December 11, 2020 • 57 mins
Tis the season of drama and what better way to sort it all out than to have one of our own make sense of it. One of the top cops in Los Angeles for over three decades, Chief Gascon joins the show. There might be some OJ talk sprinkled in, but there's a whole lot more in real-time to discuss.
Make sure to subscribe, rate, and post a review on iTunes whenever you get the chance.
Engage with the podcast by emailing us at RealFifthHour@gmail.com
Follow Ben on Twitter @BenMaller and on Instagram @BenMallerOnFOX
David is on Twitter @DavidJGascon and Instagram @DaveGascon
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
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 (00:00):
Be sure to catch live editions of The Ben Maller
Show weekdays at two a m. Eastern eleven p m. Pacific.
If you thought more hours a day, minutes a week
was enough, think again. He's the last remnants of the
old Republic, the sole fashion of fairness. He treats crackheads
in the ghetto cutter the same as the rich pill
(00:21):
poppers in the penthouse, to clearing house of hot takes,
break free for something specialitur with Ben Maller starts right
now that it does. We are in the air everywhere
eight days a week because four hours are not enough.
(00:42):
We thank you for finding the podcast. We thank you
for supporting the podcast. We started this, we did it
one day a week, and then the numbers were good,
so we kept doing it. Now it's it's Friday, Saturday,
and Sunday. This is our Friday podcast, a spinoff of
the Overnight radio show. But we can go third rail
on my end. We can hit the third rail on
(01:04):
this because you know, it's just a podcast. We can
talk about things that we don't normally talk about on
the radio show, which is just hardcore sports, and this
is a in theory a sports podcast. But we delve
into some other issues in real life, and back again
from west of the four oh five David gascon making
(01:24):
his way there. He is there, I am loud and proud.
Um is this is this an uncomfortable day for you?
Because if you've downloaded the podcast, chances are you know
who we're gonna have a conversation with a so so David.
That's assuming that most of the people can read the description. Wow,
(01:46):
I mean already. I mean we're not even a minute
in the print. The prints fine. So do you often
listen to or do you often read the description when
you click on a podcast, because that sure it's held out.
That's a good question. I well, I subscribe to some
but interview podcast. Yeah, like I I listened like Joe Rogan.
(02:10):
Sometimes I'll I don't listen to all. I actually don't
listen to that often. But if I'm looking for some
audio content, I want to hear an interview Ali or
who's Rogan got on? And then if it's someone the
description is good and it kind of gets me going,
I'll listen. If it's someone I've never heard of in
the description sucks, I'm not gonna listen fair enough. So,
(02:31):
but yeah, but generally, Yeah, the podcast I subscribed to,
you know, they're Automa. They're on my phone. I just
listened to them and when I'm wandering around doing my
sojourn around around town here. But yeah, we're gonna have today. Uh.
The chief for those that don't know, Uh, David's father
was a big cohuna at the l a p D
(02:52):
and and his most famous for the the time with
the O. J. Simpson case. He was the spokesperson for
the l A P. He was out in front on
that and he was on television globally and what he
spent over thirty years right with the Los Angeles Police
Department years in the department, man and and how wild
is this though? He was he was known worldwide for
(03:15):
what went down O J. And there was no social
media at the time. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, do
you think about what it would have been like now?
And it but it was. I don't think it would
be much different because you could not get bigger than
the O. J. Simpson case. I mean, even with social
media it made it would have made it a little different,
(03:36):
But I don't know because and the reason why I
bring that up is because of what's gone on recently
with the whole election scandal, is that you have people
that are making these you have these affidavits that are
that are signed by these individuals and sworn testimony, and
you have news agencies out there right now either one
docks in these people or two resurface seeing their past
(04:01):
life like what they've done in their teenage years and
the early early twenties, and they basically try to out
these people. And I think more so now than ever,
is that if you had police officers that were involved
in this investigation and or the d a's office, I
think you'd have more agencies looking to these individuals and
(04:22):
try to discredit them if they felt like O. J
was in the right not in the wrong. So the
media spin what is easier to spin stuff in the
age of social media, because if you're on the right
side of big tech, you don't get censored. If you're
on the other side of big tech, you get censors.
So it's hard to get your message out because so
(04:42):
many people there's a whole different You're you're opening up
Pandora's box because that's a whole different conversation which we've had.
We've had that that people take social media way too seriously.
And it's the matrix. It's it's not really on that.
But we're getting sidetracked here. But the the o J.
If you're a young person and you're you weren't around
for o J. I was just in the early part
(05:04):
of my career when the trial was going on. I
remember I was still in college when the murder happened.
And then I got out and I started working in
San Diego and I was covering the Dodgers in the
in l A. And I remember I was living in
Orange County. I was driving into l A. And I
drive in that one on one corridor through downtown and
they had put up every parking lot right across next
(05:24):
to the and I said every There was two massive
parking lots right near the one on one when you
make the the the interchange with the the one with
the one tent like you know l A Freeways if
you're not in l A. But anyway, so I'm driving
there and they put up these giants, and I mean
they were like three or four stories of um, what's
what's the term I'm looking for? You know, those things
(05:45):
like painters stand on they're kind of like fake fake
I'm trying to I don't know what the term for
that is. But they so they could have the shot
of downtown behind them. Yeah you know that, yeah, so,
and and they were international media. It was wild a
panoramic view, right, yeah, exactly wanted the panoracs, so they
put up like planks of wood and so that the
reporters could stand and so behind them you saw the
(06:08):
skyline of l A. And they were reporting on O
J and UM. And I remember going to cover Dodging
games and during the trial part of it, and it
was people. There was a buzz in the crowd. This
was in the days without social media, and there were
I remember one night the Dodgers, I think they were
in the playoffs, uh, either playing Atlanta or Cincinnati, and
(06:28):
a couple of guys showed up. They were they had
been on the Tonight Show. They were Judge Edo and
personators and the crowd David. The crowd went wild. They
everyone wanted to be and wanted to be around these
two knuckleheads and were dressed like Judge Edo, and uh,
it was pretty It was just it was crazy and
your your dad and just a central figure in that.
So I'm excited to talking. We're gonna get to that.
(06:50):
We have to start with other stuff. They'll guess, gone, right,
we have to start with all this stuff before we
get to the meet with the Chief. Yes, yeah, alright,
So I think it's it's it's ideal with Mr West
of the four oh five all the time. Uh so,
why don't we welcome in the chief here, David gascon Man,
who was in the l APD for thirty two years.
And I get to work with his son, your son
(07:11):
here on a weekly basis. So when you found out
your child was going to become a sportscaster, did you
consider holding some kind of intervention? Uh not, in the
least you did not, Now, Uh why not? Because sportscasting,
if you were to rank like careers, sportscasting is kind
(07:32):
of on the back the backside of that. Well actually no,
you know, oh look, he could be a politicians would
be worse, that would Yeah? And and who taught your
son how to park? His mother? Have you seen some
(07:58):
of the photo photograp chief? Have you seen? Because uh,
now I have. I don't go in right now because
of what's been going on this year. But when I
when I go into the studio and I'd park and
on nights your son was working there. Uh, he would
park in every kind of direction imaginable rather than in
the actual space. And I have photographic proof that this
(08:20):
happened multiple occasions. And and I blame you. Oh no,
not me, not me. I'm one of those guys that says,
shalt not but they would just say, look, details, details. Now,
(08:42):
I'm here to take the point, you know, I'm here
to get involved in the important market to car Nah. Well,
I'm happy to talk to you because I I support
law enforced, my wife's and one operator. It's been a
not a good year here chief for the you know,
people taking shots at the least and all that. And
I guess we get serious now, And uh, you're you
(09:05):
haven't had a career in law enforcement. When you sit
back and look at what's been going on here with
the media and open season on local police departments, like
what what from your perspective, Like give me your thoughts
on on how this has all gone down this last
year or so. Well, I think it's disgusting, somewhat predictable
(09:27):
and been there and done that. UM life was very
chaotic in the early seventies, UM due to a variety
of reasons, not the least of which was the Vietnam War. UM.
But we also had many many UM anti government organizations
(09:49):
that we're at work across the nation, and so we've
dealt with UM some very extreme violent organizations and uh,
it was it was really ugly. So to see it
come back is not a surprise. To see it so
politicized is not a surprise. That's more sophisticated now, But
(10:11):
a lot of things going on are more sophisticated, um,
you know, to the extent that we're able to follow
some of these things that are not suppressed or not
handling the mainstream media. There's some really problematic things happening
now here in the country and really going on around
the world. So for for those that here defund the police,
(10:33):
like what are what are the the actual real world
ramifications of that, Like you you spent your had a
great run of the l a p D. You were,
you know, one of the big shots there. But what
what does it actually mean Because we've actually seen in
some cities, as you know, they do you have defunded
the police. They have taken a good amount of money
away from law enforcement. So when they do that, that
(10:56):
in certain places, like what what happens is ares fighting crime, Well,
when you have less officers out there, less visibility, then um,
it is extremely counterproductive. And the result is you start
stacking up dead bodies and crime goes crazy, which is
(11:16):
what you see across the nation right now. Violence is extreme. Look,
we're only as good as the willingness of the community
to follow the law. And when the percentage of people
who don't follow the laws increases, for whatever the cause,
then they wreak havoc on the rest of the general population.
So if you get a percentage that starts getting higher
(11:39):
and higher, than you get civil and rest, and you
get crime, and you get all that violence out there.
And who who's going to look out for those poor people? Uh?
The only people traditionally that do look out for them
or your uniform police officers. And and that's the way
it's been, and it's been that way for or you know,
(12:02):
probably a hundred and fifty years here easily at least,
since there's been a need for a police department. You
have to go back to the basics. Why do we
have a police department? Because we have a need for them,
all right, So let's go back here to the summer
Chief And and I have that image the video in
my head still that was bouncing around social media in
l A. Here somewhere in l a where the camera
(12:23):
guy was walking down the street and there were there
were burned out police cars on like both sides of it.
It looked like a war zone. How it was not
just Los Angeles, It's happened a lot of places. But
how does that, How is that allowed to happen? How
how how are are these people that are allowed to
run around and burn police cars? It was just seemed
insane to me. Well it is. It's actually an attack
(12:46):
on um civilized society. So it's an attack on the taxpayers.
It's a it's a I mean those things cost money, obviously,
it's it's uh. It's a significant attack on a piece
of the community. And of course it wasn't just the
police cars. Um. There were victims that owned UM small
(13:08):
businesses along all of those quarters that you know, their
businesses were damaged, they were alloted, they were burned out.
Many of them UM members of the minority community that
have finally gotten a leg up and and have proven
to be successful after many years of hard work, and
what did we do? Um we we kind of um
(13:31):
burn them down to the ground and threw them out
of their opportunities for a bright future. And you've got
to ask yourself the question, who would do such things
and for what reason? Obviously, if you're trying to be
constructive to make things better, uh, and there are certain
things we can all agree to, then how does that
advance the course of discussion to torch police cars and
(13:56):
and burn people out of their livelihoods? It doesn't. Well, yeah,
and then the other thing about it too. You know
a lot of the people that were doing that, they
knew who they were, but they just give them, not
even a slap on the wrist. They were they were
like in and out. It was a revolving door. The
prosecutors were not charging them with anything. So it's like
they got a free pass on that, which is also
(14:18):
mind blowing on top of it, like they you know,
they knew who was doing it in some locations, they
caught some of the people and they were not even
punished for it, which is which is just insane to me. Well,
it's it's another issue. Um. So you know how we
generally say don't paint people with a broad brush, And
we certainly would say that when we're talking about, um,
(14:39):
police officers in general, we don't want to paint it
with a broad brush. Um, but you would have to
say that about prosecutors to a lot of the activities
that you see going on under the direct results of
politics and the nature of where politicians are and how
they are influence and what they are trying to accomplish,
(15:03):
what suits their political preferences going forward. And I think
you've seen a lot of that go on in various
parts of the country, and and and that leaves you
somewhat speechless and disappointed. Um, But in a lot of ways,
I'm not. I'm not disappointed that they lived up or
lived down to the expectations I have for some of them.
(15:26):
I think you've seen some of the most gross incompetence
in political leadership in the history of our country during
this year. Yeah. Well, and following that train of thought,
I know when you found out that, I guess you
you know him live A. George Gascon is the new
district attorney in l A. Shares a similar last name
(15:47):
to you, and has much different feelings on how to
treat crime. In fact, the story came out I'm sure
you saw it here. This last week or so, the
new district Attorney in l A announced essentially he's going
to stop prosecutions on non violent crimes including trespassing, disturbing
the police, driving without a license, prostitution, resisting arrest is
(16:11):
on that list. UM, drug possession, criminal threats like all
that stuff is not going to be prosecuted. Uh, for
first time offenders. I believe. I think it's only for
first time offenders. But when you saw that, I mean,
this guy has a reputation. What what was your reaction? Well,
first and foremost, I know George. I've known George for
(16:35):
i'd say most of his career here in Los Angeles,
and I personally like George and I've always gotten along
with him. And when George left the l A p
D and ended up in Mason and then ended up
in San Francisco and on, and I was very much
distressed by um his politics, which I found shocking and disappointing.
(17:00):
And I like George personally, but I pretty much am
on the opposite side of the coin on just about
everything he believes in politically, and so I'm disappointed about it. No,
we haven't spoken and what I speak with him, of
course I would, um, And and do do I believe
that he's wrong in his approach? Yes, I do. And
(17:22):
what I would I be quite vociferous in my views,
You bet, I would be. Um. I think we have
to look at history, and we have a lot of history,
uh to look at in terms of what has proven
to be successful and what has proven to be unsuccessful,
and how to deal with our communities. There's no question
that we need to have a bond with the members
(17:45):
of our community. There's no question that all of us
are opposed to abuses that occur, and none of us
want to see abuses at the hands of police officers.
We can all agree with that, so we have to
be sensitive to that. We have to hire the best people,
train him as properly it is possible, and we have
to hold them accountable. But to watch the nonsense that's
(18:05):
going on as a result of some of these things
is kind of extraordinarily disappointing. Yeah, and it's also just
the quality of life issue with a lot of these things, right,
it's not you know, I say, well, you give people
a second chance. But as as you talked about earlier, Chief,
when you own businesses, and you know, people are disturbing
the peace in front of your business, causing trouble. They're
(18:28):
drunk or whatever, and they're making threats and no one's
gonna be punished for I mean that that affects the
quality of life. I mean I heard stories in San
Francisco of what went on when he was running the
show there, George Gascon in San Francisco, And it sounds
like that's gonna be coming to Los Angeles. But these
are really quality of life things. These you know, these
(18:49):
it seems like you meaningless stuff and the pictures how trespassing.
Who cares? But you know, somebody's trespassing in your property
right And this becomes a problem if it continues over
and over again. We want to espouse that we care
about people and we're sensitive to about people's welfare. And
and then if I were to walk you downtown and
look at skid Row and to realize that we have
(19:11):
probably sixty thousand people living on the streets in this
city in the worst of conditions, Uh, what does that
really say about how we treat humanely those of us
that have problems in the community. If you have a
mental problem, if you have a drug problem, etcetera. How
(19:32):
do we treat you well, Let you live in that
kind of squalor we let you get exposed to um
diseases and illnesses and things like that. Uh, we let
you live in an area infested with with rats and
feces and all those things that that kind of problem,
you know, presents to a community. And and and yet
(19:53):
out the other side of our mouth, we're talking all
these great wonderful things we're gonna do. And oh, by
the way, send us more money so we can fix
this problem that actually we've created. Yeah, we have. We
have gone a long way to destroy some of these
major cities in this country. Um. I think Dave's been
up to San Francisco in the recent past, and it's
(20:16):
like shocking to hear the stories, and I hear them
from other people who have been there. But you know,
I'm a big Kings fan, and I go downtown frequently still,
and you know, you don't want to get too far
off the main drags there because you're looking around and
you're saying, boy, you know, I'm allowed to pack a gun,
(20:36):
but a lot of these poor people here they have
no chance as somebody jumps them. Yeah, I was just
in downtown Los Angeles this weekend. I went to the
bookstore down there and skid Role. You know, there was
this point of demarcation, as you know that one in
one street over was was bad, and then over it
wasn't that bad. On the other side it was kind
(20:57):
of nice downtown. Skid Rose moved. All were a couple
of blocks. Now it's no longer just in that that
one corridor, and no one seems to want to address that.
Like the homeless problem, it's even worse, obviously because of
what's happened now with people losing their jobs. But everyone's
concerned about other things, but the homeless it just keeps
they keeps piling up. What's it gonna take for politicians
(21:20):
to actually do something about that? And it's something we
look at it this way. If your coach kept presenting
you with a football team that was three and thirteen
year after year, what's it gonna take. It takes a change.
You know, we're gonna have to change out politicians. People
(21:41):
are going to have to recognize that you can't keep
voting the same types of people in or the same
people in, because you're going to continue to get this
kind of nonsense. It's it's the definition of insanity, isn't it. Yeah,
it's it is is wild. What's been going on with
the on this problem? That's great though, you even you
(22:02):
are allowed to carry a weapon. When you go to downtown,
you kind of look around a little bit're like, wait
a minute, what's going on around here? This is not
This is not where I want to be. If you
go go a block over. Well, you know, we're really
concerned about health issues right now, so much so that
we have this interest in locking everything down. Uh, but
what are we not concerned with the health of those
(22:24):
thousands of people in the streets that are living on
top of each other in destitute conditions. Yeah, we act
like we're paralyzed and we have no ideas on how
to deal with them, and then we ask for more money,
and then pretty soon there's billions of dollars and you
look around and the problem has grown. So, you know,
there comes a point where you say stop. You know,
(22:45):
let's look at this again from the beginning and let's
figure out ways to fix this. We need solutions. We
don't need to keep adding to the problem. Yeah, absolutely
correct here, and so you know, going going forward, you know,
what do you You say you need new politicians, but
it's like the same type of people run for these offices.
(23:05):
So what's it going to take to get some new
blood politically to actually do something well? I think it
takes a significant frustration level in the electorate. Um. So
now we're watching this unfold as it relates to COVID
nineteen and the countermeasures that are being taken in some
(23:26):
um cities, counties, and states. We're in a position to
see what's going on and learn um those various actions
by elected officials across the nation, and we can make
judgments is to how they're handling handling themselves and how
they want to attack the problem. And what's happened now
(23:49):
across the country is there is a sizable percentage of
the population that has now come to the conclusion that
elected officials, many of them, are not to be trusted
and that their judgments are faulty. Um, that they say
one thing, but they don't believe it, or they don't
act like they believe what they're saying. Uh. They impose
(24:10):
certain rules and regulations and yet they ignore them themselves.
And the population has had enough, And I think that's
going to continue to grow, and the frustration is going
to continue to grow even though we're facing this health crisis. UM,
the frustration with leadership is um going to continue to grow,
and that's going to result in some further changes down
(24:32):
the road. So I saw a great video I think
it was from San Bernardino, the police, the guy running
the police out there, who pushed back on Gavin Newsom
here in California trying to you know, shut down businesses
as you referred to the lockdown which is really just
wild here in California right now, with businesses being restaurants
(24:53):
being forced to close, barbershops, all that stuff. And he
brought up a great point though about how in California
and it's in other states, these politicians are using the police,
their weaponizing the police to fight their battles with mom
and pop businesses. You talked to a lot of people
still in law enforcement. What what's been the general reaction
(25:13):
from from the people you deal with here about politicians
demanding you go in and you know, lockdown and arrest
people running a pizza shop. Well, I think, uh, there's
frustration at every level of of the community, and that
would include your public servants. UM. So I think the
(25:37):
address your discussing is a speech by I think the
Riverside County sheriff. There's about five sheriffs that have taken
some pretty strong positions in in the state. You know,
the state's divided, I think into fifty eight counties, and
the sheriffs are constitutionally um protect the position. And it
(26:00):
is one of the first things that we did when
California's constitution was was put together and passed. It was
it designates who the offices are and how the county
should be run. The sheriff is is certainly one of them.
And as some sheriffs may tell you, uh, the sheriff
may have more votes than the than any of the
(26:22):
members of the board of supervisors. So it's kind of
interesting when you watch some of the nonsense that's gone
on in Los Angeles with the power plays back and
forth between the sheriff and the county supervisors, and um,
you know, the sheriff's have said, wait a minute. I mean,
I mean, look back and objectively look at that, and
(26:43):
let me considered. I have a real responsibility. I swear
an oath to the constitution also, and and in that
oath I have to be sensitive to all of these issues.
And I'm not going to, um, I'm not going to
be oppressive and abusive to to a largely peaceful and
responsible community. And I'm not going to be used um
(27:08):
by some elected officials when they have no substantiated reason
for the actions that they're taking. On one hand, they
say it's about the science, except when you want to
see the science, the science doesn't support their views. And
then when you find them going out and doing the
opposite of what they're demanding the public do. Uh, not
(27:30):
only is there frustration, but you you're not buying it.
And and it's not just the elected officials. Are the
elected sheriffs that feel that way? That would be pervasive
in the ranks. Um, you don't want to be used
as a sheriff step at here as a police officer, Uh,
to be a tool of somebody who's doing something that
you believe is inappropriate and perhaps even unconstitutional. Yeah. And
(27:55):
I have noticed that the phrase, and we've talked about
on the podcast with your son here, that the out
of an abundance of caution. Like I feel like these politicians,
if they use that line, they think they can get
away with anything. Uh. And and common sense. That's the
thing that's lacking. You know, common sense is not common
right now. But you look at around the country in
(28:16):
certain states have opened up a lot more compared to California,
and they don't have the problems that California has. And
yet as you reference, you call the politicians out on
this and they just do a tap dance, and so
it just it's just going to continue on and on.
But uh, if you were, if you were in charge,
(28:36):
obviously we don't know all the data and all that
we know a lot of it on the internet. But
what do you think the proper way to handle what's
been going on here with this public health situation with
the COVID. Uh, if if you were in charge, what
do you think the proper way to handle it would be? Well, so,
so remember how we generally deal with a responsible group
(28:58):
of people. You can start with chill run And what
is our priority? If I was to tell you, what's
one of the very most important things we do when
we're raising children. You want to educate children. Certainly, you
want to keep them healthy and safe, um, but we
want to educate them. Education is a top priority. Police
departments and sheriff's departments. We come in after everything else
(29:20):
seems to have failed, and we're supposed to fix things.
We're supposed to neutralize the threats, the problems, and deal
with the the event itself. But the best way to
do it is to prevent problems from happening. And so therefore,
we want a robust educational system uh to take care
of how we nurture and raise our children. Well, the
(29:42):
same thing about education goes for adults. Um. We we
should have launched a major educational effort that goes from
the top of our state all the way through to
the local community and make sure that we provide the
best and most consistent unless they consistent twice uh. Information
(30:05):
out there. People don't want to get exposed to this disease.
People don't want to die. People want to live a
healthy life. People believe in the constitution. Uh, they can
express their free will, but they want to live. And
when we start trying to treat them like cattle and
heard them in different directions, UH, they've gotten to the
(30:26):
point where they're they're not gonna be hearded. Um. So
the best approach is always education. The best approach is
always too patiently try to explain and get them to
understand and follow without having to force and not use
coercive force of police and sheriffs departments. Yeah, and we've
(30:47):
seen as I said, you know, Florida they have had
a more hands off approach, for example, and they don't
have the problems that California is now. I also want
to talk in this political climate that we're in, Chief,
I love the fact that you, because of your your
years and law enforcement from what I understand, from what
your son tells me, and I've heard through the grapevine,
(31:09):
you have great relationships with people who you completely disagree with.
You referred to. We talked about George Gascon earlier, the
district attorney in l A who you are completely, uh,
the opposite of as far as his some of his
political beliefs. But but you get along with these guys.
We live in a world right now where if you
disagree politically, you you cannot be friends like you know,
(31:32):
I'm I'm more like you where I have friends that
are you know, I disagree with politically. But uh, you know,
how did we get to this point where now if
you if you're not in lockstep, you're done. Yeah, Yeah,
there's there's no question, and it's like, um, and we
can talk politics here. We have so polarized our political
(31:54):
environment here that it it's now pervasive throughout life in
the entire tree. Now you line up whether you're to
the left or to the right of center, and we
can't find the middle ground anymore. Used to be the
measure of UM. Successful politician was figuring out a way
to find win win propositions, meeting somewhere in the in
(32:18):
the middle. Um And. And that's the way you accomplish
things by meeting and working with each other. And we're
not doing that. We seem to have gotten to the
point where the political parties and the nature of the
parties and their philosophies supersedes the commitment to the United
(32:39):
States itself, to the Constitution and to the people of
the United States. UM. And it's a selfish and absolutely
selfish way to look at politics, to think of you
and your party first and not think of the American
public in adherence to the Constitution and what's best for
the United States. And that's where we are. And until
(33:00):
we can find elective officials that are willing to do that,
we're going to be in a world to hurt and
guess who's going to take advantage of it. I mean,
we're reading about it the last couple of days. There
are people constantly probing, constantly looking for a way to
weaken the nature of the United States. The rule of
law here has been undermined now for many years, and
(33:23):
so there are people who are they don't have the
best interests of the people the United States in mind,
political power and political power on the international stage as
a priority for a lot of people and a lot
of organizations, and frankly, those of us on this call,
we really don't count for much. How much of this
has to do us horn ourselves out to the international community,
(33:48):
whether it's China, Russia, the UK, Germany, whatever it may be.
Because we had this conversation off the air, but the
Chinese have systematically the infiltrated every area of our nation,
whether it's politically, government, pharmaceuticals and medicine, academics, like they've
(34:12):
gone through and have taken shots at us and have
you know, taken a little skin off the off the body.
We don't even know where we're compromised. That's how bad
it is. Um. I I remember pointing out a little
over a year maybe eighteen months ago to a good
friend of mine. UM the fact that we seem to
(34:32):
be arresting professors across the country UM at some of
our major universities for their involvement with the Communist Chinese
Party UH activities. And and then eventually we learn of
the gazillions of dollars that are being pumped into these
universities donations. Sometimes we're not even they're not even reported,
(34:57):
but but we're talking about billions of dollars that have
been funneled into the country. And there's a reason for that. UH,
there's a reason that you know, they're contacting local mayors
and trying to select people who have shall we stay
ambition and that may one day become Congress people and
(35:18):
may find themselves on the Intelligence Committee. There's a reason
for all of that that doesn't have by accident. These
are people that are help bent on doing what they
think is in their interests. And we we seem to
be naive, We seem to have our head in the sands,
so to speak, not to be aware of this stuff,
or we're not being educated well enough by the responsible
(35:40):
organizations in our government to be aware of this. UM
we we we we only have to look at what
going what is going on in the university uh systems
that to find out how threatening this is because our
young people are getting hit with things that lay eater
on translate into problems for our way of life. You know,
(36:04):
we we believe we have a great way of life.
We believe this is a great country, and there are
people outside of the country that believe we are a
major threat to the rest of the of the world.
You know, I think we all want to get to
the Star Trek universe at some point where we all
get along and all work together, et cetera. But across
(36:25):
the globe we've demonstrated we continue to demonstrate we're not
ready to do that yet. And those people that think
we can just flip the switch and do it are
are are really causing problems on the international stage, and
they're certainly causing problems in this country. So do you
think the root is money? I think money is a
means by which people can achieve the ideology. So they know, um,
(36:51):
those that have money to burn, so to speak, No,
that money can be used to accomplish what their goal is.
UM value money. It's it's a cornerstone of our capitalistic system. Um,
we measure success that way. We like the toys, we
like to buy things and own things, and we like
(37:13):
to be viewed as uh significantly successful, etcetera. So money
becomes a natural uh tool to be used against us.
And it is so when we have positions like Eric
Swalwell a couple of days ago and Diane Feinstein's aid
from I think a year or two ago, that have
(37:35):
been caught or found to be compromised or at working
for a foreign intelligence agency or a government. What do
you recommend happens to those individuals here that are are
actually sitting in a position of power politically. Well, there's
a question of what the investigations might tell you if
you do an honest investigation. UM, it shouldn't be surprising
(37:57):
to anyone that experts know how to work us. You know,
they've spent a lot of time, they've spent years. They
know how to successfully um inject themselves into the political
life of a community or the or the country. And
they can do it in a sophisticated way. And you
might not even know it's happening to you until you
(38:19):
end up in a situation where you're other elbows with somebody.
You're having dinner with somebody, UM, but you don't understand
that there's there's another reason other than the friendship uh
that they have. And I mean we see this in
criminal activities. I mean, I worked undercovering arcotics back in
nineteen seventy one, and you can see it then with
the people that you were interacting with. They're not Communist
(38:42):
spies or agents, etcetera. But they were criminals and they
had a reason for the things that they were doing.
And you know, you you kind of learn when you
get exposed to it. And some people in our country
FBI UM are are intelligence agencies that are far more
sophisticated and understand what we're dealing with. But we're not.
(39:02):
We're not educated at the level we need to be
what the threat is. And I don't think most of
our elected officials are educated enough or insulated from the
kinds of things that can actually cause us grief. And
although I'm not a fan of Eric Swallwell's UM, I
wouldn't be the I wouldn't be one to immediately assume
(39:25):
that he was an agent UM for the Communist Chinese.
I wouldn't say that at all. He could he could
clearly and easily just be a duke um and not
know any better. Uh, you know, which is remarkable if
you listen to some of the things that he said
over the last four years. So um, but I think
(39:46):
I think we have to realize there are people that
are twenty four seven. They are looking to damage the
United States and to subvert our government, whereas we may
and not even be thinking about those things throughout the
course of our days. One of the ways that they
(40:07):
have gone out for us is, I think we can
all agree with this is the way that the news
has been published to the masses, whether it's left leaning
or right leaning. Is there a fix for that? Well,
that's that's really problematic when we get into it. So
you know, I fashioned myself a little bit of an
(40:29):
expert in dealing with the news media. I also recognize
that rather than seeing a large conspiracy here, we have
to understand who we're dealing with. His individuals and they
have some common traits, um, but they it's the way
they look at themselves and who they are, and it's
(40:49):
what their personal belief system is that too frequently gets
in the way of news and it becomes opinion. And
it also then provides a slant to the way stories carried, etcetera.
Now that's separate and apart from what the the um
the actual agencies that hire the reporters and put them
(41:10):
on the air or publish their stories. That's that's a
completely different issue, because again there's an ideology at the
top of those organizations, whether it be The New York Times,
watching the Post, ABC News, NBC, there are bosses in
control that are guiding and directing what is going on below,
and we've seen some examples recently with CNN. So you know,
(41:33):
if you get this desire to unify on on a
purpose to be accomplished, and you have the power of
your organization to advance that, then you can be pretty
destructive to the extent that you can influence the people
that follow you. But when you have so many of
(41:53):
them that philosophically agree on something, the question then becomes
is the public well served? I happen to believe that
in a democracy, UM, we all need as much objective
information as we can get so that we can make
good decisions. Good decisions on who we elect office is
(42:14):
what we're talking about here. So I'd like to know
the truth about all of these candidates. And the question
is am I getting it or am I getting only
half of the story? Which is the half of the
story that I'm allowed to hear. Uh So, I want
a free press and I want an objective press, and
I want to hear both sides of the stories. We're
not a country that says, okay, we have this. These
(42:37):
are the left newspapers and these are the right newspapers, etcetera.
We have our our papers who want to tell us
that they're telling us the truth. Our agencies on television
want to tell us that they're telling us the truth.
But the question is are they really on one side
of the political spectrum. I'm gonna pivot real quick, and
uh Ben can jump in on this because I know
(43:00):
you'll have some fun with it. Obviously, the O J stuff,
that's one thing. The Michael Jackson cases are another. But
the North Hollywood shootout, how would you have handled that
if you were in charge? Well, it's a tactical situation
once it starts going down. They so they effectively did
(43:21):
what they should have done. Um, you know the first units,
and I happen to know one of the officers in
the first unit that was there when you get when
you get to that kind of a situation, you try
to secure the perimeter. You bring in all the resources
that you needed. They did all of that stuff, but
we had been in a situation where essentially we had
(43:44):
shotguns in side arms, and then you're dealing with people
that are fully equipped for war, not only with body
armor but the types of weapons that they had. So
when you have automatic weapons, you have armor piercing rounds
and things like that, you're ready to see. You know,
you're a small infantry company and and so you know,
I think we ended up having ten or eleven officers
(44:06):
wounded in that two of them seriously, um you know,
shot through the femur and absolutely vaporized like four inches
of bone in the femer. I think for both of them, UM,
terrible situations. Yet we didn't lose anyone, but easily could
have lost them. And so um, they did what they
(44:27):
needed to do, and eventually one was killed. He was
shot simultaneously through the spinal cord at the same time
he pulled the trigger and killed himself. So both of
those UM bullets ended his life. And then the second
one ended up down the street, and three or three
of the guys that used to work at SLAT when
(44:47):
when I was at metro Um, they were the people
that ended up confronting him and he lost that firefight
and that that ended it. But that was you know,
as that thing unfold it's easy to go back and say, well,
this is what we had and this is the best
way to have approached at et cetera. But that's not
how the real world works. The real world worked exactly
(45:10):
the way you saw it on TV and live action.
Is this started unfolding before your eyes, and it's a
dynamic situation that everybody's trying to respond to and trying
to make good decisions, trying not to get themselves killed
along the way, and not trying to protect the community.
Pretty interesting case. Yeah, and chief when you're when you're
out and about, right when you're you're out and about,
(45:32):
is there a day in normal times when someone doesn't
bring up the O J case to you? Well, you know,
I just I did something a few months ago that
was just not television in October. It was a British
production company. And I tell people that's a that's a
case that will never go away because you'll remember at
(45:53):
the time it happened the way, uh it impacted the country,
and it's like, uh, there were so many different hooks
that this had into the community. People that were into sports,
people that were into movies and television, people that were
into advertising and marketing, people that cared about society, the
(46:16):
racial issue and those angles. All those things created a
following that made that one of those once in a
century types of stories that just gathered enormous interests. I
run into people to this day and it'll it'll come
up um where people want to talk about it and
I want to talk about it um as one of
(46:38):
those moments in their lives where they remember every detail
about it. I talked to somebody the other day it
was like, yeah, I followed it religiously, all of it.
It's really yeah. I mean I find those people all
the time where they find uh interesting perspectives. Um. Because
it was very dramatic. My part time job for of
(47:00):
yusually used to reach scripts at night in the middle
of the night to be rooting scripts for Steven Bocco,
whether it's Hill Street Blues or one of the other programs.
But uh so I got to know some of the
producers and directors and a few of the actors, but
it was. It was interesting in dealing with some of
them in the years after the Simpson case. They would
(47:20):
tell me that, hey, this is this is what I
do for a living. I do drama. You know, I'm
thinking of these things. And he said that day I
thinking of One director in particularly said that day I
spent the whole day sitting in my bed at Big Sir,
watching what happened in this thing, this event, and watching
you on television and the two news conferences. He said,
(47:42):
I'll never forget it. It was one of those seminal
moments in my you know, life in this country. He said,
it just made that much of an impression on me. Well,
it did. It made that much of oppression on people. Uh,
it turns out around the globe. You know. A couple
of years ago, I'm down on Argentina with one of
the United States national teams and I'm in a meeting
(48:04):
with their Olympic Committee people. And the guy who spoke
in just leaked over and he said, the guys are
talking about Jenny said, what do you mean they're talking
about me? We're down here to talk about the sport.
He said, They're all talking about you because they all
watched you and the Simpson thing. And I'm thinking, these
guys are in buenas aries and they're talking about watching
the Simpson thing. It's like craziness. But that's what happened.
(48:25):
It was it was everywhere, and it was of great
interest for a number of different reasons. And No, I
don't expect it will go away for a while. I mean,
they're teaching as a result of this thing. There are
a lot of people that just want to They remembered
so clearly, and there was so much of a following
and there's there's so much media about it that, um,
(48:45):
I don't expect it's going to go away for decades now.
Early on, Like, I know you've been asked a million times,
but when you first found out about this and you
realized that o J could be tied to it, Like,
what was the reaction among the department there, the people
around you when you found out, oh my god, this
could be you know, a legendary figure like oh J
(49:07):
could be involved in something like this. Well, it kind
of goes back to that Monday morning. I got into
the office between eight and nine o'clock as I'm as
I usually do, and uh I was the commander at
the time, and working with with me was Lieutenant John Duncan,
who handled a lot of the press and um I
would have him brief me every morning on anything that
(49:29):
occurred overnight or over the weekends. And John came in
and uh I said, anything going on over the weekend?
He said, not really, it was really quiet. He said,
although we did have a double homicide in Brentwood, said John,
a double homicide in Brentwood. We don't even get murders
in Brentwood. When you talking about double homicide, what's the story?
And he says, uh, O J. Simpson's ex wife. And
(49:52):
I said, quote O. J. Simpson's ex wife. Where is O. J. Simpson?
And he told me, which is interesting because you know
a lot of people had that rush to judgment charge
they wanted to make against the l a p D.
But he said this, He said, I talked to the
guys from Robbert Homicide and they said he didn't have
(50:12):
any to do with it. He's in Chicago. Well, that
was early information. So often the first information you get
is not totally accurate. That's why you investigate things and
it takes time. But the first briefing I received. I
asked that question specifically, and his answer was, now, he
didn't have anything to do with it. The guys say
(50:32):
he's in Chicago. Then later on that day, you know,
he returns, and then there's an interview, and then we're
watching this unfold. I'm getting phone calls from particularly from
UM New York and Miami, talking about the O J.
Simpson I didn't know. Um A lot of us grew
(50:53):
up here that we're big U c l A Basketball
fans because we all loved John Wooden and he was
highly successful. And then we were also big USC football
fans because John McKay was fantastic and really fun to
follow and had great football teams. And then we had
O J. Simpson who was an incredible running back. And UM,
(51:15):
so we were big fans. And so as the story
starts unfold over a few days, it starts looking like, oh,
he he probably did too. O J. Simpson did this,
and he had people shaking her head. They just couldn't
believe it. And and it's in a lot of ways,
were like the general public, which is we watch people
(51:35):
on television and we think we know them. We watched
interviews after they've been successful you know, they scored the
winning touchdown whatever, and they seem likable and warm and fuzzy. Uh.
They do a broadcast or they're in a TV program
or a movie, and we like them and follow them,
and we know the successes of their life, and we
feel we know these people. And that's always a problem
(51:58):
for prosecutors when they deal with you know, V I. P.
S Um, somebody with a high profile, because people think
they know them. Well, we as we found out, we
didn't know O. J. Simpson. Um. Eventually we found out
plenty about O. J. Simpson and so it was it
was surprising, it was disappointing. And uh and yet have
(52:22):
you been around a while, you understand that, Uh, these
things do happen. It happened in this case, tragic case,
and the one thing that seems to get lost. But
I always make sure I bring it up as we've
got to think of those two young people who didn't
deserve to die, and they certainly didn't deserve to die
like that. Absolutely, what what do you think happened to
(52:46):
the murder weapon? Well, he had apple time to get
rid of it. Um. You know, there's plenty of speculation
on that. I don't have any speculations that there was
somebody else involved. Um, I believe that, you know, not
only did he do it, but he's probably responsible for
(53:08):
whatever happened with it. Um. And it's gone. And so
you know, you remember this story a couple of years
ago over they thought they found the potential knife and
it didn't turn out to be etcetera. UM. A lot
of a lot of cases you're short on um, on evidence,
you're short on eyewitnesses, you're short on a lot of
(53:30):
things that you think you need. But the O. J.
Simpson case, yeah, lacking lacking the knife, but the O. J.
Simpson case had tremendous amount of evidence to the extent
that you there should be no doubt in anyone's mind,
and a lot of people, UM, I really don't have
any doubt that he did it. Yeah, when you chief,
(53:51):
when you see O J now on Twitter golfing in
Vegas and all that, and you saw the photos and
all the evidence in that case goes through your mind
when you know, I went to jail for a while
for a crime in Nevada, but he's seems to be
living living a pretty good life right now. Yeah, Well,
I think back to what I heard early on, actually
(54:12):
before I became a police officer. I mean, I didn't
grow up wanting to be a police officer. And I
ended up uh going to l A. Harvard College, one
of our local community colleges here in Los Angeles, and
so Harvard College down here right off the Harbor Freeway
in Wilmington's and I took some police science classes. That boy,
(54:32):
I was hooked in, I mean immediately hooked. We had
a lieutenant down here that was teaching. The name was
Rudy da Leone. He eventually retired as a captain from
our Harlembeck uh station. And Rudy was like the pied
piper of l A p D. I don't know how
many hundreds of us ended up joining the l A
p D over all the years that he taught at
(54:53):
Harvard College. But one of the things that we've always
heard about, and you hear it expressed in law school
and here to express all the time and philosophy courses, etcetera.
We'd rather a hundred guilty people get released than put
an innocent person in jail or even worse, you know,
have them executed. That it's the way the system works.
(55:16):
You have to believe that we have a great system
of jurisprudence here. You have to believe in the jury system, um,
And it's not going to be perfect. And so some
some some bad guys are gonna walk away. They're gonna
take their chances with the jury, and the jury is
going to come back and say, we're just not convinced enough.
(55:37):
They may go artificially in their minds from beyond a
reasonable doubt, too, beyond any doubt, and they're gonna say,
we can't convict you, and you go out the door.
And if you believe in the system, and all of
these law enforcement officers that swear an oath to do
the best they can for the community and believe in
(55:58):
the system, they shake their head. You know, I watched
in the yearly seventies, I think in consecutive years where
guys that had murdered l A police officers um walked
out of court because juries had come loose, and it
was just like stunning, UM. But you have to recognize
(56:18):
that it happens. And celebrities do get a break sometimes
from the fact that the community thinks they know them
and jurors are apt to give them more leeway than
someone else and so it's a little bit of frustration
and you shake your head. Like I said, I kind
of think of the poor victims, um this, this guy.
(56:39):
Eventually we have to hope he pays the price. He'll
answer to somebody far more powerful than us, but hopefully
he'll be held accountable for it. But it's, um yeah,
it's a it's a frustrating thing. Absolutely, listen, Chief, thank you.
I know when this is all we all got to
get together and hang out like like you real human beings.
(57:00):
You know by any time that it's always a pleasure
to uh spend time with you. And obviously I see
Dave all the time, but you know, it's good to
talk to the both of you. Enjoyed it. Be sure
to catch live editions of The Ben Meller Show weekdays
at two am Eastern eleven pm Pacific.
Be sure to catch live editions of The Ben Maller
Show weekdays at two a m. Eastern eleven p m. Pacific.
If you thought more hours a day, minutes a week
was enough, think again. He's the last remnants of the
old Republic, the sole fashion of fairness. He treats crackheads
in the ghetto cutter the same as the rich pill
(00:21):
poppers in the penthouse, to clearing house of hot takes,
break free for something specialitur with Ben Maller starts right
now that it does. We are in the air everywhere
eight days a week because four hours are not enough.
(00:42):
We thank you for finding the podcast. We thank you
for supporting the podcast. We started this, we did it
one day a week, and then the numbers were good,
so we kept doing it. Now it's it's Friday, Saturday,
and Sunday. This is our Friday podcast, a spinoff of
the Overnight radio show. But we can go third rail
on my end. We can hit the third rail on
(01:04):
this because you know, it's just a podcast. We can
talk about things that we don't normally talk about on
the radio show, which is just hardcore sports, and this
is a in theory a sports podcast. But we delve
into some other issues in real life, and back again
from west of the four oh five David gascon making
(01:24):
his way there. He is there, I am loud and proud.
Um is this is this an uncomfortable day for you?
Because if you've downloaded the podcast, chances are you know
who we're gonna have a conversation with a so so David.
That's assuming that most of the people can read the description. Wow,
(01:46):
I mean already. I mean we're not even a minute
in the print. The prints fine. So do you often
listen to or do you often read the description when
you click on a podcast, because that sure it's held out.
That's a good question. I well, I subscribe to some
but interview podcast. Yeah, like I I listened like Joe Rogan.
(02:10):
Sometimes I'll I don't listen to all. I actually don't
listen to that often. But if I'm looking for some
audio content, I want to hear an interview Ali or
who's Rogan got on? And then if it's someone the
description is good and it kind of gets me going,
I'll listen. If it's someone I've never heard of in
the description sucks, I'm not gonna listen fair enough. So,
(02:31):
but yeah, but generally, Yeah, the podcast I subscribed to,
you know, they're Automa. They're on my phone. I just
listened to them and when I'm wandering around doing my
sojourn around around town here. But yeah, we're gonna have today. Uh.
The chief for those that don't know, Uh, David's father
was a big cohuna at the l a p D
(02:52):
and and his most famous for the the time with
the O. J. Simpson case. He was the spokesperson for
the l A P. He was out in front on
that and he was on television globally and what he
spent over thirty years right with the Los Angeles Police
Department years in the department, man and and how wild
is this though? He was he was known worldwide for
(03:15):
what went down O J. And there was no social
media at the time. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, do
you think about what it would have been like now?
And it but it was. I don't think it would
be much different because you could not get bigger than
the O. J. Simpson case. I mean, even with social
media it made it would have made it a little different,
(03:36):
But I don't know because and the reason why I
bring that up is because of what's gone on recently
with the whole election scandal, is that you have people
that are making these you have these affidavits that are
that are signed by these individuals and sworn testimony, and
you have news agencies out there right now either one
docks in these people or two resurface seeing their past
(04:01):
life like what they've done in their teenage years and
the early early twenties, and they basically try to out
these people. And I think more so now than ever,
is that if you had police officers that were involved
in this investigation and or the d a's office, I
think you'd have more agencies looking to these individuals and
(04:22):
try to discredit them if they felt like O. J
was in the right not in the wrong. So the
media spin what is easier to spin stuff in the
age of social media, because if you're on the right
side of big tech, you don't get censored. If you're
on the other side of big tech, you get censors.
So it's hard to get your message out because so
(04:42):
many people there's a whole different You're you're opening up
Pandora's box because that's a whole different conversation which we've had.
We've had that that people take social media way too seriously.
And it's the matrix. It's it's not really on that.
But we're getting sidetracked here. But the the o J.
If you're a young person and you're you weren't around
for o J. I was just in the early part
(05:04):
of my career when the trial was going on. I
remember I was still in college when the murder happened.
And then I got out and I started working in
San Diego and I was covering the Dodgers in the
in l A. And I remember I was living in
Orange County. I was driving into l A. And I
drive in that one on one corridor through downtown and
they had put up every parking lot right across next
(05:24):
to the and I said every There was two massive
parking lots right near the one on one when you
make the the the interchange with the the one with
the one tent like you know l A Freeways if
you're not in l A. But anyway, so I'm driving
there and they put up these giants, and I mean
they were like three or four stories of um, what's
what's the term I'm looking for? You know, those things
(05:45):
like painters stand on they're kind of like fake fake
I'm trying to I don't know what the term for
that is. But they so they could have the shot
of downtown behind them. Yeah you know that, yeah, so,
and and they were international media. It was wild a
panoramic view, right, yeah, exactly wanted the panoracs, so they
put up like planks of wood and so that the
reporters could stand and so behind them you saw the
(06:08):
skyline of l A. And they were reporting on O
J and UM. And I remember going to cover Dodging
games and during the trial part of it, and it
was people. There was a buzz in the crowd. This
was in the days without social media, and there were
I remember one night the Dodgers, I think they were
in the playoffs, uh, either playing Atlanta or Cincinnati, and
(06:28):
a couple of guys showed up. They were they had
been on the Tonight Show. They were Judge Edo and
personators and the crowd David. The crowd went wild. They
everyone wanted to be and wanted to be around these
two knuckleheads and were dressed like Judge Edo, and uh,
it was pretty It was just it was crazy and
your your dad and just a central figure in that.
So I'm excited to talking. We're gonna get to that.
(06:50):
We have to start with other stuff. They'll guess, gone, right,
we have to start with all this stuff before we
get to the meet with the Chief. Yes, yeah, alright,
So I think it's it's it's ideal with Mr West
of the four oh five all the time. Uh so,
why don't we welcome in the chief here, David gascon Man,
who was in the l APD for thirty two years.
And I get to work with his son, your son
(07:11):
here on a weekly basis. So when you found out
your child was going to become a sportscaster, did you
consider holding some kind of intervention? Uh not, in the
least you did not, Now, Uh why not? Because sportscasting,
if you were to rank like careers, sportscasting is kind
(07:32):
of on the back the backside of that. Well actually no,
you know, oh look, he could be a politicians would
be worse, that would Yeah? And and who taught your
son how to park? His mother? Have you seen some
(07:58):
of the photo photograp chief? Have you seen? Because uh,
now I have. I don't go in right now because
of what's been going on this year. But when I
when I go into the studio and I'd park and
on nights your son was working there. Uh, he would
park in every kind of direction imaginable rather than in
the actual space. And I have photographic proof that this
(08:20):
happened multiple occasions. And and I blame you. Oh no,
not me, not me. I'm one of those guys that says,
shalt not but they would just say, look, details, details. Now,
(08:42):
I'm here to take the point, you know, I'm here
to get involved in the important market to car Nah. Well,
I'm happy to talk to you because I I support
law enforced, my wife's and one operator. It's been a
not a good year here chief for the you know,
people taking shots at the least and all that. And
I guess we get serious now, And uh, you're you
(09:05):
haven't had a career in law enforcement. When you sit
back and look at what's been going on here with
the media and open season on local police departments, like
what what from your perspective, Like give me your thoughts
on on how this has all gone down this last
year or so. Well, I think it's disgusting, somewhat predictable
(09:27):
and been there and done that. UM life was very
chaotic in the early seventies, UM due to a variety
of reasons, not the least of which was the Vietnam War. UM.
But we also had many many UM anti government organizations
(09:49):
that we're at work across the nation, and so we've
dealt with UM some very extreme violent organizations and uh,
it was it was really ugly. So to see it
come back is not a surprise. To see it so
politicized is not a surprise. That's more sophisticated now, But
(10:11):
a lot of things going on are more sophisticated, um,
you know, to the extent that we're able to follow
some of these things that are not suppressed or not
handling the mainstream media. There's some really problematic things happening
now here in the country and really going on around
the world. So for for those that here defund the police,
(10:33):
like what are what are the the actual real world
ramifications of that, Like you you spent your had a
great run of the l a p D. You were,
you know, one of the big shots there. But what
what does it actually mean Because we've actually seen in
some cities, as you know, they do you have defunded
the police. They have taken a good amount of money
away from law enforcement. So when they do that, that
(10:56):
in certain places, like what what happens is ares fighting crime, Well,
when you have less officers out there, less visibility, then um,
it is extremely counterproductive. And the result is you start
stacking up dead bodies and crime goes crazy, which is
(11:16):
what you see across the nation right now. Violence is extreme. Look,
we're only as good as the willingness of the community
to follow the law. And when the percentage of people
who don't follow the laws increases, for whatever the cause,
then they wreak havoc on the rest of the general population.
So if you get a percentage that starts getting higher
(11:39):
and higher, than you get civil and rest, and you
get crime, and you get all that violence out there.
And who who's going to look out for those poor people? Uh?
The only people traditionally that do look out for them
or your uniform police officers. And and that's the way
it's been, and it's been that way for or you know,
(12:02):
probably a hundred and fifty years here easily at least,
since there's been a need for a police department. You
have to go back to the basics. Why do we
have a police department? Because we have a need for them,
all right, So let's go back here to the summer
Chief And and I have that image the video in
my head still that was bouncing around social media in
l A. Here somewhere in l a where the camera
(12:23):
guy was walking down the street and there were there
were burned out police cars on like both sides of it.
It looked like a war zone. How it was not
just Los Angeles, It's happened a lot of places. But
how does that, How is that allowed to happen? How
how how are are these people that are allowed to
run around and burn police cars? It was just seemed
insane to me. Well it is. It's actually an attack
(12:46):
on um civilized society. So it's an attack on the taxpayers.
It's a it's a I mean those things cost money, obviously,
it's it's uh. It's a significant attack on a piece
of the community. And of course it wasn't just the
police cars. Um. There were victims that owned UM small
(13:08):
businesses along all of those quarters that you know, their
businesses were damaged, they were alloted, they were burned out.
Many of them UM members of the minority community that
have finally gotten a leg up and and have proven
to be successful after many years of hard work, and
what did we do? Um we we kind of um
(13:31):
burn them down to the ground and threw them out
of their opportunities for a bright future. And you've got
to ask yourself the question, who would do such things
and for what reason? Obviously, if you're trying to be
constructive to make things better, uh, and there are certain
things we can all agree to, then how does that
advance the course of discussion to torch police cars and
(13:56):
and burn people out of their livelihoods? It doesn't. Well, yeah,
and then the other thing about it too. You know
a lot of the people that were doing that, they
knew who they were, but they just give them, not
even a slap on the wrist. They were they were
like in and out. It was a revolving door. The
prosecutors were not charging them with anything. So it's like
they got a free pass on that, which is also
(14:18):
mind blowing on top of it, like they you know,
they knew who was doing it in some locations, they
caught some of the people and they were not even
punished for it, which is which is just insane to me. Well,
it's it's another issue. Um. So you know how we
generally say don't paint people with a broad brush, And
we certainly would say that when we're talking about, um,
(14:39):
police officers in general, we don't want to paint it
with a broad brush. Um, but you would have to
say that about prosecutors to a lot of the activities
that you see going on under the direct results of
politics and the nature of where politicians are and how
they are influence and what they are trying to accomplish,
(15:03):
what suits their political preferences going forward. And I think
you've seen a lot of that go on in various
parts of the country, and and and that leaves you
somewhat speechless and disappointed. Um, But in a lot of ways,
I'm not. I'm not disappointed that they lived up or
lived down to the expectations I have for some of them.
(15:26):
I think you've seen some of the most gross incompetence
in political leadership in the history of our country during
this year. Yeah. Well, and following that train of thought,
I know when you found out that, I guess you
you know him live A. George Gascon is the new
district attorney in l A. Shares a similar last name
(15:47):
to you, and has much different feelings on how to
treat crime. In fact, the story came out I'm sure
you saw it here. This last week or so, the
new district Attorney in l A announced essentially he's going
to stop prosecutions on non violent crimes including trespassing, disturbing
the police, driving without a license, prostitution, resisting arrest is
(16:11):
on that list. UM, drug possession, criminal threats like all
that stuff is not going to be prosecuted. Uh, for
first time offenders. I believe. I think it's only for
first time offenders. But when you saw that, I mean,
this guy has a reputation. What what was your reaction? Well,
first and foremost, I know George. I've known George for
(16:35):
i'd say most of his career here in Los Angeles,
and I personally like George and I've always gotten along
with him. And when George left the l A p
D and ended up in Mason and then ended up
in San Francisco and on, and I was very much
distressed by um his politics, which I found shocking and disappointing.
(17:00):
And I like George personally, but I pretty much am
on the opposite side of the coin on just about
everything he believes in politically, and so I'm disappointed about it. No,
we haven't spoken and what I speak with him, of
course I would, um, And and do do I believe
that he's wrong in his approach? Yes, I do. And
(17:22):
what I would I be quite vociferous in my views,
You bet, I would be. Um. I think we have
to look at history, and we have a lot of history,
uh to look at in terms of what has proven
to be successful and what has proven to be unsuccessful,
and how to deal with our communities. There's no question
that we need to have a bond with the members
(17:45):
of our community. There's no question that all of us
are opposed to abuses that occur, and none of us
want to see abuses at the hands of police officers.
We can all agree with that, so we have to
be sensitive to that. We have to hire the best people,
train him as properly it is possible, and we have
to hold them accountable. But to watch the nonsense that's
(18:05):
going on as a result of some of these things
is kind of extraordinarily disappointing. Yeah, and it's also just
the quality of life issue with a lot of these things, right,
it's not you know, I say, well, you give people
a second chance. But as as you talked about earlier, Chief,
when you own businesses, and you know, people are disturbing
the peace in front of your business, causing trouble. They're
(18:28):
drunk or whatever, and they're making threats and no one's
gonna be punished for I mean that that affects the
quality of life. I mean I heard stories in San
Francisco of what went on when he was running the
show there, George Gascon in San Francisco, And it sounds
like that's gonna be coming to Los Angeles. But these
are really quality of life things. These you know, these
(18:49):
it seems like you meaningless stuff and the pictures how trespassing.
Who cares? But you know, somebody's trespassing in your property
right And this becomes a problem if it continues over
and over again. We want to espouse that we care
about people and we're sensitive to about people's welfare. And
and then if I were to walk you downtown and
look at skid Row and to realize that we have
(19:11):
probably sixty thousand people living on the streets in this
city in the worst of conditions, Uh, what does that
really say about how we treat humanely those of us
that have problems in the community. If you have a
mental problem, if you have a drug problem, etcetera. How
(19:32):
do we treat you well, Let you live in that
kind of squalor we let you get exposed to um
diseases and illnesses and things like that. Uh, we let
you live in an area infested with with rats and
feces and all those things that that kind of problem,
you know, presents to a community. And and and yet
(19:53):
out the other side of our mouth, we're talking all
these great wonderful things we're gonna do. And oh, by
the way, send us more money so we can fix
this problem that actually we've created. Yeah, we have. We
have gone a long way to destroy some of these
major cities in this country. Um. I think Dave's been
up to San Francisco in the recent past, and it's
(20:16):
like shocking to hear the stories, and I hear them
from other people who have been there. But you know,
I'm a big Kings fan, and I go downtown frequently still,
and you know, you don't want to get too far
off the main drags there because you're looking around and
you're saying, boy, you know, I'm allowed to pack a gun,
(20:36):
but a lot of these poor people here they have
no chance as somebody jumps them. Yeah, I was just
in downtown Los Angeles this weekend. I went to the
bookstore down there and skid Role. You know, there was
this point of demarcation, as you know that one in
one street over was was bad, and then over it
wasn't that bad. On the other side it was kind
(20:57):
of nice downtown. Skid Rose moved. All were a couple
of blocks. Now it's no longer just in that that
one corridor, and no one seems to want to address that.
Like the homeless problem, it's even worse, obviously because of
what's happened now with people losing their jobs. But everyone's
concerned about other things, but the homeless it just keeps
they keeps piling up. What's it gonna take for politicians
(21:20):
to actually do something about that? And it's something we
look at it this way. If your coach kept presenting
you with a football team that was three and thirteen
year after year, what's it gonna take. It takes a change.
You know, we're gonna have to change out politicians. People
(21:41):
are going to have to recognize that you can't keep
voting the same types of people in or the same
people in, because you're going to continue to get this
kind of nonsense. It's it's the definition of insanity, isn't it. Yeah,
it's it is is wild. What's been going on with
the on this problem? That's great though, you even you
(22:02):
are allowed to carry a weapon. When you go to downtown,
you kind of look around a little bit're like, wait
a minute, what's going on around here? This is not
This is not where I want to be. If you
go go a block over. Well, you know, we're really
concerned about health issues right now, so much so that
we have this interest in locking everything down. Uh, but
what are we not concerned with the health of those
(22:24):
thousands of people in the streets that are living on
top of each other in destitute conditions. Yeah, we act
like we're paralyzed and we have no ideas on how
to deal with them, and then we ask for more money,
and then pretty soon there's billions of dollars and you
look around and the problem has grown. So, you know,
there comes a point where you say stop. You know,
(22:45):
let's look at this again from the beginning and let's
figure out ways to fix this. We need solutions. We
don't need to keep adding to the problem. Yeah, absolutely
correct here, and so you know, going going forward, you know,
what do you You say you need new politicians, but
it's like the same type of people run for these offices.
(23:05):
So what's it going to take to get some new
blood politically to actually do something well? I think it
takes a significant frustration level in the electorate. Um. So
now we're watching this unfold as it relates to COVID
nineteen and the countermeasures that are being taken in some
(23:26):
um cities, counties, and states. We're in a position to
see what's going on and learn um those various actions
by elected officials across the nation, and we can make
judgments is to how they're handling handling themselves and how
they want to attack the problem. And what's happened now
(23:49):
across the country is there is a sizable percentage of
the population that has now come to the conclusion that
elected officials, many of them, are not to be trusted
and that their judgments are faulty. Um, that they say
one thing, but they don't believe it, or they don't
act like they believe what they're saying. Uh. They impose
(24:10):
certain rules and regulations and yet they ignore them themselves.
And the population has had enough, And I think that's
going to continue to grow, and the frustration is going
to continue to grow even though we're facing this health crisis. UM,
the frustration with leadership is um going to continue to grow,
and that's going to result in some further changes down
(24:32):
the road. So I saw a great video I think
it was from San Bernardino, the police, the guy running
the police out there, who pushed back on Gavin Newsom
here in California trying to you know, shut down businesses
as you referred to the lockdown which is really just
wild here in California right now, with businesses being restaurants
(24:53):
being forced to close, barbershops, all that stuff. And he
brought up a great point though about how in California
and it's in other states, these politicians are using the police,
their weaponizing the police to fight their battles with mom
and pop businesses. You talked to a lot of people
still in law enforcement. What what's been the general reaction
(25:13):
from from the people you deal with here about politicians
demanding you go in and you know, lockdown and arrest
people running a pizza shop. Well, I think, uh, there's
frustration at every level of of the community, and that
would include your public servants. UM. So I think the
(25:37):
address your discussing is a speech by I think the
Riverside County sheriff. There's about five sheriffs that have taken
some pretty strong positions in in the state. You know,
the state's divided, I think into fifty eight counties, and
the sheriffs are constitutionally um protect the position. And it
(26:00):
is one of the first things that we did when
California's constitution was was put together and passed. It was
it designates who the offices are and how the county
should be run. The sheriff is is certainly one of them.
And as some sheriffs may tell you, uh, the sheriff
may have more votes than the than any of the
(26:22):
members of the board of supervisors. So it's kind of
interesting when you watch some of the nonsense that's gone
on in Los Angeles with the power plays back and
forth between the sheriff and the county supervisors, and um,
you know, the sheriff's have said, wait a minute. I mean,
I mean, look back and objectively look at that, and
(26:43):
let me considered. I have a real responsibility. I swear
an oath to the constitution also, and and in that
oath I have to be sensitive to all of these issues.
And I'm not going to, um, I'm not going to
be oppressive and abusive to to a largely peaceful and
responsible community. And I'm not going to be used um
(27:08):
by some elected officials when they have no substantiated reason
for the actions that they're taking. On one hand, they
say it's about the science, except when you want to
see the science, the science doesn't support their views. And
then when you find them going out and doing the
opposite of what they're demanding the public do. Uh, not
(27:30):
only is there frustration, but you you're not buying it.
And and it's not just the elected officials. Are the
elected sheriffs that feel that way? That would be pervasive
in the ranks. Um, you don't want to be used
as a sheriff step at here as a police officer, Uh,
to be a tool of somebody who's doing something that
you believe is inappropriate and perhaps even unconstitutional. Yeah. And
(27:55):
I have noticed that the phrase, and we've talked about
on the podcast with your son here, that the out
of an abundance of caution. Like I feel like these politicians,
if they use that line, they think they can get
away with anything. Uh. And and common sense. That's the
thing that's lacking. You know, common sense is not common
right now. But you look at around the country in
(28:16):
certain states have opened up a lot more compared to California,
and they don't have the problems that California has. And
yet as you reference, you call the politicians out on
this and they just do a tap dance, and so
it just it's just going to continue on and on.
But uh, if you were, if you were in charge,
(28:36):
obviously we don't know all the data and all that
we know a lot of it on the internet. But
what do you think the proper way to handle what's
been going on here with this public health situation with
the COVID. Uh, if if you were in charge, what
do you think the proper way to handle it would be? Well, so,
so remember how we generally deal with a responsible group
(28:58):
of people. You can start with chill run And what
is our priority? If I was to tell you, what's
one of the very most important things we do when
we're raising children. You want to educate children. Certainly, you
want to keep them healthy and safe, um, but we
want to educate them. Education is a top priority. Police
departments and sheriff's departments. We come in after everything else
(29:20):
seems to have failed, and we're supposed to fix things.
We're supposed to neutralize the threats, the problems, and deal
with the the event itself. But the best way to
do it is to prevent problems from happening. And so therefore,
we want a robust educational system uh to take care
of how we nurture and raise our children. Well, the
(29:42):
same thing about education goes for adults. Um. We we
should have launched a major educational effort that goes from
the top of our state all the way through to
the local community and make sure that we provide the
best and most consistent unless they consistent twice uh. Information
(30:05):
out there. People don't want to get exposed to this disease.
People don't want to die. People want to live a
healthy life. People believe in the constitution. Uh, they can
express their free will, but they want to live. And
when we start trying to treat them like cattle and
heard them in different directions, UH, they've gotten to the
(30:26):
point where they're they're not gonna be hearded. Um. So
the best approach is always education. The best approach is
always too patiently try to explain and get them to
understand and follow without having to force and not use
coercive force of police and sheriffs departments. Yeah, and we've
(30:47):
seen as I said, you know, Florida they have had
a more hands off approach, for example, and they don't
have the problems that California is now. I also want
to talk in this political climate that we're in, Chief,
I love the fact that you, because of your your
years and law enforcement from what I understand, from what
your son tells me, and I've heard through the grapevine,
(31:09):
you have great relationships with people who you completely disagree with.
You referred to. We talked about George Gascon earlier, the
district attorney in l A who you are completely, uh,
the opposite of as far as his some of his
political beliefs. But but you get along with these guys.
We live in a world right now where if you
disagree politically, you you cannot be friends like you know,
(31:32):
I'm I'm more like you where I have friends that
are you know, I disagree with politically. But uh, you know,
how did we get to this point where now if
you if you're not in lockstep, you're done. Yeah, Yeah,
there's there's no question, and it's like, um, and we
can talk politics here. We have so polarized our political
(31:54):
environment here that it it's now pervasive throughout life in
the entire tree. Now you line up whether you're to
the left or to the right of center, and we
can't find the middle ground anymore. Used to be the
measure of UM. Successful politician was figuring out a way
to find win win propositions, meeting somewhere in the in
(32:18):
the middle. Um And. And that's the way you accomplish
things by meeting and working with each other. And we're
not doing that. We seem to have gotten to the
point where the political parties and the nature of the
parties and their philosophies supersedes the commitment to the United
(32:39):
States itself, to the Constitution and to the people of
the United States. UM. And it's a selfish and absolutely
selfish way to look at politics, to think of you
and your party first and not think of the American
public in adherence to the Constitution and what's best for
the United States. And that's where we are. And until
(33:00):
we can find elective officials that are willing to do that,
we're going to be in a world to hurt and
guess who's going to take advantage of it. I mean,
we're reading about it the last couple of days. There
are people constantly probing, constantly looking for a way to
weaken the nature of the United States. The rule of
law here has been undermined now for many years, and
(33:23):
so there are people who are they don't have the
best interests of the people the United States in mind,
political power and political power on the international stage as
a priority for a lot of people and a lot
of organizations, and frankly, those of us on this call,
we really don't count for much. How much of this
has to do us horn ourselves out to the international community,
(33:48):
whether it's China, Russia, the UK, Germany, whatever it may be.
Because we had this conversation off the air, but the
Chinese have systematically the infiltrated every area of our nation,
whether it's politically, government, pharmaceuticals and medicine, academics, like they've
(34:12):
gone through and have taken shots at us and have
you know, taken a little skin off the off the body.
We don't even know where we're compromised. That's how bad
it is. Um. I I remember pointing out a little
over a year maybe eighteen months ago to a good
friend of mine. UM the fact that we seem to
(34:32):
be arresting professors across the country UM at some of
our major universities for their involvement with the Communist Chinese
Party UH activities. And and then eventually we learn of
the gazillions of dollars that are being pumped into these
universities donations. Sometimes we're not even they're not even reported,
(34:57):
but but we're talking about billions of dollars that have
been funneled into the country. And there's a reason for that. UH,
there's a reason that you know, they're contacting local mayors
and trying to select people who have shall we stay
ambition and that may one day become Congress people and
(35:18):
may find themselves on the Intelligence Committee. There's a reason
for all of that that doesn't have by accident. These
are people that are help bent on doing what they
think is in their interests. And we we seem to
be naive, We seem to have our head in the sands,
so to speak, not to be aware of this stuff,
or we're not being educated well enough by the responsible
(35:40):
organizations in our government to be aware of this. UM
we we we we only have to look at what
going what is going on in the university uh systems
that to find out how threatening this is because our
young people are getting hit with things that lay eater
on translate into problems for our way of life. You know,
(36:04):
we we believe we have a great way of life.
We believe this is a great country, and there are
people outside of the country that believe we are a
major threat to the rest of the of the world.
You know, I think we all want to get to
the Star Trek universe at some point where we all
get along and all work together, et cetera. But across
(36:25):
the globe we've demonstrated we continue to demonstrate we're not
ready to do that yet. And those people that think
we can just flip the switch and do it are
are are really causing problems on the international stage, and
they're certainly causing problems in this country. So do you
think the root is money? I think money is a
means by which people can achieve the ideology. So they know, um,
(36:51):
those that have money to burn, so to speak, No,
that money can be used to accomplish what their goal is.
UM value money. It's it's a cornerstone of our capitalistic system. Um,
we measure success that way. We like the toys, we
like to buy things and own things, and we like
(37:13):
to be viewed as uh significantly successful, etcetera. So money
becomes a natural uh tool to be used against us.
And it is so when we have positions like Eric
Swalwell a couple of days ago and Diane Feinstein's aid
from I think a year or two ago, that have
(37:35):
been caught or found to be compromised or at working
for a foreign intelligence agency or a government. What do
you recommend happens to those individuals here that are are
actually sitting in a position of power politically. Well, there's
a question of what the investigations might tell you if
you do an honest investigation. UM, it shouldn't be surprising
(37:57):
to anyone that experts know how to work us. You know,
they've spent a lot of time, they've spent years. They
know how to successfully um inject themselves into the political
life of a community or the or the country. And
they can do it in a sophisticated way. And you
might not even know it's happening to you until you
(38:19):
end up in a situation where you're other elbows with somebody.
You're having dinner with somebody, UM, but you don't understand
that there's there's another reason other than the friendship uh
that they have. And I mean we see this in
criminal activities. I mean, I worked undercovering arcotics back in
nineteen seventy one, and you can see it then with
the people that you were interacting with. They're not Communist
(38:42):
spies or agents, etcetera. But they were criminals and they
had a reason for the things that they were doing.
And you know, you you kind of learn when you
get exposed to it. And some people in our country
FBI UM are are intelligence agencies that are far more
sophisticated and understand what we're dealing with. But we're not.
(39:02):
We're not educated at the level we need to be
what the threat is. And I don't think most of
our elected officials are educated enough or insulated from the
kinds of things that can actually cause us grief. And
although I'm not a fan of Eric Swallwell's UM, I
wouldn't be the I wouldn't be one to immediately assume
(39:25):
that he was an agent UM for the Communist Chinese.
I wouldn't say that at all. He could he could
clearly and easily just be a duke um and not
know any better. Uh, you know, which is remarkable if
you listen to some of the things that he said
over the last four years. So um, but I think
(39:46):
I think we have to realize there are people that
are twenty four seven. They are looking to damage the
United States and to subvert our government, whereas we may
and not even be thinking about those things throughout the
course of our days. One of the ways that they
(40:07):
have gone out for us is, I think we can
all agree with this is the way that the news
has been published to the masses, whether it's left leaning
or right leaning. Is there a fix for that? Well,
that's that's really problematic when we get into it. So
you know, I fashioned myself a little bit of an
(40:29):
expert in dealing with the news media. I also recognize
that rather than seeing a large conspiracy here, we have
to understand who we're dealing with. His individuals and they
have some common traits, um, but they it's the way
they look at themselves and who they are, and it's
(40:49):
what their personal belief system is that too frequently gets
in the way of news and it becomes opinion. And
it also then provides a slant to the way stories carried, etcetera.
Now that's separate and apart from what the the um
the actual agencies that hire the reporters and put them
(41:10):
on the air or publish their stories. That's that's a
completely different issue, because again there's an ideology at the
top of those organizations, whether it be The New York Times,
watching the Post, ABC News, NBC, there are bosses in
control that are guiding and directing what is going on below,
and we've seen some examples recently with CNN. So you know,
(41:33):
if you get this desire to unify on on a
purpose to be accomplished, and you have the power of
your organization to advance that, then you can be pretty
destructive to the extent that you can influence the people
that follow you. But when you have so many of
(41:53):
them that philosophically agree on something, the question then becomes
is the public well served? I happen to believe that
in a democracy, UM, we all need as much objective
information as we can get so that we can make
good decisions. Good decisions on who we elect office is
(42:14):
what we're talking about here. So I'd like to know
the truth about all of these candidates. And the question
is am I getting it or am I getting only
half of the story? Which is the half of the
story that I'm allowed to hear. Uh So, I want
a free press and I want an objective press, and
I want to hear both sides of the stories. We're
not a country that says, okay, we have this. These
(42:37):
are the left newspapers and these are the right newspapers, etcetera.
We have our our papers who want to tell us
that they're telling us the truth. Our agencies on television
want to tell us that they're telling us the truth.
But the question is are they really on one side
of the political spectrum. I'm gonna pivot real quick, and
uh Ben can jump in on this because I know
(43:00):
you'll have some fun with it. Obviously, the O J stuff,
that's one thing. The Michael Jackson cases are another. But
the North Hollywood shootout, how would you have handled that
if you were in charge? Well, it's a tactical situation
once it starts going down. They so they effectively did
(43:21):
what they should have done. Um, you know the first units,
and I happen to know one of the officers in
the first unit that was there when you get when
you get to that kind of a situation, you try
to secure the perimeter. You bring in all the resources
that you needed. They did all of that stuff, but
we had been in a situation where essentially we had
(43:44):
shotguns in side arms, and then you're dealing with people
that are fully equipped for war, not only with body
armor but the types of weapons that they had. So
when you have automatic weapons, you have armor piercing rounds
and things like that, you're ready to see. You know,
you're a small infantry company and and so you know,
I think we ended up having ten or eleven officers
(44:06):
wounded in that two of them seriously, um you know,
shot through the femur and absolutely vaporized like four inches
of bone in the femer. I think for both of them, UM,
terrible situations. Yet we didn't lose anyone, but easily could
have lost them. And so um, they did what they
(44:27):
needed to do, and eventually one was killed. He was
shot simultaneously through the spinal cord at the same time
he pulled the trigger and killed himself. So both of
those UM bullets ended his life. And then the second
one ended up down the street, and three or three
of the guys that used to work at SLAT when
(44:47):
when I was at metro Um, they were the people
that ended up confronting him and he lost that firefight
and that that ended it. But that was you know,
as that thing unfold it's easy to go back and say, well,
this is what we had and this is the best
way to have approached at et cetera. But that's not
how the real world works. The real world worked exactly
(45:10):
the way you saw it on TV and live action.
Is this started unfolding before your eyes, and it's a
dynamic situation that everybody's trying to respond to and trying
to make good decisions, trying not to get themselves killed
along the way, and not trying to protect the community.
Pretty interesting case. Yeah, and chief when you're when you're
out and about, right when you're you're out and about,
(45:32):
is there a day in normal times when someone doesn't
bring up the O J case to you? Well, you know,
I just I did something a few months ago that
was just not television in October. It was a British
production company. And I tell people that's a that's a
case that will never go away because you'll remember at
(45:53):
the time it happened the way, uh it impacted the country,
and it's like, uh, there were so many different hooks
that this had into the community. People that were into sports,
people that were into movies and television, people that were
into advertising and marketing, people that cared about society, the
(46:16):
racial issue and those angles. All those things created a
following that made that one of those once in a
century types of stories that just gathered enormous interests. I
run into people to this day and it'll it'll come
up um where people want to talk about it and
I want to talk about it um as one of
(46:38):
those moments in their lives where they remember every detail
about it. I talked to somebody the other day it
was like, yeah, I followed it religiously, all of it.
It's really yeah. I mean I find those people all
the time where they find uh interesting perspectives. Um. Because
it was very dramatic. My part time job for of
(47:00):
yusually used to reach scripts at night in the middle
of the night to be rooting scripts for Steven Bocco,
whether it's Hill Street Blues or one of the other programs.
But uh so I got to know some of the
producers and directors and a few of the actors, but
it was. It was interesting in dealing with some of
them in the years after the Simpson case. They would
(47:20):
tell me that, hey, this is this is what I
do for a living. I do drama. You know, I'm
thinking of these things. And he said that day I
thinking of One director in particularly said that day I
spent the whole day sitting in my bed at Big Sir,
watching what happened in this thing, this event, and watching
you on television and the two news conferences. He said,
(47:42):
I'll never forget it. It was one of those seminal
moments in my you know, life in this country. He said,
it just made that much of an impression on me. Well,
it did. It made that much of oppression on people. Uh,
it turns out around the globe. You know. A couple
of years ago, I'm down on Argentina with one of
the United States national teams and I'm in a meeting
(48:04):
with their Olympic Committee people. And the guy who spoke
in just leaked over and he said, the guys are
talking about Jenny said, what do you mean they're talking
about me? We're down here to talk about the sport.
He said, They're all talking about you because they all
watched you and the Simpson thing. And I'm thinking, these
guys are in buenas aries and they're talking about watching
the Simpson thing. It's like craziness. But that's what happened.
(48:25):
It was it was everywhere, and it was of great
interest for a number of different reasons. And No, I
don't expect it will go away for a while. I mean,
they're teaching as a result of this thing. There are
a lot of people that just want to They remembered
so clearly, and there was so much of a following
and there's there's so much media about it that, um,
(48:45):
I don't expect it's going to go away for decades now.
Early on, Like, I know you've been asked a million times,
but when you first found out about this and you
realized that o J could be tied to it, Like,
what was the reaction among the department there, the people
around you when you found out, oh my god, this
could be you know, a legendary figure like oh J
(49:07):
could be involved in something like this. Well, it kind
of goes back to that Monday morning. I got into
the office between eight and nine o'clock as I'm as
I usually do, and uh I was the commander at
the time, and working with with me was Lieutenant John Duncan,
who handled a lot of the press and um I
would have him brief me every morning on anything that
(49:29):
occurred overnight or over the weekends. And John came in
and uh I said, anything going on over the weekend?
He said, not really, it was really quiet. He said,
although we did have a double homicide in Brentwood, said John,
a double homicide in Brentwood. We don't even get murders
in Brentwood. When you talking about double homicide, what's the story?
And he says, uh, O J. Simpson's ex wife. And
(49:52):
I said, quote O. J. Simpson's ex wife. Where is O. J. Simpson?
And he told me, which is interesting because you know
a lot of people had that rush to judgment charge
they wanted to make against the l a p D.
But he said this, He said, I talked to the
guys from Robbert Homicide and they said he didn't have
(50:12):
any to do with it. He's in Chicago. Well, that
was early information. So often the first information you get
is not totally accurate. That's why you investigate things and
it takes time. But the first briefing I received. I
asked that question specifically, and his answer was, now, he
didn't have anything to do with it. The guys say
(50:32):
he's in Chicago. Then later on that day, you know,
he returns, and then there's an interview, and then we're
watching this unfold. I'm getting phone calls from particularly from
UM New York and Miami, talking about the O J.
Simpson I didn't know. Um A lot of us grew
(50:53):
up here that we're big U c l A Basketball
fans because we all loved John Wooden and he was
highly successful. And then we were also big USC football
fans because John McKay was fantastic and really fun to
follow and had great football teams. And then we had
O J. Simpson who was an incredible running back. And UM,
(51:15):
so we were big fans. And so as the story
starts unfold over a few days, it starts looking like, oh,
he he probably did too. O J. Simpson did this,
and he had people shaking her head. They just couldn't
believe it. And and it's in a lot of ways,
were like the general public, which is we watch people
(51:35):
on television and we think we know them. We watched
interviews after they've been successful you know, they scored the
winning touchdown whatever, and they seem likable and warm and fuzzy. Uh.
They do a broadcast or they're in a TV program
or a movie, and we like them and follow them,
and we know the successes of their life, and we
feel we know these people. And that's always a problem
(51:58):
for prosecutors when they deal with you know, V I. P.
S Um, somebody with a high profile, because people think
they know them. Well, we as we found out, we
didn't know O. J. Simpson. Um. Eventually we found out
plenty about O. J. Simpson and so it was it
was surprising, it was disappointing. And uh and yet have
(52:22):
you been around a while, you understand that, Uh, these
things do happen. It happened in this case, tragic case,
and the one thing that seems to get lost. But
I always make sure I bring it up as we've
got to think of those two young people who didn't
deserve to die, and they certainly didn't deserve to die
like that. Absolutely, what what do you think happened to
(52:46):
the murder weapon? Well, he had apple time to get
rid of it. Um. You know, there's plenty of speculation
on that. I don't have any speculations that there was
somebody else involved. Um, I believe that, you know, not
only did he do it, but he's probably responsible for
(53:08):
whatever happened with it. Um. And it's gone. And so
you know, you remember this story a couple of years
ago over they thought they found the potential knife and
it didn't turn out to be etcetera. UM. A lot
of a lot of cases you're short on um, on evidence,
you're short on eyewitnesses, you're short on a lot of
(53:30):
things that you think you need. But the O. J.
Simpson case, yeah, lacking lacking the knife, but the O. J.
Simpson case had tremendous amount of evidence to the extent
that you there should be no doubt in anyone's mind,
and a lot of people, UM, I really don't have
any doubt that he did it. Yeah, when you chief,
(53:51):
when you see O J now on Twitter golfing in
Vegas and all that, and you saw the photos and
all the evidence in that case goes through your mind
when you know, I went to jail for a while
for a crime in Nevada, but he's seems to be
living living a pretty good life right now. Yeah, Well,
I think back to what I heard early on, actually
(54:12):
before I became a police officer. I mean, I didn't
grow up wanting to be a police officer. And I
ended up uh going to l A. Harvard College, one
of our local community colleges here in Los Angeles, and
so Harvard College down here right off the Harbor Freeway
in Wilmington's and I took some police science classes. That boy,
(54:32):
I was hooked in, I mean immediately hooked. We had
a lieutenant down here that was teaching. The name was
Rudy da Leone. He eventually retired as a captain from
our Harlembeck uh station. And Rudy was like the pied
piper of l A p D. I don't know how
many hundreds of us ended up joining the l A
p D over all the years that he taught at
(54:53):
Harvard College. But one of the things that we've always
heard about, and you hear it expressed in law school
and here to express all the time and philosophy courses, etcetera.
We'd rather a hundred guilty people get released than put
an innocent person in jail or even worse, you know,
have them executed. That it's the way the system works.
(55:16):
You have to believe that we have a great system
of jurisprudence here. You have to believe in the jury system, um,
And it's not going to be perfect. And so some
some some bad guys are gonna walk away. They're gonna
take their chances with the jury, and the jury is
going to come back and say, we're just not convinced enough.
(55:37):
They may go artificially in their minds from beyond a
reasonable doubt, too, beyond any doubt, and they're gonna say,
we can't convict you, and you go out the door.
And if you believe in the system, and all of
these law enforcement officers that swear an oath to do
the best they can for the community and believe in
(55:58):
the system, they shake their head. You know, I watched
in the yearly seventies, I think in consecutive years where
guys that had murdered l A police officers um walked
out of court because juries had come loose, and it
was just like stunning, UM. But you have to recognize
(56:18):
that it happens. And celebrities do get a break sometimes
from the fact that the community thinks they know them
and jurors are apt to give them more leeway than
someone else and so it's a little bit of frustration
and you shake your head. Like I said, I kind
of think of the poor victims, um this, this guy.
(56:39):
Eventually we have to hope he pays the price. He'll
answer to somebody far more powerful than us, but hopefully
he'll be held accountable for it. But it's, um yeah,
it's a it's a frustrating thing. Absolutely, listen, Chief, thank you.
I know when this is all we all got to
get together and hang out like like you real human beings.
(57:00):
You know by any time that it's always a pleasure
to uh spend time with you. And obviously I see
Dave all the time, but you know, it's good to
talk to the both of you. Enjoyed it. Be sure
to catch live editions of The Ben Meller Show weekdays
at two am Eastern eleven pm Pacific.
Host
Ben Maller
Popular Podcasts
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.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.