Angela J. Davis | Policing The Black Man, Arbitrary Justice, & A Broken System

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00:51 Which means you'll unfortunately never hear my voice again. In the 1930s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed the nation through a series of radio broadcast known as the Fireside Chats His aim was to reassure the common man that our society would recover from its troubled times From 1930 and I deal with a different kind of fire For a new era of worldly frustration we offer a fresh conversation I'm Greg Carlwood

01:27 These are the Hireside Chats. Here we go, Hireside Chatters from sunny San Diego! I'm Greg Carlwood and it's clear we have a lot of problems in this country that have gone unaddressed for far too long but two that are finally being talked about in a big way are these systematic imbalances that make the uphill struggle of life unnaturally steep for people of color from the uneven distribution of small business loans and using property taxes as the mechanism for a community's public school funding, to the little-known history of dismantling thriving bootstrapped black communities to make way for a new highway or even New York City Central Park. And of course the second is the overly aggressive and perpetually militarized police departments of America where we've seen this us versus them mentality bubble over to new heights and accountability drop right off a cliff

02:17 And just in the first few days of the most recent round of police brutality protests, I saw every type of person from black men and young Asian children to white senior citizens and sitting circles of unarmed teenagers face the wrath of over-aggressive and undertrained police officers doling out the crowd control we pay for. And while we've been seeing sad, gross heartbreaking footage of police officers beating shooting or choking out unarmed black men and boys for years now usually for minor non-violent offenses this isn't just a problem with police but a problem at every level of the criminal justice system. Today we have just the person to school us on these nuances at every level of the criminal justice system that contribute to the imbalances felt by Black Americans

03:05 Her name is Angela j davis an expert in criminal law and procedure with a specific focus on prosecutorial power and racism in the criminal justice system. She's currently a professor of law at AUS Washington college of law, previously served as the director of DC public defender service She is the author of Arbitrary Justice, The Power of the American Prosecutor and has edited or co-edited several other books on the subject of law including the highly recommended Policing the Black Man, Arrest, Prosecution & Imprisonment. She won the American University Teacher Of The Year Award in 2015, the American University Faculty Award for Outstanding Scholarship Research Creative Activity and Other Professional Contributions in 2009

03:53 And the American University Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching in a Full-Time Appointment in 2002. I couldn't be more psyched, so let's get into it! The ever impressive Professor Angela Davis, welcome to The Higher Side. Thank you for having me Gregg. Yes thank you so much for doing this Inequality in the criminal justice system is something we've talked about here in the past but I like to try and contribute positively to the momentum when something like this does have everyone's attention. And what I really enjoyed about your work as you go beyond just one on one police encounters with seen and point out that there are steps before

04:32 for that, and certainly many phases after within the system that are heavily slanted against black men in particular. And I hope that by having you here we can add those layers to the conversation rather than this binary choice that's emerging of do we want police or not? But how do you introduce this topic to people? Beyond the latest attention it's getting, we've seen a lot of highly emotional video clips recently but obviously this is not a new problem is it? No, it's not. In fact these awful killings that we've been seeing for the past few months and of course for the past few years are not new I mean black men have been killed black men and women have been killed by law enforcement since the time of slavery from the Black Codes to

05:23 The lynchings that occurred up through the civil rights movement, there's a history of unarmed black men and women being killed by law enforcement for no justifiable reason. The only difference now is that there is cell phone video and so now we're seeing it with our own eyes but honestly it has been going on all alone And no one ever believed police officers would say that the individual was reaching for a gun or not giving any excuse at all. And no one believed the families of these victims, but now we're seeing it with our own eyes. I guess the disheartening thing is that even now that we have video, the killings are continuing and I think that's what so disheartening for some many people

06:12 Yes yes i agree and when it comes to all the unfortunate statistics that you site in policing the black man to illustrate the inequities here, can you relay a few of them to us for those who might still need to hear more just really to point out what the studies and statistic show specifically. Well, there's numerous studies that show that there are unwarranted racial disparities in our criminal justice system at every step of the process from arrest through sentencing. African American men are six times more likely to be incarcerated than white men 2.5 times more likely then

06:55 Latino men and if current trends continue one of every three black American males born today will expect to go to prison in his lifetime. And so, are unwarranted racial disparities at every step of the process. And by unwarranted, I mean that black and brown people in this criminal justice system are treated worse than their similarly situated white counterparts at every step of the process. In other words we're not talking about an issue of black people or black and brown people committing crimes more than white people. We're talking about

07:32 If a white person is alleged to have committed the same act as a black person, they can expect to be treated better in our criminal justice system at every step of the process from arrest through sentencing. And countless studies demonstrate that. Yes and I think that is the best approach because obviously sometimes when you start having these conversations people move it in that direction but no if you compare apples to apples some statistics I have here Data collected by the U.S. Sentencing Commission between December of 2007 and 2011 revealed that black men in federal prisons received sentences 19.5% longer than white men sentenced for the same crime Also, data collected from January 1st 2015 to May 31st 2015 revealed that African Americans killed by police were twice as likely to be unarmed

08:29 as white people. So like those are clear biases when you really chisel down to apples to apples comparisons, I mean it's very telling and a lot of those statistics do speak for themselves. Absolutely! It starts with racial profiling and going from there you find that there are disparities in the way that cases are prosecuted, the sentences that you just mentioned... And so it is really at every step of the process And in a recent interview you said that in the last three years since policing the black man came out things haven't gotten much better and some ways they've gotten worse what aspects of this problem would you say have gotten worse than the last three years.

09:12 Well, I guess this book came out. We didn't expect that the killings of Black men were going to stop right? We didn't expect that but i guess what's so disheartening is that despite all the efforts at reform President Obama had a task force and put out all these recommendations there were some changes made in some police departments you know, the killings have not stopped. And then the reason why I guess I think it's worse in many ways is that the videotapes that continue to come out and people thought that was going to really deter police officers from continuing to do this but it has not right? The video tapes that have been so horrendous and I think the George Floyd videotape was probably one that shocked the nation and the world more than any other mean

10:04 Even since then. there have been numerous additional killings of black men, Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta and a number of others who've been killed in the protests whose names are not out there. And so I think that's what is disheartening is that despite all of the very clear evidence and despite the outcry especially the recent outcry which really feels a little bit different these killings are continuing So disheartening and distressing to so many of us. Mm-hmm well said, and if we look at the deeper history beyond just the last three years I'm curious how you think it compares to today because there is this sort of simplistic type of thinking that says Well the further we get away from slavery the better things have been for black people

11:00 Maybe that's true but has there ever been a time or decade where you think we got it more right than we have today are as it may be not been just strictly linear process. Well, you know it's hard to say. I mean if you look from the time of slavery till now and again say that things are the same Of course nothing compares to slavery But I guess you would think that by 2020 You know we would have made more progress than we have made I mean I grew up in a segregated South myself I grew up in Alabama. I remember seeing white and colored signs. I lived under that and through that

11:37 And I never thought that at the age of sixty four in twenty twenty i would be saying worse racial violence than i personally witnessed as a child and segregated. And so it is hard for me to say that things have gotten much better especially when it comes to this issue, Yes and so if you engage in this conversation with someone who's more conservative kinda like we mentioned before it's not uncommon to hear well of course there's more black men incarcerated or police are moron edge when they're dealing with black man because look at the statistics of what demographics are committing more crime,

12:18 I mean, we have all heard this sort of thing. What are those people missing? What have you found to be the best way to engage in that kind of conversation when it comes up?" I guess what they're missing is that if you just look at the number of African-Americans that are in prison and you use that to try to measure whether African Americans are committing more crime, you have a deeply flawed analysis because if your measuring Criminality by arrest even it's flawed and the reason for that is. There are a number of people who commit crimes who are never arrested for those crimes right? And that is because of racial profile like police officers will target black and brown communities, right you'll have just give me an example

13:08 Let's say there is a group of white kids standing on the street corner, young boys fooling around. Maybe they're punching each other or whatever police officer might see them and just see a bunch of kids playing on the corner and keep ongoing my wave hello or whatever But time and time again, more often than not when a police officer sees a group of young black boys just standing around doing what kids do they're going to go over to them. They're going to stop them question them throw them on the ground frisked And that's going to escalate into them arresting them because of course they're going to resist if they're not doing anything wrong as kids will do, as adults would do. Then that leads to an arrest and so you can see how this whole issue of racial profiling just starts the ball rolling where you've got similarly situated people doing the same thing

14:03 One is going to be treated one way, another's going to be treated a different way. And the problem of racial profiling starts the ball rolling right? They're pulling in more people of color at the beginning who are not doing anything different than whites and so that's why the racial profiling issue is such a problem it has been documented time and time again on both national and local level There have been studies that have been done by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, for example. The latest study that they put out which was released in 2018 revealed that African Americans were more likely to be stopped by police than either white or Latino residents both in traffic stops and in street stops

14:54 Black and Latinos more likely to have multiple contacts with police than whites, especially with traffic stops. More than one in six black residents were pulled over or stopped on the street had similar interactions with the police many times and multiple times over the course of a year. When there was an interaction, black and brown people were twice as likely to be threatened or have force used against them by the police. That's on a national level, more recent national study was done by the Stanford Open Policing Projects this report just came out this last year and it was really thorough study it looked at almost 100 million traffic stops that were done between 2011 and 2017 across 21 state patrol agencies

15:47 And the results show that police officers time and again stop and search black and Latino drivers on the basis of less evidence than they use in stopping white drivers. They also found that when white drivers were stopped, they were searched less often than black drivers but guess what? They were more likely to be found with illegal items then black driver. Right so these are just some of the findings Probably the most well known study that was done on a local level was in New York City. There were the lawsuit against the city and the police department called Floyd versus city of New York, and they did extensive research and studies to look at the number of stops that were done and who was being stopped?

16:37 And they found that between 2004 and 2012, New York City Police Department conducted over 4.4 million what they call carry stops. I will stop and explain what that is. So there's something called stop-and-frisk. The United States Supreme Court has said that police officers may stop and frisk an individual if they have something called reasonable suspicion To believe that that individual is armed and dangerous, they can press them if they have reasonable suspicion to believe that they're armed in danger. They can stop them if they have reasonable suspicion to believe that crime like to believe it does some criminality going on.

17:15 And so they were doing all of these carry stops, as they're called and named after the case. And there was a lawsuit and court ultimately found that police officers were violating the Constitution that they were stopping and frisking them without reasonable suspicion just based on race. They were stopping them. So for example in 52% of those 4.4 million stops, the person stopped was black And in 31% of the cases, a person was Latino and 10% of the stops. The person was like mind you, the population there is only 23%, black so you can see where they were disparate stops and what's interesting about this stop is that.

17:56 they only found weapons in 1% of the stocks of African Americans. Interestingly, they found weapons in 4% of very few stocks of white people again similar to the Stanford study searching black people more often but actually were finding contraband on white people more often even though they were stopping them less and so you know I could go on and all these statistics other Other studies, but every single 1 has shown that there's been unwanted stuff. So that's where it starts right? If you're going to be picking out black people to stop and of course, you're gonna end up arresting them more and they're gonna be in the system or.

18:37 to be prosecuted more, and there are going to be more of them in prison. So just simply looking at the number people arrested or the number of people in prison is no indication of criminality. There are a lot of white people out here committing crimes but they're not being arrested and they're not even being stopped to start with that's what this research is showing us. Yes absolutely clearly a bias has shown I've tried to approach these conversations by saying that When i was young i did a lot of dumb stuff and definitely had run ins with police but in college so many people drove after more drinks than they should have had or drove around or walked around with weed all the time in missouri where it was not legal at all, we could've gotten caught obviously i know some people who did.

19:28 It's not like I ever felt as if I had a free pass because I was white, but if we're all doing these things from time to time and police are looking at the black guys more suspiciously and searching their cars more often. Obviously it looks like they're doing these things more often on paper but profiling is going to warp those crime statistics a lot as you just told us about Yes and the case of Rayshard Brooks is a prime example of this. So here's a man who was in his car, asleep on a fast food line they call the police

20:06 And he's doing nothing but sleeping, they decide you know maybe he is intoxicated. They give him a breathalyzer test He is intoxicated and so they decided alright we're going to arrest you for DUI even though he's sitting in his car sleeping not racing down the highway drunk he's sittin' in his car sleeping Imagine if they had just said to Mr Brooks look buddy what your phone number let me call your family have them come pick you up You go home sleep it off and then let him go home. And I honestly believe if he'd been white, they probably would have done that or give him a citation or something. Why did he need to be arrested? Of course that arrest ended up escalating and now he's dead. So police officers have total discretion to decide whether to arrest the person even

20:55 Even if they have the legal standard, which is probable cause. The Supreme Court says that if they have probable cause to believe that a person has committed an offense they may arrest them. Probable cause of very low standard more probably than not But they don't have to arrest them, and oftentimes they don't. They have discretion in deciding whether to arrest the person. They can see two kids fighting and just go over to them and say hey break it up! Go home you know? Go home to your parents. And they do that a lot but when it comes to African Americans Latinos the tendency is to arrest, to handcuff throw them down exert force put them in the system

21:33 And so that's how we end up with these disparities, discretionary decisions made by individuals in our criminal justice system that produce these disparities. And let me just be clear there are a lot of complicated reasons for racial disparities in the criminal justice system right? We have you know everything goes back to a lot of complicated factors There is socioeconomic reasons that lead people to commit crimes that are oftentimes based on and include racism, racial disparities that lead people into the system. So there are the socioeconomic reasons but a good amount of good percentage of the racial disparity that we find in the system is due to discretionary decisions by police officers, by prosecutors and even sometimes by judges as well

22:26 And those discretionary decisions when you've got cops and prosecutors deciding to treat one person one way and another, another way. It oftentimes breaks down along class and race lines. That is unfair! There's no reason why we should have those types of unwarranted racial disparities in our system today but we do Agreed and just start with the youth which really sets the tone for a person's life in their ideas about their society what can be said about the policing of black boys specifically i'm sure most people have heard that term school to prison pipeline but to what extent is that really how it seems to work.

23:09 Well, you know the chapter in Policing the Black Man written by Kristen Henning called Boys to Men. The role of policing and socialization of black boys really does a great job explaining to us why it is that black boys are actually targeted more than any other demographic more than black men or white or Latino women girls or boys they are targeted most. You know, for all the reasons I mentioned before right? And what happens is it does create this situation where kids because they're treated that way you know by police officers grabbed and thrown down on the ground and you know touched on their bodies in ways that you know

23:59 Anybody would feel humiliated by particularly adolescents. We know that juveniles, the juvenile brain all the science shows us works differently than the adult brain and we know that kids react to all kinds of situations different from adults and That's kids of any race but when police officers are targeting black boys you're going to end up with the disproportionate inclusion of black boys in both the juvenile system and the adult system. All the statistics show that when it comes to charging kids as adults, black and brown boys are charged as adults more than whites. They're brought into the system more than whites. And so what impact does that have on these kids? Of course it has a tremendous traumatic

24:44 impact on these young people. And it also impacts the way that they look at law enforcement, it continues on through up until adulthood of course and has a tremendous impact on how they interact with the police and how the police interact with them And you mentioned the school to prison pipeline. We have these individuals in public high schools and even in some middle schools and elementary schools, we have what's called School Resource Officers – police officers that are placed in schools across the country

25:20 And so what happens there? You've got the same kind of profiling going on that you do on the streets. Why have police officers in schools, so the whole idea behind this at the beginning was presumably theoretically to create better relationships between police officers and kids but that's not what happened because police officers in these schools Do what they're trained to do and that is arrest people use force right into Maintain control over individuals. And so they're doing it in schools now when I was growing up There were not police officers in schools kids can fight all the time What happened? They got called the principal's office or put in detention at worst their parents will call now They're arrested

26:06 And this starts the whole school to prison pipeline. Why do we have police officers in schools? We've had countless examples of not only just kids being arrested, but kids being treated brutally forced being used against them. You know, really need to take police officers out of schools for sure Yes i agree i was thought that was weird when i went from private school to public school and high school in there was a cop walking the halls and never made me feel good either but, i did have this statistic here we say over half the students arrested at school in united states and referred to juvenile justice system are black or hispanic.

26:44 While black students represent only 16% of student enrollment, they represent 27 percent of students referred to law enforcement and 31 percent of students subjected in school arrests. Again with that discretion and at this young of an age it does have ripple effects throughout a person's life Absolutely, and there's just no reason for it. Kids should be treated as kids and yet every single state has laws which permit kids to be charged as adults. You know, the age is different from state to state but all states have those laws and once a kid is brought into the adult system they are treated exactly like an adult. They have no opportunity for rehabilitation or treatment or anything. And this is a problem in all 50 States

27:35 That's another thing that gets me when people want to say, well black men are committing more crimes or are more violent. Well on top of the statistics we already pointed out the frustration that comes from the harassment or the general neglect of black communities poverty that kind of stuff is gonna push some people into a well screw it i might as well get mine kind of mentality but if we reverse engineer that, it starts with the way they're treated by law enforcement in their earlier encounters or the system in general when people gets so frustrated they give up while there prone to commit crimes. So where's that mindset really starting you know lot of times its with these encounters

28:22 Yeah, I think that's right. In other words, I don't think that black and brown kids are more inclined to have those attitudes than white. It's just that white kids are not exposed to cops in the same way as black kids. They're not treated the same. They're not even around cops because police officers aren't deployed to white neighborhoods and they're not in a lot of schools where upper middle class kids are but they're Urban schools, they're in a lot of public schools. And we still live in a segregated society despite the fact that the laws have changed and neighborhoods are still very segregated. Schools are still very segregated despite Brown v Board because of the neighborhoods being segregated and so you're having police officers dealing more with black and brown kids than with white kids and bringing them into this system.

29:16 And to quote you again, you write black men are policed and treated worse than their similarly situated white counterparts at every step of the criminal justice system from arrest through sentencing. Well obviously we've talked about racial profiling We know they're harassed more often in general to get to that first stage of an arrest but But walk us through some of those major steps that would come after an arrest, all the way up to sentencing. Where are we seeing the greatest injustices in those steps of the process? Well I focus a lot on the prosecutorial stage

29:52 You know, there's been a lot of attention to police officers and there should be a lot of attention paid to police. We can see with the events of the past few months and years we must pay attention to cops they have a lot of power and a lot of discretion on the street to stop and frisk and ultimately engage in encounters that can end up with people being killed so we have to continue to pay attention to them But we also must equally pay attention to prosecutors, and I think people don't pay enough attention to that step of the process. It's my contention that prosecutors are in fact the most powerful officials in our criminal justice system. And the reason why I say that Greg is because although police officers have the power to stop and arrest a person and bring them to the courthouse door, that's kind of where their power stops when it comes to that person's involvement in the criminal justice system

30:43 Once they bring the person to the courthouse door, it is up to the prosecutor To decide whether that individual stays in the system and what happens to them. And the reason for that is because prosecutors and prosecutors alone decide whether an individual is charged with a crime. That's really what gets the person involved in the system The police officer can only recommend charges. The prosecutor has total discretion in deciding what to do at that point, they can accept the recommendation, they can charge a person with something higher or they can just simply dismiss the case even if they have the power to charge. Let me just give an example to try and illustrate what I mean. Let's say a police officer arrests a person

31:32 And that person has five bags of cocaine on them. And the police officer brings them to the court and recommends that the prosecutor be charged with possession with intent of distributing cocaine. That is a felony charge in all jurisdictions, it carries a mandatory minimum sentence by that I mean if the person's convicted they have to serve that sentence The judge has no discretion to give them a break even if their first offender And so the police officer says I recommend that you charge this person with five counts of distribution of cocaine. Each count carries, let's say it carries 10 years in prison and that is realistic. You know it varies from state to state but that's a realistic sentence for a crime like that. The prosecutor can decide

32:22 A number of things. Prosecutor can accept that recommendation and bring the five counts for possession with intent to distribute, or the prosecutor can say you know what I'm just going to charge this person with a misdemeanor even though i can charge him with a felony give this person a break and charge them with a misdemeanor that only carries one year in prison for each one That's what I'm gonna do Or the prosecutor can say um this person looks like a good decent person he's college bound He never had an arrest record And so I'm just going to dismiss the case and let him go entirely. Prosecutor can do all of that, any of those things." Now you can see how if the prosecutor decides to give favorable treatment to one person and dismiss their case, and look at another person and decide to charge them harshly it can create disparities. Oftentimes way too often those disparities break down along class and race lines

33:19 And just to be clear, you know less people think that it's hard for charges to be run. I can see how people might think that when they look at how these police officers aren't charged It is very easy for prosecutors to charge an individual with a crime the standard is probable cause more likely than not which is Much lower than the proof beyond a reasonable doubt that they have to show at the time of a trial. And so it's very easy for them to pile on charges against the person, And that gives them an advantage at the plea bargaining stage, which we can also talk about. But before we get to that I just want again stress the problem of racial disparities you know if a prosecutor gives one person a break and not another person and it breaks down along race lines it's very easy for us to say well there's you know race discrimination going on here but it's really complicated. I'm not one who says

34:14 A prosecutor looks at two cases, a black kid with cocaine and white kids cocaine. He says you know what I think i'm gonna treat the black kid worse. I don't think that's what going on Greg. I think it is complicated confluence of issues including something called implicit bias which is something that we all as human beings suffer from, you know. That thing that causes us to treat people differently based on race or skin color or body type or sexual orientation and we're not even conscious that we're doing it's an unconscious view that some of us have that comes about

34:54 as a result of stereotypes in the media and elsewhere. It's that thing that causes, you know, white woman to be on an elevator and black guy gets on the elevator and she pulls her purse a little closer it gets over in the corner she is not even aware she doing this but she sees this black man like automatically she thinking criminality She no consciously doing this or certainly not purposely doing it but its implicit bias And all of us, of every race, creed and color we all suffer from these implicit biases one way or the other. The problem is that when you are in a position of power and your all important decisions that can make the difference between a person's liberty and sometimes their life or not

35:41 if you're being influenced by those kinds of implicit biases, that is an extreme problem. And I think that's what oftentimes going on with racial profiling and it's also going on with prosecutors sometimes when they make these decisions right? I can see a prosecutor seeing a white kid get arrested for some drug offense he comes in with his fancy lawyer and the lawyer says oh you know give Todd a break he's got a drug problem and his parents are gonna put him in a drug program And if he finishes the drug program, please dismiss this case because you know he's a smart kid. He's headed to college. Please don't ruin his life give him another chance and you can see a prosecutor saying You know what I used to do a few drugs when i was young too. I don't want to ruin this kids life

36:27 He's gonna get his drug program, so let me give him a break. And I think no one would think there is anything wrong with that! I don't think there is anything wrong with that. I think Todd deserves a break The problem however Gregg is when Jamal comes through having committed the same offense he has a drug problem too but he doesn't have a drug program and he doesn't have wealthy parents to put him in a drug program He's got this poor overworked public defender who comes with the same story and the prosecutor is like, he doesn't have a drug program. And he looks at Jamal, he doesn't see himself. Jamal of high school drop out you're not going to college. He doesn't have that same empathy for Jamal until Jamal gets charged with the felony Is that a conscious decision on the part of prosecutor? Probably and I would say definitely not but it happened

37:16 And so what do we do about this, right? Do we blame the prosecutor I guess my point is, I blame prosecutors because if they are aware that these disparities are taking place and they're not taking steps to try to eliminate them. I do blame them because they have the power to do so. As the person who makes the decisions about who's to be charged and not to be charged, prosecutors have the power to use that same discretion in ways to try to eliminate racial disparities in our criminal justice system and I feel like they oughta be doing it. And some are starting to do it and that is something we can talk about as well

37:53 Right that is a really great summary and it's what i find so unique about your work everybody talking about police but there are other conversations to be had, that are equally important and pretty strategic for correcting this systemic issue. And obviously it seems like we need to educate or train more than just the police on the streets but people know so little about prosecutors What can we say about that? I mean, how do we correct this most prosecutors are actually elected officials locally. Right Yes, exactly. There's something we can do about it so the first point to make here is that most criminal cases are handled in state and local courts we hear about federal prosecutors especially lately worrying about all this stuff going on with federal prosecutors there's a federal system and as a state local system the vast majority of criminal cases are resolved on the state and local level and State and local prosecutors or as you say

38:55 elected officials. There are only four states in the District of Columbia, those are the only jurisdictions where prosecutors aren't elected and every other state they run for office every four years and this is on the county level There's close to probably 3,000 county or city prosecutors that are responsible for prosecuting cases on the state and local level. They run for office every four years. Very few people pay attention to district attorney races. Everybody is looking at the City Council and the mayor. Very few people are looking at district attorney races. There is a reason for that! You know, until recently and it's still true to a large degree. Most of these prosecutors run unopposed many of them serve for decades you go on the ballot box there is only one name there right? And so of course they're not going to be held. They don't feel they have to be accountable

39:47 The most important decisions they make, namely the charging decision and the plea bargaining decision. They're made behind closed doors. They don't have to justify those decisions to anyone like the charging decision example I gave before that's not done in open court and they don't have to tell the judge what they did why they decided to dismiss a case or bring a case. They answer it to no one there is no transparency And even though that's the most important decision, then the plea bargaining decision which we haven't talked about plea bargaining yet. That is a big issue and a big problem in our system and I hope we do have a chance to talk about that but those decisions

40:24 They're not made in open court and so no one really knows how they're made, and they don't have to justify making those decisions. And so when these chief prosecutors run for office the way it works is you've got a district attorney and then they have what they call assistant district attorneys that handle their cases in court but the chief district attorney's elected And by the way, they call different things and some jurisdictions they'll call district attorneys and others they'll call state's attorney sometimes prosecuting attorney in Virginia. They're called Commonwealth Attorney same thing this is the elected position when they run for office They don't say here's my charging and plea bargaining policies and here's what I'm doing to eliminate racial disparities of criminal justice They not talking about any that stuff all their saying is I'm gonna be tough on crime and I'm gonna keep you safe

41:11 And if they have an opponent, the opponent saying well I'll be tougher on crime. That's all they're saying and not talking about the real issues that really drive what they're doing every day and most of the public is not educated about those issues. So that is why say to people pay attention to your district attorney races and more people need to be running for office in challenging them then this is starting to change Since about 2015, you've started to see individuals, what some people are now calling progressive prosecutors who have decided to challenge some of these incumbent district attorneys. And these new folks actually running on a platform of ending mass incarceration and reducing racial disparities and diverting cases out of the system. So just few examples there's Larry Krasner in Philadelphia who ran on that platform and won Kim Foxx in Cook County Chicago around that platform and won

42:09 Rachel ronald in boston and their number of others but there's still a handful of them because there is three thousand district attorney races across the country and then maybe a couple dozen of these new progressive projects are doing really great work. What we need more of them if you're gonna see that kind real change in this system because it will have prosecutors who make the decision that they're gonna stop overcharging people and pressuring people to plead guilty, and charging people with high-level felonies and seeking long sentences. If we had more who were willing to stop that trend, we could make a difference in this terrible mass incarceration crisis that we have in this country today.

42:56 Yes cheers to that and as you said people should also understand the bargaining process and also things like the phenomenon of false confessions under duress or holding a person until they're worn down how did these processes end up trapping people who might not have even done anything wrong at all. Well, let's talk about plea bargaining because that is really an issue and a problem in this country. So prosecutors as I said control the charging process but they also control plea bargaining it's the combination of the charging and plea bargaining powers that really permit prosecutors to control almost control the outcome of most cases

43:39 The reason I say that is because 95 to in some jurisdictions 97% of all criminal cases are resolved by way of a guilty plea. Right, people look at all these TV shows Law and Order and all these you know about 10 different versions of Law and Order. And they see all these trials going on in TV that's only on TV there is not a lot of trials going on in the United States There are lots of guilty pleas going on. This is how it works I'll give you an example let me just use this same example I used with the drug offense

44:16 This prosecutor says I'm going to charge this person with five counts of distribution of cocaine. Each one of them carries 10 mandatory years in prison, 5 times ten that person's looking at 50 mandatory years in prison right? That's the rest of their life right if they're lucky to even live that long So it's very easy for them to bring the charges because again probable cause you know very low standard higher standard going to trial but. Even though the person has a constitutional right to go to trial going to travel is risky business right let's say that person says i'm gonna go to try and try to fight all these charges,

44:53 A jury can do anything. I mean, even if you're lucky enough to have a lawyer who has the time to investigate the case and come up with a good defense and say look i'm innocent, i've got a good defense You just don't know what a jury's gonna do They might still convict until your taking a chance by going to trial So the prosecutor can say, and it's totally up to the prosecutor whether to offer a deal or not. They don't have to judge can't make them but oftentimes more often than not they will offer a deal so that prosecutor might say tell you what Mr. Defendant I'll cut your break if you plead guilty to just one of these 10-year mandatory minimum offenses I'll dismiss the other four so now you're looking at ten mandatory years instead of

45:36 50, well 10 years in prison is a really long time. Right? That's a long time but if you're looking at 50 years You can see how even an innocent person would take the deal because they were afraid of going to trial and being convicted Of all the offenses that end up spending the rest of their life in prison This is what goes on every day in criminal court in this country. And to make it worse, the prosecutor has total power over the process so the prosecutor might say look you know I'm offering this deal its good until 5 o'clock tomorrow either your guy takes or off the table

46:15 And the defense attorney might say, well wait a minute. I need more time than that it's my ethical duty to investigate the case to find out whether my client has a defense and the prosecutor can and they often do say too bad take it by tomorrow or is off the table. So the defense attorneys in the untenable position of having to try to advise a client about whether to take a plea and they don't even know if their clients have a defense or not this is what is passing as justice in the United States of America today. This happens all day, every day in criminal courts and when you take into account the fact that 95 to 97% of all cases are resolved by a guilty plea, you can see how prosecutors are just controlling this system. Oftentimes they don't even turn over it's all the information about the case there might be exculpatory information and they are constitutionally required to turn that information over to the defense

47:09 But if there's a guilty plea, they don't have to turn it over then. The Supreme Court says you have to turn over exculpatory evidence in a timely manner. Most courts interpret that as long as you give it to the person before trial, you're fine. Well, if there is a guilty plea they may never turn over that information. There may be information out there showing that the person's innocent and yet their pleading guilty. That's why we have so many wrongful convictions but this what going on unfortunately in our courts every day Wow i think that's so eye opening a lot of people probably didn't know a lot of that stuff and. Man it is a great thing to see people come out for cause that doesn't affect them directly. It's very inspiring, lot of people are doing that now. A lot of people are putting themselves in harms way on behalf what they see happening the black men should be kind of inspired by that things bring us together but this is another criticism I hear and curious what you think about it but

48:08 I hear people saying that if Black Lives Matter as an organization was looking at everything equally, they would spend at least some time talking about black on black crime. And I am not a big fan of well what about this? Because there's always other issues to talk about but we're trying to focus on one specific thing But that said, when I heard the numbers which i hadn't heard until recently it was a bit crazy and correct me if i'm wrong there's all kinds of statistics on the internet they can definitely be wrong but it seems like police officers kill about 250 black men a year and if we want to talk about unarmed black men then maybe a few dozen. There are about 7 000 black-on-black killings a year

48:54 And to not address that is a large part of the reason why some people, maybe more conservative people think that this is a political movement that has ulterior motives rather than addressing specifically trying to keep more black people alive. What do you say to that? That's a difficult one but what would you say to that? I don't think it's difficult at all. I don't know why it's an either or situation most crime is intra racial in other words because we live in a segregated society most crime that involves the victim, is its white on white and most of his white on white black on black there very little interracial crime if you actually look at statistics

49:37 And so yes, we do have to do something about the violence in all of our communities. It's kind of apples and oranges like I don't know why there is a saying that okay why are you paying attention to the fact that there is a disproportionate number of black and brown people being killed by police You shouldn't pay attention to that. You should pay attention to black on black crime." It's not an either-or situation, we live in a violent society period with too many guns on the street where people of all races killing each other with guns and we need to do something about gun control We live in a very violent society period We need to do more about violence prevention in all communities. There's no question about that, but then in no way Makes the black lives matter movement Less important or in no way should suggest that we shouldn't be paying attention To these you know murders that these police officers are doing on videotaping getting away with them It's sort of like don't look at that look at this I don't buy that right

50:38 I don't buy that. We need to solve all of these problems, it's not an either-or situation." Yes, I think that's a great answer! I just had to ask before I even saw the comment section for this one but... Okay so in closing if you were in charge of the criminal justice system what would be say your top three changes? Policy changes or things that you think maybe Protesters out there should demand that you think would have the greatest effect i do think this man and reimagining and restructuring our police function needs to be at the top of the list for all other reasons i mentioned in our earlier conversation.

51:23 And I think people paying attention to prosecutors and holding prosecutors accountable, not only for prosecuting cops who kill people because as you point out that's like a relatively small number when you compare it all the other crimes. But we need to hold prosecutors accountable for the decisions that they make that have furthered and increased this problem of mass incarceration and make sure that they're using their power and discretion In mass incarceration and in racial disparities, and they can do that. There are prosecutors across the country that are doing that now there are good models

51:59 Larry Krasner, I mentioned before Kim Fox and others. So we need to push for that so on both the police and prosecution level, I would say those for me would be my top two And then you know just in terms of our sentencing laws We need to change our sentencing laws. We have sentencing laws as I said before that have totally unreasonable sentences as compared with the rest of the world. There's no reason why there should be a law in the books that allows a person to spend the rest of their life in prison without any possibility of parole for a non-violent offense, I mean that makes no sense so I would say that would be an overhaul as well and I will say you know just in closing I am feeling a bit hopeful

52:47 Even though I have no reason to be hopeful because I'm 64 years old and things like things are just so terrible But I really do think that what's going on now in this country and around the world is a sea change. I have to believe that We're seeing we've never before seen these kinds of protests every day all over the country And all over the world and people really now demanding that black lives Do matter and saying that and honestly believing it And the example one example i give that just kind of really almost you know have a lot to do with me feeling this way is that there's a little town in alabama called mountain brook alabama right outside of. Birmingham or montgomery i think it is,

53:30 edit ninety eight percent white and there's like one percent african-american. And they had a black lives matter rally at four hundred people showed up, add the protested and i thought wow amal from alabama so i made for it never never dreamed of live to see that day And so people of all races now, I think are getting it. And I think unfortunately for poor George Floyd, I think that incredibly awful eight minute and 46 second videotape where we saw that police officer staring into that cell phone camera as if to say tape me, I don't care and just draining the life out of that man with his foot on his neck for eight excruciating minutes or eight minutes and 46 seconds

54:19 I think people witnessing that really like kind of struck the consciousness of this country, you know in a way that i think is making people realize that we have to change and so. I'm hopeful, I'm hopeful that this time there's going to be some real and meaningful change Yes, yes. Me too and I do like to focus on the positives. I've seen a lot of inspiring tear jerking videos of police and people hugging police and protesters and I guess putting themselves at risk of a virus even thinking that a hug is more important than it's just there have been some inspirational things to look at and you know usually that's the best way to go but you've been very generous with your time sorry we went a bit long i really appreciate your expertise

55:07 Before I let you go, are there other things you're working on or other resources for people to follow up on that you'd like to highlight? Maybe remind them of the books that you have out there. Well sure! My book Policing The Black Man... You know i'm not here to promote myself with a book but it's an anthology and its a book of essays and we were really fortunate to have gotten a positive response from so many of the people I reached out when I was putting this anthology together agreed to participate in the brian stevenson who i'm sure many of your listeners know uh... from the movie just mercy and from his incredible book just mercy he wrote the initial chapter in the book police in a black man which is different credible essay about that history of racial injustice in this country leading straight up to today sheryl and i thought for men don't like it really depends on every chapter called do black lives matter to the court already mentioned kristin hanning's captain so

56:02 I'm saying all that to say that there's something there for everybody on a lot of different issues. And there are all kinds of great books out there, they're great book lists about race that are going out on internet. I urge people to educate themselves right now is the time to do that is to read find out about the history racial injustice in this country You know, donate to organizations that are out there fighting injustice. There are many not just the Equal Justice Initiative and the NAAC Legal Defense Fund but there all kinds of bail funds out there and other smaller organizations that are out there you know trying to help and find something as I say to people all the time everybody can't do everything but everybody can do something And so find that one thing that you feel strongly about you know make a difference

56:46 Yes, amazing. Well thanks for educating us I definitely learned a lot from your work and those essays you mentioned keep fighting the good fight and take care out there Thank you so much for having me Greg You got it And that is a wrap people Angela J Davis be in the change that she would like to see in the world i thought that was great. And this is angela j davis not angela why david's shouldn't have to say this, add it ironic that i do when it involves an african american guest but you know i digest a lot of material for these interviews and on so many videos of angeles speeches i would see comments like

57:33 She should have never gotten out of jail, or don't applaud this Marxist etc. Well that is a different person Angela Y Davis was a Black Panther and fairly extreme activist and I'm not gonna give her whole bio or relay any opinions about her except to say that i'm sure we'll have some similar comments here and there And that kind of thing is so ignorant it should be embarrassing But it does relate to something i did expect to add this wrap up which is that right now, our society so polarized and lockstep with their quote unquote team that makes a show like this difficult to release a little bit.

58:19 Which is sad but a lot of people out there think that if i do it show what they lost scholar about the unfairness of the criminal justice system, then i'm exposing myself as an extreme left soy boy and tifa radical. Another irony is that on the other side anyone who questions authority or a skeptical of official narratives, is labeled a maga hat wearing loud mouth trumpers so imagine trying to run a show that threads these needles it's harder and harder to do. But for me, it's like what is conspiracy culture except to examine how the empire manipulates minds and installs difficult economic ladders and treats the majority of us like disposable trash? To look at little microcosms of that shouldn't be weird. If a person asks me for examples of what I mean why i am a conspiracy-minded person

59:16 A lot of the examples I use are ones that affected black people specifically, like the Tuskegee experiments or the chemical sprayers on the Pruitt-Igoe projects in St. Louis Those would be two big examples Or going all the way to Africa to test vaccines would be another one And i could use a lot of examples of testing unsafe stuff on military soldiers too Chemical exposure, Gulf War sickness i should be able to have contempt for the military industrial complex and also empathy, four young kids who signed up to be soldiers and ended being used in chemical and medical experiments that were covered up. I'm just saying you can drill down on a lot of specific communities and see how the machine has attacked them specifically. And i think that should bring people together

1:00:11 Obviously, we want to avoid getting caught up in the rabid woke virus as Chris Knowles would say. But we can still talk about systematic injustice and getting chewed up by the big machine as we always have To say that you don't want to see skin color be a factor in the way people are treated should not indicate your political persuasion either Isn't that little messed-up? The real world is a lot more nuanced than that at least I hope I tried to say that in the intro, that just being in the flow of the economic current is challenging for everyone. We're all swimming upstream! I was definitely kept up at night and a panicked sweat over my options in life until I threw this Hail Mary of podcasting And even though we are all swimming upstream, we should also be able to admit that the pressure... The current it's not the same for everyone. We can say that can't we?

1:01:09 Forget skin color for a second anyone growing up in arnold missouri is at a disadvantage to someone, growing up in say chicago if they want career options beyond seven eleven walmart and jimmy johns because there's just nothing there. So yeah life is just not fair sometimes but we should work to correct those things and you look at policing and imprisonment this country and we clearly have a big problem And I know because i've definitely been harassed by police. I have been pulled over doing nothing, in one instance told to get on my knees and had three or four cops standing with their guns aimed at my back screaming orders with floodlights in my eyes at night. I wasn't mouthing off, I did not do anything wrong! I told this story already the point is that it could be your friend or son or cousin in that situation skin color aside

1:02:04 And we should work to make sure that most of them survive those encounters and so don't neglect to prioritize this problem because you think it's someone else is. I tried to express that in the show by asking angela some questions on behalf of the more conservative parts of this crowd, I've heard these counterpoints my whole life and i don't think they're very strong. And it's definitely not comfortable to ask someone like angela some of these things because of how i know it can make me look but those are the people that i would like to see changed by an interview like this so i was trying to bring up their talking points for this kind of discourse, that's all

1:02:51 And from my experience which is clearly anecdotal the black people that i've been close with have pretty thick skin they can talk about this stuff pretty openly and in a very raw way, and then my conversations we have had. A good laugh over when the white boy steps in it a little bit But they look at jimmy fallon doing blackface and just shrug and move on. They are necessarily as sensitive or in need of coddling as the narrative suggest i just wanna stop being harassed and sentenced to more years in jail for the same crime and looked out with such a skeptical eye, you want to be given some opportunities for success it's not rocket science

1:03:34 So no amount of removing risque sitcom episodes is gonna make up for that so maybe we need to adjust that focus i know this is thorny territory. And i knew i was gonna lose some paid subscribers in twenty twenty four economic reasons things are rough out there i know, what people on both sides are also very triggered by these little words and phrases that they think you're owned by their political opposition i try hard not to be on either side of the third rail i am a separate thing which is take our last episode as an example carry roads talking about ayahuasca and his experiences in the nfl. He use the phrase toxic masculinity, can i got way too many emails and comments related to well i had to stop listening when he said that

1:04:26 Why? Because it's one of these stupid trigger phrases generally used by, let's say radical feminists. But are people so simple-minded as to not understand that a person who has been encouraged to play football since they were nine who ended up with a long career in the NFL would think that he was involved in a subculture that amplifies and glorifies the worst aspects of manliness Let a guy talk about his experience what do you know about being in the nfl i just get frustrated when i work to bring you guys something interesting and a person gives me their time, and they're just speaking off the cuff and they say so many interesting things but your phrase that your political opposition sometimes uses any shut right down.

1:05:18 It's just sad and if we're going to try to maintain a diverse audience you can handle a wide range of guests from all walks of life, we will have to shave off some of those who get set off by stuff like that i mean even in the show like today i tried to avoid looping things like black lives matter. The movement itself because yes i see that as a political organization is a co-opting or a corporate ties in of. Clearly very real issue but it's like a marketing slogan, i also heard that there are some charitable organizations that they say are aligned with black lives matter but when you donate to them they go to the biden campaign for the dnc directly that's the sort of thing and then im talking about

1:06:09 that manipulation cheapens the conversation but thats just my opinion and it's unrelated i would say to the criminal justice system slant against dark skin people which is much older than that slogan or movement anyway. But for some listeners even having a show like this as soon as they see it no matter how hard we try, make it non political they will see it that way And we are bombarded with social and political operations to manipulate our culture, our mindset. All that stuff organized by the best experts in the world at this sort of thing so clearly it's going to trap some of us

1:06:53 What we march on sometimes on thc we talk to an anarchist like james corbett here his thoughts on policing and sometimes we talk to someone like angela. Who i think has a real expertise in areas of the criminal justice system that tend to be blind spots for a lot of people who would like to see somethings fixed but they don't know enough about law to express it properly, It's also okay to say that sometimes we don't see problems that don't affect us personally until they're explained to us. I'm 6'1", i never considered a girl's height in dating, but i have shorter friends who clearly factor that in constantly to any relationship they are interested in pursuing. Is being shorter than your girlfriend a problem? Huh! I never thought about it you know

1:07:46 Again life's not fair for everyone either and somethings probably can't be fixed or have to be just overlooked if there are traditional norms that are just weird. Broaden out good looking people are always gonna have an easier life than the rest of us no matter what we do in a matter what their skin color is, a lot of other things can be fixed and when it's life or death when its putting people in cages for the best years of their life we should think long and hard about that Angela brings up a lot of great points again. Commonality between so many different topics is that solutions are typically local not these big political national, overreaching projects clearly we need to change the laws that would automatically alter what police are out there doing

1:08:40 I have a good friend who's a cop and exactly the kind of guy i would want out there. He doesn't want to be looking for weed on teenagers, he wants to be keeping his community safe. He wants his neighbors to know their cars are not getting broken into every night. He wants people in his town to know they're not going to get attacked on their way to work but he would also say that prosecutors are very important and this situation is delicate From his perspective and response to overzealous prosecutors in some cities, prosecutors have been put in place or elected who are maybe too lax.

1:09:19 Who wanna end up swinging way too far the other way to make up for how harsh the last guy was and my friend has expressed me that he can't even do his job right because he sees the same kids and it is usually. Kids who don't have a lot of guidance kids are out there basically raising themselves but he sees the same ones breaking into houses and cars in pretty bold fashion, Because they know that the new prosecutor is black and they're gonna get a pass and we'll break into more stuff tomorrow. It's something to consider, this is just what I was told by a professional in the field... ...in a particular city And when his situation was explained to me, I could empathize with it That does seem pretty damn difficult

1:10:06 I was a really shitty difficult kid in private school because i knew that at home my parents thought the school was a little too strict and a little ridiculous and so, i didn't really listen because the real punishment always comes at home. So if it wasn't coming at home what are you gonna do teacher? What are you gonna do But anyway, I think my cop buddy, I and Angela would all want a solution that doesn't put these kids in a cage for youthful mistakes but also allows neighbors to feel secure. Isn't that fair to say? There are a lot of factors in a person's life today we just tried to focus on a narrow sliver of being policed more aggressively because your skin color

1:10:56 And again solutions are sometimes more complicated than they seem let me use my cop friend example again and you do have to just take my word for it that is one of the good ones if i adopted a black son this guy is exactly the guy i would want to be on the call. If this kid was out there doing something stupid And that said, one solution that people talk about is officers should live in the neighborhoods they police. Well for my friend it actually is a requirement and so he lives in a dangerous area so that he can tackle real problems He did transfer to the suburbs for awhile and he loathed it because he felt like it was mainly just harassing people rather than solving real problems cause there really weren't any

1:11:41 But now he lives in the inner city so you can try to help and is raising two young children who if they were school going age would be in a bad district for good schools, no probably should even be walking into the bus stop alone and stuff like that. So just think about this as a guys job his whole family has to reorganize themselves to be less safe so that it can try to work in an area that could use his help is that right I don't know, seems kind of extreme to me because these problems are bigger than any one guy. He can't really do anything about the safety of a giant city and you don't want those people to just all retreat to safer areas because it's better for their family and who is not going put their family first? I'm kinda rambling in going into all sorts of places in this wrap up probably stepping on landmines left and right

1:12:36 I know the show has some reach and i don't think im really an authority on anything but i have both black friends whose thoughts and concerns they've expressed to me deserve to get some airtime here. As well as conference i have who also have concerns that i would like to relay in a situation like this don't get mad at me i'm really a neutral party, I look at social media sometimes and think man we should do twice as much listening as we do talking. And we should ask the opinions of black men and police officers on solutions they think could work for both of them

1:13:15 I mentioned some of the solutions i find interesting on previous shows and other wrap ups and earlier in this episode but, an 811 emergency number that uses the 911 system but says hey we got a problem here. Though we don't want police for this one we don't need anybody armed coming here again won't help the situation we just need to stretcher or any empty or family counselor to deescalate domestic argument i think thats a creative one It's clear how a lot of accidental shootings would not have happened if you could just opt out of sending a police officer to certain situations. How do we weed out bad cops? I think they should have malpractice insurance like doctors do, and i think any lawsuits or accident payouts should come from pension funds! If police unions are there to protect police and their retirement funds

1:14:09 Well, you better work on behalf of the good ones to protect that money from the problem officers. We clearly need to decriminalize drugs so that having some weed is not a reason to drag a person out of a car! We should probably scale back traffic laws so that we can create conditions where we aren't having a mild heart attack because the cop gets behind us and if I forget to use my turn signal because i'm nervous it's not going to cost me $500 in a day in court or worse get me pulled out of the car and talked to like a piece of shit. Police should be far better trained in unarmed combat, and should probably train on an ongoing basis not just to get onto the force

1:14:52 i heard that barber school is longer than the police academy in some places which is obviously insane, we also had that story from a few years ago about police with too high of an IQ not being hired. Because let's see lemme put on my conspiracy hat for a minute I think they want a powder keg situation i think they want conflict and accidents and racial tensions because it keeps us from rallying around and putting the spotlight on the capstone cabal. But that's another show, I think things on the reform list i mentioned are sensible efficient and don't require us to start from scratch Don't let them problem reaction solution us into some federalized national corporate police force

1:15:42 On top of that yes paying more attention to our prosecutor elections who's your district attorney. Do you know a lot of us are lucky if we even know our mayor but we gotta reclaim these positions local local local and that's gonna end a lot of my ranting my qualifying in my damage control, I sometimes get a lot of negative feedback over something i said and then i feel the need to over compensate with a full explanation of this sort of stuff. Because a lot of the time when i see these comments i don't even think that the critics and i disagree, i think sometimes i just spoke too recklessly in they took something wrong way we're all very on guard right now but i guess the focus should be on those in our audience who have been listening for a long time

1:16:35 They probably don't think any of this is outside of our normal routine at all, and I thank you guys for that support. But yes Angela J Davis the book is Policing The Black Man if you want to learn more about this issue from all angles and from multiple voices or Arbitrary Justice If You Want To Dive Deeper Into The Power Of The American Prosecutor Reach out to Angela and thank her for her work if you feel so inclined. I'm sure looking at my website, and the titles of previous episodes, even just the name of the show can turn off a serious person like Angela but she was willing to give us a chance so let her know it was appreciated if we can

1:17:20 i know she was on a tight schedule and two hours is the long time to talk somebody like me. And a lot of our time was taken up by tech issues and bad signals so obviously that was all edited out but it took time, and she's very good sport and all that comes with the hassle of thc interview obviously the plus show has more That's mostly our police union and solutions talk, but sign up if you want to hear my full interviews. You know this the higher side chats dot com it's how we pay the bills and keep out ads for new underwear an stamps dot com Well that one was on The House stamps calm your welcome And that's it for me today dude take care out there your move police unions prosecutors and protectors of the unjust system Your fucking mood

1:18:12 Well, they tie that yellow ribbon round the oak tree They've worn out all their prayer in there All along thought they were rooting for the home team As they're sent to the game and torn apart We twist this tourniquet upon the pipeline That it carries all the pain and the worry As we blindly clap and cheer from the sidelines It's clear Arnold was intrigued from the very start And that's where they found me In a cemetery A smoking gun in my hand I'm down for the land of THC The American scream

1:19:23 They took that faded ribbon off the oak tree Worn out all the hope in their hearts Long thought I was doing Now I'm lying in a pool of my blood And that's where they found me In the cemetery A smoking gun in mine From the land of the free Sing with me, and that's where they found

1:20:07 In my cemetery A smoking guy in my ear Now I'm down from the land of the THC The Americans scream And that's where they found me, in my cemetery A smoking gun down from the land of the E

1:21:00 With me, then I can't scream