August 11, 2025 • 32 mins
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
It's that time, time, time, time, luck and load.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
So Michael Verie Show is on the air.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
It's simple but fundamental pillar of our democracy that the
rule of law apployes to all of us equally, fairly
and justly.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
The US Justice Department is opening an investigation into the
New York Attorney General Leticia James's office. This comes as
part of a criminal investigation into James, who previously prosecuted Trump.
Speaker 5 (00:37):
There are now two Grand Jurisa poenas issued by the
US Attorney's Office for the Northern District of New York
looking to get information about James's office, basically trying to
see if there was any criminality by her office when
she filed that civil lawsuit against the Trump organization. If
you remember that lawsuit going to trial and the Trump
organization being found liable having to oh now at this
(01:00):
point because of interest about a half a billion dollars
in penalty.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
The mission is clear.
Speaker 6 (01:06):
I'm focused, I'm prepared, I'm ready. I've been trained by
the best. I went to Howard University that overturned legal
segregation in this country. I've been taught in those classrooms
with third Good Marshall once taught I'm not afraid of
no President Donald Trump. We're ready for you. We're coming
(01:29):
for you, We're standing up for you.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
We're fighting on. We're not going down.
Speaker 6 (01:35):
Sailing victory, my friends is clear. It's now and I'm
not waiting four years. I'm waiting two. I tell us,
speaker of the name of Hi King Jeffries comes to.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Bring us some rest.
Speaker 6 (01:49):
Come on, ladies, it's up to us. We saved this
democracy before, we'll save it now.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Let's go.
Speaker 7 (01:57):
Damn body made the decision to bring a civil lawsuit
because I think PAM has the budget right now to
feed tiss chains in prison. So I think we're gonna
wait until we get a supplemental from Congress for the
prison food budget to feeder fat ass in prison.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
And I think that's gonna be the step too. Has
it in?
Speaker 8 (02:13):
Trump today authorized the use of military force against the
Mexican cartels. And that's only the third biggest headline. The
Mexican cartels are more dangerous to America than the Ukraine
Russia War, the Middle East, and most everything else that
(02:40):
we waste our time on. You know, I've heard it
said that CIA officers when they travel CIA officers have
said that the most dangerous group for them to research
right and deal with is not the powerful Chinese military,
(03:01):
the Russian military, the Irani's Al Qaeda isis Hesblo. That's
not who they fear. They fear the Mexican cartels because,
as I have heard it said, when you leave China,
(03:22):
you're outside of China. When you leave Russia, you're outside Russia.
When you leave the Middle East, you're you come home.
This is your little bubble where you live. They they
can't touch you here, But the Mexican cartel has somebody
on your street, in every street America. They have insinuated
(03:45):
themselves into every crevice of American society. I was in
Cabo San Lucas ten years ago. I couldn't have been
ten years ago because my kids were yeah, maybe ten
years ago, and I the area where I was going
had recently had some problems. Why did I go? Because
(04:06):
I'm stupid, So you're right to ask why I still went.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
So I asked. I got a driver.
Speaker 8 (04:15):
Who had security background and security credentials, and I took
extra precautions, not that it maybe would have mattered if
the cartel wants you, but I was asking him about
the cartel constantly, and he said, hey, why don't you
limit your questions on the cartel to me? And I'm
(04:37):
assuming you're not asking anybody else these questions And I.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Said, yeah, no, I'm not.
Speaker 8 (04:45):
Why And he said, well, everywhere you go, you're interacting
with either a cartel member or the family member of
a cartel member. They're everywhere. I said, wow, okay, thank
you for telling me that. And he said, I'm not
trying to scare you, but to put it into perspective,
(05:06):
my brother's in the cartel And I said, oh, what
does he do.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
He said, he's a lookout.
Speaker 8 (05:13):
He is in a particular neighborhood where some cartel members live.
And I can't tell you where it is. I don't
need to know, sir. He is a lookout. His job,
he's a street corner vendor and he makes up fried
plantains and he watches what's going on very naturally, and
he has a communications system and if anything, if there
(05:35):
is someone doing surveillance. If there is, then his job
is to report that the second he sees it. And
so you got to realize the cartels are not just
highly trained guys in a balaclava, you know, with machine guns.
They have their people in the government and everywhere else.
(05:56):
Those people have a pipeline into the streets. You and
I live on drugs, children, women, and some boys. These
people have absolutely positively devastated entire swaths of American society.
(06:18):
And it ain't just the inner city a tweaker on
heroin anymore or fentanyl. It's suburban moms who've buried their
fifteen year old son who was going to be the
star quarterback on the football team next year, and he
tried fentanyl one time, or he tried a piece of
candy that a kid gave him one time and it
(06:40):
was as big as a nerd?
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Did you ever eat nerds? W little nerd little poppers? Yeah?
Speaker 8 (06:45):
So for Trump to do this has all of my support,
because I have long been bothered that we send all
this money to Ukraine over their war. We sent all
this one of the Middle East over there. We've got
a war on America's streets, not just the illegals coming
in here, who, by the way, we're being controlled in
(07:08):
large part by the cartels, but by a foreign invading,
highly sophisticated, well funded military.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
All right, let's get to items one and two coming up.
The Michael Verry Show.
Speaker 8 (07:25):
Imagine people in politics actually solving problems instead of talking
about them in self dealing. Give Donald Trump credit. I
spent a lot of time this morning talking about the
importance of America, the importance of DC, not only to
foreigner but mostly local American domestic tourists. We should be
(07:47):
proud of our capital. Instead it's a hellhole. And guess
what he's not doing tolerating it. This is what entrepreneurs do.
You see a problem, you solve it. That's what you do.
Democrats don't do that. They make up excuses why problems
can't be solved. President Trump Hill of Press Commerce today
(08:09):
where he announced that a federal takeover of law enforcement
in Washington, d C.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Is happening.
Speaker 9 (08:17):
And we're here for a very serious purpose, very serious purpose.
Something's out of control, but we're going to put it
in control very quickly, like we.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Did on the southern border.
Speaker 9 (08:27):
I'm announcing a historic action to rescue our nation's capital
from crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor and worse.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
This is Liberation Day in DC, and.
Speaker 9 (08:40):
We're going to take our capital back. We're taking it
back under the authorities vested in me as the President
of the United States, I'm officially invoking Section seventy forty
of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, you know
what that is, and placing the DC Metropolitan Police Department
and underdirect federal control. And you'll be meeting the people
(09:04):
that will be directly involved with that. Very good people,
but they're tough, and they know what's happening, and they've
done it before.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
It's exciting.
Speaker 8 (09:18):
You ever go into a rundown, decrepit home and start
cleaning things up, how fresh and new and exciting it looks.
Or you see a barn find on one of those
TV shows where there's an old car truck in a
barn that hadn't been driven in forty years and they
just start wiping the dust off and all of a
sudden it comes to life.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
The President announced that he will.
Speaker 8 (09:40):
Deploy the National Guard to help restore order in your
nation's capital.
Speaker 9 (09:47):
In addition, I'm deploying the National Guard to help re
establish law order in public safety in Washington, d C.
And they're going to be allowed to do their job properly.
And you people are victims of it too. You know
your reporters, and I understand a lot of you tend
to be on the liberal side, but you don't want
to get You don't want to get mugged and raped
(10:08):
and shot and killed.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
And you all know people and.
Speaker 9 (10:12):
Friends of yours that happened, and so you can be
any anything you want, but you want to have safety
in the streets. You want to be able to leave
your apartment or your house where you live and feel
safe and go into a store to buy a newspaper,
buy something.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
And you don't have that now.
Speaker 9 (10:30):
The murder rate in Washington today is higher than that
of Bogata, Columbia, Mexico City, some of the places that
you hear about as being the worst places on earth
much higher. This is much higher. The number of carthfs
has doubled over the past five years, and the number
(10:52):
of carl Jackins has more than tripled. Murders in twenty
twenty three reached the highest rate probably every twenty five years.
But they don't know what that means because it just
goes back.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Twenty five years. Can't be worse.
Speaker 9 (11:06):
Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and
bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs,
and homeless people, and we're not going to let it
happen anymore. We're not going to take it, just like
we did on our southern border. Nobody comes to our
southern border, and three months in a row we had zero.
(11:27):
I don't know if that's right, but the people that
do the work, it's a very liberal group of people, actually,
and they actually said zero for the last three months.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Nobody thought a thing like that was.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Possible Maslov's hierarchy of needs. What is first? Safety? For survival?
Speaker 8 (11:46):
President Trump said, every American has a right to petition
their government in peace and safety.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
You should be able to go.
Speaker 8 (11:56):
And speak before Congress in our nation's capital and field safe.
Speaker 9 (12:01):
Every American is a constitutional right to be able to
access and petition their government in safety, and countless federal
officials and employees likewise have the right to carry out
their jobs in peace without being shot. As you know,
I lost a very good person a while ago, was
shot waiting for his wife. He was in the car.
(12:23):
They wrapped his car, they shot him. They killed him
like there was nothing to it. She was walking to
the car. She was It's a horror show. This issue
directly impacts the functioning of the federal government and has
a threat to America.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Really, it's a threat to our country.
Speaker 8 (12:42):
You know, a high profile crime like that can really
bring a lot of attention. Now, you can have a
thousand people killed, but it's not until someone that people
know that it matters. This is clip five oh eight.
He took the time to read some of the higher
(13:03):
profile crimes over the past few years.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
This is what brings attention to things.
Speaker 8 (13:07):
We had a guy here who built the galleria for
Gerald Hines is a great developer, late great developer, last
name Cayam, and he was shot and killed in his
driveway over his watch, just west of downtown.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
And that really.
Speaker 8 (13:23):
Spurred a new mayor, a new renewed sense in public
safety thirty five years thirty four years ago in Houston.
But he's right to point to some of these because
this is how you get people's attention.
Speaker 9 (13:37):
Days ago, former member of the Doge staff was savagely
beaten by a band of roving thugs after defending a
young woman from an attempted carjacking. He was left stripping
in blood. He thought he was dead with a broken
nose and concussion. Can't believe that he's alive. He can't
believe it. In June, a twenty one year old congressional
(14:00):
in turn was tragically killed after being hit by a
straight bullet and a drive by shooting. A former Trump
administration official named Mike Gill fantastic person was murdered last
year in cold blood and a carjacking blocks away from
the White House.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
We all knew him, great person.
Speaker 9 (14:22):
Waiting for his wife as she was walking to the car.
A Democrat congressman was also carjacked at gunpoint not far
from the Capitol.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
And in twenty twenty three and.
Speaker 9 (14:34):
A to Senator und Paul was stabbed in the chest
and head by a demented lunatic as he walked down
the street, just absolutely for no reason.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Horrifically. Last July fourth weekend.
Speaker 9 (14:49):
A three year old girl was shot in the head
and killed while sitting in a car near the Capitol.
It's becoming a situation of complete and total lawlessness.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Bizarre of talk radio the Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 8 (15:06):
The president of the he's actually the chairman of the
Washington d C. Police Officers Union, has been in the
news of late. He was our guest this morning, and
he was a guest of President Trump at the President's
remarks today where he announced, as you heard earlier today,
that today is Liberation Day for Washington, d C. I
(15:31):
spent just over three weeks in DC this summer, so
some of the shows you heard me do I was
in DC.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
I don't announce it, but I can.
Speaker 8 (15:41):
Tell you that there is a palpable fear on the
streets of DC due to crime. My boys were interning
in Congress and lo and behold, a twenty one year
old kid was shot and killed by bangers shooting at
(16:01):
each other and a stray bullet happened to hit him.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
You know.
Speaker 8 (16:05):
One of the things that I talked about really affecting
me was if you know the area when you walk
out of the Capitol and you start heading east, you
can walk along right there, and you can walk along.
(16:25):
You just turn right as soon as you come out.
You walk along the road curves and you go down
and in fifteen to twenty minutes you're at a community
called Eastern Market. And that's where I got my oldest
son an apartment for the summer, and it's nice little
shops and restaurants. There's a pickleball facility where you can rent.
(16:51):
You know, it's in one space and you can rent
a pickleball court for an hour. Inside this little retail space,
there's a nice bookstore right there. There are lots of
ethnic restaurants. There's a lot Va restaurants and Indian restaurants,
Nigerian restaurant. There's a taco bell. As you're walking along
and then you get.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
To a CVS.
Speaker 8 (17:13):
You walk in that CBS and there is a menacing
police officer standing right at the front with sunglasses on
like calaja, and he never speaks for anything else, and
I guess he's there to try to intimidate the young
punks who steal from the store. And then you go
in the store and almost everything in the store is
locked up. There is no checkout. They do self checkout.
(17:33):
It's a smaller than usual store. It's more of a
pantry type deal. But when you go to get anything
a razor blade, I don't know anything that costs more
than five bucks, you have to push a button and
they announce over the loudspeaker we need assistance on Aisle five.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
It's only like ten hours on Aisle five in.
Speaker 8 (17:55):
Hairsprayop and there comes so they don't have him that
check you out anymore. They only having boys who come
and unlock the cage for you to buy things, which
is exactly how it works at the commissary in prison.
When you don't deal with criminals as prisoners, you deal
with everyone as prisoners. See, when you don't discriminate between
(18:21):
good people and bad people, the word discrimination has become
a dirty word in this country. Discrimination existed before we
had different races.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
We were talking about.
Speaker 8 (18:29):
Discrimination means treating two things differently, and treating different things
differently is showing a difference of opinion toward the same
things that you can do. So you cannot say that
two boys, because we're doing this on the basis of
(18:50):
being boys, that's a reasonable restriction. You can't say that
white boys you can go into the bathroom, but black
boys you cannot. That is an illegal form of discrimination
because a boy is a boy, and there's a reason
you separate boys and girls. But you can say only
boys can go into the boy's bathroom and only girls
(19:11):
can go in the girls restaurant.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Because despite the fact.
Speaker 8 (19:14):
That democrats can't understand this, boys and girls are very
different and they shouldn't be put in the same bathroom.
President Trump was talking today at his press conference, and
he made a point it's embarrassing that he's got to
stand in front of the world and talk about taking
over our nation's capital because the hood rats have made
(19:34):
it a war zone.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
This is embarrassing.
Speaker 8 (19:37):
This is what Putin and world leaders are seeing of
our country, and I'm embarrassed with it, and he's right
to be embarrassed.
Speaker 9 (19:45):
Today we're formally declaring a public safety emergency.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
This is an emergency.
Speaker 9 (19:50):
This is a tragic emergency, and it's embarrassing for me
to be up here. You know, I'm gonna see Putin.
I'm going to Russia on Friday. I don't like up
You're talking about how unsafe and how dirty and disgusting
this once beautiful capital was with graffiti all over the walls.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
It's another part of it, by the way, because we're.
Speaker 9 (20:12):
Talking about safety, we're also talking about beautification. We're the
most beautiful, potentially capital in the world.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
We always had.
Speaker 9 (20:19):
But people come from Iowa, they come from Indiana, they
come and then they get mugged.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Not going to happen.
Speaker 9 (20:24):
Keep coming because within by the time you get your
trip set, it's going to be safe again, and it's
going to be cleaned very quickly. We're going to replace
the medians that are falling down all over the roads.
We're going to replace the botholes. We're going to put
a nice new coat of asphalt over the top. No,
we don't have to rip the road out and spend
seven years building a new road because they cut everything
(20:45):
that because some designers said, well we need a quarter
of an inch more turn for safety reasons.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
We're going to do it right. We're going to get
it done quickly.
Speaker 9 (20:56):
So today we're declaring public safety emergions.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Say in the District of Columbian.
Speaker 8 (21:03):
President Trump said that in twenty twenty two, nearly seventy
percent of the criminals in Washington, d c. Went unprosecuted.
Speaker 9 (21:12):
They turned our nation's capital into a sanctuary jurisdiction. That's
the other thing. We have to get rid of sanctuary
cities as quickly as possible. We're going to do it too.
We have to because it's sanctuary for criminals releasing illegal
alien gang members onto the streets.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
In twenty twenty two.
Speaker 9 (21:27):
Nearly seventy percent of criminals arrested in Washington went unprosecuted.
That's not going to happen with the group we have
for standing aside and standing behind me.
Speaker 8 (21:39):
This is not complicated, folks, and the President recognizes that.
It's rules and regulations in the men and women to
enforce them. It's not that hard.
Speaker 9 (21:48):
What you need is rules and regulations, and you need
the right people to implement them. And we have the
right people here that I can tell you. Look at
the border. Biden said, there's nothing you can do, So
kamalo as the borders are. She never called one of
the border patrol agents who are great, isis great, never
spoke to anybody, never went there, but she was the
borders are, and everybody said it was impossible to fix.
(22:12):
I fixed it in three months. No really, I fixed
it the first week, but really fixed it over the
last couple of months. And I mean literally to a
point where as I said, zero illegals entering our country
in the last ninety days.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Pretty amazing.
Speaker 8 (22:33):
President Trump noting that this is not going to be
limited to Washington, DC. People are going to see the results,
but we're going to clean up our big cities. This
is very exciting news to me. I love our country
and I'm a student of history, and I think about
how great it's gonna be hard for some of you
(22:53):
young folks to understand how great a city Baltimore used
to be, how great a city to Troit used to
be Philadelphia. Cities that you could walk in and be
proud of and and and gaze up at the architecture.
It was amazing.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Here.
Speaker 8 (23:11):
He is noting today that this will go further than
just the streets of Washington, d C.
Speaker 9 (23:15):
We have other cities also that are bad, very bad.
You look at Chicago, how bad it is. You look
at Los Angeles, how bad it is. And we have
other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem.
And then you have, of course Baltimore and Oakland. We
don't even mention that anymore. They're they're so far gone.
We're not gonna let it happen. We're not going to
(23:36):
lose our cities over this, and this will go further.
We're starting very strongly with DC and we're going to
clean it up real quick, very quickly. As they say,
listen to the Michael Berry Show podcast and you'll be
the smartest guy in the room.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Share with your friends, and you'll be the most popular too.
Speaker 8 (23:56):
The chairman of the Police Officers Union in Washington, D C.
And I'll tell you what sure sounds like. The officers
on the street in Washington, d C. Welcome the Trump
takeover because good officers did not join the forest to
(24:22):
get a good retirement or a cush job. They joined
the forest because they are naturally built. They are naturally
wired as sheep dog. Sheep dogs want to protect the week,
and when they're not allowed to do their jobs, they.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Don't like that.
Speaker 8 (24:42):
DC Mayor Muriel Bowser was on MSNBC when she said
what DC needs is more judges and police officers so we.
Speaker 10 (24:53):
Know we're holding the right people and holding the right
people accountable.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
There's more to do.
Speaker 10 (25:00):
We need judges, you hear jinnim Piro says she needs
prosecutors and we need police in DC. I'd like to
hire five hundred great people over the course of the
next several years to get our numbers where they.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Need to be.
Speaker 10 (25:17):
And DC is hiring. So if you're interested in policing
and the best city in the world, I'll just.
Speaker 8 (25:22):
Stop that right there, because nobody wants to be a
police officer.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Where there's been a call to defund the police. President
Trump said.
Speaker 8 (25:30):
The public safety threat is caused by the failure of
the local government and they will end cash bail. So
when she says we need more judges, no, we need different,
better judges.
Speaker 9 (25:44):
This entire public safety crisis demis directly from the abject
failures of the city's local leadership. The radical left city
Council adopted.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
No cash bail.
Speaker 9 (25:57):
By the way, every place in the country, you know,
cash bail is a disaster. That's what started the problem
in New York. And they don't change it. They don't
want to change it. That's what started it in Chicago.
Speaker 8 (26:11):
So President Trump said that in twenty twenty two, nearly
seventy percent of the criminals in Washington, d C.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Went unprosecuted even when arrested.
Speaker 8 (26:24):
Let me ask Greg Pemberton, is crime worse in DC
today than it was a year or two or three ago,
the chairman of the DC Police Officers Union. For people
who don't know for ourselves, please put this into perspective
for us, because you guys are on the streets of
(26:44):
DC every day.
Speaker 11 (26:47):
Well, in twenty twenty three, we saw violent crime totals
topping thirty year highs. We had nearly three hundred homicides
that year, we had nine hundred and sixty armed carjacking,
thousands of robberies, thousands of shootings, numbers that we hadn't
seen since the crack epidemic in the early nineteen nineties.
(27:08):
Since then, the police department reported in twenty twenty four
the crime dropped thirty six percent, and this year the
reporting that has dropped another twenty five percent. But as
you very eloquently stated in your intro, we don't believe
that that's true. The reason being is that won our
NBC affiliate here in Washington uncovered information earlier this month
(27:32):
that a commander of a police district is now under
investigation and it has been stripped of as police powers
for going into police databases and changing classifications from felonies
to misdemeanors so that those felonies aren't carried on the
monthly reports. And in addition to that, we know that
our members are being told when they go to these
(27:53):
scenes and victims are reporting that they were a victim
of a violent crime or a felony, that managers are
coming to those scenes, lieutenants, captains and above, and are
ordering the officers to take reports for lesser offenses to
keep those crime stats moving in a downward trajectory. But
what anybody that works, or lives or travels to DC knows,
(28:17):
As you mentioned, it really is problematic. Anywhere you go,
you can feel and sense, it's palpable that there is
criminal activity a foot, whether that's the smell of marijuana smoke,
whether that's traffic incidents, whether that's more violent crime like
robberies and carjackings. It's ubiquitous throughout the city, and so
(28:38):
we don't believe the crime has gone down. We believe
that that's a manipulation of the crime stats here in
the district.
Speaker 8 (28:45):
June thirtieth, at the twelve hundred block of Seventh Street,
Eric Tarpinian Jaquim was shot and killed. He was a
twenty one year old congressional intern. It's only one persons,
seemingly isolated incident, but those types of things tend to
catch a lot of attention. Then, we had Big Balls
this past week who was beaten pretty badly by about
(29:06):
ten young young folks. We've had some of these high
profile cases. How common are these cases? I have to
tell you, I've been going to d C since I
clerked there as a young lawyer in nineteen ninety five,
and it feels less safe, but I've also grown older
I recognize that.
Speaker 11 (29:29):
Well. Unfortunately, they're all too common. I mean, one of
your representatives from Texas, Henry Quaar, was carjacked in Navy Yard.
I think that was earlier this year. We had Angie Craig,
representative from Minnesota, who was assaulted in her elevator of
her own apartment building. There are multitudes of staffers that
have been victims of robberies, assaults, carjackings. Rand Paul's staffer
(29:54):
was stabbed in the head, probably about a year and
a half ago, and the stories continue and continue. Obviously,
those are the ones that you hear about because they
make the news. But on a day to day basis,
our officers are running call to call to call for
these various types of incidents that are happening to citizens
all over the city. And it's a disservice to the
(30:17):
the police department to manipulate these crime staffs. It's the
disservice to the city, and ultimately it's an ultimate disservice
to these victims because we're not dedicating the proper resources
to investigating those cases and trying to close those cases.
But ultimately, what's the takeaway the bad guys get away
with it, right, because we're not doing what we need
to do to get handcuffs on them and get them
(30:38):
into the criminal justice system, no matter how broken it
is here in the district. But we need to do
our job on the front end, which is handcuffed these
guys and get them booked and charged with these crimes.
And we can't do that in the current environment that
we're working in.
Speaker 8 (30:50):
Greg Pemberton is a chairman of Washington DC Police Officers Union.
President Trump has sent in some FEDS over the weekend,
seemingly in a supplemental capacity to assist the DC police officers.
Nobody's criticizing the DC police officers and the work they're doing.
They're outmanned, outgunned, overwhelmed, understaffed, the problems that we see
(31:15):
across the country. Do you welcome a greater federal presence
on the streets.
Speaker 11 (31:22):
Definitely, But let me back up a little bit and
give a little context. In twenty twenty, our city council here,
the municipal government legislative branch, passed a multitude of pieces
of legislation that handcuffed police officers, that made it impossible
for them to do their jobs and increased their liability
for administrative, civil, and criminal sanctions even when they go
(31:47):
out and do their job properly. And since then we
have had a mass exodus of police officers. Our police
agency has an authorized staffing level of four thousand sworn members.
We are currently sitting one and eighty with more than
eight hundred vacancies for the position a police officer. The
way the department is making up that difference, that that
(32:08):
staffing difference is through mandatory overtime, and we're currently working
more than two million hours per year in overtime, which
is completely unsustainable. It is four times or maybe even
five times the pre COVID averages for annual overtime rates,
and it is burning out our officers and it is
sending people packing for other agencies where they aren't treated
(32:30):
this way. And the reason that the FEDS are looking
at this and saying let's send some supplemental resources, which
of course we welcome, is because we cannot staff the
police department based on the way our local government treats us,
which is just a horrible environment for policing and public safety.
Speaker 8 (32:47):
Agreed, get an officer hurt as well? Greg Kemberton, the
chairman of the Washington DC Police Officers Union. Thank you, sir,
It's that time, time, time, time, luck and load.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
So Michael Verie Show is on the air.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
It's simple but fundamental pillar of our democracy that the
rule of law apployes to all of us equally, fairly
and justly.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
The US Justice Department is opening an investigation into the
New York Attorney General Leticia James's office. This comes as
part of a criminal investigation into James, who previously prosecuted Trump.
Speaker 5 (00:37):
There are now two Grand Jurisa poenas issued by the
US Attorney's Office for the Northern District of New York
looking to get information about James's office, basically trying to
see if there was any criminality by her office when
she filed that civil lawsuit against the Trump organization. If
you remember that lawsuit going to trial and the Trump
organization being found liable having to oh now at this
(01:00):
point because of interest about a half a billion dollars
in penalty.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
The mission is clear.
Speaker 6 (01:06):
I'm focused, I'm prepared, I'm ready. I've been trained by
the best. I went to Howard University that overturned legal
segregation in this country. I've been taught in those classrooms
with third Good Marshall once taught I'm not afraid of
no President Donald Trump. We're ready for you. We're coming
(01:29):
for you, We're standing up for you.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
We're fighting on. We're not going down.
Speaker 6 (01:35):
Sailing victory, my friends is clear. It's now and I'm
not waiting four years. I'm waiting two. I tell us,
speaker of the name of Hi King Jeffries comes to.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Bring us some rest.
Speaker 6 (01:49):
Come on, ladies, it's up to us. We saved this
democracy before, we'll save it now.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Let's go.
Speaker 7 (01:57):
Damn body made the decision to bring a civil lawsuit
because I think PAM has the budget right now to
feed tiss chains in prison. So I think we're gonna
wait until we get a supplemental from Congress for the
prison food budget to feeder fat ass in prison.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
And I think that's gonna be the step too. Has
it in?
Speaker 8 (02:13):
Trump today authorized the use of military force against the
Mexican cartels. And that's only the third biggest headline. The
Mexican cartels are more dangerous to America than the Ukraine
Russia War, the Middle East, and most everything else that
(02:40):
we waste our time on. You know, I've heard it
said that CIA officers when they travel CIA officers have
said that the most dangerous group for them to research
right and deal with is not the powerful Chinese military,
(03:01):
the Russian military, the Irani's Al Qaeda isis Hesblo. That's
not who they fear. They fear the Mexican cartels because,
as I have heard it said, when you leave China,
(03:22):
you're outside of China. When you leave Russia, you're outside Russia.
When you leave the Middle East, you're you come home.
This is your little bubble where you live. They they
can't touch you here, But the Mexican cartel has somebody
on your street, in every street America. They have insinuated
(03:45):
themselves into every crevice of American society. I was in
Cabo San Lucas ten years ago. I couldn't have been
ten years ago because my kids were yeah, maybe ten
years ago, and I the area where I was going
had recently had some problems. Why did I go? Because
(04:06):
I'm stupid, So you're right to ask why I still went.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
So I asked. I got a driver.
Speaker 8 (04:15):
Who had security background and security credentials, and I took
extra precautions, not that it maybe would have mattered if
the cartel wants you, but I was asking him about
the cartel constantly, and he said, hey, why don't you
limit your questions on the cartel to me? And I'm
(04:37):
assuming you're not asking anybody else these questions And I.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Said, yeah, no, I'm not.
Speaker 8 (04:45):
Why And he said, well, everywhere you go, you're interacting
with either a cartel member or the family member of
a cartel member. They're everywhere. I said, wow, okay, thank
you for telling me that. And he said, I'm not
trying to scare you, but to put it into perspective,
(05:06):
my brother's in the cartel And I said, oh, what
does he do.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
He said, he's a lookout.
Speaker 8 (05:13):
He is in a particular neighborhood where some cartel members live.
And I can't tell you where it is. I don't
need to know, sir. He is a lookout. His job,
he's a street corner vendor and he makes up fried
plantains and he watches what's going on very naturally, and
he has a communications system and if anything, if there
(05:35):
is someone doing surveillance. If there is, then his job
is to report that the second he sees it. And
so you got to realize the cartels are not just
highly trained guys in a balaclava, you know, with machine guns.
They have their people in the government and everywhere else.
(05:56):
Those people have a pipeline into the streets. You and
I live on drugs, children, women, and some boys. These
people have absolutely positively devastated entire swaths of American society.
(06:18):
And it ain't just the inner city a tweaker on
heroin anymore or fentanyl. It's suburban moms who've buried their
fifteen year old son who was going to be the
star quarterback on the football team next year, and he
tried fentanyl one time, or he tried a piece of
candy that a kid gave him one time and it
(06:40):
was as big as a nerd?
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Did you ever eat nerds? W little nerd little poppers? Yeah?
Speaker 8 (06:45):
So for Trump to do this has all of my support,
because I have long been bothered that we send all
this money to Ukraine over their war. We sent all
this one of the Middle East over there. We've got
a war on America's streets, not just the illegals coming
in here, who, by the way, we're being controlled in
(07:08):
large part by the cartels, but by a foreign invading,
highly sophisticated, well funded military.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
All right, let's get to items one and two coming up.
The Michael Verry Show.
Speaker 8 (07:25):
Imagine people in politics actually solving problems instead of talking
about them in self dealing. Give Donald Trump credit. I
spent a lot of time this morning talking about the
importance of America, the importance of DC, not only to
foreigner but mostly local American domestic tourists. We should be
(07:47):
proud of our capital. Instead it's a hellhole. And guess
what he's not doing tolerating it. This is what entrepreneurs do.
You see a problem, you solve it. That's what you do.
Democrats don't do that. They make up excuses why problems
can't be solved. President Trump Hill of Press Commerce today
(08:09):
where he announced that a federal takeover of law enforcement
in Washington, d C.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Is happening.
Speaker 9 (08:17):
And we're here for a very serious purpose, very serious purpose.
Something's out of control, but we're going to put it
in control very quickly, like we.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Did on the southern border.
Speaker 9 (08:27):
I'm announcing a historic action to rescue our nation's capital
from crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor and worse.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
This is Liberation Day in DC, and.
Speaker 9 (08:40):
We're going to take our capital back. We're taking it
back under the authorities vested in me as the President
of the United States, I'm officially invoking Section seventy forty
of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, you know
what that is, and placing the DC Metropolitan Police Department
and underdirect federal control. And you'll be meeting the people
(09:04):
that will be directly involved with that. Very good people,
but they're tough, and they know what's happening, and they've
done it before.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
It's exciting.
Speaker 8 (09:18):
You ever go into a rundown, decrepit home and start
cleaning things up, how fresh and new and exciting it looks.
Or you see a barn find on one of those
TV shows where there's an old car truck in a
barn that hadn't been driven in forty years and they
just start wiping the dust off and all of a
sudden it comes to life.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
The President announced that he will.
Speaker 8 (09:40):
Deploy the National Guard to help restore order in your
nation's capital.
Speaker 9 (09:47):
In addition, I'm deploying the National Guard to help re
establish law order in public safety in Washington, d C.
And they're going to be allowed to do their job properly.
And you people are victims of it too. You know
your reporters, and I understand a lot of you tend
to be on the liberal side, but you don't want
to get You don't want to get mugged and raped
(10:08):
and shot and killed.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
And you all know people and.
Speaker 9 (10:12):
Friends of yours that happened, and so you can be
any anything you want, but you want to have safety
in the streets. You want to be able to leave
your apartment or your house where you live and feel
safe and go into a store to buy a newspaper,
buy something.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
And you don't have that now.
Speaker 9 (10:30):
The murder rate in Washington today is higher than that
of Bogata, Columbia, Mexico City, some of the places that
you hear about as being the worst places on earth
much higher. This is much higher. The number of carthfs
has doubled over the past five years, and the number
(10:52):
of carl Jackins has more than tripled. Murders in twenty
twenty three reached the highest rate probably every twenty five years.
But they don't know what that means because it just
goes back.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Twenty five years. Can't be worse.
Speaker 9 (11:06):
Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and
bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs,
and homeless people, and we're not going to let it
happen anymore. We're not going to take it, just like
we did on our southern border. Nobody comes to our
southern border, and three months in a row we had zero.
(11:27):
I don't know if that's right, but the people that
do the work, it's a very liberal group of people, actually,
and they actually said zero for the last three months.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Nobody thought a thing like that was.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Possible Maslov's hierarchy of needs. What is first? Safety? For survival?
Speaker 8 (11:46):
President Trump said, every American has a right to petition
their government in peace and safety.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
You should be able to go.
Speaker 8 (11:56):
And speak before Congress in our nation's capital and field safe.
Speaker 9 (12:01):
Every American is a constitutional right to be able to
access and petition their government in safety, and countless federal
officials and employees likewise have the right to carry out
their jobs in peace without being shot. As you know,
I lost a very good person a while ago, was
shot waiting for his wife. He was in the car.
(12:23):
They wrapped his car, they shot him. They killed him
like there was nothing to it. She was walking to
the car. She was It's a horror show. This issue
directly impacts the functioning of the federal government and has
a threat to America.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Really, it's a threat to our country.
Speaker 8 (12:42):
You know, a high profile crime like that can really
bring a lot of attention. Now, you can have a
thousand people killed, but it's not until someone that people
know that it matters. This is clip five oh eight.
He took the time to read some of the higher
(13:03):
profile crimes over the past few years.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
This is what brings attention to things.
Speaker 8 (13:07):
We had a guy here who built the galleria for
Gerald Hines is a great developer, late great developer, last
name Cayam, and he was shot and killed in his
driveway over his watch, just west of downtown.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
And that really.
Speaker 8 (13:23):
Spurred a new mayor, a new renewed sense in public
safety thirty five years thirty four years ago in Houston.
But he's right to point to some of these because
this is how you get people's attention.
Speaker 9 (13:37):
Days ago, former member of the Doge staff was savagely
beaten by a band of roving thugs after defending a
young woman from an attempted carjacking. He was left stripping
in blood. He thought he was dead with a broken
nose and concussion. Can't believe that he's alive. He can't
believe it. In June, a twenty one year old congressional
(14:00):
in turn was tragically killed after being hit by a
straight bullet and a drive by shooting. A former Trump
administration official named Mike Gill fantastic person was murdered last
year in cold blood and a carjacking blocks away from
the White House.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
We all knew him, great person.
Speaker 9 (14:22):
Waiting for his wife as she was walking to the car.
A Democrat congressman was also carjacked at gunpoint not far
from the Capitol.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
And in twenty twenty three and.
Speaker 9 (14:34):
A to Senator und Paul was stabbed in the chest
and head by a demented lunatic as he walked down
the street, just absolutely for no reason.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Horrifically. Last July fourth weekend.
Speaker 9 (14:49):
A three year old girl was shot in the head
and killed while sitting in a car near the Capitol.
It's becoming a situation of complete and total lawlessness.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Bizarre of talk radio the Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 8 (15:06):
The president of the he's actually the chairman of the
Washington d C. Police Officers Union, has been in the
news of late. He was our guest this morning, and
he was a guest of President Trump at the President's
remarks today where he announced, as you heard earlier today,
that today is Liberation Day for Washington, d C. I
(15:31):
spent just over three weeks in DC this summer, so
some of the shows you heard me do I was
in DC.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
I don't announce it, but I can.
Speaker 8 (15:41):
Tell you that there is a palpable fear on the
streets of DC due to crime. My boys were interning
in Congress and lo and behold, a twenty one year
old kid was shot and killed by bangers shooting at
(16:01):
each other and a stray bullet happened to hit him.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
You know.
Speaker 8 (16:05):
One of the things that I talked about really affecting
me was if you know the area when you walk
out of the Capitol and you start heading east, you
can walk along right there, and you can walk along.
(16:25):
You just turn right as soon as you come out.
You walk along the road curves and you go down
and in fifteen to twenty minutes you're at a community
called Eastern Market. And that's where I got my oldest
son an apartment for the summer, and it's nice little
shops and restaurants. There's a pickleball facility where you can rent.
(16:51):
You know, it's in one space and you can rent
a pickleball court for an hour. Inside this little retail space,
there's a nice bookstore right there. There are lots of
ethnic restaurants. There's a lot Va restaurants and Indian restaurants,
Nigerian restaurant. There's a taco bell. As you're walking along
and then you get.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
To a CVS.
Speaker 8 (17:13):
You walk in that CBS and there is a menacing
police officer standing right at the front with sunglasses on
like calaja, and he never speaks for anything else, and
I guess he's there to try to intimidate the young
punks who steal from the store. And then you go
in the store and almost everything in the store is
locked up. There is no checkout. They do self checkout.
(17:33):
It's a smaller than usual store. It's more of a
pantry type deal. But when you go to get anything
a razor blade, I don't know anything that costs more
than five bucks, you have to push a button and
they announce over the loudspeaker we need assistance on Aisle five.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
It's only like ten hours on Aisle five in.
Speaker 8 (17:55):
Hairsprayop and there comes so they don't have him that
check you out anymore. They only having boys who come
and unlock the cage for you to buy things, which
is exactly how it works at the commissary in prison.
When you don't deal with criminals as prisoners, you deal
with everyone as prisoners. See, when you don't discriminate between
(18:21):
good people and bad people, the word discrimination has become
a dirty word in this country. Discrimination existed before we
had different races.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
We were talking about.
Speaker 8 (18:29):
Discrimination means treating two things differently, and treating different things
differently is showing a difference of opinion toward the same
things that you can do. So you cannot say that
two boys, because we're doing this on the basis of
(18:50):
being boys, that's a reasonable restriction. You can't say that
white boys you can go into the bathroom, but black
boys you cannot. That is an illegal form of discrimination
because a boy is a boy, and there's a reason
you separate boys and girls. But you can say only
boys can go into the boy's bathroom and only girls
(19:11):
can go in the girls restaurant.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Because despite the fact.
Speaker 8 (19:14):
That democrats can't understand this, boys and girls are very
different and they shouldn't be put in the same bathroom.
President Trump was talking today at his press conference, and
he made a point it's embarrassing that he's got to
stand in front of the world and talk about taking
over our nation's capital because the hood rats have made
(19:34):
it a war zone.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
This is embarrassing.
Speaker 8 (19:37):
This is what Putin and world leaders are seeing of
our country, and I'm embarrassed with it, and he's right
to be embarrassed.
Speaker 9 (19:45):
Today we're formally declaring a public safety emergency.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
This is an emergency.
Speaker 9 (19:50):
This is a tragic emergency, and it's embarrassing for me
to be up here. You know, I'm gonna see Putin.
I'm going to Russia on Friday. I don't like up
You're talking about how unsafe and how dirty and disgusting
this once beautiful capital was with graffiti all over the walls.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
It's another part of it, by the way, because we're.
Speaker 9 (20:12):
Talking about safety, we're also talking about beautification. We're the
most beautiful, potentially capital in the world.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
We always had.
Speaker 9 (20:19):
But people come from Iowa, they come from Indiana, they
come and then they get mugged.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Not going to happen.
Speaker 9 (20:24):
Keep coming because within by the time you get your
trip set, it's going to be safe again, and it's
going to be cleaned very quickly. We're going to replace
the medians that are falling down all over the roads.
We're going to replace the botholes. We're going to put
a nice new coat of asphalt over the top. No,
we don't have to rip the road out and spend
seven years building a new road because they cut everything
(20:45):
that because some designers said, well we need a quarter
of an inch more turn for safety reasons.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
We're going to do it right. We're going to get
it done quickly.
Speaker 9 (20:56):
So today we're declaring public safety emergions.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Say in the District of Columbian.
Speaker 8 (21:03):
President Trump said that in twenty twenty two, nearly seventy
percent of the criminals in Washington, d c. Went unprosecuted.
Speaker 9 (21:12):
They turned our nation's capital into a sanctuary jurisdiction. That's
the other thing. We have to get rid of sanctuary
cities as quickly as possible. We're going to do it too.
We have to because it's sanctuary for criminals releasing illegal
alien gang members onto the streets.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
In twenty twenty two.
Speaker 9 (21:27):
Nearly seventy percent of criminals arrested in Washington went unprosecuted.
That's not going to happen with the group we have
for standing aside and standing behind me.
Speaker 8 (21:39):
This is not complicated, folks, and the President recognizes that.
It's rules and regulations in the men and women to
enforce them. It's not that hard.
Speaker 9 (21:48):
What you need is rules and regulations, and you need
the right people to implement them. And we have the
right people here that I can tell you. Look at
the border. Biden said, there's nothing you can do, So
kamalo as the borders are. She never called one of
the border patrol agents who are great, isis great, never
spoke to anybody, never went there, but she was the
borders are, and everybody said it was impossible to fix.
(22:12):
I fixed it in three months. No really, I fixed
it the first week, but really fixed it over the
last couple of months. And I mean literally to a
point where as I said, zero illegals entering our country
in the last ninety days.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Pretty amazing.
Speaker 8 (22:33):
President Trump noting that this is not going to be
limited to Washington, DC. People are going to see the results,
but we're going to clean up our big cities. This
is very exciting news to me. I love our country
and I'm a student of history, and I think about
how great it's gonna be hard for some of you
(22:53):
young folks to understand how great a city Baltimore used
to be, how great a city to Troit used to
be Philadelphia. Cities that you could walk in and be
proud of and and and gaze up at the architecture.
It was amazing.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Here.
Speaker 8 (23:11):
He is noting today that this will go further than
just the streets of Washington, d C.
Speaker 9 (23:15):
We have other cities also that are bad, very bad.
You look at Chicago, how bad it is. You look
at Los Angeles, how bad it is. And we have
other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem.
And then you have, of course Baltimore and Oakland. We
don't even mention that anymore. They're they're so far gone.
We're not gonna let it happen. We're not going to
(23:36):
lose our cities over this, and this will go further.
We're starting very strongly with DC and we're going to
clean it up real quick, very quickly. As they say,
listen to the Michael Berry Show podcast and you'll be
the smartest guy in the room.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Share with your friends, and you'll be the most popular too.
Speaker 8 (23:56):
The chairman of the Police Officers Union in Washington, D C.
And I'll tell you what sure sounds like. The officers
on the street in Washington, d C. Welcome the Trump
takeover because good officers did not join the forest to
(24:22):
get a good retirement or a cush job. They joined
the forest because they are naturally built. They are naturally
wired as sheep dog. Sheep dogs want to protect the week,
and when they're not allowed to do their jobs, they.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Don't like that.
Speaker 8 (24:42):
DC Mayor Muriel Bowser was on MSNBC when she said
what DC needs is more judges and police officers so we.
Speaker 10 (24:53):
Know we're holding the right people and holding the right
people accountable.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
There's more to do.
Speaker 10 (25:00):
We need judges, you hear jinnim Piro says she needs
prosecutors and we need police in DC. I'd like to
hire five hundred great people over the course of the
next several years to get our numbers where they.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Need to be.
Speaker 10 (25:17):
And DC is hiring. So if you're interested in policing
and the best city in the world, I'll just.
Speaker 8 (25:22):
Stop that right there, because nobody wants to be a
police officer.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Where there's been a call to defund the police. President
Trump said.
Speaker 8 (25:30):
The public safety threat is caused by the failure of
the local government and they will end cash bail. So
when she says we need more judges, no, we need different,
better judges.
Speaker 9 (25:44):
This entire public safety crisis demis directly from the abject
failures of the city's local leadership. The radical left city
Council adopted.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
No cash bail.
Speaker 9 (25:57):
By the way, every place in the country, you know,
cash bail is a disaster. That's what started the problem
in New York. And they don't change it. They don't
want to change it. That's what started it in Chicago.
Speaker 8 (26:11):
So President Trump said that in twenty twenty two, nearly
seventy percent of the criminals in Washington, d C.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Went unprosecuted even when arrested.
Speaker 8 (26:24):
Let me ask Greg Pemberton, is crime worse in DC
today than it was a year or two or three ago,
the chairman of the DC Police Officers Union. For people
who don't know for ourselves, please put this into perspective
for us, because you guys are on the streets of
(26:44):
DC every day.
Speaker 11 (26:47):
Well, in twenty twenty three, we saw violent crime totals
topping thirty year highs. We had nearly three hundred homicides
that year, we had nine hundred and sixty armed carjacking,
thousands of robberies, thousands of shootings, numbers that we hadn't
seen since the crack epidemic in the early nineteen nineties.
(27:08):
Since then, the police department reported in twenty twenty four
the crime dropped thirty six percent, and this year the
reporting that has dropped another twenty five percent. But as
you very eloquently stated in your intro, we don't believe
that that's true. The reason being is that won our
NBC affiliate here in Washington uncovered information earlier this month
(27:32):
that a commander of a police district is now under
investigation and it has been stripped of as police powers
for going into police databases and changing classifications from felonies
to misdemeanors so that those felonies aren't carried on the
monthly reports. And in addition to that, we know that
our members are being told when they go to these
(27:53):
scenes and victims are reporting that they were a victim
of a violent crime or a felony, that managers are
coming to those scenes, lieutenants, captains and above, and are
ordering the officers to take reports for lesser offenses to
keep those crime stats moving in a downward trajectory. But
what anybody that works, or lives or travels to DC knows,
(28:17):
As you mentioned, it really is problematic. Anywhere you go,
you can feel and sense, it's palpable that there is
criminal activity a foot, whether that's the smell of marijuana smoke,
whether that's traffic incidents, whether that's more violent crime like
robberies and carjackings. It's ubiquitous throughout the city, and so
(28:38):
we don't believe the crime has gone down. We believe
that that's a manipulation of the crime stats here in
the district.
Speaker 8 (28:45):
June thirtieth, at the twelve hundred block of Seventh Street,
Eric Tarpinian Jaquim was shot and killed. He was a
twenty one year old congressional intern. It's only one persons,
seemingly isolated incident, but those types of things tend to
catch a lot of attention. Then, we had Big Balls
this past week who was beaten pretty badly by about
(29:06):
ten young young folks. We've had some of these high
profile cases. How common are these cases? I have to
tell you, I've been going to d C since I
clerked there as a young lawyer in nineteen ninety five,
and it feels less safe, but I've also grown older
I recognize that.
Speaker 11 (29:29):
Well. Unfortunately, they're all too common. I mean, one of
your representatives from Texas, Henry Quaar, was carjacked in Navy Yard.
I think that was earlier this year. We had Angie Craig,
representative from Minnesota, who was assaulted in her elevator of
her own apartment building. There are multitudes of staffers that
have been victims of robberies, assaults, carjackings. Rand Paul's staffer
(29:54):
was stabbed in the head, probably about a year and
a half ago, and the stories continue and continue. Obviously,
those are the ones that you hear about because they
make the news. But on a day to day basis,
our officers are running call to call to call for
these various types of incidents that are happening to citizens
all over the city. And it's a disservice to the
(30:17):
the police department to manipulate these crime staffs. It's the
disservice to the city, and ultimately it's an ultimate disservice
to these victims because we're not dedicating the proper resources
to investigating those cases and trying to close those cases.
But ultimately, what's the takeaway the bad guys get away
with it, right, because we're not doing what we need
to do to get handcuffs on them and get them
(30:38):
into the criminal justice system, no matter how broken it
is here in the district. But we need to do
our job on the front end, which is handcuffed these
guys and get them booked and charged with these crimes.
And we can't do that in the current environment that
we're working in.
Speaker 8 (30:50):
Greg Pemberton is a chairman of Washington DC Police Officers Union.
President Trump has sent in some FEDS over the weekend,
seemingly in a supplemental capacity to assist the DC police officers.
Nobody's criticizing the DC police officers and the work they're doing.
They're outmanned, outgunned, overwhelmed, understaffed, the problems that we see
(31:15):
across the country. Do you welcome a greater federal presence
on the streets.
Speaker 11 (31:22):
Definitely, But let me back up a little bit and
give a little context. In twenty twenty, our city council here,
the municipal government legislative branch, passed a multitude of pieces
of legislation that handcuffed police officers, that made it impossible
for them to do their jobs and increased their liability
for administrative, civil, and criminal sanctions even when they go
(31:47):
out and do their job properly. And since then we
have had a mass exodus of police officers. Our police
agency has an authorized staffing level of four thousand sworn members.
We are currently sitting one and eighty with more than
eight hundred vacancies for the position a police officer. The
way the department is making up that difference, that that
(32:08):
staffing difference is through mandatory overtime, and we're currently working
more than two million hours per year in overtime, which
is completely unsustainable. It is four times or maybe even
five times the pre COVID averages for annual overtime rates,
and it is burning out our officers and it is
sending people packing for other agencies where they aren't treated
(32:30):
this way. And the reason that the FEDS are looking
at this and saying let's send some supplemental resources, which
of course we welcome, is because we cannot staff the
police department based on the way our local government treats us,
which is just a horrible environment for policing and public safety.
Speaker 8 (32:47):
Agreed, get an officer hurt as well? Greg Kemberton, the
chairman of the Washington DC Police Officers Union. Thank you, sir,
Popular Podcasts
Fudd Around And Find Out
UConn basketball star Azzi Fudd brings her championship swag to iHeart Women’s Sports with Fudd Around and Find Out, a weekly podcast that takes fans along for the ride as Azzi spends her final year of college trying to reclaim the National Championship and prepare to be a first round WNBA draft pick. Ever wonder what it’s like to be a world-class athlete in the public spotlight while still managing schoolwork, friendships and family time? It’s time to Fudd Around and Find Out!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!