← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:00]
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JVL
Hello everyone. I'm JVL from the Bulwark and I am joined today by Radley Balco, who has been writing about police and law enforcement and civil rights for forever in a day. 20 years too long. 20. I mean, really 20 years, right? I mean, I've started reading you when I was like a kid, and I think you were also a kid at the time. Like we were basically the same age. We came up through journalism together. Right now Radley runs a fantastic substack called the Watch. I was one of his first premium subscribers. You should be too. It's fantastic. Bradley, I wanted to talk to you about Minneapolis. You wrote a fantastic piece for the New York Times. And not for, not for your own substack, which was very generous of you because you hit on something that I, I have been sort of obsessing over, which is that what is, what is different about Minneapolis is, is a real difference. There are bad people and bad professionals in all lines of work. Yet, you know, you get very bad criminal level priests, very bad criminal level nurses and doctors, very bad criminal level law enforcement officers. Right. People who do their jobs badly and cause harm. The difference in Minneapolis is like the institutional level response all the way up through the government, which immediately. Then A, insisted that these things that we saw weren't real, B, insisted that the people being killed were domestic terrorists, and C, tried to like close off local law enforcement from doing post shooting investigations. Can you talk a little bit about and just try to explain to people like why this isn't just a difference in scale, it's a difference in kind. Yeah.
- [03:46]
Radley Balko
So I think the best way to kind of articulate what's happening here is to talk about what happens after a normal police shooting versus what happened after these two shootings of Renee Goode and Alex Preddy. So normally after a police officer kills someone, the police agency will put out a statement or they'll hold a press conference or they'll give an interview and they'll talk about, you know, they might praise the officer a little bit or their history, but they'll always promise an investigation that is unbiased and professional and transparent. And they're not always all of those things. Sometimes they're none of those things. A lot of times they're structured to make sure the officer has the best chance of getting off as possible. But I think it's important that they at least pay lip service to the idea that they want this to be just and fair. Right. Even if they don't intend it to be those things, at least saying that you want those things or you intend on those things, saying it shows that you care that the community still trusts you, that you care that the community, you know, still believes in that you're committed to these things, these important principles that we have. So after these shootings, I think it started actually in Chicago after the killing of a undocumented Mexican man who was just dropped his kids off at school, we saw this. The statements from DHS and other administration officials are, they are unequivocally clearing these officers of any wrongdoing whatsoever. They're unequivocally painting the people killed as either domestic terrorists or criminal illegal aliens. Everything is in this sort of maximalist, like wildly exaggerated language, almost Twitter language.
- [05:38]
JVL
Right?
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Radley Balko
It is, it's posting language. Right, right.
- [05:42]
JVL
And so not lawyer language, like posting.
- [05:44]
Radley Balko
Language, not lawyer language, but. And not even in the language of, of, you know, I've, I've come up with this term, the exonerative, exonerative tense that we see after police shootings where there's this language that tries to remove the, the culpability. You know, it's, it's like a gun fired at a bullet penetrated the suspect. Right. It's never an officer shot somebody, but this is so far beyond that. And, you know, the way I have tried to compare it is, you know, normally when police agencies lie or misdirect or mislead after a police shooting, it's because they're trying to cover something up. Right? Because they still want credibility. They still want to be seen as trustworthy, and they're there. It's a cover up. What we're seeing after these shootings is the kind of lie that you tell not to cover something up, but to, to make sure everyone knows that you think you can get away with anything. Right? It's performative lying. It's, it's lying to sort of. There's a flex of your power.
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JVL
Right? That's exactly right.
- [06:46]
Radley Balko
They know they're lying. We know they're lying and they know we know they're lying. But they're going to do it anyway because they need to show us that they can get away with it. And it's a real, you know, I think it's a real, a red flag, you know, that when the government doesn't even care if the citizens perceive it as legitimate anymore, what they want is they want us to fear them and they want immigrant communities to fear them. They want ICE watchers and people recording on their phones to fear them. You know, they, you know, for the first time, I think in Trump's year in office, now they are seeing the kind of resistance that could actually defeat them and defeat their agenda. And I think they're terrified of it. And so what they're doing is they're responding by just sort of blanketly kind of projecting their power in every way they can. And, you know, it's, it's scary. I think that these officers, you know, I think the current administration sees police training as some sort of woke agenda. Right. I mean, the, the very idea of de escalation they don't buy into it. That's not something we should do. Because de escalation, I mean, you know, this is a president who famously never apologizes for anything and thinks anyone who does is weak. Right. And so de escalation is a form of sort of giving away your power. Right? So they don't believe in that. They believe in escalating. They believe in more force, more violence. Right. This is a president who's openly endorsed police brutality, you know, on the campaign trail. But, you know, they are hiring these officers with explicit appeals to white supremacy and white nationalism and white nationalist literature and songs. You know, they know exactly what they're doing. They're. The people they're hiring now are people who are watching these videos we've been seeing for the last six months and are saying, you know what? I want to do that for a living. I want to go out and do what those guys are doing. That's already problematic. They are telling them that immigrants poison the blood of the country. They're telling them the people who try to hold ICE accountable are domestic terrorists. And they're telling that they have complete and absolute immunity from any sort of liability, criminal or financial. I mean, that is just a recipe for violence. Like there's no other way to look at those, you know, putting all of those things together into one occupying package.
- [08:59]
JVL
So it, it seems as though the administration is trying to signal that it is changing. And there's been a lot of this, like one of my personal bugaboos, a lot of mainstream media reporting saying, like, ah, the administration is changing tack, changing course. And I'm like, I, is it, is it changing? Like, we would have to see things change, right? Because Tom Holman is showing up and Greg Bevino is gone. That doesn't mean that, like, the, the rules of engagement and the policies and the training have changed. Like, those would be real things that need to, to happen. The ICE and DHS and CPB have not pulled out of Minnesota as far as we can tell. Although today Susan Collins says that they are either pulling out or not going any further into Maine. Unclear. So I guess one of my questions to you is, has, Am I just being, am I being too cynical here? Has there been a change over the last three days, or is this just cosmetics?
- [10:02]
Radley Balko
I mean, there's been a tiny change in rhetoric from people like Homan, although Trump again yesterday went on a big rant about Somali immigrants and how terrible and violent they are. And I'm not, I'm not normally a meme guy. But I saw a meme that I thought that was very funny, which was that, you know, changing from Greg Vivino to Tom Holman is like your pants and changing your shirt. You know, this is just going to be the same, you know, the same shit within a different package. Basically, Homan, you know, Holman is the guy who threatened to arrest AOC for letting immigrants know of their rights.
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JVL
He's the guy who took cash bribes in a kava bag.
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Radley Balko
Right? I mean, the guy who took the money in a kava bag is going to make everything better. Right? You know, he also threatened to bring hell to Boston because it was a sanctuary city. I mean, Homan has a long history of, you know, if it weren't for Bavino, you know, Homan would be one of the most loathsome figure, you know, the most loathsome figure in this administration. I think he moves, you know, up a notch now that Bovino is out of the way, but he's still right up there. And, you know, Trump's rhetoric hasn't changed. He seems to. He seems to regret the fact that what he's doing in Minneapolis isn't popular. I don't think he regrets what he's actually doing by any stretch of the imagination. You know, it's sort of like being sorry. You got caught not being sorry. So, yeah, I mean, I don't. I think you're right to be cynical. I'm. I'm. You know, I think it's possible that they may turn tail and leave Minneapolis the way they did Chicago. But then I think they're just going to go to whatever city pisses off Trump next, and they're going to do the same thing all over again.
- [11:42]
JVL
Again, you understand how. How law enforcement organizations work much better than I do. But it seems to me that we could not be seeing what we've seen on the ground in Los Angeles and Chicago and now in Minneapolis, unless there was a paper trail somewhere of orders and directions and procedures being given out that told these agents to act this way, or is that wrong? Is this the kind of thing like this, the culture exists and nobody actually needs to write it down and says, hey, it's okay to. When you see somebody filming, you go over and shove them onto the ground. And it. Because I'm sort of thinking about accountability. I'm wondering about, like, okay, so someday, if there is a congressional investigation into DHS and they subpoena a bunch of records, will there be, you know, a manual somewhere that says, do this, do this bad thing?
- [12:41]
Radley Balko
You know, I mean, I. There may be. I mean, I think the. The memo that the Associated Press reported on last week that, you know, purport purported to provide legal justification for warrantless raids on home, private homes. I think that's pretty damning. And, you know, I read it. There's. The legal justification is laughable for it. So, you know, there may be some documents like that. I do think, you know, you know, when they switched tactics and started raiding Home Depot parking lots, that was apparently from, you know, a meeting where Stephen Miller lost his shit and started screaming at people that they weren't arresting enough people. I doubt that's in writing anywhere. You know, I do think that one thing we know about Trump over the years is that he knows to avoid putting things in writing. And I guess maybe that's probably been passed down. But, you know, I mean, there was a video that came out about from Bovino sort of holding a rally before sending his troops out into Minneapolis, where he said, you know, this. We own this city, or the city is ours. You know, that kind of rhetoric has an impact, but I also just think there's a. A shared understanding here about what kind of culture, you know, is going to exist in these mass deportation enforcements that, you know, when Trump is setting the tone with his language by saying, you know, Minneapolis's day of reckoning and retribution is coming, when he is dehumanizing immigrants, when he's describing anybody who wants to hold ICE accountable and exercise their First Amendment rights as domestic terrorists, I mean, I don't think you need a whole lot in writing when all that's already way out there in the public and in the public record. Right. I mean, that filters down. That affects how these people do their jobs. There is one other thing, I think that happened that was pretty significant, that didn't get, I think, as much attention as it deserved at the time, and that's that ICE was running these deportations for a long time, for about 10, 10, 11. 10 or 11 months. 9 or 10 months maybe. And then at one point, they put Border Patrol in charge of the whole operation. And so Border Patrol kind of moved above ice. And Border Patrol is, you know, for. For all the problems with ice, and there are a lot of problems, Border Patrol has been the rogue sort of federal police agency for 20 years. It's always been the one where you see the most violence, the most abuse, the least amount of accountability, the least amount of internal control and professionalism.
- [15:02]
JVL
Yeah. Garrett Graff wrote a huge piece about this, like, 10 years ago.
- [15:05]
Radley Balko
Right. And there.
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JVL
There.
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Radley Balko
There's a great report on border Patrol agents, you know, having a habit of putting themselves in front of cars and then claiming they feared for their lives and shooting the driver, which seems particularly resonant these days.
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JVL
Right.
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Radley Balko
So, you know, that was a signal, I think, to everybody involved in these operations that we're going to put the most rogue, aggressive, unaccountable agency in charge of everything now. And I think that sent a message right down the line.
- [15:30]
JVL
So I, I've got just three more things, only three more things. The first is how do you explain the difference in how law enforcement treats groups of armed protesters from one side of the political spectrum versus a guy like Alex Preddy? So I, you know, I, the, the obvious examples, the Cliven Bundy showdown, right. When, when he and his, his friends were all tacked out and the feds just like spent months going back and forth in court over it. Nobody, nobody went, you know, and treated him the way they treated Alex Brady. The, the January 6th. Right. You have armed, armed protesters rushing in and Capitol police officers not opening fire. And you know, I assume those guys feared for their lives. And, and then I think also about the. So five years ago in April, we had a bunch of militia members storm the Michigan State Capitol. And they, you know, they, they, there was some pushing and shoving as they were trying to get in, like onto the floor, and state troopers like held the line on them, you know, didn't get violent. Exactly. But it was, I mean, it was pretty, pretty darn tense. And all these guys were carrying long guns and, and then a bunch of them with their long guns went up into the gallery and just sort of like stared down at the legislator and, and it seems like you get a bunch of right wing guys with like serious weaponry together and they get treated with a lot of restraint and de. Escalation, which, by the way, is good. It seems like this is how law enforcement should work.
- [17:19]
Radley Balko
Yep.
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JVL
It just that it should probably work for. Also for unarmed people.
- [17:25]
Radley Balko
Yep.
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JVL
Maybe. Is there a reason for this? Is it like, I assume you've like been watching this again for 20 years and you've noticed these patterns too?
- [17:32]
Radley Balko
Yeah, I mean, the analogy I would draw is, is when a police officer is accused and tried for a crime, you know, they get very, very good representation. They get every possible break from the courts. They tend to get very lenient sentences. They get favorable juries and it's, you know, I'm all for due process and justice and I think all of those things are good. I just wish everybody got it right and that's the same thing. You know, I think it's a good thing that the Obama administration, I remember arguing with. With people sort of on the left, on Twitter during the whole Cliven Bundy thing, where you had people being like, we just need to send a drone and wipe all these guys out at once, you know? And I know that's not what we want the government to do, and they didn't. They backed down. And I think the Obama administration deserves credit for de. Escalating that. That situation without violence. But, yeah, I mean, there is a direct contradiction here. I mean, part of it is we have a new administration. I don't think we'd be seeing this from the Obama administration. I mean, they deported a lot of people, but not.
- [18:32]
JVL
Right. It's kind of like this. But, I mean, don't you wind up creating a bunch of, like, really perverse incentives when, over the course of many years, this dynamic continues to play out?
- [18:42]
Radley Balko
Yeah, I think. Yeah, I think, yes, it's what we.
- [18:45]
JVL
Want out of law enforcement, but from the perspective of, like, the citizenry, that deal isn't sustainable. The idea that, like, if we go peacefully protest and we don't have a whole bunch of people carrying long guns, then we might or might not get attacked by the cpb. But if we show up in force and make the situation more fraught, more dangerous, then we'll get a little more deference and de escalation.
- [19:08]
Radley Balko
I mean, again, you know, one of the frustrations with this. This era that we're living in is that you can just, like, with the lies, like, you can point out the hypocrisy. But I think. I think maybe you were the one who wrote this. Not too long ago, somebody at the Bulwark wrote this that, like, hypocrisy is the policy. You know, I mean, hypocrisy is also a flex of power. It's like we can be hypocrites, and we. And, you know, we're hypocrites, and we don't give a shit because there's nothing you could do about it. Right, Right. And so, you know, when Cash Patel says, you know, if you don't want to get killed, don't bring a gun to a protest. Well, what did you say? You know, however many years ago, six years ago, when Kyle Rittenhouse brought a gun to a protest and crossed state lines to do it, he said he tweeted at Kyle Rittenhouse, you know, reach out to me. I'll help you sue Biden in the media over this. Right. You know, Greg Abbott. What did Greg Abbott do when a crazy right winger texted his friend, I'm going to go kill a protester and then posted on a bulletin board, I'm going to go kill a protester and then went and killed a protester and got convicted for it. What did Greg Abbott do? He pardoned him. I mean, what kind of message does that send? It is blatant, hypocritical. I agree with you that it's, it sends the wrong incentives. It tells people on the right that, you know, you are going, not only are you not going to be, you know, prosecuted for using this kind of threat and violence, intimidation, you're going to be valorized for it. I mean, look at where Rittenhouse is now.
- [20:34]
JVL
If you want to avoid accountability, the way to do it is to be armed. Final question. So you, you have, in your long career, you have seen cases in which very bad, unprofessional police departments have been reformed and become better. It doesn't happen all the time. Right? It's not. Certainly doesn't happen as much as we would like, but it does happen. Right? It is. You know, there are, there are good police departments out there that are professional and take this, this stuff seriously. Do you think it is possible to reform the DHS law enforcement branch like they, the agent branch from CPB and ICE and there's a third agency in there? Yeah. At this point, like let's just pretend we fast forward three more years after they have hired another 7,000 people or whatever and the people they are hiring are all people who see this stuff and say, oh, I want to. I like that. That is what I would like to do for my career. Please sign me up so that I can go work with the guys who shot Alex Preddy. Can you reform something like that? Because my view, and again, not an expert, I don't know how successful reform happens within law enforcement organizations, but my view is you have to burn it all to the ground and break the. These. Many of these functions of these agencies are important functions and the functions need to be reconstituted basically with, you know, I mean, for up to me like I'd burn all of DHS to the. I'd feed DHS to the wood chipper. It's a very new agency anyway. We lived for 240 years or 215 years with, without a Department of Homeland Security. Take these functions and assign them into other parts of the executive bureaucracy and start from scratch with building because everything in the culture seems utterly rotten to Me. But you've studied this stuff. How would you do it? Like if we made you king of the world for a month and you were trying to think about, huh, okay, well, how do we reform this stuff? How do you think it should be done?
- [22:48]
Radley Balko
At this point, I'm kind of with you. I mean, I think this is a black mold situation. You know, I think you tear everything out and you start over. You know, I think there are, there's a need for some kind of a police agency at the border. I mean, I'm a very, very pro immigration person. I think if anybody wants it wants to come here, there should be a way to come here legally. You do still have to process people. You still do have to, you know, make sure you're not bringing in, you know, people with violent criminal histories, people who, you know, might have contagious illnesses, you know, so you need something.
- [23:23]
JVL
We do let Bradley. Anybody who wants to come here can come here if they're from South Africa, right?
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Radley Balko
That's right. If you're in white and white, right.
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JVL
White, South Africa, the Afrikaners. Come on.
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Radley Balko
So I think you need that. I don't think you need an ice. I don't think. I, I don't. And before ice, it was ins. Look, you know, the Obama administration and before that, I think most administrations had a very pro asylum, pro position that, you know, when people were seeking political asylum, we tended to be pretty liberal in granting it. And INS and then later ice, their main function was to find people who had violent criminal histories. And you don't get those people by raiding Home Depot parking lots. Right. You do, though, you get those people by conducting investigations that take maybe a couple of weeks. And then you have an eight or ten person team that has to go out and find where they are and has to apprehend them. And that all seems like something that could probably be done by the FBI or HSI or, you know, a police group that doesn't solely focus on trying to deport as many people as possible in a shorter time as possible. And that is what ICE has come to, that sort of come to be their function. You know, they have rooted out every possible oversight function within the government, within, within ice, from the inspector General's office to even the office that oversees detention facilities and makes sure that they're humane. That office has been hollowed out and gutted. I just don't know how you. When this administration has gone through and purged anyone that they see as an institutionalist or anyone who they see is more loyal to the Constitution than to the president when you have deliberately hired people for their loyalty with these specific, explicit appeals to horrible, destructive, fever swamp ideas. I don't know how you reform that from the inside out. I think you abolish it and you start with something new.
- [25:26]
JVL
All right, final question. Because I want to end on a deeply pessimistic note, as is my want. I have had the thought a lot over the last three weeks, what if there had been no cell phone video with Renee Goode and Alex Brady? And I just. I mean, just thinking about that counterfactual world, it just sort of makes me sick to my stomach. And can you imagine, like, if we didn't have ways to show actual video documentary proof from like a 15 different angles? I mean, good Lord.
- [26:07]
Radley Balko
Yep. I mean, you know, that shooting I talked about and I mentioned in Chicago, you know, that guy. And there's a reason that, you know, I've written about him and I can't think of his name off the top of my head. Right? Because he didn't get nearly attention. Everybody else did. But, you know, there was one video, I think, maybe two angles, and that video was really disturbing. Right. You know, they claimed again, as they always do, that he tried to assault them with his car and that's why they had to kill him. And the video doesn't show that at all. You know, the video shows the officers running up to him very quickly, which is a violation of federal policy, him trying to flee because he was scared and probably didn't want to be deported. And that one didn't generate much attention at all. And it was. I thought it was every bit as disturbing as the Renee Good video. So I think, you know, I think the video has been extremely important. I think the multiple angles have been. Have been extremely important. I think the. Let's just be honest, the race of the people involved has been important and generating outrage. I also think both people, you know, don't have criminal histories. They are you. They were both citizens Pretty in particular. You know, just, you know, he. Freddie, really. I mean, I'm not the first person to make this point, but I mean, Brett, he really exposed like the. Just how hollow and fragile the MAGA. MAGA's conception of masculinity is. Right. I mean, here's a guy who was valiantly sticking up for a woman who'd just been assaulted, who worked, is a literal. Was a little ICU nurse in the VA who, you know, has this history of sort of helping people and being an all around good and decent person and was a believer in the second Amendment and like that's the key right.
- [27:42]
JVL
Also exposed their commitment to the second Amendment right.
- [27:45]
Radley Balko
It just, it just disposed their utter. And you know, I don't think this, this administration, like I said, I don't think they care about hypocrisy. I think they see it as a flex. I do think, you know, that, that a lot of people on the right who support the second Amendment, you know, do have enough self awareness to be a little bit ashamed of, of supporting what happened to Pretty. And so I do think I've seen a little more skepticism of this one than I saw of Renee. Good. Because you know they could just dismiss her as was it Eric Erickson called her an awful which is, you know, some, some acronym for urban lesbian woman professional or something. And they couldn't, you know, be as dismissive about Freddie. And so I have seen a lot more people. I think it's brought a lot of people around and I think that's one reason why you're seeing, you know, Trump backpedal a little on it.
- [28:30]
JVL
Yeah, well you get a lot of strategic silence. But you know, he was white unlike Philandre Castile. Right. Who was another famous people who care about second amendment hypocrisy like you and I do. And anyway, Radley Balco, his substack is the watch. Please go and sign up for it. It is absolutely essential reading. It keeps me informed on this stuff because there is nobody better anywhere in America covering these sorts of things. Radley, thank you so much. Everybody else hit like hit the hit. Subscribe. Follow us on the channel. We'll be back with more bad news probably in like an hour. Good luck, America.
- [29:06]
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