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
Amy, I never asked you.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Also, which way would you you know, as a newsperson,
would you let people know what your politics are?
Speaker 4 (10:45):
No, So imagine for a moment.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
TV anchors if they had to put an R or
a D or an I next to their name every
time they're on the air. Like we do politicians, we
always put the R for a Republican, the D for Democrat.
Imagine if we did that for anchors on TV.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Well, I mean there's a big difference between identifying them.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
But imagine if if you tuned into a TV channel
and the reporter had an R next to the naming
you right away they were a Republican reading the news?
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Well, how about this?
Speaker 4 (11:15):
Any how about this?
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Any reporter that works for CNN versus any reporter that
works for Fox News.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
That's hard to guess, but see, but their biases come
out through their reporting. That's my point, right, and so
you don't need to really.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
That's my point.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
All right, before we bail real quickly. When the show
is and on Sunday, Sunday at.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Two PM is Studio six forty. We're still in our
our our honeymoon period. Tomorrow night, seven pm, Unsolved with
Steve Gregory and then some new episodes are coming.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
So okay too, a lot going on, all right, Steve,
thanks coming in, all right. Absenteeism in school Now, this
goes back to the pandemic, and I have said, we
have said, people have talked about it. We won't even
know to what extent the pandemic has effected us. We
won't know for decades. The absolute influence that it's had.
(12:02):
One of them is absenteeism from school. In California, about
one in four students, We're talking about a million and
a half students chronically absent in twenty twenty two to
twenty twenty three. That means they missed an average of
ten percent of the school year. Now, absenteeism is something
(12:23):
that used to be only the bad kids would be
absent like that, all right. I grew up as a
middle class white kid. You know, I went to a
middle class white school, and absenteeism if we're gone, man,
parents jumped on it, the school jumped on it.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
It was a big deal. Today.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
It is not a big deal today. It is bad
for a whole bunch of reasons, mainly the pandemic and
its aftermath. So kids hopefully theoretically learn at home. Well,
if you're a home where your kid, you're home for
a year or more, all of a sudden, overwhelming, boring,
(13:01):
socially stressful, that's what school is about. And this is
and I'm taking across the board and across the socioeconomic
the entire socioeconomic pattern of our society. Now, the poor
someone is, the more they're going to be absent. It's
that simple.
Speaker 4 (13:22):
The poor someone is.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Well, frankly, the refor it is because, as you know,
it's just not fun to be poor, particularly in southern California,
LA Unified, where I grew up in I went to school,
sixty two percent of LA Unified. The kids get supplemental
breakfast and lunch. They're on governmental food programs. Sixty two percent.
(13:45):
I mean that is astronomical. So all kinds of programs
have been instituted to try to get kids back into
school and let them deal with it and let them
come back to socialization and fit into your normal school
pattern the.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
Way we went to school.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Schools have to get creative, that's the bottom line. So
one of them is having mentors, teachers that mentor particularly
teachers that these kids have in common with, for example,
Black students African American teachers and staffers to connect. Same
thing with Latino students. Getting Latino staff particularly teachers to
(14:28):
connect and mentoring one of the ones. And this one
is like, come on, really. In Oakland, chronic appsentism skyrocketed
to thirty percent. Actually it was thirty percent, became fifty
three percent.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
In the year.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
After the pandemic. Last school year, fifty three percent chronic absenteeism.
I mean that is crazy. This is illiterately and is
what it is. Kids coming out of school. If you
want to call out of school, I mean sign their
name with x's but they apply for food stamps. I
mean it's gotten that crazy. So you know what Oakland
(15:11):
is doing, and logical districts across the country are paying
heat and some are even falling. Okay, this is pursuing
to a grant funded program launched in twenty twenty three
pain students fifty bucks a week for perfect attendance. You
(15:32):
go to school, you get paid fifty bucks a week. Now,
the reaction to that is, let's just say, insane. People
are going, come on, really, are you really going to
pay students, elementary, junior, high, high school students fifty dollars
a week just to go to school? And the answer is,
(15:54):
in this case, in this program, yeah yeah, on a
sixty percent prove their attendance after taking part. Really well,
sixty percent of those chronic absenteeism folks ended up going
to school every day.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
It's the money, you bet, it's the money.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
But here is why, as crazy as it sounds, I
look at this long term. Okay, this is the long
game we're talking about. You've got a kid who is
absent like crazy, who comes out, drops out of school
because illiteracy is effectively his life, or such low level
(16:32):
of education that it becomes close to that. And so
you know, someone that's going to earn minimum wage, go
on the dole, probably have children that are going to
be in the same position for the most part.
Speaker 4 (16:44):
And what are they going to cost over a lifetime?
What are they going to.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Costant food stamps? What are they going to cost in
child credit? What are they going to cost in training programs?
It's the cost of fortune about fifty dollars a week.
If that turns someone around fifty bucks a week times
(17:11):
forty weeks, what two thousand dollars over three years six
thousand dollars relative what's going to cost later on? That's
why as we end the program on Friday with this
week's World in.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Review living under a rock, Well, here's what you've missed
piping hot off the newswires from around the corner to
around that world.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
This is this week's world in Review, and I'm going
to give you highlights of what happened this week, because
as always, it's a very busy week. I mean, that's
the way we do news cycles now, and so let's
just go through what happened yesterday. The Biden administration reached
an agreement with drug makers to lower prices on ten
(18:02):
of the costs list prescription drugs under Medicare, and that
broke brand new ground. And you're going to see medicare
now negotiating with the drug companies first time, and it's the.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
Walls have opened up.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
And also President Biden made a major cancer funding announcement,
his Cancer Moonshot program, in which tons of money, in
this case one hundred and fifty million dollars grant just
the start of it to deal with cancer deaths and
to basically save fifty percent of cancer patients, reduce the
(18:37):
death rate by half. I think it was twenty thirty
five or twenty forty. And his son Bows, you know,
died of brain cancer. So he is particularly engaged in
that horrible figure that just came out of Gaza. The
number forty thousand has now been reached. Forty thousand Palestinians
(18:58):
have been killed in Gaza since the war was launched
against Camas, and that was October eighth, right after the attack.
And that's a dark milestone in the ten month old conflict.
And the talks continue, not that they're going any place.
The talks are continuing for some kind of a ceasefire,
(19:20):
and who knows if that's going to work.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
I'm guessing absolutely not.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
A story that I did just a few minutes ago,
Federal agencies in the White House working to make it
easier for us to unsubscribe and not deal with those
ridiculous doom cycles in which we go into menus on
the phone and get stuck for minutes and minutes because
(19:44):
you're going from menu to menu. Press one if you
want this, then you go there, Press one if that happens,
and it just goes on and on and eventually eventually
you talk to a real person and try to undo anything.
Unsubscri or cancel. Boy, you are in for the right
of your life. The Olympic News Jordan Chiles, US gym
(20:08):
nass was stripped of her bronze medal after she was
not given a score she should have. The judges agreed,
they changed the score. She got the bronze medal instead
of the Romanian and they now had a situation where
(20:29):
she wasn't getting enough points anyway, the technical part of it,
The United States went in and.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
Made a made a complaint.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
They went ahead and challenged and it was four seconds late,
four seconds late, and she lost her bronze medal and
had to turn it in. You happened to be in
the Bermudez. You're in a lot of trouble. Tropical storm
or Nesto nailed eastern Puerto Rico, hundreds of thousands of
people without power. By the way, there were hundred thousands
of people without power anyway, That entire grid was falling
(21:02):
apart and they really weren't able to bring it back
to where it should be. And then you got Ernesto
coming in and just nailing eastern Puerto Rico. And now
the Bermudas are in a lot of a lot of trouble.
That's what happens with storms of this kind. Tell me
that climate change isn't here. Ukrainian News. Ukrainians have incurred
(21:26):
incursion into Russia and have gotten pretty far. They're eighteen
or twenty miles into Russian soil and this is the
first time that's happened. And all of a sudden, putin
is spinning on that one, and we are going to
have a debate. Vice presidential debate. Minnesota Governor Tim Walls
and jd Vance agreed to a vice presidential debate CBS News,
(21:51):
October one. Jd Vance said, I'll do more so that
should be a lot of fun. All right, guys, we're
done tomorrow morning. It's handle on the law. Marginal legal
advice and that's from eight to eleven o'clock, following Dean
Sharp from six to eight with House Whisper Show, and
then Neil Savedra from two to five tomorrow afternoon. So there,
(22:16):
and that's after the Tech Show with Rich tomorrow. All right,
it's been a fun week and we're coming back, of
course on Monday wake Up Call with Amy King, and
then Neil and I are here for the rest of
the show with.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
Amy and what else. I think that's it, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
We're pretty well done and I'll catch you tomorrow, and
we'll catch you on Monday. KFI AM six forty live
everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You've been listening to the
Bill Handle Show. Catch My Show Monday through Friday, six
am to nine am, and anytime on demand on the
iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from kf I
am six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
And good morning everybody. Bill Handle here on a Friday morning,
August sixteenth. It is not a foody, foody Friday because
Neil Savedra is not here today. You'll be back on Monday.
He's filling in for Gary this morning. Also, quick word
about what's going on in the world of podcasts. As
you may know, I now am. I guess broadcasting? Is
(00:29):
that what your word? Podcasting? A podcast? I don't know
what the verb is. Dropping episodes anyway, it's every Tuesday
and Thursday. Yeah, Steve, Yeah, gave me the look.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Dropping dropping episodes. I have physiological issues.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Well it is, and I have two episodes. The first
one drops on Tuesday and then I dropped the second
one on Thursday. Every Tuesday and Thursday at nine o'clock.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
I should probably put a cold compresce on this, thank
you very much.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
And it is this week. By the way, yesterday was
Supreme Court cases that will blow your mind. All right,
so's and then next Tuesday we drop another episode and
do we.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
Know which win?
Speaker 1 (01:09):
It is?
Speaker 4 (01:10):
Next Tuesday? Tuesday?
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Oh, Elon Musk, the crazy Elon Musk and some things
you may not know about him. All right, the Johnny
Walker arrests. Steve Gregory has been covering it, and you
know what, I'm going to let you set it up
and explain who and what happened and how these guys
got arrested with sure.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Yeah, let's go back to May twenty fifth. That's when
Johnny Wackter was leaving his part time job as a
bartender in downtown Los Angeles. And he was an actor.
Everyone knows him as an actor, but he is like
hundreds and hundreds of actors here in this market that
have to supplement their income by doing other jobs. And
he was finishing his job as a bartender on that evening,
(01:50):
and as he walked to his car, he noticed a
few guys around it, and his car.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
Was jacked up. It was on Jack's already.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
They were trying to steal the cat converter, and he
approached him and confronted him, and without other than that
verbal confrontation, without provocation, someone turned around an open fire
on him, killing him un scene. The guys got into
a car and took off. Laped later identified the getaway
vehicles of black Infinity Q fifty Sedan come to find
(02:20):
out that was stolen, and then the search was on.
It was pretty high profile because it's just the way
this area is. Anytime the word actor is put in
front of someone who's died, been killed, or committed suicide,
we lose our minds and we give it a lot
of attention. And in this particular case, it got a
(02:40):
lot of public attention. Media were all over it, and
eventually the police kind of started focusing in on this
surveillance video that cropped up some time later. And in
this surveillance video is not only the car that I
talked to you about, but they also were able to
get a description of someone who had very prominent tatch
twos on their face, tattoo above the left eye went
(03:03):
on the right cheek. So as they started to work
their sources, because detectives have confidential informants, and when they
suspected this could be gang related, they immediately know where
to go and who to talk to, and they were
really working their sources. Eventually it narrowed it down to
the Florencia thirteen gang in South LA. Members of that gang.
(03:24):
Now that gang is notorious. It's being driven and run
by the Mexican mafia. So they initially got it narrowed
down to a few people, and as they were looking
at them, surveilling them, they eventually got warrants and they
served those warrants yesterday morning, and during the service of
those warrants they were able to make four arrests and
(03:45):
gather a bunch of evidence. Now, some of the evidence
that took officers to that scene included fingerprints on the
tire iron that was recovered from the scene of the shooting.
And three of the four that were arrested were booked
for murder and the other the fourth book for accessory.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
All right, so today with the database is if a
fingerprint is left, even a partial I understand, boom, it
comes up and someone's identified. That's new relative to what
computers can do.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Now you do as long as and this is I
don't think people understand this, as long as that person's
profile is in the system. You know, someone who's never
been never had a driver license, for instance, because it's
based on partially on that and other anytime you give
your fingerprint, now you're in a system. But if you've
never given any biometric data, you're not in a system.
And that's why people get freaked out, all just do DNA.
(04:35):
It's like, well, yeah, we've done DNA, and I'm sure
they've done DNA swabs at the scene of this particular crime.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
But someone has to be in the database.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Yeah, But if all it takes is a driver's license application,
that's everybody is in a database.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Well, yes, including IDs if you have a state ID,
and a lot of times you don't in this state,
you don't need a state ID for a lot of things,
and you may have lost your license it you know,
you never know. But in this particular case, they were
all in the system. I think all but one and
two of those that were arrested or eighteen are eighteen
years old and they're in jail on two million dollars bail.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Yeah, which clearly they're not going to make. And what
are the chances of a gang bang or a member
of this gang not having been in the criminal justice
system throughout his order life.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
Well, particularly if.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
They were in the system as a juvenile, that could
be different. And if they've never been arrested, then they're
not in the system unless they have it. Again, let's
they have a driver license. Most people do. Most everyone
has a driver license, but in this case. And I
want to be perfectly clear. Investigators focused in on this
gang and members of the gang, but they have not
confirmed that any of the ones booked yesterday are truly
(05:51):
in that gang.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
So this was not a tip. This was police work.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
Right.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
It's a combination of everything because remember they've been surveilling
the people for a while. So the four were booked yesterday.
There they might be in court as soon as Monday
to face charges. And I was told that more arrests
are coming and there this case may actually spin off
(06:16):
into something else that they didn't see, that they didn't
know it dropped in their lap.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
So more to come up, Okay, and just quickly for
if you just tuned in and we get people to
just tuned into segments. This is Johnny Walker is the
actor on Guiding Light. I thought it was General Hospital
Guiding Light. Really, I get him soaping the general hospital,
General Hospital?
Speaker 4 (06:39):
Thank you?
Speaker 2 (06:39):
He is General Hospital, thank you. Yeah, nothing to tell.
I don't watch the Yeah, I don't either. My favorite
one used to be The Young and the Hung, but
they don't do that anymore.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
What nothing, nothing, nothing, I just got my acid reflex
came back.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
Studio six forty great segue. Thanks Bill, You're welcome. Yes,
we are taping another episode today.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
In fact, we're taping a couple episodes today of college
students are coming in this morning and this afternoon and representing.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
See who do we have in today?
Speaker 3 (07:12):
I think we have ASU, Cal Lutheran and Cal State
Long Beach.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
All right, So talk about that because I'll tell you
that's going to be an award winner too.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
Talk about I'm telling you.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Right now, Steve, I know you, you know you get
I go to the Golden mics and I know you
have to bring a shopping cart and to point him
in the Golden mice.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
You win.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
But talk about the premise because there are some people
who have not listened to it and what you're getting
from it, or what we're getting from it by listening.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
So it basically is a platform for future journalists. College
and university journalists come together every week and we discuss
the issues of the day. But we do it through
the lens of a college journalist. So it's like a
Meet the Press or any one of those talking shows,
talking head shows, but the panels college journalists, and we're
(08:02):
getting them from all different sized campuses, private universities, public universities.
It's just been really fun in eye opening to listen
to their perspective on stuff. And because I haven't I
work around a lot of young people here. But it's
a little different than when I'm looking at the future
of journalism now. I will tell you up front, the
(08:23):
byproduct has been pretty interesting because there have been a
few haters that come out about the show. Some people
out there literally think that these kids ought to be
looking at things a certain way already at nineteen twenty
years old, not realizing the key word here a student
and they're still learning.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
My question is, you know, how are you going to
get conservative people? Because you remember when I was in college,
I mean everybody was, you know, left wing. I mean
it's said that's where liberalism really thrives when you're in college,
and then the old saw wait till you go out
there and start making a living, you become much much
more conservative. So how do you get a balance of people.
(09:04):
I assume you have to interview them, pretty we do.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
The vetting process is pretty thorough, we like to think.
So they submit their resume and then they submit names
of professors who can vouch for them, and then we
have them submit a sixty second audio or video clip
explaining why they think they should be on the panel.
Then if if they keep moving up these levels, then
we do a fifteen minute zoom interview with them in advance,
and then we talked to them. I never asked them
(09:28):
about their politics. I think that's irrelevant, but that comes
out obviously it does. And it's interesting because in one
of the discussions we had, one of the student reporters
literally said, I think everyone should know what my political
leanings are.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
Oh, isn't that interesting.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
I said why, And they get into it and they're like,
because I think it's transparent. I said, well, you're and
then I'm kind of like, Okay, that's fine, but I'm
nice and for me, no, I think it's irrelevant. It
should all come out in your reporting. If your reporting
is truly objective, no one should really know where you lean.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
I've known you for twenty five years give or take,
right or twenty years to this day. I don't know
what your political leanings are, and I want to have
no idea what your political leanings are.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
And I wouldn't ask, right, and I wouldn't tell you.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
So I'm asked all the time, and I said, I
don't discuss that stuff.
Speaker 4 (10:18):
I'm not even registered to vote in California. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
That was the other thing is you are so independent
you don't even vote.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Well, I don't vote here, And that's the big difference
because I don't want people I mean, because you can
look up people's voting record and that's something that's public record,
and I just don't think people need to know what
my political leanings are.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
Amy, I never asked you.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Also, which way would you you know, as a newsperson,
would you let people know what your politics are?
Speaker 4 (10:45):
No, So imagine for a moment.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
TV anchors if they had to put an R or
a D or an I next to their name every
time they're on the air. Like we do politicians, we
always put the R for a Republican, the D for Democrat.
Imagine if we did that for anchors on TV.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Well, I mean there's a big difference between identifying them.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
But imagine if if you tuned into a TV channel
and the reporter had an R next to the naming
you right away they were a Republican reading the news?
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Well, how about this?
Speaker 4 (11:15):
Any how about this?
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Any reporter that works for CNN versus any reporter that
works for Fox News.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
That's hard to guess, but see, but their biases come
out through their reporting. That's my point, right, and so
you don't need to really.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
That's my point.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
All right, before we bail real quickly. When the show
is and on Sunday, Sunday at.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Two PM is Studio six forty. We're still in our
our our honeymoon period. Tomorrow night, seven pm, Unsolved with
Steve Gregory and then some new episodes are coming.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
So okay too, a lot going on, all right, Steve,
thanks coming in, all right. Absenteeism in school Now, this
goes back to the pandemic, and I have said, we
have said, people have talked about it. We won't even
know to what extent the pandemic has effected us. We
won't know for decades. The absolute influence that it's had.
(12:02):
One of them is absenteeism from school. In California, about
one in four students, We're talking about a million and
a half students chronically absent in twenty twenty two to
twenty twenty three. That means they missed an average of
ten percent of the school year. Now, absenteeism is something
(12:23):
that used to be only the bad kids would be
absent like that, all right. I grew up as a
middle class white kid. You know, I went to a
middle class white school, and absenteeism if we're gone, man,
parents jumped on it, the school jumped on it.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
It was a big deal. Today.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
It is not a big deal today. It is bad
for a whole bunch of reasons, mainly the pandemic and
its aftermath. So kids hopefully theoretically learn at home. Well,
if you're a home where your kid, you're home for
a year or more, all of a sudden, overwhelming, boring,
(13:01):
socially stressful, that's what school is about. And this is
and I'm taking across the board and across the socioeconomic
the entire socioeconomic pattern of our society. Now, the poor
someone is, the more they're going to be absent. It's
that simple.
Speaker 4 (13:22):
The poor someone is.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Well, frankly, the refor it is because, as you know,
it's just not fun to be poor, particularly in southern California,
LA Unified, where I grew up in I went to school,
sixty two percent of LA Unified. The kids get supplemental
breakfast and lunch. They're on governmental food programs. Sixty two percent.
(13:45):
I mean that is astronomical. So all kinds of programs
have been instituted to try to get kids back into
school and let them deal with it and let them
come back to socialization and fit into your normal school
pattern the.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
Way we went to school.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Schools have to get creative, that's the bottom line. So
one of them is having mentors, teachers that mentor particularly
teachers that these kids have in common with, for example,
Black students African American teachers and staffers to connect. Same
thing with Latino students. Getting Latino staff particularly teachers to
(14:28):
connect and mentoring one of the ones. And this one
is like, come on, really. In Oakland, chronic appsentism skyrocketed
to thirty percent. Actually it was thirty percent, became fifty
three percent.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
In the year.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
After the pandemic. Last school year, fifty three percent chronic absenteeism.
I mean that is crazy. This is illiterately and is
what it is. Kids coming out of school. If you
want to call out of school, I mean sign their
name with x's but they apply for food stamps. I
mean it's gotten that crazy. So you know what Oakland
(15:11):
is doing, and logical districts across the country are paying
heat and some are even falling. Okay, this is pursuing
to a grant funded program launched in twenty twenty three
pain students fifty bucks a week for perfect attendance. You
(15:32):
go to school, you get paid fifty bucks a week. Now,
the reaction to that is, let's just say, insane. People
are going, come on, really, are you really going to
pay students, elementary, junior, high, high school students fifty dollars
a week just to go to school? And the answer is,
(15:54):
in this case, in this program, yeah yeah, on a
sixty percent prove their attendance after taking part. Really well,
sixty percent of those chronic absenteeism folks ended up going
to school every day.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
It's the money, you bet, it's the money.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
But here is why, as crazy as it sounds, I
look at this long term. Okay, this is the long
game we're talking about. You've got a kid who is
absent like crazy, who comes out, drops out of school
because illiteracy is effectively his life, or such low level
(16:32):
of education that it becomes close to that. And so
you know, someone that's going to earn minimum wage, go
on the dole, probably have children that are going to
be in the same position for the most part.
Speaker 4 (16:44):
And what are they going to cost over a lifetime?
What are they going to.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Costant food stamps? What are they going to cost in
child credit? What are they going to cost in training programs?
It's the cost of fortune about fifty dollars a week.
If that turns someone around fifty bucks a week times
(17:11):
forty weeks, what two thousand dollars over three years six
thousand dollars relative what's going to cost later on? That's
why as we end the program on Friday with this
week's World in.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Review living under a rock, Well, here's what you've missed
piping hot off the newswires from around the corner to
around that world.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
This is this week's world in Review, and I'm going
to give you highlights of what happened this week, because
as always, it's a very busy week. I mean, that's
the way we do news cycles now, and so let's
just go through what happened yesterday. The Biden administration reached
an agreement with drug makers to lower prices on ten
(18:02):
of the costs list prescription drugs under Medicare, and that
broke brand new ground. And you're going to see medicare
now negotiating with the drug companies first time, and it's the.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
Walls have opened up.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
And also President Biden made a major cancer funding announcement,
his Cancer Moonshot program, in which tons of money, in
this case one hundred and fifty million dollars grant just
the start of it to deal with cancer deaths and
to basically save fifty percent of cancer patients, reduce the
(18:37):
death rate by half. I think it was twenty thirty
five or twenty forty. And his son Bows, you know,
died of brain cancer. So he is particularly engaged in
that horrible figure that just came out of Gaza. The
number forty thousand has now been reached. Forty thousand Palestinians
(18:58):
have been killed in Gaza since the war was launched
against Camas, and that was October eighth, right after the attack.
And that's a dark milestone in the ten month old conflict.
And the talks continue, not that they're going any place.
The talks are continuing for some kind of a ceasefire,
(19:20):
and who knows if that's going to work.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
I'm guessing absolutely not.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
A story that I did just a few minutes ago,
Federal agencies in the White House working to make it
easier for us to unsubscribe and not deal with those
ridiculous doom cycles in which we go into menus on
the phone and get stuck for minutes and minutes because
(19:44):
you're going from menu to menu. Press one if you
want this, then you go there, Press one if that happens,
and it just goes on and on and eventually eventually
you talk to a real person and try to undo anything.
Unsubscri or cancel. Boy, you are in for the right
of your life. The Olympic News Jordan Chiles, US gym
(20:08):
nass was stripped of her bronze medal after she was
not given a score she should have. The judges agreed,
they changed the score. She got the bronze medal instead
of the Romanian and they now had a situation where
(20:29):
she wasn't getting enough points anyway, the technical part of it,
The United States went in and.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
Made a made a complaint.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
They went ahead and challenged and it was four seconds late,
four seconds late, and she lost her bronze medal and
had to turn it in. You happened to be in
the Bermudez. You're in a lot of trouble. Tropical storm
or Nesto nailed eastern Puerto Rico, hundreds of thousands of
people without power. By the way, there were hundred thousands
of people without power anyway, That entire grid was falling
(21:02):
apart and they really weren't able to bring it back
to where it should be. And then you got Ernesto
coming in and just nailing eastern Puerto Rico. And now
the Bermudas are in a lot of a lot of trouble.
That's what happens with storms of this kind. Tell me
that climate change isn't here. Ukrainian News. Ukrainians have incurred
(21:26):
incursion into Russia and have gotten pretty far. They're eighteen
or twenty miles into Russian soil and this is the
first time that's happened. And all of a sudden, putin
is spinning on that one, and we are going to
have a debate. Vice presidential debate. Minnesota Governor Tim Walls
and jd Vance agreed to a vice presidential debate CBS News,
(21:51):
October one. Jd Vance said, I'll do more so that
should be a lot of fun. All right, guys, we're
done tomorrow morning. It's handle on the law. Marginal legal
advice and that's from eight to eleven o'clock, following Dean
Sharp from six to eight with House Whisper Show, and
then Neil Savedra from two to five tomorrow afternoon. So there,
(22:16):
and that's after the Tech Show with Rich tomorrow. All right,
it's been a fun week and we're coming back, of
course on Monday wake Up Call with Amy King, and
then Neil and I are here for the rest of
the show with.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
Amy and what else. I think that's it, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
We're pretty well done and I'll catch you tomorrow, and
we'll catch you on Monday. KFI AM six forty live
everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You've been listening to the
Bill Handle Show. Catch My Show Monday through Friday, six
am to nine am, and anytime on demand on the
iHeartRadio app.
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