Season 5 - Episode 122
Join the conversation with James F. "Jim" Pastor, a former Chicago Police Officer turned author, as he unpacks the tumultuous atmosphere enveloping police leadership today. Our chat delves into ideologies that shape our society, touching on race, religion, and politics, and their effects on law enforcement. Pastor's book "You Say You Want a Revolution" serves as our backdrop, exposing the intense pressures officers face during societal upheaval and the forewarning of potential perils that lie ahead. It's a dialogue that transcends the pages, shedding light on the readiness required in these unpredictable times.
Strap in for this deep discussion of policing's evolution over the past four decades, as we dissect the escalating police-involved incidents and the heart-wrenching rise in officer suicides. Pastor, with his multifaceted expertise, guides us through the socio-political minefields that today's officers must navigate, and we probe the contentious nature of modern-day politics, especially within the heated discussions of college campuses. The conversation extends to the necessity of public safety policing, as Pastor's insights challenge us to consider the alignment of policing practices with the core values of our communities.
The chat ends as we tackle the relationship between patriotism and the challenges facing policing against the backdrop of globalism and its critique of nationalistic sentiments. Pastor illuminates the impact of political decisions on the ground, stressing the critical role of police leadership in steering officers through treacherous waters. It's a crucial discussion for those vested in the intersection of law enforcement and the fabric of our national identity, and Pastor doesn't shy away from the tough questions that confront the very essence of public safety.
Contact us: copdoc.podcast@gmail.com
Website: www.copdocpodcast.com
If you'd like to arrange for facilitated training, or consulting, or talk about steps you might take to improve your leadership and help in your quest for promotion, contact Steve at stephen.morreale@gmail.com
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Episode Transcript
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Intro-Outro (00:02):
Welcome to The Cop Doc Podcast.
This podcast explores policeleadership issues and innovative
ideas.
The cop doc shares thoughts andideas as he talks with leaders
in policing communities,academia and other government
agencies.
And now please join Dr SteveMorreale and industry thought
(00:25):
leaders as they share theirinsights and experience on The
CopD oc Podcast.
Steve Morreale (00:34):
Hey everybody, Steve Morreale, coming to you
from South Carolina today, andtoday we go down to Naples,
Florida, beautiful Naples,Florida.
We talked to Jim Pastor and heis in Naples, Florida, and a
former police officer, a PhD,doctor, Pastor, a JD, and doing
some wonderful work, wrote somebooks.
We'll talk about it.
The most recent is you say youwant a revolution, a compelling
(00:55):
and cautionary tale on what liesahead.
So good morning to you, Jim.
Hi Steve, thanks for having me,Thank you for coming.
I think that this is going to bea very interesting episode
because and I know when you werea police officer I want you to
talk about your background.
But when you're a policeofficer, you have to be somewhat
measured as to what you can sayin public.
No different than me as afaculty member at a state
(01:17):
university now.
But because you are releasedfrom that, you are retired,
you're no longer a policeofficer, but you have all that
experience You've been aprofessor, an author, a lawyer.
Tell us about yourself and whatbrings you to writing and what
brought you to The CopD ocPodcast.
Jim Pastor (01:33):
Thanks for having me again.
I'm a kid from the South sideof Chicago.
I grew up in a very workingclass neighborhood.
Father was a steel worker andmy friends went to the trades
and steel mills and I became acop and I had this idea of being
an FBI as a kid.
I started on a Chicago policedepartment 40 years ago.
It was a great opportunity Backthen.
(01:55):
I came in with a bachelor'sdegree in law enforcement and
sociology, which was ratherunusual back then.
We want a lot of educated copsback then.
Right, and you know, throughthe years I progressed.
I had this idea that you keeplearning and working and I loved
the things that I was doing andI went to graduate school, I
(02:15):
went to law school and then Igot my PhD all while working and
all writing, and I've had awhat I'd call labor of love over
the years, all in and aroundpolicing, public safety and
security.
I'm currently legal counsel forelectronic security firm and I
have a small consulting businesswhere I do expert witness work
(02:36):
and then I write the book yousay you want a revolution is a
labor of love.
I've studied terrorism for manyyears.
Back in the day I was, one ofmy mentors was Dick Ward.
Steve Morreale (02:47):
Oh, my goodness, Dick and I was so, so bad to
see him leave.
Yes, I know Dick very well, Iknew him.
Jim Pastor (02:54):
Yes, he was NYPD detective and ultimately he
pretty much ran the Universityof Illinois, chicago when I was
there working on my master's andPhD and he used to have a
terrorism conference every year.
And I was this young kid, 24years old, with all kinds of
alphabet people in the audience,you know FBICIA, tf, dea.
(03:17):
It was fascinating to me at thetime.
It was a time in Americanhistory just early to mid 80s
when there was a lot of concernwith terrorism, and then I think
we're coming back around tothat.
So what I was fascinated withback then was why people had the
fanatical mindsets, whyideologies grow and what feeds
(03:41):
them and how those things can beaddressed, both from a law
enforcement or from a societalperspective.
There's a long tentacle storyover the years, but why I wrote
this book is because I thinkwe're in very, very dangerous
times.
I call it a revolutionaryclimate and what happened in
Israel?
Steve Morreale (04:01):
just gonna say that I think that's a telling
yes, so I don't know.
Jim Pastor (04:05):
I mean, I could keep going.
There's so much to say and I'mfascinated around the topic
intellectually and academically,but it's also it's us, it's
it's who we are.
Steve Morreale (04:16):
It's like our life.
I was just gonna say that, andI think those who are listening
and so many are faculty members,students and police officers
and those who are scholars andsuch can benefit from this.
I believe when you look at thebook and as you look chapter by
chapter, it's really fascinating.
It's well researched andobviously, like you say, a labor
love.
It's not the first thing you'vewritten, but one of the things
(04:38):
you start with is talking aboutrace, religion and politics, and
I do believe that race andreligion play a very, very big
role.
We talk about oppressionoppression with the Palestinians
at the Gaza Strip and did thatcause the attack on Israel?
The situation where you havehostages being taken in, the
threat of being killed one byone, is just chilling.
(04:58):
I know it seems like far, faraway, but I'm sure you and I was
just engaged in a course lastnight graduate course on border
security and we talked aboutwhat was going on, as we're
talking about now, in Israel.
Could that have an impact inthe United States?
I think so many of us think, eh, that's way, way far away.
I would hasten to say that thisis a problem that may come our
(05:22):
way and we need to be ready,would you agree?
Jim Pastor (05:24):
I totally.
I think you've seen a smallindicators of that already with
some of the protests and counterprotests in the streets.
Steve Morreale (05:33):
Sorry, we just had a disruption in our internet
connectivity and we weretalking about what's going on
and how people are railing forboth sides here in the United
States, and certainly we haveseen over and over and over
again different groups, radicalunits and those who are sort of
counterculture thinkers that areputting police in the middle,
(05:56):
and I think that's reallyimportant.
Let's talk about that, becauseimagine the job of a police
officer.
You and I were in the businessfor an awfully long time a while
ago, but it's so much moredifficult now.
And so here police aremarshaled to come and allow
sometimes illegal or an illegalgathering where two factions are
railing against each other, andyou're in the.
(06:18):
You're in the middle.
You know you're trying to allowfor free speech, but also make
sure that it doesn't get out ofhand.
Talk about that and howdifficult that is for police
organizations.
Jim Pastor (06:28):
It's extraordinarily difficult, but the thin blue
line is becoming thinner andmore problematic and more
difficult to manage.
These entities are designedessentially to maintain law and
order, and part of the law, ofcourse, is to allow protests.
First, amendment rights arehugely important in this country
, as is public safety, andthere's a very fine line between
(06:52):
what can be allowed in thepublic square and particularly
when you have a counter protestsituation, and that's where the
volatile nature of these issuesthat are so embedded into
people's lives this is whereideology plays such a huge role,
in that the thinking is soembedded in people's minds and
(07:15):
lives, and there's essentially Iwould call it a collision
course that we're on, where thereasonable people, the
reasonable minds, are becomingless common and what is more
strident is becoming morefrequent, because these
conflicts or protests can turninto demonstrations and then
(07:37):
chaos.
The police are in a verydelicate situation, and how do
you manage?
That is a kind of acase-by-case analysis, but what
I looked at is the larger trendsto say that these things are
happening.
This is why they're happening,and in the middle is the
canaries in the coal mine, whichcan see this the police and
(07:59):
when police are targeted, itjust creates that additional
stress on society.
The dynamic of attacking thepolice and attacking police
entities or institutions aresuch that it breaks down that
thin blue line into a city.
And that is why I wrote thebook, because I can harken back
(08:22):
to a book I wrote in 2008, whichwas called Terrorism and Public
Safety Policing Implicationsfor the Obama Presidency, and at
that time it was my opinionthat we were getting to a very,
very delicate, racially impugnedsituation where race was
playing a role, where the firstblack president was coming
(08:44):
aboard and there was a lot ofpeople who were unhappy about
that.
And at the time the societyharkened a post-racial America,
and I wrote about this in my newbook.
How can you become post-racialand then, 12 years later, become
systematically racist?
It's almost we're on a ferriswheel, a titty water, where we
(09:07):
are declared post-racial andthen we become systematically
racist.
It's impossible to be both.
Systematically racist isessentially, you know, embedded
with racism throughout yoursociety, throughout your system.
Post-racial is to say that youdon't care about race anymore.
Steve Morreale (09:25):
So in this is where we're at.
You're asking what is it?
It's easy to learn, right.
Jim Pastor (09:30):
And that's right.
And so it's because thesethings are so deep-seated.
We are creating a circumstance.
Who's the we?
I got ideas about who the we is.
There's a lot of things drivingthis collision course that the
reason why I cared about it somuch is because of the police,
because they're the ones caughtin the mix.
(09:50):
They're the ones who are goingto have to deal with the fallout
and be directly affected by it.
The police shootings or policeinvolved attacks are becoming
more frequent as our policesuicide as are a very delicate
situation where the psyche ofthe average police officer and
(10:11):
how the job is done has changeddramatically from what I saw 40
years ago.
And I care about the police,but I care even more about
society.
If you affect the police, youaffect society.
Steve Morreale (10:24):
We're talking to Jim Pastor.
Talk to Jim Pastor.
He is in Naples, florida,former Chicago police officer,
an educator, a writer, obviouslya lawyer and a PhD.
And we're talking about societyand we're talking about how
police are drawn into the middle.
Actually, jim, one of thethings that I am beginning to
write about is socio-politicalrisk and policing and something
that police managers don't thinkthat they are drawn into social
(10:48):
issues.
They are drawn into politicalissues.
You know just as we're talkingabout.
But, as I read the book and Iread pieces of your book and the
book is called you say you wanta revolution, a takeoff on the
Beatles.
You talk about race, religionand politics.
But what I find here?
You start talking aboutCharlottesville and what
happened there.
We talk about critical racetheory.
You talk about white privilege.
(11:08):
You talk about a third rail,wokeism in the culture, war, the
national anthem and attack onthe American flag, mob action.
You talk about religion, butthen you go on to talk about
extremist ideologies in thecapitalist system and the attack
of the capitalist system.
And it could be very well.
What's going on over there inthe Middle East?
You talk about single interestgroups and they just want the
(11:30):
audience to know what you arewriting about Anti-abortion,
animal rights, radicalenvironmentalists, ms-13,
marxists, urban street gangs.
You talk about Antifa asanarchist and the Boogaloo boys.
You're talking about fascism.
Right wing just goes on and onRight wing fascism,
anti-government groups andracial and hate groups and
national racist groups.
(11:51):
The Black Panther Party forself-defense, the Aryan
Brotherhood, proud boys and allof this is which is crazy.
But then you go on to talkabout reimagining policing.
It's pretty hard to reimaginepolicing, even though it might
be forced on us when, in manycases if you think about
Portland and Seattle that thepolice were under siege.
How do you reform while you'retrying to just protect the
(12:14):
people who are protectingsociety?
I mean big questions.
Jim Pastor (12:18):
Huge questions and during the summer of 2020, I
think there was a knee jerkreaction to the George Floyd
killing, which was no one coulddefend it.
I haven't heard one policeofficer and all the people that
I know try to defend it in anyreal way, but it's one man
800,000 or 750,000 policeofficers in this country and it
(12:42):
turned the world upside down ina sense of police, and I say in
my book that it's changedpolicing for the foreseeable
future, what it's going to looklike going forward, it's still a
question, and I offer up what Icall public safety policing,
where I have three crucialelements of what that looks like
.
To the larger point, all thoseideologies are all, and I use a
(13:06):
diagram in my book where I havethe capitalistic system and
around them is all the variousideologies, and they're all.
All of them look to destroy thesystem and, with the police
being the most visiblerepresentatives of the system,
they are inevitably tied to thesystem and then tied to the
(13:26):
impact of these ideologies andthey're coming, and the way I
see ideologies is it's a tit fortat the more the the one stands
up, the more likely the otherwill stand up, and I use this
principle and this is somethingthat most people don't want to
understand or our biases do notallow us to really get our arms
(13:48):
around.
And this is the principle If youignore or appease one extreme
and you demonize and attack theother extreme, you'll get more
of both, and that's what I thinkis happening in this country.
There's enough people on bothsides of the spectrum that are
supporting these extremistthinking that are inevitably
creating our own demise, if youwill.
(14:11):
And I use a quote in my bookwhere Lincoln President Lincoln
in the 1840s basically said ifwe lose this society, if we lose
this country, it won't bebecause of foreign troops
crossing the Ohio River.
It will be because of our owndivide.
That's what I see is happeningin this country in a very
dangerous way, and he is Israeliwar, and the incident with
(14:35):
Hamas is one of those triggersthat we start to see the lines
being hardened and people'smindsets becoming more and more
strident to either side.
And how it plays in the bookwas either an attempt to find a
reasonable ground or it's awarning.
I don't know what it is and Ican tell you this, and, for
(14:57):
whatever it's worth, thank youfor putting a book called
Revolution on your podcast,because a lot of people don't
want to touch it.
And why?
Because it's so potentiallyvolatile that people are afraid
to think about what this maymean to their life.
Steve Morreale (15:13):
But when you look, at the title, some might
think that you are proposing arevolution, but what you're
saying is that it's in thecountry we are so divided, both
politically and in beliefconservative versus liberal,
whatever that is and it's sohard to avoid the conversation.
Having the conversation is veryimportant, and you know you've
(15:35):
been on campuses for a long,long time.
It strikes me that campusesacross the country are supposed
to allow for dialogue and that'snot always happening.
It really isn't to the pointwhere, if you are a conservative
and I hold myself as aconservative I have to bite my
tongue.
I have to keep my thoughts tomyself.
You know, jim, as a formerpolice officer, you know as a
(15:57):
former law enforcement officer,you know that there are people
on campus that have nothing butdisdain for criminal justice.
Nothing but disdain for me as aprofessor.
I'm not saying it's a greatnumber, but it, like everything
else we're talking about, thereis an undercurrent to say you
are an apologist for police whenpeople don't understand what I
am and what I believe in.
I don't like bad policeofficers any more than you do.
(16:18):
I can't imagine a countrywithout policing and how it
would go into utter chaos.
Jim Pastor (16:25):
It is.
It's inherent in human nature.
This is where most people don'treally want to get to the basis
of who we are as people.
We need order.
People crave for order andwithout an enforcing arm in a
country, you will open upPandora's box, so to speak.
But let me just say, yes, thetitle sounds like I want to
(16:46):
advocate for it, but really it'sthe first line of the song
revolution.
And the Beatles in 68 saidessentially be careful what you
ask for folks.
So I use that as a jumping offpoint to say the Beatles said
the same thing If you want moneyfor people with minds that hate
, well, brother, you have towait and we have a lot of hate
(17:08):
going on.
And my point was to say, justas the Beatles in 68 put a lid
on a revolutionary environmentthat was percolating back then,
what I'm trying to do is putanother lid on a revolutionary
environment that is percolatingnow, but in a much more
dangerous fashion, because backin 68, there wasn't a right wing
(17:33):
counter revolution mindset thatwas out there.
It was mostly, almostexclusively, driven from the
left.
So now you have an element of acounterweight, if you will,
that is pushing the envelope andcreating a kind of that
collision course in a way thatwe didn't have in the 60s.
(17:55):
So I say this this is not myidea, folks, this is what
they're saying.
And one of the things I'velearned from Dick Ward over the
years is pay attention to whatthe terrorists are telling you,
because they're telling you whatthey're going to do.
Yeah, listen, they're saying it.
They're telling you loud andclear what their minds are and
what their attitudes are andwhat their intentions are.
(18:16):
So you look at your ideologiesand you say to yourself oh, I
either ignore that is just puffor I take it seriously.
And I've been around the blacklong enough to know that you
ought to take it seriously,because some of these people are
dead serious in their intenseand again, this is not something
that most people want to talkabout, no, but if we don't talk
(18:38):
about it?
Steve Morreale (18:39):
we're going to get it.
I keep cutting off because youget me thinking about so many
things and I hope the audienceis thinking the same thing, like
what do we do?
Is this a wake up call?
Should we be paying attention?
Is a potential attack just forfor a tax sake, to attack the
capitalist system of the UnitedStates or any democratic society
?
Is that in the offing?
Is there so much anger that'sout there that we should be on
(19:03):
alert?
I mean that's a real problem.
And then you think about Jim,just to bring it a little bit
forward, talking about theIslamist actors out there.
What about our own cities?
Look at the lawlessness thatwe're watching on television
where there are groups of people.
It baffles me when you see agroup of people who are using
social media to amass and attackand overrun a store and then go
(19:27):
on to the next one a couple ofdays later and the police are
outnumbered, they are outflankedand in some cases you've got
politicians saying stand down,yeah.
Jim Pastor (19:37):
Well, one of my titles of my chapter four is
reimagining policing fromdefunding to lawlessness, and I
lay out the reasons whylawlessness will increase and
why lawlessness could be seen asa indicator for the destruction
of capitalism.
Look what happens in thesescenarios that you're describing
(19:58):
.
You have these mobs going in,grabbing anything they want in a
store or greatly affecting thecommerce in a business district.
What do businesses do?
Many of them are just shuttingdown, and so what do you do when
you shut down a Walgreens orCVS or even some Neiman Marcus
(20:19):
or target?
Steve Morreale (20:20):
Target is in the middle of it.
Jim Pastor (20:21):
Yes, yeah, and you just shut it down.
What do you affect?
The way commerce is done?
You affect the capitalisticsystem.
Steve Morreale (20:27):
Well, you begin to oppress the very people who
need this.
Jim Pastor (20:32):
Absolutely.
The woman who's got three kids,that doesn't have a car, that
relies on the CVS to go to thestore Now isn't there anymore,
and so what do you do?
There are so many parts of thisand this animates me in a way,
because those mob actions arereally also political and that's
where people they see this as abunch of criminal actors.
(20:55):
Yeah, but the criminal actorsdesign or intending to do
something bigger than just steal.
There is a momentum and there'sa logic in lawlessness and it's
like a cancer If you have acancer in your body, it will
continue to grow unless it'saddressed.
And we are afraid to addressthose things because it's going
(21:17):
to speak to a racial incitement.
A lot of urban leaders doingthey're sitting on their hands
because they're afraid, or nowthey're blaming the businesses
for not having enough security.
That's a classic juxtaposition.
It's not my job to stop thelooting, it's your job to stop
the looting.
Steve Morreale (21:35):
Yes, it's what society in America believes that
the government is responsibleto maintain security and protect
, and so I think, in a lot ofways, what we're seeing as
capital or for profitorganizations are saying I'm not
staying in this city becauseyou can't protect me.
There's a statement that'sbeing made there.
Jim Pastor (21:52):
Absolutely, and you know I said it in my book.
Now the book is a little.
I wrote it mostly during 2021.
And so a lot of what I said inthe book is happening now.
It's ahead of its time.
It's purkuling, because whatyou do is you look at the tea
leaves and you start to kind oflike how is this going to play?
How is this going to play?
Well, it's playing out as Isaid in the book, and that is,
(22:15):
businesses will take the bottomline and say wait a minute, we
can't continue to lose money,we're just going, we're going to
shut it down and we're going todo business where we can't Now.
That may shift even morebusiness to online shopping and
things like that.
There may be some actualalternative available, but for
(22:36):
some people it's not a real goodalternative.
But, more importantly, for thesocial structure, for social
cohesion, for the viability ofour urban areas, it is hugely
detrimental.
And how this gets solved iswhat I offer up is public safety
, policing, emphasis on ordermaintenance technology and then
(22:59):
what I call protective measures,which is both police officers
protecting themselves and thepublic, and that may require
police officers arming up in away that a lot of people don't
feel comfortable with.
So it's a very interestingdynamic and I admire and
appreciate the average popthat's out there and I speak to
(23:23):
them and my heart goes out tothem.
But when you talk earlier aboutthe police leaders not wanting
to get involved with politics,really for me this is policy.
I have a PhD in public policy.
Policies matter and, okay,politics is often tied to
policies.
It's really the policies thatdrive human behavior and the
(23:46):
incentives we either give peopleto abide the law or the
incentives we give them toignore the law, and I think what
we're doing now is giving moreincentives to the law violators
than we are to the law ofviaduct.
Steve Morreale (24:02):
We're talking to Jim Pastor and he is an author,
a PhD, ajd and a former policeofficer out of Chicago, and he
has written a number of books.
The book we're focusing on, asyou say, you want a revolution,
and one of the things that I'mhearing is what you're talking
about is policy.
I understand, and what began tohappen a few years ago was a
same thing that prosecutorswould come in and run on the
(24:26):
idea, the premise, that theywere not going to enforce minor
laws and those laws, perhapsthat were targeted at the inner
city, at minorities, and whenthere is no consequence, very
often there's Lawlessness.
If you're not gonna put me injail, then I'll do what I can do
.
And so the revolving doorhappens the police put handcuffs
(24:47):
on people, they bring them in,then they're out, the system
handles it and if the offenderis not going to be held to
account, there's no consequences.
Believe me, as you well know,the signal goes out like it
doesn't matter.
No one's doing anything.
Coming to the store, stealoutwardly Securities not gonna
stop you, so just keep coming,and it becomes a devolution in a
(25:08):
lot of ways and that's a realproblem.
I'm sure police are sitting andlistening today on the sideline
, thinking what the hell am Igonna do?
But I want to say is thatpolice leaders and I do so much
training with police leaderslisten, your job is to keep a
focus on the mission, evenamongst the noise, make sure
that your people are protectedand make sure that they do Not
(25:29):
ignore the law, take action andyou have no control over what
happens afterwards.
What are your thoughts?
Jim Pastor (25:34):
Yes, police leaders have to do their job, and so
police officers, for that matter.
The problem is what you callDevolution, I called momentum,
and there's a logic and aMomentum to lawlessness is, as
you just said, people learn.
Oh, tony, got away with a bunchof stuff, look at, hey, but I'm
gonna get some for myself.
(25:56):
I see this is rational actors.
These are not necessarily yeah,they're criminals because
they're committing these kindsof things, but really, what they
are is rational actors.
They're doing what they can getaway with and whatever the
system allows them to get awaywith.
When the rational person do that, well, there's the incentives
that I talked about.
(26:16):
How do you manage that from apolicing perspective?
How does the police chiefprotect the citizens and his or
her officers at the same time?
Well, what I think is happeningmore commonly we have rejected
the notion of proactive policingand become police officers in
the audience will probably Findus somewhat humorous.
(26:39):
I hope there may be a pointwhere police officers turn into
firemen, where they stay in thestation until Something happens
and then they go to deal withthe issue.
Steve Morreale (26:47):
They wait for the paxons to ring and then they
go.
They respond right.
Jim Pastor (26:51):
Correct.
So that completely reactiveapproach is foreign to me.
I was a tactical police officer.
I stopped probably fivethousand cars.
I look for the bad guys.
It's important that policeofficers understand that the
proactive approach ishistorically been the way to
reduce crime.
It's also, granted, becomesometimes done in ways that are
(27:16):
wrong and there is that veryfine line.
But what I think has happenedbecause some of those things are
very much a discretionary basisand some of these things can
treat, stop, can go bad in aheartbeat.
So I think the emphasis hasbecome just don't do that, stay
in the car and Wait for you tobe called and then deal with it
(27:39):
then now let me interrupt.
Steve Morreale (27:40):
I understand what you're saying and I think
it's absolutely what happens inmany major cities, but my
question is is that what thegeneral public expect in your
mind?
Jim Pastor (27:50):
you know what they Expect not to be harassed, but
then they expect to be protected.
And what is a funny thing iswho is the bad guy?
I can tell you how many times Iwas asked the question why are
you stopping me?
You're stopping me because I'mblack.
No, I'm stopping you becauseI'm investigating a crime.
I don't know if you're a badguy or a good guy, I just don't
(28:13):
know who you are.
And so the way that averageperson sees that is they don't
care about it until they'reaffected.
And once they're affected, thenthey get interested, and I
think we're gonna find more andmore people getting interested
About how their communities arepoliced, because if there's lack
of policing, then there's morecrime.
(28:34):
Now the dynamic of this is evenmore volatile.
If policing as a whole doesn'tbecome more proactive, well,
what will happen?
People will become moreself-defense and they will carry
weapons, and they will then betheir own judge During an
executioner, if you will, andI'm saying the vaginal anti-ism
(28:56):
right.
Yes if we have created thissituation where we are afraid to
deal with the to use yourAnalogy earlier the mobs.
If the mobs can't be dealt with, then at some point in time
Citizens will deal with the mobsand that's where it gets
potentially very volatile.
Steve Morreale (29:15):
You put the police in the middle.
As to who are we policing?
Jim Pastor (29:18):
and if you think about a mob.
Steve Morreale (29:19):
You think about a mob.
It's a flash mob and policeshow up and you know there's not
enough people on the street andthree or four or five cars show
up.
They can't deal with a mob.
I mean, you put your hands onone person, you really are
taking yourself out ofcommission and you may be
threatened by others who arejumping on you to stop them from
Arresting Tony.
So very often what happens isthat you just stand back for a
(29:41):
little bit because you can'toutdo a mob of a hundred people
If there's only three peoplewith a gun and with a taser.
Jim Pastor (29:47):
I bring up a historical example.
Ironically, right before theCivil War, there was a movement
called the wide-awakes and thewide-awakes were essentially
More than there's who decidedthat they were going to protect
their communities and protecttheir politicians, who were
advocating the Prohibition ofslavery, and they sought to
(30:11):
create an environment where freemen, free land and Succeed
freedom.
Well, society was breaking downthen, so there was a movement
that brought to the fore calledthe wide-awakes.
Now we have fast forward 160years.
We now have a wolf Movement onthe other side of the realm and
(30:31):
there's going to be a wide-awaketype of situation in the US.
If we don't get our Streetsunder control, if we don't get
commerce under control, if oururban areas Breakdown, people
will flee.
That can't flee, and if they'renot fleeing, they're gonna do
something to protect themselves.
(30:52):
Human nature is self-protective.
That's in our DNA.
So yes, in your scenario, ifthere's three police officers on
the street and a hundred peoplerunning around, they have to
just stay the course and justobserve being observed, which it
often happens in the case wherethe stores are hiring security
(31:12):
guards to essentially watchpeople commit crimes.
Steve Morreale (31:16):
We see that all the time I know yeah, cuz
they're afraid to engage andthey're outnumbered.
We're talking to Jim, pastor,and we're having a conversation
that is, I won't say, muchdeeper, but it is so much more
important because it talks aboutsociety and the way society has
evolved, the way we are as acountry with our Mores.
(31:39):
You, at the end of your book,talk about God, country and
Family.
There have been some who feelthat those Core bedrock beliefs
in America are eroding.
So Jim had written a book.
You say you want a revolutionand we're sort of picking apart
some of the things that he hastalked about.
The couple of questions thatcome to mind for me, jim, is
(32:00):
have you gained traction sincewriting this book?
Are people seeing it, payingattention, understanding it?
Are you clairvoyant?
Jim Pastor (32:08):
Let me answer the second part first.
I am not clairvoyant, but I payattention.
I'm a student of human natureand a student of society.
Since I was 18 years old I havea sociology and law enforcement
degree, so I guess I wastrained to look at.
Sociology was all about givingbehavior and subcultures and
things like that so I payattention to how people think
(32:32):
and in my humble opinion, thebook is ahead of its time and
the traction that is coming andthere is some coming.
But I didn't write the book tomake money.
I wrote the book as an attemptto find Rational heads and also
maybe just a warrant if we don'tdo something Significant, we're
heading towards this collisioncourse but that said in the end
(32:55):
it's what do we go for?
What's our purpose in life?
Do we see it as one with themost toys wins, or is there a
larger meaning to our lives?
And that's where that lastchapter I try to pull out what
has driven people in thiscountry for millennium?
And that is something biggerthan ourselves, and that we
should see things that we arejust part of a larger puzzle, if
(33:19):
you will, and our country, ourfamily and ultimately, if you
believe in God, the Creator, isthe reason why we are living.
Shakespeare said we are with theactors in the world as a stage.
So it's disappointing to me onone level, that a lot of people
in public safety and securitydon't want to deal with the idea
(33:42):
of revolution because they seethe title, they're chilled away
from it.
I think they're afraid of maybeeven a cancel culture situation
, or they just don't want to goto the logical end game of what
is going on around them.
What I say is that end game ispercolating and only the good
(34:04):
people will stop it fromhappening, and or maybe there is
some rational way to bridge thegap between the extremes that
are developing in this country.
Steve Morreale (34:16):
Well, don't you say that.
You know, as you're saying,that I'm thinking to myself.
Well, define good people anddon't get me wrong.
But is it my side or your side?
Is it liberal or conservative,Is it?
And that's the big deal.
When you saw what happened onJanuary 6th, what was your
reaction to that?
Jim Pastor (34:30):
Frankly, it was a mob action gone wild and I see
that as a.
It cuts both ways.
I don't know enough aboutwhether this was some part of
this was egged on by eithergovernmental actors or by
essentially others inciting thecrowd, or if it was just a crowd
(34:52):
that went out of control.
It wasn't good.
Obviously, any violence, anylaw-biting, any hatred is how I
break out.
Those people who are goodversus there are not.
I don't have an excuse foranyone who violates the law.
That's it, bottom line.
So good people don't violatethe law.
Now how do you bridge the gap ifthe government has created a
(35:15):
circumstance where good peoplesay I have to violate the law,
that's a dangerous place to beand I don't want to go there,
and yet, at the same time, weallow riots to occur.
I mean, I did the stats there'sI don't know 700 and some odd
riots in the summer of 2020.
(35:36):
And then there was a three hourriot in the Capitol.
On balance, the riots of 2020greatly impacted society in my
mind, way more than the riot inthe Capitol.
Now, neither one were right.
You can appease either side,because go with the principle If
you ignore or appease one sideand demonize and attack the
(35:59):
other.
You're going to get more ofboth, but why was it?
The overriding emphasis was onthe Capitol three hour riot and
we essentially did the wink andnod.
For a summer of law.
You can't reconcile the two.
Both were wrong, but we haveattacked one and ignored the
other.
(36:19):
That's dangerous in my mind.
Now we can get into reasons whythe riots of 2020 went out and
how provocateurs were in thecrowd in the riots in the cities
, just why there wereprovocateurs in the crowd and
the riots in the Capitol.
In the end of the day, steve,good people in my mind, don't
hate, don't commit crime, don'tcommit violence.
(36:42):
Now then there's thoseexceptions, and I don't know how
to manage that andunfortunately, government's job
is to number one duty is toprotect the citizens.
The failure to government to dothat leads to these other very
dicey situations where we losethe perspective of what is right
(37:03):
and wrong, and that's dangerousit is dangerous.
Steve Morreale (37:06):
We're talking to Jim Pastor and you're listening
to the Cop Talk podcast.
I'm Steve Moriellian.
We're talking about some prettydeep, deep situations and deep
issues in America and beyond.
I wrote a few things down andwe need to wind down in a few
moments, but one of the thingsthat I wrote down was patriotism
, which is, I guess, what youwould say God, family and
country.
(37:26):
What do you think is happening?
Why are there so many peoplewho are speaking out against the
United States as a principle,as a belief, as a country,
supposedly, of freedom andrights?
Where's that?
Jim Pastor (37:39):
coming from?
Well, you can argue it's comingfrom the vice of ideologies
that believe that anationalistic approach, which is
essentially what patriotism is,is not healthy for this globe,
and nationalistic thinkingcauses wars, and so thus the
(37:59):
solution to mankind's ills is aglobalist government that takes
away the idea of patriotism andthen takes the dynamics of the
competition that goes topatriotism and nationalistic
thinking out of the equation.
And I think one of the reasonswhy we are in a flag mire as a
(38:23):
country is there's a lot ofpeople in this country that
don't really care about thecountry.
They care about the globe, andif the solution is to save the
world, then maybe one of thesolutions is to diminish the
country, and I think you couldsee that at the southern border,
the idea of a border andsovereignty has become almost
(38:47):
repulsive to a lot of people,and so if you're seeking a
globalist solution, you don'twant a strong United States,
because that would stand in theway of a one world government
mindset.
Now that is a lot bigger thanmost people want to go To me.
You have to ask the questionlike a rational actor why would
(39:09):
you defund policing to upset theapple cart in the United States
in terms of its ability togovern itself?
Why would you open up thesouthern border?
Why would you leave Afghanistan, in a way that you did, with
billions of dollars of munitionsthat now have allegedly some of
them landed in Hamas's hands?
(39:31):
Why would you do those things?
The country was your desire tomaintain the integrity of the
country.
If you look at and that's whatI did in my book I took the
capitalistic system and I tookthe various ideologies and I put
it around it and said every oneof these ideologies wants to
destroy the capitalistic systemand the capitalistic system is
(39:52):
embedded in the notion ofsovereignty and patriotism in
this country.
So this is big and I can't saythat everyone who desires to let
in migrants from the southernborder wants a globalistic
system, but I can say the endresult of that policy is to
(40:12):
foster that.
Steve Morreale (40:14):
So let me interrupt you again, let me ask
you this question as we winddown how do police respond to
all of the things we're talkingabout?
Have they shut us off becausewe're talking so big, so global?
This hasn't got anything to dowith me in the Chicago Police
Department or the Boston PoliceDepartment or the San Francisco
Police Department, and I'm justthrowing so many things at you.
But what strikes me is thatconundrum that we put police in
(40:37):
sometimes when politiciansdecide what laws they wish to
enforce, that when they tellpolice you will not deal with
GSA police protecting thefederal building, we're not
going to protect it, that'stheir job, which is crazy.
Or we're not going to allow youto call immigration and you're
not going to assist immigrationbecause we whomever we is
(41:00):
politicians do not believe inthat arm of the law.
How confusing and confoundingis that for a police officer who
believes that a badge is abadge and that we help each
other.
Jim Pastor (41:12):
And the law is the law, and the reason why they got
on the job is because they careabout people and they want to
help people, and the way theyhelp people is they enforce the
law when bad guys commitcriminal acts.
So, yes, how does an averagepolice officer manage this?
Human nature says a lot of themjust put their heads down and
(41:34):
try to stay out of the fray.
Those who do get into the fraywhen they are in the fray be
professional and buy the lawthat requires the boss and the
leaders in the policecommunities to protect their
officers when they are beingaccused of wrongdoing by
snippets on a camera that losethe context of the whole
(41:55):
situation.
I can say that I've done a lotof use of force work in my life
as a lawyer for police unions.
It's one of the most difficultthings to defend because it's an
inevitably a situation thatsometimes looks bad, because
it's hard to arrest somebodythat doesn't want to be arrested
.
Steve Morreale (42:13):
Oh yeah yeah, it never looks good.
There's an awful lot ofresistance and it always looks
bad when you're trying toovercome that resistance.
It's not print out.
Jim Pastor (42:21):
So what do people do ?
And people are police andpolice are people.
They will often avoid thosesituations because they're too
hard to manage.
So what can we do as a police?
In my mind and this might beidealistic police leaders have
to drive the show, and this iswhy I admire what you're doing
with your podcast, becauseyou're getting inside the heads
(42:43):
of leaders and, at least fromwhat I can see, most of these
leaders have created kind of alittle box that they live in,
that they manage their dailylife, which we all have to do.
But they gotta see beyond theirbox and see the larger trends
and see how those things areaffecting policing generally,
and police associations need tostep up and defend the policies
(43:07):
that we know historically haveled to reductions in crime and
defend why those are needed.
Steve Morreale (43:14):
That's so interesting because you're
talking about leaders and I saythat there's an awful lot of
police chiefs out there that aremanagers and they manage the
day-to-day and they never stepup, they never use the pulpit
that they have to explain tosociety why the police do what
they do and what theexpectations are, and to work
with the community to say whatdo you expect?
(43:34):
Here's what we have, what wouldyou like us to do?
In other words, society isn'tgonna drive what the police do,
but they are gonna help themfocus on what's important to
them quality of life, crimes,those kinds of issues.
Jim, we need to wind down.
We could talk for quite a whileand I can only assume that
we'll be back at this, but letme ask you a couple of parting
questions.
How do people get in touch withyou?
Jim Pastor (43:55):
I have a website, wwwsecurelaw, and let me spell
it secureS-E-C-U-R-E-L-A-W-L-L-C,
securelaw-l-l-c.
Dot com.
You'll find my email on thewebsite.
The book is available in Amazonborders.
You say you want a revolution,a compelling and cautionary tale
(44:19):
of what lies ahead, becausethat's a take off from the
Beatles song.
There's another book out therewith that first line, so be
careful what you're buying.
But beyond that, I'm availablein a lot of capacities.
I want to get the word out.
This is the message thatmatters to me, and I care about
police officers and I care aboutthis country, and so I thank
(44:42):
you for the opportunity.
Partially, steve, and I saythis with great respect.
There was a lot of people thatdon't want to touch this with a
10 foot pole, and it's thosepeople who are the managers and
essentially you described, thatjust want to kind of put their
head in the sand and just hopethings get better and just deal
with the circumstances that arein front of them.
(45:02):
So we got to see if life isbigger than ourselves.
At least that's how I manage mylife, that's how I try to
rationalize who Jim Pastor is.
I'm a nothing, and yet I'vespent 40 plus years trying to do
the right thing, and all of ushave to work inside of ourselves
and say what matters to me.
What is worth sacrificing forIs my country, is my family, is
(45:27):
my God worth sacrificing for?
So that's why I wrote the book.
I knew I was gonna get into thefray.
I didn't want to get into fray.
I don't want to be called aracist.
I'm not a racist.
But yet inevitably, when you'redealing with controversial
subjects and biases inherent inall of us, people just want to
rather throw the stone insteadof deal with the issue.
(45:49):
So be part of the solution, notthe problem.
Steve Morreale (45:52):
I have to say that this has prompted a number
of questions.
You dig into some things thatare really very important, and
I'll ask you one final question.
We're talking to Jim Pastor aswe wind down the Cop Talk
podcast.
If you could sit down at dinner, wow, that's a great question.
Jim Pastor (46:06):
It's not directly, but I admire what Abraham
Lincoln did.
He didn't deal with necessarilypolicing, but he dealt with
public safety and he dealt withhumanity, and that, to me,
that's what policing is.
It's human beings trying tokeep lives safe.
(46:27):
And what Lincoln went throughand extraordinary stances he
took.
I ported him a lot in my bookbecause it was an attempt just
to say a man stood up at thetime, this country needed it and
we have been blessed from it.
But Lincoln declared martiallaw and he forced laws when a
(46:50):
lot of people were afraid to doit.
He actually engaged a rebellionin order to keep the country
together and it was hard.
Why was it hard?
Because it would probably havebeen easier to just appease and
just allow the country toseparate.
But is that what we want?
And ultimately, in my mind, theanswer is no.
(47:11):
But we'll all have to make thatdecision, individually and
collectively.
Steve Morreale (47:15):
And I think what you say is we have more in
common than we would believe,but it requires us to listen to
each other and to talk and toidentify problems and work on
solutions exactly what you'vebeen saying.
So I appreciate it.
We've been talking to JimPastor and he is down in
beautiful Naples, florida now.
After being a Chicago policeofficer, now a lawyer and a PhD.
(47:36):
So if you're from Chicago, doyou support a couple of teams?
Jim Pastor (47:41):
Well, I was a South Sider, so my heart was with the
White Sacks and, of course, theBears and Bulls.
Steve Morreale (47:48):
Well, you gotta say the Bears for me.
Jim Pastor (47:50):
Yeah the Bears, yeah the Bears.
And Bik Bok is just dying.
I know, I know.
He grew up in an area just restof where I grew up.
I had friends from theneighborhood that went to high
school with him.
He was an absolute legend onthe South Side, but of course he
was a legend in football.
Steve Morreale (48:06):
But Is it true?
Jim Bad Bad Lee Roy Brown wasfrom the South Side of Chicago.
Yeah, yeah.
Jim Pastor (48:13):
Yeah, people like him.
And you know, steve, there's alot of wonderful people that are
being affected by the crime inChicago and I care about those
people, and Chicagoans are realdowner people and I try.
That's who I am.
Steve Morreale (48:28):
Well, thank you so much for your time, for your
energy.
I wish you the best of luck.
So we've been talking to JimPastor and his book.
You Say You Want a Revolution.
That's another episode of theCop Doc Podcast in the can.
Thanks for listening and keeplistening for other episodes
coming up.
If you have an idea, pleasereach out and let me know Easy
to find CopDocPodcastcom.
(48:49):
I'm Steve Morielli.
Thanks for listening.
Intro-Outro (48:52):
To The CopDoc Podcast with Dr Steve Morreale.
Steve is a retired lawenforcement practitioner and
manager, turned academic andscholar from Worcester State
University.
Please tune into The CopDocPodcast for regular episodes of
interviews with thought leadersin policing.
Welcome to The Cop Doc Podcast.
This podcast explores policeleadership issues and innovative
ideas.
The cop doc shares thoughts andideas as he talks with leaders
in policing communities,academia and other government
agencies.
And now please join Dr SteveMorreale and industry thought
(00:25):
leaders as they share theirinsights and experience on The
CopD oc Podcast.
Steve Morreale (00:34):
Hey everybody, Steve Morreale, coming to you
from South Carolina today, andtoday we go down to Naples,
Florida, beautiful Naples,Florida.
We talked to Jim Pastor and heis in Naples, Florida, and a
former police officer, a PhD,doctor, Pastor, a JD, and doing
some wonderful work, wrote somebooks.
We'll talk about it.
The most recent is you say youwant a revolution, a compelling
(00:55):
and cautionary tale on what liesahead.
So good morning to you, Jim.
Hi Steve, thanks for having me,Thank you for coming.
I think that this is going to bea very interesting episode
because and I know when you werea police officer I want you to
talk about your background.
But when you're a policeofficer, you have to be somewhat
measured as to what you can sayin public.
No different than me as afaculty member at a state
(01:17):
university now.
But because you are releasedfrom that, you are retired,
you're no longer a policeofficer, but you have all that
experience You've been aprofessor, an author, a lawyer.
Tell us about yourself and whatbrings you to writing and what
brought you to The CopD ocPodcast.
Jim Pastor (01:33):
Thanks for having me again.
I'm a kid from the South sideof Chicago.
I grew up in a very workingclass neighborhood.
Father was a steel worker andmy friends went to the trades
and steel mills and I became acop and I had this idea of being
an FBI as a kid.
I started on a Chicago policedepartment 40 years ago.
It was a great opportunity Backthen.
(01:55):
I came in with a bachelor'sdegree in law enforcement and
sociology, which was ratherunusual back then.
We want a lot of educated copsback then.
Right, and you know, throughthe years I progressed.
I had this idea that you keeplearning and working and I loved
the things that I was doing andI went to graduate school, I
(02:15):
went to law school and then Igot my PhD all while working and
all writing, and I've had awhat I'd call labor of love over
the years, all in and aroundpolicing, public safety and
security.
I'm currently legal counsel forelectronic security firm and I
have a small consulting businesswhere I do expert witness work
(02:36):
and then I write the book yousay you want a revolution is a
labor of love.
I've studied terrorism for manyyears.
Back in the day I was, one ofmy mentors was Dick Ward.
Steve Morreale (02:47):
Oh, my goodness, Dick and I was so, so bad to
see him leave.
Yes, I know Dick very well, Iknew him.
Jim Pastor (02:54):
Yes, he was NYPD detective and ultimately he
pretty much ran the Universityof Illinois, chicago when I was
there working on my master's andPhD and he used to have a
terrorism conference every year.
And I was this young kid, 24years old, with all kinds of
alphabet people in the audience,you know FBICIA, tf, dea.
(03:17):
It was fascinating to me at thetime.
It was a time in Americanhistory just early to mid 80s
when there was a lot of concernwith terrorism, and then I think
we're coming back around tothat.
So what I was fascinated withback then was why people had the
fanatical mindsets, whyideologies grow and what feeds
(03:41):
them and how those things can beaddressed, both from a law
enforcement or from a societalperspective.
There's a long tentacle storyover the years, but why I wrote
this book is because I thinkwe're in very, very dangerous
times.
I call it a revolutionaryclimate and what happened in
Israel?
Steve Morreale (04:01):
just gonna say that I think that's a telling
yes, so I don't know.
Jim Pastor (04:05):
I mean, I could keep going.
There's so much to say and I'mfascinated around the topic
intellectually and academically,but it's also it's us, it's
it's who we are.
Steve Morreale (04:16):
It's like our life.
I was just gonna say that, andI think those who are listening
and so many are faculty members,students and police officers
and those who are scholars andsuch can benefit from this.
I believe when you look at thebook and as you look chapter by
chapter, it's really fascinating.
It's well researched andobviously, like you say, a labor
love.
It's not the first thing you'vewritten, but one of the things
(04:38):
you start with is talking aboutrace, religion and politics, and
I do believe that race andreligion play a very, very big
role.
We talk about oppressionoppression with the Palestinians
at the Gaza Strip and did thatcause the attack on Israel?
The situation where you havehostages being taken in, the
threat of being killed one byone, is just chilling.
(04:58):
I know it seems like far, faraway, but I'm sure you and I was
just engaged in a course lastnight graduate course on border
security and we talked aboutwhat was going on, as we're
talking about now, in Israel.
Could that have an impact inthe United States?
I think so many of us think, eh, that's way, way far away.
I would hasten to say that thisis a problem that may come our
(05:22):
way and we need to be ready,would you agree?
Jim Pastor (05:24):
I totally.
I think you've seen a smallindicators of that already with
some of the protests and counterprotests in the streets.
Steve Morreale (05:33):
Sorry, we just had a disruption in our internet
connectivity and we weretalking about what's going on
and how people are railing forboth sides here in the United
States, and certainly we haveseen over and over and over
again different groups, radicalunits and those who are sort of
counterculture thinkers that areputting police in the middle,
(05:56):
and I think that's reallyimportant.
Let's talk about that, becauseimagine the job of a police
officer.
You and I were in the businessfor an awfully long time a while
ago, but it's so much moredifficult now.
And so here police aremarshaled to come and allow
sometimes illegal or an illegalgathering where two factions are
railing against each other, andyou're in the.
(06:18):
You're in the middle.
You know you're trying to allowfor free speech, but also make
sure that it doesn't get out ofhand.
Talk about that and howdifficult that is for police
organizations.
Jim Pastor (06:28):
It's extraordinarily difficult, but the thin blue
line is becoming thinner andmore problematic and more
difficult to manage.
These entities are designedessentially to maintain law and
order, and part of the law, ofcourse, is to allow protests.
First, amendment rights arehugely important in this country
, as is public safety, andthere's a very fine line between
(06:52):
what can be allowed in thepublic square and particularly
when you have a counter protestsituation, and that's where the
volatile nature of these issuesthat are so embedded into
people's lives this is whereideology plays such a huge role,
in that the thinking is soembedded in people's minds and
(07:15):
lives, and there's essentially Iwould call it a collision
course that we're on, where thereasonable people, the
reasonable minds, are becomingless common and what is more
strident is becoming morefrequent, because these
conflicts or protests can turninto demonstrations and then
(07:37):
chaos.
The police are in a verydelicate situation, and how do
you manage?
That is a kind of acase-by-case analysis, but what
I looked at is the larger trendsto say that these things are
happening.
This is why they're happening,and in the middle is the
canaries in the coal mine, whichcan see this the police and
(07:59):
when police are targeted, itjust creates that additional
stress on society.
The dynamic of attacking thepolice and attacking police
entities or institutions aresuch that it breaks down that
thin blue line into a city.
And that is why I wrote thebook, because I can harken back
(08:22):
to a book I wrote in 2008, whichwas called Terrorism and Public
Safety Policing Implicationsfor the Obama Presidency, and at
that time it was my opinionthat we were getting to a very,
very delicate, racially impugnedsituation where race was
playing a role, where the firstblack president was coming
(08:44):
aboard and there was a lot ofpeople who were unhappy about
that.
And at the time the societyharkened a post-racial America,
and I wrote about this in my newbook.
How can you become post-racialand then, 12 years later, become
systematically racist?
It's almost we're on a ferriswheel, a titty water, where we
(09:07):
are declared post-racial andthen we become systematically
racist.
It's impossible to be both.
Systematically racist isessentially, you know, embedded
with racism throughout yoursociety, throughout your system.
Post-racial is to say that youdon't care about race anymore.
Steve Morreale (09:25):
So in this is where we're at.
You're asking what is it?
It's easy to learn, right.
Jim Pastor (09:30):
And that's right.
And so it's because thesethings are so deep-seated.
We are creating a circumstance.
Who's the we?
I got ideas about who the we is.
There's a lot of things drivingthis collision course that the
reason why I cared about it somuch is because of the police,
because they're the ones caughtin the mix.
(09:50):
They're the ones who are goingto have to deal with the fallout
and be directly affected by it.
The police shootings or policeinvolved attacks are becoming
more frequent as our policesuicide as are a very delicate
situation where the psyche ofthe average police officer and
(10:11):
how the job is done has changeddramatically from what I saw 40
years ago.
And I care about the police,but I care even more about
society.
If you affect the police, youaffect society.
Steve Morreale (10:24):
We're talking to Jim Pastor.
Talk to Jim Pastor.
He is in Naples, florida,former Chicago police officer,
an educator, a writer, obviouslya lawyer and a PhD.
And we're talking about societyand we're talking about how
police are drawn into the middle.
Actually, jim, one of thethings that I am beginning to
write about is socio-politicalrisk and policing and something
that police managers don't thinkthat they are drawn into social
(10:48):
issues.
They are drawn into politicalissues.
You know just as we're talkingabout.
But, as I read the book and Iread pieces of your book and the
book is called you say you wanta revolution, a takeoff on the
Beatles.
You talk about race, religionand politics.
But what I find here?
You start talking aboutCharlottesville and what
happened there.
We talk about critical racetheory.
You talk about white privilege.
(11:08):
You talk about a third rail,wokeism in the culture, war, the
national anthem and attack onthe American flag, mob action.
You talk about religion, butthen you go on to talk about
extremist ideologies in thecapitalist system and the attack
of the capitalist system.
And it could be very well.
What's going on over there inthe Middle East?
You talk about single interestgroups and they just want the
(11:30):
audience to know what you arewriting about Anti-abortion,
animal rights, radicalenvironmentalists, ms-13,
marxists, urban street gangs.
You talk about Antifa asanarchist and the Boogaloo boys.
You're talking about fascism.
Right wing just goes on and onRight wing fascism,
anti-government groups andracial and hate groups and
national racist groups.
(11:51):
The Black Panther Party forself-defense, the Aryan
Brotherhood, proud boys and allof this is which is crazy.
But then you go on to talkabout reimagining policing.
It's pretty hard to reimaginepolicing, even though it might
be forced on us when, in manycases if you think about
Portland and Seattle that thepolice were under siege.
How do you reform while you'retrying to just protect the
(12:14):
people who are protectingsociety?
I mean big questions.
Jim Pastor (12:18):
Huge questions and during the summer of 2020, I
think there was a knee jerkreaction to the George Floyd
killing, which was no one coulddefend it.
I haven't heard one policeofficer and all the people that
I know try to defend it in anyreal way, but it's one man
800,000 or 750,000 policeofficers in this country and it
(12:42):
turned the world upside down ina sense of police, and I say in
my book that it's changedpolicing for the foreseeable
future, what it's going to looklike going forward, it's still a
question, and I offer up what Icall public safety policing,
where I have three crucialelements of what that looks like
.
To the larger point, all thoseideologies are all, and I use a
(13:06):
diagram in my book where I havethe capitalistic system and
around them is all the variousideologies, and they're all.
All of them look to destroy thesystem and, with the police
being the most visiblerepresentatives of the system,
they are inevitably tied to thesystem and then tied to the
(13:26):
impact of these ideologies andthey're coming, and the way I
see ideologies is it's a tit fortat the more the the one stands
up, the more likely the otherwill stand up, and I use this
principle and this is somethingthat most people don't want to
understand or our biases do notallow us to really get our arms
(13:48):
around.
And this is the principle If youignore or appease one extreme
and you demonize and attack theother extreme, you'll get more
of both, and that's what I thinkis happening in this country.
There's enough people on bothsides of the spectrum that are
supporting these extremistthinking that are inevitably
creating our own demise, if youwill.
(14:11):
And I use a quote in my bookwhere Lincoln President Lincoln
in the 1840s basically said ifwe lose this society, if we lose
this country, it won't bebecause of foreign troops
crossing the Ohio River.
It will be because of our owndivide.
That's what I see is happeningin this country in a very
dangerous way, and he is Israeliwar, and the incident with
(14:35):
Hamas is one of those triggersthat we start to see the lines
being hardened and people'smindsets becoming more and more
strident to either side.
And how it plays in the bookwas either an attempt to find a
reasonable ground or it's awarning.
I don't know what it is and Ican tell you this, and, for
(14:57):
whatever it's worth, thank youfor putting a book called
Revolution on your podcast,because a lot of people don't
want to touch it.
And why?
Because it's so potentiallyvolatile that people are afraid
to think about what this maymean to their life.
Steve Morreale (15:13):
But when you look, at the title, some might
think that you are proposing arevolution, but what you're
saying is that it's in thecountry we are so divided, both
politically and in beliefconservative versus liberal,
whatever that is and it's sohard to avoid the conversation.
Having the conversation is veryimportant, and you know you've
(15:35):
been on campuses for a long,long time.
It strikes me that campusesacross the country are supposed
to allow for dialogue and that'snot always happening.
It really isn't to the pointwhere, if you are a conservative
and I hold myself as aconservative I have to bite my
tongue.
I have to keep my thoughts tomyself.
You know, jim, as a formerpolice officer, you know as a
(15:57):
former law enforcement officer,you know that there are people
on campus that have nothing butdisdain for criminal justice.
Nothing but disdain for me as aprofessor.
I'm not saying it's a greatnumber, but it, like everything
else we're talking about, thereis an undercurrent to say you
are an apologist for police whenpeople don't understand what I
am and what I believe in.
I don't like bad policeofficers any more than you do.
(16:18):
I can't imagine a countrywithout policing and how it
would go into utter chaos.
Jim Pastor (16:25):
It is.
It's inherent in human nature.
This is where most people don'treally want to get to the basis
of who we are as people.
We need order.
People crave for order andwithout an enforcing arm in a
country, you will open upPandora's box, so to speak.
But let me just say, yes, thetitle sounds like I want to
(16:46):
advocate for it, but really it'sthe first line of the song
revolution.
And the Beatles in 68 saidessentially be careful what you
ask for folks.
So I use that as a jumping offpoint to say the Beatles said
the same thing If you want moneyfor people with minds that hate
, well, brother, you have towait and we have a lot of hate
(17:08):
going on.
And my point was to say, justas the Beatles in 68 put a lid
on a revolutionary environmentthat was percolating back then,
what I'm trying to do is putanother lid on a revolutionary
environment that is percolatingnow, but in a much more
dangerous fashion, because backin 68, there wasn't a right wing
(17:33):
counter revolution mindset thatwas out there.
It was mostly, almostexclusively, driven from the
left.
So now you have an element of acounterweight, if you will,
that is pushing the envelope andcreating a kind of that
collision course in a way thatwe didn't have in the 60s.
(17:55):
So I say this this is not myidea, folks, this is what
they're saying.
And one of the things I'velearned from Dick Ward over the
years is pay attention to whatthe terrorists are telling you,
because they're telling you whatthey're going to do.
Yeah, listen, they're saying it.
They're telling you loud andclear what their minds are and
what their attitudes are andwhat their intentions are.
(18:16):
So you look at your ideologiesand you say to yourself oh, I
either ignore that is just puffor I take it seriously.
And I've been around the blacklong enough to know that you
ought to take it seriously,because some of these people are
dead serious in their intenseand again, this is not something
that most people want to talkabout, no, but if we don't talk
(18:38):
about it?
Steve Morreale (18:39):
we're going to get it.
I keep cutting off because youget me thinking about so many
things and I hope the audienceis thinking the same thing, like
what do we do?
Is this a wake up call?
Should we be paying attention?
Is a potential attack just forfor a tax sake, to attack the
capitalist system of the UnitedStates or any democratic society
?
Is that in the offing?
Is there so much anger that'sout there that we should be on
(19:03):
alert?
I mean that's a real problem.
And then you think about Jim,just to bring it a little bit
forward, talking about theIslamist actors out there.
What about our own cities?
Look at the lawlessness thatwe're watching on television
where there are groups of people.
It baffles me when you see agroup of people who are using
social media to amass and attackand overrun a store and then go
(19:27):
on to the next one a couple ofdays later and the police are
outnumbered, they are outflankedand in some cases you've got
politicians saying stand down,yeah.
Jim Pastor (19:37):
Well, one of my titles of my chapter four is
reimagining policing fromdefunding to lawlessness, and I
lay out the reasons whylawlessness will increase and
why lawlessness could be seen asa indicator for the destruction
of capitalism.
Look what happens in thesescenarios that you're describing
(19:58):
.
You have these mobs going in,grabbing anything they want in a
store or greatly affecting thecommerce in a business district.
What do businesses do?
Many of them are just shuttingdown, and so what do you do when
you shut down a Walgreens orCVS or even some Neiman Marcus
(20:19):
or target?
Steve Morreale (20:20):
Target is in the middle of it.
Jim Pastor (20:21):
Yes, yeah, and you just shut it down.
What do you affect?
The way commerce is done?
You affect the capitalisticsystem.
Steve Morreale (20:27):
Well, you begin to oppress the very people who
need this.
Jim Pastor (20:32):
Absolutely.
The woman who's got three kids,that doesn't have a car, that
relies on the CVS to go to thestore Now isn't there anymore,
and so what do you do?
There are so many parts of thisand this animates me in a way,
because those mob actions arereally also political and that's
where people they see this as abunch of criminal actors.
(20:55):
Yeah, but the criminal actorsdesign or intending to do
something bigger than just steal.
There is a momentum and there'sa logic in lawlessness and it's
like a cancer If you have acancer in your body, it will
continue to grow unless it'saddressed.
And we are afraid to addressthose things because it's going
(21:17):
to speak to a racial incitement.
A lot of urban leaders doingthey're sitting on their hands
because they're afraid, or nowthey're blaming the businesses
for not having enough security.
That's a classic juxtaposition.
It's not my job to stop thelooting, it's your job to stop
the looting.
Steve Morreale (21:35):
Yes, it's what society in America believes that
the government is responsibleto maintain security and protect
, and so I think, in a lot ofways, what we're seeing as
capital or for profitorganizations are saying I'm not
staying in this city becauseyou can't protect me.
There's a statement that'sbeing made there.
Jim Pastor (21:52):
Absolutely, and you know I said it in my book.
Now the book is a little.
I wrote it mostly during 2021.
And so a lot of what I said inthe book is happening now.
It's ahead of its time.
It's purkuling, because whatyou do is you look at the tea
leaves and you start to kind oflike how is this going to play?
How is this going to play?
Well, it's playing out as Isaid in the book, and that is,
(22:15):
businesses will take the bottomline and say wait a minute, we
can't continue to lose money,we're just going, we're going to
shut it down and we're going todo business where we can't Now.
That may shift even morebusiness to online shopping and
things like that.
There may be some actualalternative available, but for
(22:36):
some people it's not a real goodalternative.
But, more importantly, for thesocial structure, for social
cohesion, for the viability ofour urban areas, it is hugely
detrimental.
And how this gets solved iswhat I offer up is public safety
, policing, emphasis on ordermaintenance technology and then
(22:59):
what I call protective measures,which is both police officers
protecting themselves and thepublic, and that may require
police officers arming up in away that a lot of people don't
feel comfortable with.
So it's a very interestingdynamic and I admire and
appreciate the average popthat's out there and I speak to
(23:23):
them and my heart goes out tothem.
But when you talk earlier aboutthe police leaders not wanting
to get involved with politics,really for me this is policy.
I have a PhD in public policy.
Policies matter and, okay,politics is often tied to
policies.
It's really the policies thatdrive human behavior and the
(23:46):
incentives we either give peopleto abide the law or the
incentives we give them toignore the law, and I think what
we're doing now is giving moreincentives to the law violators
than we are to the law ofviaduct.
Steve Morreale (24:02):
We're talking to Jim Pastor and he is an author,
a PhD, ajd and a former policeofficer out of Chicago, and he
has written a number of books.
The book we're focusing on, asyou say, you want a revolution,
and one of the things that I'mhearing is what you're talking
about is policy.
I understand, and what began tohappen a few years ago was a
same thing that prosecutorswould come in and run on the
(24:26):
idea, the premise, that theywere not going to enforce minor
laws and those laws, perhapsthat were targeted at the inner
city, at minorities, and whenthere is no consequence, very
often there's Lawlessness.
If you're not gonna put me injail, then I'll do what I can do
.
And so the revolving doorhappens the police put handcuffs
(24:47):
on people, they bring them in,then they're out, the system
handles it and if the offenderis not going to be held to
account, there's no consequences.
Believe me, as you well know,the signal goes out like it
doesn't matter.
No one's doing anything.
Coming to the store, stealoutwardly Securities not gonna
stop you, so just keep coming,and it becomes a devolution in a
(25:08):
lot of ways and that's a realproblem.
I'm sure police are sitting andlistening today on the sideline
, thinking what the hell am Igonna do?
But I want to say is thatpolice leaders and I do so much
training with police leaderslisten, your job is to keep a
focus on the mission, evenamongst the noise, make sure
that your people are protectedand make sure that they do Not
(25:29):
ignore the law, take action andyou have no control over what
happens afterwards.
What are your thoughts?
Jim Pastor (25:34):
Yes, police leaders have to do their job, and so
police officers, for that matter.
The problem is what you callDevolution, I called momentum,
and there's a logic and aMomentum to lawlessness is, as
you just said, people learn.
Oh, tony, got away with a bunchof stuff, look at, hey, but I'm
gonna get some for myself.
(25:56):
I see this is rational actors.
These are not necessarily yeah,they're criminals because
they're committing these kindsof things, but really, what they
are is rational actors.
They're doing what they can getaway with and whatever the
system allows them to get awaywith.
When the rational person do that, well, there's the incentives
that I talked about.
(26:16):
How do you manage that from apolicing perspective?
How does the police chiefprotect the citizens and his or
her officers at the same time?
Well, what I think is happeningmore commonly we have rejected
the notion of proactive policingand become police officers in
the audience will probably Findus somewhat humorous.
(26:39):
I hope there may be a pointwhere police officers turn into
firemen, where they stay in thestation until Something happens
and then they go to deal withthe issue.
Steve Morreale (26:47):
They wait for the paxons to ring and then they
go.
They respond right.
Jim Pastor (26:51):
Correct.
So that completely reactiveapproach is foreign to me.
I was a tactical police officer.
I stopped probably fivethousand cars.
I look for the bad guys.
It's important that policeofficers understand that the
proactive approach ishistorically been the way to
reduce crime.
It's also, granted, becomesometimes done in ways that are
(27:16):
wrong and there is that veryfine line.
But what I think has happenedbecause some of those things are
very much a discretionary basisand some of these things can
treat, stop, can go bad in aheartbeat.
So I think the emphasis hasbecome just don't do that, stay
in the car and Wait for you tobe called and then deal with it
(27:39):
then now let me interrupt.
Steve Morreale (27:40):
I understand what you're saying and I think
it's absolutely what happens inmany major cities, but my
question is is that what thegeneral public expect in your
mind?
Jim Pastor (27:50):
you know what they Expect not to be harassed, but
then they expect to be protected.
And what is a funny thing iswho is the bad guy?
I can tell you how many times Iwas asked the question why are
you stopping me?
You're stopping me because I'mblack.
No, I'm stopping you becauseI'm investigating a crime.
I don't know if you're a badguy or a good guy, I just don't
(28:13):
know who you are.
And so the way that averageperson sees that is they don't
care about it until they'reaffected.
And once they're affected, thenthey get interested, and I
think we're gonna find more andmore people getting interested
About how their communities arepoliced, because if there's lack
of policing, then there's morecrime.
(28:34):
Now the dynamic of this is evenmore volatile.
If policing as a whole doesn'tbecome more proactive, well,
what will happen?
People will become moreself-defense and they will carry
weapons, and they will then betheir own judge During an
executioner, if you will, andI'm saying the vaginal anti-ism
(28:56):
right.
Yes if we have created thissituation where we are afraid to
deal with the to use yourAnalogy earlier the mobs.
If the mobs can't be dealt with, then at some point in time
Citizens will deal with the mobsand that's where it gets
potentially very volatile.
Steve Morreale (29:15):
You put the police in the middle.
As to who are we policing?
Jim Pastor (29:18):
and if you think about a mob.
Steve Morreale (29:19):
You think about a mob.
It's a flash mob and policeshow up and you know there's not
enough people on the street andthree or four or five cars show
up.
They can't deal with a mob.
I mean, you put your hands onone person, you really are
taking yourself out ofcommission and you may be
threatened by others who arejumping on you to stop them from
Arresting Tony.
So very often what happens isthat you just stand back for a
(29:41):
little bit because you can'toutdo a mob of a hundred people
If there's only three peoplewith a gun and with a taser.
Jim Pastor (29:47):
I bring up a historical example.
Ironically, right before theCivil War, there was a movement
called the wide-awakes and thewide-awakes were essentially
More than there's who decidedthat they were going to protect
their communities and protecttheir politicians, who were
advocating the Prohibition ofslavery, and they sought to
(30:11):
create an environment where freemen, free land and Succeed
freedom.
Well, society was breaking downthen, so there was a movement
that brought to the fore calledthe wide-awakes.
Now we have fast forward 160years.
We now have a wolf Movement onthe other side of the realm and
(30:31):
there's going to be a wide-awaketype of situation in the US.
If we don't get our Streetsunder control, if we don't get
commerce under control, if oururban areas Breakdown, people
will flee.
That can't flee, and if they'renot fleeing, they're gonna do
something to protect themselves.
(30:52):
Human nature is self-protective.
That's in our DNA.
So yes, in your scenario, ifthere's three police officers on
the street and a hundred peoplerunning around, they have to
just stay the course and justobserve being observed, which it
often happens in the case wherethe stores are hiring security
(31:12):
guards to essentially watchpeople commit crimes.
Steve Morreale (31:16):
We see that all the time I know yeah, cuz
they're afraid to engage andthey're outnumbered.
We're talking to Jim, pastor,and we're having a conversation
that is, I won't say, muchdeeper, but it is so much more
important because it talks aboutsociety and the way society has
evolved, the way we are as acountry with our Mores.
(31:39):
You, at the end of your book,talk about God, country and
Family.
There have been some who feelthat those Core bedrock beliefs
in America are eroding.
So Jim had written a book.
You say you want a revolutionand we're sort of picking apart
some of the things that he hastalked about.
The couple of questions thatcome to mind for me, jim, is
(32:00):
have you gained traction sincewriting this book?
Are people seeing it, payingattention, understanding it?
Are you clairvoyant?
Jim Pastor (32:08):
Let me answer the second part first.
I am not clairvoyant, but I payattention.
I'm a student of human natureand a student of society.
Since I was 18 years old I havea sociology and law enforcement
degree, so I guess I wastrained to look at.
Sociology was all about givingbehavior and subcultures and
things like that so I payattention to how people think
(32:32):
and in my humble opinion, thebook is ahead of its time and
the traction that is coming andthere is some coming.
But I didn't write the book tomake money.
I wrote the book as an attemptto find Rational heads and also
maybe just a warrant if we don'tdo something Significant, we're
heading towards this collisioncourse but that said in the end
(32:55):
it's what do we go for?
What's our purpose in life?
Do we see it as one with themost toys wins, or is there a
larger meaning to our lives?
And that's where that lastchapter I try to pull out what
has driven people in thiscountry for millennium?
And that is something biggerthan ourselves, and that we
should see things that we arejust part of a larger puzzle, if
(33:19):
you will, and our country, ourfamily and ultimately, if you
believe in God, the Creator, isthe reason why we are living.
Shakespeare said we are with theactors in the world as a stage.
So it's disappointing to me onone level, that a lot of people
in public safety and securitydon't want to deal with the idea
(33:42):
of revolution because they seethe title, they're chilled away
from it.
I think they're afraid of maybeeven a cancel culture situation
, or they just don't want to goto the logical end game of what
is going on around them.
What I say is that end game ispercolating and only the good
(34:04):
people will stop it fromhappening, and or maybe there is
some rational way to bridge thegap between the extremes that
are developing in this country.
Steve Morreale (34:16):
Well, don't you say that.
You know, as you're saying,that I'm thinking to myself.
Well, define good people anddon't get me wrong.
But is it my side or your side?
Is it liberal or conservative,Is it?
And that's the big deal.
When you saw what happened onJanuary 6th, what was your
reaction to that?
Jim Pastor (34:30):
Frankly, it was a mob action gone wild and I see
that as a.
It cuts both ways.
I don't know enough aboutwhether this was some part of
this was egged on by eithergovernmental actors or by
essentially others inciting thecrowd, or if it was just a crowd
(34:52):
that went out of control.
It wasn't good.
Obviously, any violence, anylaw-biting, any hatred is how I
break out.
Those people who are goodversus there are not.
I don't have an excuse foranyone who violates the law.
That's it, bottom line.
So good people don't violatethe law.
Now how do you bridge the gap ifthe government has created a
(35:15):
circumstance where good peoplesay I have to violate the law,
that's a dangerous place to beand I don't want to go there,
and yet, at the same time, weallow riots to occur.
I mean, I did the stats there'sI don't know 700 and some odd
riots in the summer of 2020.
(35:36):
And then there was a three hourriot in the Capitol.
On balance, the riots of 2020greatly impacted society in my
mind, way more than the riot inthe Capitol.
Now, neither one were right.
You can appease either side,because go with the principle If
you ignore or appease one sideand demonize and attack the
(35:59):
other.
You're going to get more ofboth, but why was it?
The overriding emphasis was onthe Capitol three hour riot and
we essentially did the wink andnod.
For a summer of law.
You can't reconcile the two.
Both were wrong, but we haveattacked one and ignored the
other.
(36:19):
That's dangerous in my mind.
Now we can get into reasons whythe riots of 2020 went out and
how provocateurs were in thecrowd in the riots in the cities
, just why there wereprovocateurs in the crowd and
the riots in the Capitol.
In the end of the day, steve,good people in my mind, don't
hate, don't commit crime, don'tcommit violence.
(36:42):
Now then there's thoseexceptions, and I don't know how
to manage that andunfortunately, government's job
is to number one duty is toprotect the citizens.
The failure to government to dothat leads to these other very
dicey situations where we losethe perspective of what is right
(37:03):
and wrong, and that's dangerousit is dangerous.
Steve Morreale (37:06):
We're talking to Jim Pastor and you're listening
to the Cop Talk podcast.
I'm Steve Moriellian.
We're talking about some prettydeep, deep situations and deep
issues in America and beyond.
I wrote a few things down andwe need to wind down in a few
moments, but one of the thingsthat I wrote down was patriotism
, which is, I guess, what youwould say God, family and
country.
(37:26):
What do you think is happening?
Why are there so many peoplewho are speaking out against the
United States as a principle,as a belief, as a country,
supposedly, of freedom andrights?
Where's that?
Jim Pastor (37:39):
coming from?
Well, you can argue it's comingfrom the vice of ideologies
that believe that anationalistic approach, which is
essentially what patriotism is,is not healthy for this globe,
and nationalistic thinkingcauses wars, and so thus the
(37:59):
solution to mankind's ills is aglobalist government that takes
away the idea of patriotism andthen takes the dynamics of the
competition that goes topatriotism and nationalistic
thinking out of the equation.
And I think one of the reasonswhy we are in a flag mire as a
(38:23):
country is there's a lot ofpeople in this country that
don't really care about thecountry.
They care about the globe, andif the solution is to save the
world, then maybe one of thesolutions is to diminish the
country, and I think you couldsee that at the southern border,
the idea of a border andsovereignty has become almost
(38:47):
repulsive to a lot of people,and so if you're seeking a
globalist solution, you don'twant a strong United States,
because that would stand in theway of a one world government
mindset.
Now that is a lot bigger thanmost people want to go To me.
You have to ask the questionlike a rational actor why would
(39:09):
you defund policing to upset theapple cart in the United States
in terms of its ability togovern itself?
Why would you open up thesouthern border?
Why would you leave Afghanistan, in a way that you did, with
billions of dollars of munitionsthat now have allegedly some of
them landed in Hamas's hands?
(39:31):
Why would you do those things?
The country was your desire tomaintain the integrity of the
country.
If you look at and that's whatI did in my book I took the
capitalistic system and I tookthe various ideologies and I put
it around it and said every oneof these ideologies wants to
destroy the capitalistic systemand the capitalistic system is
(39:52):
embedded in the notion ofsovereignty and patriotism in
this country.
So this is big and I can't saythat everyone who desires to let
in migrants from the southernborder wants a globalistic
system, but I can say the endresult of that policy is to
(40:12):
foster that.
Steve Morreale (40:14):
So let me interrupt you again, let me ask
you this question as we winddown how do police respond to
all of the things we're talkingabout?
Have they shut us off becausewe're talking so big, so global?
This hasn't got anything to dowith me in the Chicago Police
Department or the Boston PoliceDepartment or the San Francisco
Police Department, and I'm justthrowing so many things at you.
But what strikes me is thatconundrum that we put police in
(40:37):
sometimes when politiciansdecide what laws they wish to
enforce, that when they tellpolice you will not deal with
GSA police protecting thefederal building, we're not
going to protect it, that'stheir job, which is crazy.
Or we're not going to allow youto call immigration and you're
not going to assist immigrationbecause we whomever we is
(41:00):
politicians do not believe inthat arm of the law.
How confusing and confoundingis that for a police officer who
believes that a badge is abadge and that we help each
other.
Jim Pastor (41:12):
And the law is the law, and the reason why they got
on the job is because they careabout people and they want to
help people, and the way theyhelp people is they enforce the
law when bad guys commitcriminal acts.
So, yes, how does an averagepolice officer manage this?
Human nature says a lot of themjust put their heads down and
(41:34):
try to stay out of the fray.
Those who do get into the fraywhen they are in the fray be
professional and buy the lawthat requires the boss and the
leaders in the policecommunities to protect their
officers when they are beingaccused of wrongdoing by
snippets on a camera that losethe context of the whole
(41:55):
situation.
I can say that I've done a lotof use of force work in my life
as a lawyer for police unions.
It's one of the most difficultthings to defend because it's an
inevitably a situation thatsometimes looks bad, because
it's hard to arrest somebodythat doesn't want to be arrested
.
Steve Morreale (42:13):
Oh yeah yeah, it never looks good.
There's an awful lot ofresistance and it always looks
bad when you're trying toovercome that resistance.
It's not print out.
Jim Pastor (42:21):
So what do people do ?
And people are police andpolice are people.
They will often avoid thosesituations because they're too
hard to manage.
So what can we do as a police?
In my mind and this might beidealistic police leaders have
to drive the show, and this iswhy I admire what you're doing
with your podcast, becauseyou're getting inside the heads
(42:43):
of leaders and, at least fromwhat I can see, most of these
leaders have created kind of alittle box that they live in,
that they manage their dailylife, which we all have to do.
But they gotta see beyond theirbox and see the larger trends
and see how those things areaffecting policing generally,
and police associations need tostep up and defend the policies
(43:07):
that we know historically haveled to reductions in crime and
defend why those are needed.
Steve Morreale (43:14):
That's so interesting because you're
talking about leaders and I saythat there's an awful lot of
police chiefs out there that aremanagers and they manage the
day-to-day and they never stepup, they never use the pulpit
that they have to explain tosociety why the police do what
they do and what theexpectations are, and to work
with the community to say whatdo you expect?
(43:34):
Here's what we have, what wouldyou like us to do?
In other words, society isn'tgonna drive what the police do,
but they are gonna help themfocus on what's important to
them quality of life, crimes,those kinds of issues.
Jim, we need to wind down.
We could talk for quite a whileand I can only assume that
we'll be back at this, but letme ask you a couple of parting
questions.
How do people get in touch withyou?
Jim Pastor (43:55):
I have a website, wwwsecurelaw, and let me spell
it secureS-E-C-U-R-E-L-A-W-L-L-C,
securelaw-l-l-c.
Dot com.
You'll find my email on thewebsite.
The book is available in Amazonborders.
You say you want a revolution,a compelling and cautionary tale
(44:19):
of what lies ahead, becausethat's a take off from the
Beatles song.
There's another book out therewith that first line, so be
careful what you're buying.
But beyond that, I'm availablein a lot of capacities.
I want to get the word out.
This is the message thatmatters to me, and I care about
police officers and I care aboutthis country, and so I thank
(44:42):
you for the opportunity.
Partially, steve, and I saythis with great respect.
There was a lot of people thatdon't want to touch this with a
10 foot pole, and it's thosepeople who are the managers and
essentially you described, thatjust want to kind of put their
head in the sand and just hopethings get better and just deal
with the circumstances that arein front of them.
(45:02):
So we got to see if life isbigger than ourselves.
At least that's how I manage mylife, that's how I try to
rationalize who Jim Pastor is.
I'm a nothing, and yet I'vespent 40 plus years trying to do
the right thing, and all of ushave to work inside of ourselves
and say what matters to me.
What is worth sacrificing forIs my country, is my family, is
(45:27):
my God worth sacrificing for?
So that's why I wrote the book.
I knew I was gonna get into thefray.
I didn't want to get into fray.
I don't want to be called aracist.
I'm not a racist.
But yet inevitably, when you'redealing with controversial
subjects and biases inherent inall of us, people just want to
rather throw the stone insteadof deal with the issue.
(45:49):
So be part of the solution, notthe problem.
Steve Morreale (45:52):
I have to say that this has prompted a number
of questions.
You dig into some things thatare really very important, and
I'll ask you one final question.
We're talking to Jim Pastor aswe wind down the Cop Talk
podcast.
If you could sit down at dinner, wow, that's a great question.
Jim Pastor (46:06):
It's not directly, but I admire what Abraham
Lincoln did.
He didn't deal with necessarilypolicing, but he dealt with
public safety and he dealt withhumanity, and that, to me,
that's what policing is.
It's human beings trying tokeep lives safe.
(46:27):
And what Lincoln went throughand extraordinary stances he
took.
I ported him a lot in my bookbecause it was an attempt just
to say a man stood up at thetime, this country needed it and
we have been blessed from it.
But Lincoln declared martiallaw and he forced laws when a
(46:50):
lot of people were afraid to doit.
He actually engaged a rebellionin order to keep the country
together and it was hard.
Why was it hard?
Because it would probably havebeen easier to just appease and
just allow the country toseparate.
But is that what we want?
And ultimately, in my mind, theanswer is no.
(47:11):
But we'll all have to make thatdecision, individually and
collectively.
Steve Morreale (47:15):
And I think what you say is we have more in
common than we would believe,but it requires us to listen to
each other and to talk and toidentify problems and work on
solutions exactly what you'vebeen saying.
So I appreciate it.
We've been talking to JimPastor and he is down in
beautiful Naples, florida now.
After being a Chicago policeofficer, now a lawyer and a PhD.
(47:36):
So if you're from Chicago, doyou support a couple of teams?
Jim Pastor (47:41):
Well, I was a South Sider, so my heart was with the
White Sacks and, of course, theBears and Bulls.
Steve Morreale (47:48):
Well, you gotta say the Bears for me.
Jim Pastor (47:50):
Yeah the Bears, yeah the Bears.
And Bik Bok is just dying.
I know, I know.
He grew up in an area just restof where I grew up.
I had friends from theneighborhood that went to high
school with him.
He was an absolute legend onthe South Side, but of course he
was a legend in football.
Steve Morreale (48:06):
But Is it true?
Jim Bad Bad Lee Roy Brown wasfrom the South Side of Chicago.
Yeah, yeah.
Jim Pastor (48:13):
Yeah, people like him.
And you know, steve, there's alot of wonderful people that are
being affected by the crime inChicago and I care about those
people, and Chicagoans are realdowner people and I try.
That's who I am.
Steve Morreale (48:28):
Well, thank you so much for your time, for your
energy.
I wish you the best of luck.
So we've been talking to JimPastor and his book.
You Say You Want a Revolution.
That's another episode of theCop Doc Podcast in the can.
Thanks for listening and keeplistening for other episodes
coming up.
If you have an idea, pleasereach out and let me know Easy
to find CopDocPodcastcom.
(48:49):
I'm Steve Morielli.
Thanks for listening.
Intro-Outro (48:52):
To The CopDoc Podcast with Dr Steve Morreale.
Steve is a retired lawenforcement practitioner and
manager, turned academic andscholar from Worcester State
University.
Please tune into The CopDocPodcast for regular episodes of
interviews with thought leadersin policing.
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