In this episode of The Babylon Bee podcast, editor-in-chief Kyle Mann and creative director Ethan Nicolle talk about the biggest stories of the week like how religious gathers and pretending to be protests so they can meet, our recent feud over putting Trump in an AWANA vest, and how all of a sudden defunding the police became a national talking point. Detective Dan from Small Town Dicks joins Kyle and Ethan to talk all about it. In the subscriber portion, subscribers get to listen to Kyle and Ethan continue their conversation with Detective Dan! Pre-order the new Babylon Bee Best-Of Coffee Table Book coming in 2020! Get a Sneak Peak! Send your emails to podcast@babylonbee.com and maybe we will answer you in our next Mailbag segment! Show Outline Introduction Kyle's dad burns podcasts onto CDs and Ethan diagnoses depression in dads stemming from how children handle blu ray discs. Stuff That's Good Kyle likes O.C. Supertones album For the Glory Ethan likes Mac Smith's Scurry. This News Is Weird Man charged with assault after thrown pickle hits Vermont highway worker Peruvian mayor poses as corpse to avoid arrest for flouting coronavirus lockdown, reports say Ocean Just as Gross as You Thought: Filled with Mucus Doctors remove mobile phone charger from man's bladde Crayola launches skin tone crayons so 'all kids can colour themselves Seagull flies into woman's house and vomits on her kitchen counter Stories of the Week Story 1 Clever Churchgoers Avoid Arrest By Disguising Themselves As Rioters Summary: Many churches still aren't gathering in person but several congregations came up with a clever way to avoid arrest for gathering against government orders: disguising themselves as rioters. The real story: Governments seemed to be going hard after churches and other things deemed non-essential, but anything related to protesting was fine. Originally a satire of how apparently COVID wasn't a concern for anything related to the protest. A thousand medical experts signed an open letter supporting public gathering for protests stating that "white supremacy contributes to COVID and is a lethal public health issue" Churches were/are still fighting to open and trying to comply with lots of extra rules they needed to follow such as limited capacity, masks, no physical contact, some were saying no communion elements, no singing. A prophecy fulfilled. A group of Hasidic youth in NYC put up a George Floyd sign so that they could not be shut down by the cops for their religious gathering. Story 2 Trump Shows Off Completed Awana Vest Summary: President Trump and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi are firing Bible photo ops back and forth, as you would expect politicians to be doing at a time like this. But Trump won the contest of Bible knowledge by showing off his completed Awana Sparks vest. The real story: Trump decided to walk across the street from the White House to the Episcopalian church St. John's ("The church of the Presidents") which rioters had set on fire the night before. He did this as a show of resolve against the lawlessness which would lead to the burning of churches. He drew criticism for supposedly using police to drive away protestors with "teargas" for the photo op and for the way he stood in front of the church and held up the Bible like it was a political prop. We decided to poke fun of the pandering-ness and the Bible being used as a prop by Trump and then Pelosi and then Cuomo all suddenly being experts on the Bible in all these weird public events quoting verses and making the Bible agree with their side We put an AWANA vest on Trump, which prompted an email from AWANA communications chief asking us to immediately pull it down as it was "beyond satire" and how they didn't want their vest to be on Donald Trump. They threatened to sue us if we didn't comply. Seth put AWANA on blast on Twitter We learned Monday that they would NOT be pursuing a lawsuit Kyle's Awana stories! Ethan just hated Awana Story 3 Los Angeles Police To Undergo Intensive Socially Conscious Slam Poetry Training Summary: As public demand for comprehensive police reform grows, the LAPD is leading the way by training its officers in socially conscious slam poetry. The Real Story: BLM protests are demanding #DefundThePolice… the details are vague but it sounds like they want to get rid of the police altogether in some instances. Marriane Williamson has a great tweet about the ex-cops starting ISIS. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey was publicly mocked and shamed at a protest when he refused to say he would abolish the police.. Here is his walk of shame. "Go Home Jacob!" "Shame! Shame!" The Minneapolis city council just voted 9-3 vowing to DISBAND their city police department and council president Lisa Bender told crowds that these 9 members were "committed to ending the city's relationship with the police force and "to end policing as we know it and recreate systems that actually keep us safe." Has this been done anywhere before? Camden, NJ " the city's police department was disbanded and replaced with a new one covering Camden County that had more officers, but on lower pay, according to a City Lab report." A CNN anchor, Aislyn Camerota asked city council President Lisa Bender "who do I call when someone breaks into my house?" and she said that that question comes from a place of privilege She later went on Chris Cuomo's Prime time and said a "police free future" is "the goal." We also did a CFA joke, but Ethan hates them. Topic of the Week Detective Dan of Small Town Dicks joins Kyle and Ethan to talk about all the police issues facing the nation. Dan was formerly a K9 handler and Violent Crimes detective at the same Small Town police department as his twin brother Dave, who also hosts the podcast with Yeardlley Smith of the Simpsons. Dan regards his years as a K9 handler to be the most rewarding of his career. He is now retired. They discuss misconceptions about the police and discuss changes we need to make to serve and protect everyone. Hate Mail We get an email filled with flowerbeds. Paid-subscriber portion Kyle and Ethan continue their conversation with Detective Dan. To watch or listen to the full length podcast, become a paid subscriber at https://babylonbee.com/plans
In a world of fake news, we bring you up-to-the-minute factual inaccuracy and a heavy dose of moral truth with your hosts, Kyle Mann and Ethan Nicole.
This is the Babylon Bee.
Fake news you can trust.
Welcome to the Babylon Bee podcast.
Welcome.
Your favorite podcast that you listen to on your iPod or watch.
You know that my dad still gets it now.
My dad still burns his podcast onto CDs and listens to them, which is just, it's a thing.
I have a two-year-old, and you know what's the most stressful thing in the world is when he gets a hold of a CD or a DVD or a Blu-ray.
No!
They have no concept of being gentle.
And then the first thing he tries to do is he knows that all these little holes that are in all these different systems, it goes in there, but he doesn't understand there could already be one in there, so he starts trying to jam it into all the holes.
Oh, yes.
And it's like, that's where true anxiety and depression come from and being a father.
Not depression, but like your heart goes.
It's just the most stressful thing we've experienced.
I think the last VHS player we had was one of those TVs that had the built-in VHS and DVD player.
And we started to lose all our kids' VeggieTails DVDs and stuff.
I'm like, where are all the DVDs?
It's all jammed in there.
We flip open the VHS side, which we hadn't used in a long time.
And there's like 20 DVDs.
They don't understand.
You can't just shove them all in at once.
And not in which slot it goes in, just the VHS slot.
If you put them all in at once, it'll create a new movie that has all the characters in it.
Yeah, that has like the yo Gabba Gabba guys dancing with Bob and Larry and Strawberry Shortcates there for some reason.
Yeah, he-man, that's what toddlers watch.
Yeah, I don't know.
Anything crazy happened this week, Kyle?
Did there?
Was there something I was supposed to know?
Oh, I don't know.
Yeah.
We usually try to update about our week, but I can't think of anything.
We had a lawsuit threatened against us by Iwana.
Oh, yeah, we'll get into that later.
Tell us about it.
We'll talk about it later.
We're going to talk about church and how we still haven't been able to go to it.
We're going to talk about cops, how people want to abolish them, and we're going to talk to a real cop.
Yeah.
We're going to talk to Detective Dan.
That'll be exciting.
A secret.
It'll be our first anonymous guest.
Do some hate mail later on.
So yeah, it's going to be a good show.
It's a good time.
If this is your first time joining us, this is a podcast where you hang out with the Babylon Bee Writers.
Right.
Why?
I don't know.
I don't know.
But if you want to, here we are.
But just in case.
If you're not having fun, leave.
It's fine.
We're not offended.
Basically, there's a podcast for everything.
And there wasn't a podcast to hang out with Babylon B writers.
Right.
So we filled that void.
You're welcome.
You're welcome, podcast listeners and watchers and all that.
First of all, let's recommend some things on stuff that's good.
But now, this week's edition of stuff that's good.
I'm going to recommend a Ska album.
Supertones had an album.
What's that?
what's ska ska is a quick history lesson ska is a genre of music well Well, was it before?
There's Baroque, Romantic period.
Where does Ska fit in back in?
Yeah, it's like it was the Protestant Reformation.
Okay.
When it came about.
Well, Ska actually has a lot of different phases.
So there's like Ska in the 1940s and 50s.
Wait, really?
Yeah.
So Ska.
Does that count?
Scott technically is that.
I think this is third wave Ska, if I remember.
I've heard that term.
I don't know the history.
I believe Ska, the Ska you think of, like guys in checkered vans and Skank.
Yeah, yeah, like real big fish.
That is, I think that's considered third wave Ska.
So Supertones was a band back then.
You guys have probably all heard of them if you're into Christian culture at all.
If you're a real Christian.
And their biggest album was probably Supertone Strike Back or Chase the Sun.
But I hadn't realized, I learned like years later, years after the fact, that they released an album in like 2011 called For the Glory.
Trying to make their comeback.
It was like the big comeback album.
It's around the same time Five Iron did the same thing.
And I'm all about Five Iron.
So I was like, Five Iron's album, Engine of a Million Plots, I think, was just amazing.
And I hadn't even heard of the Supertones once.
So when I went back and listened to it, I was like, oh man.
And it's good.
In my opinion, honestly, it's like Supertones' best album.
Wow.
Like, they really refined their sound, and the lyrics are so good.
The lyrics are theologically.
Do they rap a lot?
Very excellent.
Yeah, so here's the thing.
I was always more of a Five Iron guy because they worked in the skate punk sound and the harder sound.
And I like Reese's voice.
Supertones, you know, with the white boy rap mixed with the sky.
I was never a huge fan.
I liked it back then.
I don't really listen to that anymore, though.
But yeah, it was really cool back then to do the rap.
Five Irons a little, they're a little like left.
They try to do some ragecore stuff here and there.
They're trying to get on that bandwagon.
They scream a little.
Five Iron's a little like lefty, like a little.
The lyrics are always like a little, yeah, a little, maybe even theologically, a little on the left.
The Supertones are like right-wing.
I don't know.
So the Supertones guy is a Presbyterian pastor.
So his lyrics are more like theologically.
Okay.
You know, it's a little more worship-y.
So here's one of the lyrics that I love: Without a shot shot or a single bomb dropped, the killing machine will forever stop.
There will be no more war when the Prince of Peace tells all the world of his name.
So picture a white guy rapping that.
And that's this new Supertones album.
I said the new Supertones album that came out nine years ago.
Nine years ago.
For the Glory.
Check it out.
My recommendation is pretty.
Well, it's a comic, but it's a webcom.
Max Smith is an incredibly gifted artist.
He's a concept artist who decided to go out in the zone.
He is a big fan of things like Secret of Nim.
What are other good animal stories?
I'm trying to think.
Fox and the Hound.
Fox and the Hound.
Like the more dark.
Oh, with all the rabbits.
All the rabbits.
Watership Down.
Yeah.
So he kind of took and did his, he has a very, it's digital painting that looks very natural.
And he does these fully painted comic panels.
And it's all realistic looking, beautiful paintings of animals.
And it's about these mice in this kind of post-apocalyptic world.
I don't know.
I've never noticed it being overly violent.
I've never noticed if there's any swearing in it.
I don't think there is, but don't quote me on that.
But it seems to be a pretty generally PG-13-ish, PG, PG-13-ish story.
It's not for little kids, but it's just beautiful even just to look at.
I get his books just because I love to get inspired by looking through them.
And he does Kickstarters, so you can get a big, beautiful, hardbound.
But just check out his art.
I'm sure we're going to put some up on the screen here.
And I love getting him attention because he's not going through a publisher.
He's not going through anybody.
He's purely, he kind of just quit doing, he's doing some side work for concept art for game companies and stuff.
But he just decided to follow his passion here and make this book.
And it's beautiful.
There's multiple volumes now.
So check out Scurry by Max Smith.
Yeah, if you were ever frightened as a child by Secret of Nim, you know, like I was with the owls munching on the mouse bones and all that.
It looks similar in terms of like the darkness and the rats and the thing.
Yeah, he's very inspired by Nim.
Cool.
He likes Nim a lot.
I like it.
And he has lots of different animals in there.
There's a cool moose in there.
Anyway.
This has been Stuff.
That's good.
How about some weird news?
Let's do it.
This news is weird.
Man charged with assault after thrown pickle hits Vermont Highway Worker.
Is there a good sound effect for a pickle hitting a guy in the face?
There it is.
There it is.
The first time that sound effect has ever been recorded.
You know how weird all these stock, like audio and image sites are where you can search something incredibly specific, and once in a while, you just nail it.
You're like.
Giant pickle hits man in face.
Yeah, pickle hitting man in face.
And boom.
There it is.
I have a lot of questions on this one.
So it says a large, it doesn't just say pickle, it says large pickle.
So, but they don't.
I couldn't find any details on the size.
Like, they didn't give any inches or anything.
Oh, gosh, are you really doing this?
What?
I didn't notice all these puns you put in the notes.
Is that you?
So I was trying to find what size is the world's largest pickle, and I couldn't even find that.
Are you going to say that?
Right here, it was a pretty big deal.
You think the guy who threw the pickle was his door ajar?
Get a jar?
Jar.
Okay, so that's all.
That's all you have.
Oh, that's all you have?
Yeah.
Well, I was curious because there really is pickle phobia.
People have that.
Like a fear of pickles.
Yeah.
Do you think that who has a fear of pickles?
That's ever seen that.
That's on that show.
There's like a show about fear things, people that are scared of stuff, maybe.
I can't remember.
It was weird phobias or that makes sense.
But they did this thing where they brought a tray of pickles to this lady and she had a meltdown.
She's in it for the murder.
Yeah, I know it was fake, but I.
But apparently there's people that are afraid of pickles, and I'm just curious if this legitimizes that fear.
Or maybe the guy in the car, he didn't realize someone left a pickle in his car and he has this fear.
So he's like, and he threw it out the window.
And sorry about it, bumping the mic down.
Sorry about that.
And that's what happened here.
Yeah.
Maybe.
There's a lot of questions.
Have you ever seen those videos of the cats that get scared by the cucumber?
Yeah.
Like you set it next to them and if they just don't notice it and then they turn their head and see it.
Those are the best.
It's like some instinct that it's a snake or something.
Something like that.
Yeah.
Maybe that was maybe that's an instinct this guy in the car had.
That's a snake.
Oh no, that's a pickle too.
It's out of my fingers now.
Oh, I hit a guy.
Oops.
Yeah, I kind of wonder if a pickle's just coming right here.
Maybe it is.
Maybe it is creepy.
Peruvian mayor poses as corpse to avoid arrest for flouting coronavirus lockdown.
So he like he laid in a coffin with a mask on, pretended to be a dead COVID victim because he had had like a night out partying and like broken his own lockdown rules.
So is this like he sees the cops coming?
I didn't, I don't know.
Yeah, he hears the foot diets and he's looking around.
He jumped in among amongst the dead.
I don't know.
Lying there.
I hope there's not a pile of bodies to jump onto.
That's horrible.
I'm curious if he's done this for many other things.
This is the first time he got caught.
Oh, that's yeah, that's his wife.
Is like, where are you?
I was dead.
I don't know.
That wouldn't work for the wife, I guess.
But yeah, I don't know.
Next one, ocean, just as gross as you thought.
Filled with mucus.
I don't know.
I never thought that the ocean was full of mucus.
Apparently, they have things called snot palaces in the ocean.
That's what I call my nose.
A snot palace?
A snot palace.
That sounds like something that could be in a rap song.
I'm cleaning out the old snot palace.
Snot Palace.
Drinking from my chalice.
All these gangsters are so callous.
What's the percentage of snot to water in the ocean?
There's a lot of water.
There's a lot of water.
But apparently it's an engineering marvel.
The snot palaces.
I couldn't find a good picture of a good snot palace.
I don't know.
Sounds made up.
I'm calling it.
We should have a costume.
A contest.
Who can create the best snot palace?
That's an engineering marvel.
Doctors remove mobile phone charger from man's bladder.
It was my turn.
Doctors remove mobile phone charger from man's bladder.
Sorry, sorry.
So I'm always losing my chargers.
So I was wondering if I have any in my bladder because I don't even want to ask why this was in his bladder.
Yeah, we shouldn't even ask.
We shouldn't ask.
I'll bet doctors are constantly removing things from strange places.
Strange.
Yeah, it's probably just the weird.
Apple's constantly changing the ends of their things, you know?
So maybe who knows?
That causes confusion.
Crayola launches skin tone crayons so all kids can color themselves.
It's like a giant box of all skins.
Well, they claim it's all the skin colors.
They didn't get them all.
Yeah, I don't think they got me.
I don't see a neon pink in there or like a bright, pasty white.
There is a pink.
Not my pink.
They ink my pink.
On the video, we have a color correction on the video that makes me look even pinker than usual.
Yeah, yours is more saturated than mine.
Or magenta.
Yeah.
I don't know.
There's some pretty white people out there.
Do they have a ginger one that's like a white with speckles of red throughout it?
Yeah, they should do it, like a glittered or speckled like to get all the little red glitter bits in there.
Like one with for people with bad acne, like little red spots.
Yeah.
I know.
That's weird.
Well, good for them.
That's a I support this.
Good job.
There's a diversity of crayons.
Seagull flies into woman's house and vomits on her kitchen counter.
I just like that that made the news.
Yeah, there's not enough going on in the world.
We need more seagull.
Although I think fluent and barfed.
I personally think we would be happier if this was the kind of news that we mean stuff are getting reported on.
I god you hear about that woman.
Like you wouldn't be fighting about it with your friends.
You wouldn't be posting about it on Facebook.
Yeah.
You'd just be laughing at it.
She said it looked like wet rice.
What do you think that was that it is eaten?
I made a dumb joke on the notes saying maybe it's bad sushi, but I'm just trying to think what could it have eaten that looks like wet rice.
What do seagulls eat?
Much fish.
It might have been eaten.
Well, if it's at a beach, maybe there's eating some foods.
Maybe they did eat rice.
I don't know.
They just eat anything.
Yeah, anything.
They're like rats.
Yeah.
How about some weekly stories, Kyle?
Okay.
Every week there are stories.
These are some of them.
Many churches still aren't gathering in person, but several congregations came up with a cleverer way to avoid arrest for gathering against government orders.
They disguise themselves as rioters.
Hey, hey.
Hey.
It's just like the thinking meme, the thinking guy meme.
Hmm.
No, not that one.
It's the black guy that's going like this.
Oh, yeah.
Can't arrest you if you're a rioter.
Maybe that's not the right application of that meme.
But yeah, so government's still going hard against hard after churches and nonsense.
What's your church doing right now?
I don't think they're opening yet.
Ours is putting out little surveys.
When do you want to come back?
When would you come back?
Would you leave us immediately if you came into our church and we didn't have tons of social distancing stuff up?
So I answered all the questions like, just open back up.
We miss you guys.
Let's just disguise ourselves as rioters.
We had this great idea at the Babylon Bee.
I miss you guys.
Let's do it.
Those are my answers.
Yeah, I want to go back to church, but the other thing is that a lot of these churches are doing where you have to sign up ahead of time because they only, you know.
Oh, because they're only going to have like five people in the service.
Yeah.
And then, like, I'm thinking, well, if our church isn't opening up for a little while, I'll go visit another church.
But then I don't want to sign up or some other.
I'm playing with that idea of like, well, if there's a church that's open, it's closer.
But then it's like, I don't want, you know, I don't want to take someone else's slot.
Oh, you know, they signed.
When people actually go to this church, I see.
So I'm a little stuck.
We should start our own cigar shop church.
Our families wouldn't be down with that, though.
It would just be you.
And my cigar.
Yeah, but you know, if you're a rioter, you're safe.
Because I'm seeing these massive crowds just swarming through the streets.
And none of the media is saying, hey, what about the COVID-19?
You guys are killing grandma.
You just don't see it.
Yeah, I don't know if we have the graphic.
I saw this graphic.
I wish I had grabbed it.
Did I mention this on a previous show?
It said like if you're...
Oh yeah, I did see this.
Okay.
Okay.
Yeah, it had all these listings of gatherings.
It's like church.
Yeah, allowed gatherings.
Allowed gatherings or allowed, you know, 12 people, 12 people is like all of them.
But then it said protest, 100 people.
Yeah.
Outdoor.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Social gatherings of up to 10.
And protests of up to 100.
For some reason.
But does the virus just go, oh, wait.
Oh, wait, this is for social.
Social protests.
Yeah, this is important.
This is an important issue.
Did you see that one guy that was the New York health official, I think, that said, if everybody gets sick in two weeks because of these protests, don't blame the protesters.
Blame racism.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, it's the racist's fault.
We can blame.
I was like blaming racists for everything.
It's fine with me.
Yeah.
And then, yeah, I saw health experts that were saying that were saying that this virus, it was basically parodying some of our Babylon B articles that are saying that this virus will not spread at a protest.
And there were people that were saying that, like, health officials were saying, well, white supremacy contributes towards health issues.
So it's more important to do that.
And it's like, white supremacy contributes towards like, I guess, well, it's probably.
Conorrhea.
Yeah.
It's probably saying that like people of color have worse health care because of white supremacy or something.
So you have to dismantle that before you can fix the health issue.
This is actually this Babylon B article about the church rioters.
It came true.
It's a fulfilled prophecy.
Yeah, a group of Hasidic youth in NYC put up a George Floyd sign so that they could not be shut down by the cops for their religious gathering.
That's hilarious.
Absolutely a great photo.
There's these young Jewish people having a carnival and something like that.
And there's just a little sign in the corner, justice for George Floyd.
I do like that they put the least amount of effort possible.
Yeah, justice.
Yeah, in our Photoshop, there's a lot more effort put in.
Yeah, you've got the.
I love people that thought it was.
There's a few people that thought it was real, or they were reacting like we were trying to trick people with it.
Oh, yeah.
Which I think is pretty obvious from there's a little note on the wall.
There's a big note that says, what is it?
Like, no Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA.
And then in small text that says, Welcome to our church.
Go and grab some coffee and join us.
You have the real cheery greeting.
Grab a coffee and a free donut and have a donut.
So, a little scuffle with a wanna here.
President Trump and Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, are firing Bible photo ops back and forth, as you would expect politicians to do at a time like this.
But Trump won the contest of Bible knowledge by showing off his completed Owana Sparks Fest.
Wow.
So he won that exchange.
So at first, Trump went out in front of St. John's church.
He held the Bible up.
As we all do, when you walk into church, we all walk with our Bible like this.
It was his hand backwards.
We all hold it like this.
Or however it was.
Yeah, it was something like that.
You don't show the spine, you show the front.
It was definitely upside down and backward.
I can't remember.
And then Nancy Pelosi had a photo of him.
We talked about this a little last episode.
Yeah.
But Nancy Pelosi had a photo of him where she did it.
And then she's like, but I'm actually going to read it.
And then Governor Fukumo did the same thing.
She strikes me as a finger licker.
What is she reading?
I think that's like an old lady thing.
I do it, honestly.
Again, I think that's like an old person thing.
Some pages won't move.
You need the licking.
You give me a good licking.
So this is kind of funny.
So this Awana thing.
Yeah.
So there was a lawsuit threatened against the Babylon B by Awana over this Photoshop of Trump wearing an Iwana vest.
So Awana, anybody who doesn't know, is like, it's like Boy Scouts for Christians, kind of.
Yeah, what does it mean?
Awana?
Approved workmen are not ashamed.
Oh, wow, really?
Yeah.
Approved workmen are not.
Yeah, it all works.
Yeah, it works.
Awana.
Awana.
Approved.
Wait, does that mean?
That's from the Bible.
Okay.
Approved.
It's from.
If I knew my Awana better, I would know exactly what verse it is.
2 Timothy 2:15.
Study to shoe thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed.
Rightly dividing the world.
So if you're really committed to the Lord, you will not be ashamed.
You're an approved workman.
Right.
Exactly.
All right.
You sound like you're making fun of the Bible mercy, though.
I'm just trying to.
It's a weird way to like.
I'm trying to figure it all out.
Yeah.
Workman.
This is not a thing that I'm used to being.
I'm an approved workman.
That sounds like you're here to clean the pipes or something.
So I.
It's just a weird way to put it.
You have your business card and then you get your little Iwana stamp.
Our plumbing shop is.
Yeah.
It's like a union of the approved.
Yeah.
I want to certify.
We're approved workmen.
Local union.
So we were talking to our little writers group and I kind of threw out this joke like Trump shows his Iwana vest.
And I think like one person liked it.
And I was like, I know most of you guys don't even know what Awana is.
Yeah, even within our writers, there's guys that don't know what it was.
And I'm just like, this joke is so dumb.
So I just do it thinking it's just, you know, nobody's really going to read this.
It's for me.
Sometimes you got to write it.
Or it's just for the inside.
For the insiders.
It's just for the insiders and Christian culture stuff.
We know they're not going to get a ton of shares, but sometimes you just got to not do a Chick-fil-A joke.
So then we got an email from Awana, their communications officer, saying, take this down immediately.
Basically, I didn't want to be associated with that.
And they were nice about it in the first email.
A little stern, but his explanation was that he didn't want black families to Google and find Trump in an Awana vest.
Yeah, I don't know if he said black family or something.
It was something about inner city.
I made that.
Yes, you made that connection.
It was something about inner city people in Chicago, and we're doing outreach.
What if they Google Awanna and see Trump in an Awana vest?
That was concern.
The idea was that the photo was offensive, right?
Was that what they said?
Yeah.
Putting words in their mouth again.
Ah, yeah.
It was a threat.
It was weird because it was like the idea that it's putting a bad image on Awana because it's literally just the president.
So the idea is that an image of the president is offensive.
something like that so you know we're just like i get kind of So satire is so well protected by free speech laws and such.
I just ignore this.
Whatever.
And Seth goes and.
Seth is our CEO.
He's a bit of a rascal.
He tweeted.
Well, I think there were further communications.
Like they were saying we're actually going to file a lawsuit.
Yeah, I know there was at least a follow-up, and they said, if it's not taking down, yeah.
There's kind of a threatening language, right?
Yeah.
And so Seth made it public, like Awana's threatening to sue us.
And of course, that's not good for a company's image when it's like, it's clearly a joke.
And it's not even making light of Awana or making Awana look bad.
It's trying to say that Trump, if he wanted to be a real Bible scholar.
Yeah, it's kind of crazy.
This is the best thing you could do is have a one.
I have an Awana Timothy Award, just so you guys know.
Wow.
Which was like prestigious.
I don't think it was the highest because you had to go on to like the children.
The highest would be the second Timothy Award.
I don't know.
And how many Timothies are there?
Is there three Timothies?
No.
No, there's not three.
Yeah, I thought the book of Hezekiah was real when you said it.
So you're allowed three Timothy's.
Some of them have three.
Peter?
No.
No?
No, three Peter?
John.
Three John.
That's how Trump says it.
Three John.
Yeah, I feel like, yeah, I don't know.
John, you know, he's got his epic trilogy.
He had to make it a one, two, three.
One, two, three.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So anyway, yeah.
So I want to, then they came out and said they weren't going to sue us.
So I think we're cool with Awana.
That's good.
down.
We're good.
We're good with Omana.
Hopefully they don't strip me of my Timothy Ward or anything like that.
That'd be tragic.
I loved Iwana.
I was in Awana all the way up to sixth grade.
And then I didn't go on in the junior, high, and high school programs.
They had like a JV and a V, you know, junior varsity and a varsity program.
I don't know what they still do, but I don't know what my aversion was, but I was as a kid, Boy Scouts and I want to, when I was forced to go to these things, and I was a pretty compliant, good kid, and quiet, you know, shy.
But the little rebel in me came out when I had to go to these things.
I hated organized activities.
I hated having to play these games and stuff.
And, you know, it's like they're trying to turn you into a little kid military or something or whatever, or just repeat things and just fall in line.
And it's very.
I think we went to a Boy Scout meeting once and felt like that.
But we liked I want to.
It helped my dad was the director for a long time or like of our little group or our boys group or whatever.
So we would go to Josh Woodry twice a year and go camping and do all kinds of fun stuff.
So it was great.
But yeah, once I hit like sixth grade, I was like, okay, I don't need to be in the pretend military.
Like the little jewels don't motivate you anymore at that point.
I think if I had a dad around that was kind of like explaining to me there is a masculine side to Boy Scouts and stuff.
Like I kind of wish I had actually embraced it more.
For some reason, I was very uncomfortable.
What do you think on Trump's vest or some patches he would have on that vest?
Well, obviously he would get the top award, which is the winning badge.
There's a patch or badge.
Well, they had like badges that had jewels in them and then you could jewels.
And then you could get patches in addition.
So I guess these would be patches.
You probably have like the gold weaving badge or something.
I don't know.
You weave gold.
Gilding.
The gilding.
Everything is gilded.
Can you weave gold?
Sounds like something in Rumpelstilt's game, though.
Can one weave gold?
Weaving the gold.
Spinning it.
Spinning it.
How about the badge for doesn't even need forgiveness because he's so good?
Yeah, like the no forgiveness badge.
No, no forgiveness needed.
He always says that, right?
He's like, I actually prefer to just be so good that Jesus doesn't need to forgive me.
I can just give it to somebody else.
So it's like a stick figure of someone asking for forgiveness and then like a no sign through it.
And that's the path.
That's like you go to a Bible study with a guy who like ended up there and didn't really want to go.
That's like the answer they give.
I figure you just pass the forgiveness on to other people that need it because I'm pretty good.
I'm fine.
Yeah, I'm fine.
This is only tangentially related, but we had that guy at our church.
There was that guy, like that exactly.
Yeah, like that guy at your church?
At a previous church years ago.
Every week or just one week?
No, he attended for a while, but never really got it.
He was always saying things brashly at Bible study.
Oh, yeah.
And he would drop cuss words.
I got just figured out, you know, whatever.
And you're just like, And so he joined the church softball team, which was hilarious because we were like being trying to, we would pray and stuff.
And then, you know, he would not like a call by the umpire.
And we're in this all-church.
We're in this like city league with other like non-churches.
Hey, you umpire, you're laughing ball back.
You know, we're just like, oh.
I actually prefer those guys to the people that have Christianes down so well that you never know if they're real at all, right?
Yeah, okay, yeah.
I'm down with them.
I mean, I don't know what you think, but I prefer people that have like such a they've perfected the art of looking Christian to the point that like they like Black Hole Sun, like the people in that vid music video of Black Hole Sun.
They're like, How about the Bible lifting badge?
He'd probably be on the badge.
The badge of himself.
He has the pose.
That is the Bible pose now.
Oh, is it like this?
I can't remember.
I don't know.
Yeah, something like that.
I think in all the great moments of American history, we've got Washington Crossing, the Delaware.
We've got Lincoln giving the Emancipation Proclamation, you know, whatever.
I'm just thinking all the images.
You think he practiced that in the mirror?
And maybe there was a haul in the White House of all the paintings, and then the last one is going to be.
Yeah, he probably practiced it.
With that look, he wants that.
No, he doesn't practice anything.
I don't think.
I think he does.
Hey, Bible.
St. John's, let's go.
Let's do this.
Across the street.
That's how he strikes me.
He's on a whim, yeah.
It's like, hey, I just got this great idea.
We're going to go across the street.
We're going to do a little Bible photo shoot.
Get me a Bible.
Pulls it off Mike Pence.
Mike Pen's like, hey, my Bible.
Hey, my bookmark.
I had a bookmark in that.
This would be a tough competition between him and Pelosi, but the pandering badge.
The pandering badge?
Yeah, a little patch with a pander.
I don't know.
A pander bear?
A pander.
Pandarmonium.
Yeah, I don't know.
None of these are funny.
That's funny.
We'll move on from this one.
To story number three.
As public demand for comprehensive police reform grows, the LAPD is leading the way by training its officers in socially conscious slam poetry.
So they're having these training sessions with all the police and just a scrawny white guy that's rapping at them.
Was it rap?
And they're actually teaching poeting.
Slam poetry.
They actually are teaching in slam poetry too.
So they're never out of character.
So for instance, they're actually in, like, the teacher introduces slam poetry and says, they who screamed wailing calls to action from the gutter.
Their unheard voices bounce off the ears of the 1% and the high-rise pigs winking up above them.
None of the wealth never trickled down the sewer pipes of capitalism.
So stuff like that.
White picket fences protect the white putrid smiles in a varicose vain prison.
Waving our message on bricks because paper nobody listen.
Rubber bullets pop pop as a response just because we clocked pigs for disson.
One instructor explained in the introductory portion of one of the classes.
I came off the block, glock cocked and shell shocked.
This is one of the officers.
He's now been trained.
I came off the block, Glock cocked and shell shocked.
Eyes open.
Here's hoping.
The 99% be heard.
Word, this injustice is absurd.
So I'm thinking like a robber is he's got the bag of money over.
He bashes out the Santa Claus bag.
And he runs out of the bank, and the officers arrive.
They all pull up.
They jump out.
No guns, though.
No guns.
Yeah, they got slam poetry.
Like, oh, yeah, you'll be stealing the bags of money.
Profits of the billionaires falling down.
Like honey.
Like honey.
Like a honey badger attacking.
We are like ducks.
We're quacking.
I don't know.
Yeah.
It's really an art form, so that's why we can't just you're stealing from the 1%, so that's okay.
Yeah.
So they would just let him go.
And he'd be like, just take that.
That's what criminals do when they little salute for the audio listeners, and then they just march off like this.
Tip the fedora and move on, I guess.
Well, a lot of people want to replace the cops with something.
Like, they think we just need to get rid of them and start over.
Yeah, I don't know.
We're going to talk with our officer in just a little bit here.
And there was a lot of good nuance and complexity that he brought out at this discussion.
Yeah, which he opened my eyes on a couple things because there's the joke about social workers taking over for cops.
And there's some legitimacy to that because cops are basically told to do a lot of stuff that cops weren't really trained to do.
Yeah, and so here's the problem, I think, is that the left has some legitimate grievances against things.
Like they recognize some injustice.
Come on.
They recognize some legit injustices that we can agree with them on.
Like police brutality is bad.
You know, we can all kind of say, oh, yeah, sure.
And then they make up these slogans.
Sounds sincere at all.
Oh, sure, whatever.
Yeah, sure.
And then they make up these slogans.
Yeah, the slogans ruin everything.
That's what ruins it because then they go, defund the police.
Yeah.
And you're like, okay, I was on board.
Yeah, until you got that.
We have to be so black and white and everything.
Come on.
And, you know, it's the same thing with the Kavanaugh allegations and stuff where they didn't.
Oh, they'll try to throw everything in everything.
Believe all women.
Yeah, I believe every single woman.
Yeah, but then they spread it out, believe a person.
And then if you go on the website, it's like, and then you find out abortion's in there.
Everything's in there.
Yeah.
These three words encapsulate the entire platform of the furthest left people.
Yeah, because you can't just agree with them that there's a grievance and then discuss what the best option is.
You have to agree with.
If you want to discuss things, you are racist, sir.
You have to agree with like Marxism.
Right.
Like, honestly, there's police brutality, so communism.
Right.
And if you don't buy that whole package, you know, you're a racist.
Yeah.
That's how it feels.
Yeah.
It does feel that way.
If you're listening and you're from the left, just do some work on that.
So stop it.
Knock it off.
Just knock it off.
Marianne Williamson had some words.
Are these words?
She was a candidate.
She was a crystals and essential oils candidate for the Democrat Party.
This is more like slam poetry than is it?
You want to read it?
I'm all for disbanding police departments.
Sorry, I need to be more Marianne Williamson.
I'm all for disbanding police departments as they now exist.
But we need to remember a piece of history.
When the U.S. invaded Iraq, we disbanded their army, and those former army forces created ISIS.
The last thing we need is thousands of angry ex-cops forming a militia of their own.
That voice.
I don't know.
But it was funny because I'm like, I'm like, okay, yeah, U.S. invaded Iraq.
This is true.
You know, you go into places and we leave these voids and then terrorists come up.
And then she's like, if you disband police, then they're going to form a militia.
They're going to become United States ISIS?
U.S.ISS.
USISIS.
How would that work?
I'm still trying to work out what angle to take on that.
I don't know.
So they're all in the police station.
They all get kicked out.
So then they're all like, what are they doing?
they're camping out in the woods or something and they're all getting, they're just all starting to bubble over and rage.
Like, they fired us all.
Firing their guns in the air.
I'll show them to fire.
The captains up front.
And he's like, they didn't appreciate all the work we did for you guys for this country.
We all got guns.
They don't.
We got handcuffs.
They don't.
We got armored cars.
They don't.
Let's go, boys.
It's time to take over this country.
We don't need a president.
We don't need authority.
We're the authority.
Cut some heads off.
Everybody start fashioning machetes out of stuff.
Yeah, there's just such a weird ignorance between the situation over there and the situation has nothing to do with that.
And it's a weird view of cops, too.
Like that that's what they would do.
Right?
Like that they would form ISIS?
What do you think they're really thinking?
I think deep down inside of every cop is an ISIS member.
And I like how unlike a lot of people on the left, she's against disbanding the police.
Yeah, like this thing's so strange.
She's trying to say we need to not disband the police because they'll form ISIS.
Like the reason is just.
There's some people on the left.
It scares me, but I think they would actually prefer ISIS to the police.
Just because they're a little more multicultural.
Yeah, you wouldn't really be able to criticize them without being.
Yeah, at least it's a little more exotic and open-minded than having all these white cops and stuff with all the blue and red and white and stuff.
Yeah.
So the defund the police thing is interesting.
Abolish the police, all this stuff.
I mean, I think we can all agree maybe there's a lot of police departments that need to be rebuilt, you know?
Yeah, ones that need like scaffolding and shiplap.
Yeah, that's what I was talking about.
But, you know, we'll talk about that with our guests.
Yeah, I guess it's pretty informative.
We had a good time with Detective Dan.
My favorite thing was the Minneapolis mayor when he went into that crowd of protesters.
Yeah.
And they're like, are you going to abolish the police right now?
And he's like, oh, I can't really do that.
He's surrounded.
I actually felt sorry.
I've kind of not liked him through a lot of times I've seen him.
He's very social justice, very selfie posing selfies.
I'm with you guys.
He's got to let the police station burn, right?
Yeah, he's like Justin Trudeau.
Yeah, he's very Trudeauian.
So he's in this thing.
He looks like he's like 12 years old.
He looks like Ben from Parks and Recreation, who was the mayor of a town when he was 18 or something.
And it's so great because he's not even wearing a dress shirt or a t-shirt.
He's just like, it's like he was trying to be one of them or something.
I'm just going to hang out with you guys and we're going to rap about this.
And they're like, and then he's like, I can't really spam it, please.
Because they wanted to make a statement right now.
He's in the middle of a mob.
And they're just saying, go home, go home.
And shame, shame.
And he just quietly head down, like arrest the development, Charlie Brown walk.
Kirby enthusiastically enthusiasm awkward.
And he just walks.
Just walks out of there.
It is one of the most awkward things I've ever seen in my life.
Yeah.
Definitely.
We had the CNN anchor that was asking the city council president from Minneapolis, who do I call when someone breaks into my house?
And she said, this question comes from a place of privilege.
Yeah, so, but what is that?
It's okay.
I'm on the phone.
There's a guy in my house with a gun.
He's putting all of my Blu-rays into a giant bag.
And he's aiming a gun at me.
If I do anything, he's going to shoot me.
And he's not handling the Blu-rays very much.
He's shoving them into the slots.
He doesn't even know there's already a disc in there.
You know, and they're like, press one if you have white privilege or something.
Oh, yeah.
And we have a recording.
We actually have one of these 911 calls.
Yeah, one of these 911 calls that is going on.
Because so if you have white privilege and you call 911, one way to fix that is they can just put you in an order of importance of privilege.
Yeah, so instead of calling 911, they have the Community Justice Sensitive Crisis Intervention Response Team that you can call.
Wow, that's a long name.
Yeah.
So here we go.
What's your emergency?
I think somebody broke into my house.
I would love to help you with this issue you're currently having.
I'll just need you to enter your intersectionality score on your dial pad.
And I would actually be happy to help you determine your score with a 30-question survey.
No, I know it.
Thank you so much.
Unfortunately, due to a high level of microaggressions.
Can you please hold?
but I what's your emergency There's someone in my house.
He's about six foot two and whoa, whoa, hold on, sir.
The response team does not wish to receive any physical description that may contribute to ageism, ableism, racism, or other phobias incompatible with a just and inclusive society, okay?
What?
Sir, am I going to have to repeat myself using hand-clap emojis?
He broke the window.
I need you to recognize that that's your privilege talking.
Is there a way that your whiteness might be escalating the situation?
Dude, I'm half Hispanic, okay?
Have you tried offering the intruder your flat screen TV?
Are you kidding?
The Bachelor is on tonight.
Kneeling down and apologizing to your intruder usually works.
Or you can try tweeting about this in a socially conscious way.
He's upstairs.
I can't.
Sir.
Sir, please do not engage.
Your instinctual reaction of self-defense will only reinforce negative stereotypes.
Dispatched all units.
I'm going to need a slam poetry team into interpretive dance units at 1284 12th Street ASAP.
Sir?
Sorry, are you there?
Sir.
Sir.
Hey, sir.
Hey, never mind.
Some insane guy wearing a MAGA hat and war paint and carrying an AR-15 just crashed through my window and he subdued the intruder.
I think we'll be okay.
All units, all units.
Please send 12 militarized brute squad teams to investigate possible armed racists.
You don't have to send anything.
Remain where you are, sir.
We're coming to save you, sir.
Well, good.
I'm glad.
An improvement on the old system?
Yeah, way better than breakdown, rebuild.
Breakdown?
Rebuild.
Rebuild.
With scaffolding.
And shiplap.
And shiplap.
Do you think for the police and chic?
What do they call it?
Shabby chic.
Everybody loves this shabby chic.
So are you picturing like an HGTV show where you rebuild Chip and Joanna rebuilding all the police departments?
And then they're like, that's not what we meant.
You just spent millions of dollars.
See the jail cells?
We're going to open them up.
Yeah.
Or open concept.
We think we need a little bit of splatter paint here.
They just knock all of the jail cells over in just a big wide open area.
Open concept prison.
Open concept prisons.
That's a headline right there.
That's a headline.
Hold on.
Let me write that down.
Yeah, we got to write that down.
Yeah, every single one of those shows, it's always open concept.
Can we just like let's just say we already know you're going to do open concept.
We don't need to have a big discussion every single episode about I think we need to open this up breed a little bit.
And every architectural trend.
Line of eyesight.
Every architectural trend reverses in like 20 or 30 years.
And then there's like construction companies that just specialize.
We're going to close it off in here.
We're going to put some more walls up there and isolate everybody.
What happens is in like 20 years, everyone's going to be like, oh, these old homes from the 2010s that were all open concept.
Oh, it's terrible.
And there will be a whole business of like building walls in those homes.
You think so?
Yeah, because remember the popcorn ceilings?
Yeah.
There's like a whole, there's like contractors that just do that.
They just remove it.
They just remove it, yeah.
The popcorn ceilings.
That's a lot of work.
I did one room.
It's horrible.
My house.
It's horrible.
The scraping it and all that.
Scraping it all.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it's going to happen.
Well.
All right.
Well, do you want to talk to Detective Dan coming on?
The problematic police officer?
Yeah.
Yeah, we figured a lot of people have been talking to other people.
Let's talk to a police officer about all this.
Let's do it.
And now, the Babylon Bees Topic of the Week.
All right, everyone, we're on the topic of the week now.
That's true.
This is the topic of the week.
It's the portion of the show where we talk about a topic.
Yeah.
And we were thinking there's a topic everybody's been talking about a whole bunch.
Cops.
Cops.
You know who hasn't been able to talk much about it lately?
Cops haven't been talking about like everybody I hear talking about it is not cops, yeah.
So I was thinking it'd be good to talk to a cop.
I was like, Do I know any cops?
And then there's like this podcast I love called now.
This is a Christian podcast, so I have to be careful with the title of this podcast.
But I'm pretty sure that we actually just had a guest on with the last name Dick.
Yeah, that's funny.
We're running into this word again.
The podcast is called Small Town Dicks, but it means it means detectives.
You sure there's no double on top of that, though?
Maybe he can fill us in.
This is Detective Dan from the podcast, Small Town Dicks, with Yardley Smith of The Simpsons, where they do true crime.
So, Detective Dan, welcome to the Babylon B podcast.
And is small town dick a bad word?
Uh, first off, thank you, gentlemen, for having me on the show.
Um, dicks is uh noir slang for detectives, okay.
And is it like Dick Tracy?
Yes, okay.
So, uh, where I worked, and part of our show is we don't divulge exactly where I worked or where our cases actually occur out of respect for the victims and the families of those victims to keep them somewhat anonymous.
You know, in the day of social media, it's very easy to reach out and find people online.
And we, we don't want people to reach out to the victims of our cases.
So, um, that's why we keep it anonymous.
But yes, uh, in our police department, we commonly refer to the detective pool as the dicks.
Okay, all right, but come on, you mean that a little could be a little tongue-in-cheek.
You're fun in a little bit.
He's a yeah, all the dicks when you kind of wink, right?
It depends on uh who the detective is, right?
I assume.
So, you uh, you are retired now, but you were a canine handler, you were in the violent crimes detective division.
I got that all wrong.
You were a you were whatever, violent crimes.
I read this wrong.
Oh, yes, I uh started out on patrol, um, and uh, did a few years of that, um, became a canine handler at one point, uh, which was awesome.
Such a fun job, and had a great dog who's since passed away, but um, incredible dog.
It was a German shepherd.
And then, after my canine, uh, my stint on the canine team, I became a detective, started out in financial crimes and worked my way up and eventually became a violent crimes detective.
Wow, and I would say I know, I bet you have some stories, but I know you do because I listened to your show.
I think it's uh, right now, I've got 79 stories.
Wow, pretty crazy.
Um, well, I don't know if your canine ever got in trouble, uh, with the police or with uh, with society at large.
Yeah, were the dogs racist or were they?
Yeah, the dogs ever get in trouble for being too rough with the criminals.
It seems like they get off easier than humans, yeah.
The uh, the humans actually responsible for whatever the dog does, so um, that's important to keep the training up, that's for sure.
I want to ask you, do you have any good dog stories?
But we'll wait.
We might have you in the subscription portion, so we might uh throw some of those in there if we can.
Sure, so we wanted to talk to you about because I mean, obviously, what's going on, we got riots in the streets, we got people talking about abolishing the police or defunding them.
Uh, cops just got canceled off the TV.
Um, I heard they're planning on editing John McLean out of all the diehard movies.
Just kidding on that one, but there's a lot of crazy stuff happening.
I hope not.
Those are classics, yeah.
So what's your reaction to, first of all, and you guys did do an episode on this, but a brief, your take as a police officer on the George Floyd situation and what happened there.
So the first thing, I mean, let's just, the elephant in the room is the video, right?
Right.
You have to address the video.
And when I watched that video for the first time in its entirety, I was shocked.
I was outraged.
I was upset.
And I was ashamed.
That tactic of putting your knee on a man's neck is nothing that's ever been taught in an academy.
It's just not a tactic we use.
And police officers are acutely aware of the dangers of certain positions that you put a suspect in.
And I'll say this.
That man was handcuffed.
There are other ways to restrain someone who may still be kind of actively resisting, even though they're in handcuffs.
Putting your knee on their neck is not one of them.
And there's not a, I've talked to a lot of police officers in the last two weeks, and not one of us, not one officer I've talked to has seen any justification for what we saw on that video.
Yeah, it makes you wonder.
I mean, the reaction from almost everybody, as far as I could see, was that it was a bad way to be.
Like, you shouldn't be sitting on a guy's neck for that long.
I mean, even all the way up to the president, people were upset about this video.
It wasn't like a lot of them getting disputed, or everybody's like trying to be Mr. Detective about it.
I didn't see a lot about that on this one.
Yeah, I mean, on its face, it's just, it's horrible.
And I want to clarify that putting your knee on a suspect's back is a tactic that we use, but not the neck.
We put our knee in between the shoulder blades to gain control of the upper body and the arm so we can handcuff someone.
It makes it easier because it's very difficult to put someone in handcuffs that doesn't want to go on handcuffs.
I bet.
But putting your knee on someone's neck, that's not something that we teach.
And rightly, he was arrested for it.
The part that bothers me the most about that video is the look on his face while he's being videoed and he's got his knee on that man's neck.
It just, it screams indignation to me.
And there's nothing you can do about it.
And it's punitive.
And cops are not, we don't dole out the punishment.
That's the court.
The court doles out the punishment.
It's not our responsibility.
It's not our job to dole out punishment.
And he looked like he was trying to punish that man.
Yeah, it makes me curious.
I saw that he, I believe, if I'm correct, his wife filed for divorce like a few days before that.
Like he was in the middle of a divorce at the time of this or did it happen after?
I don't know.
And, you know, I've heard theories that that's a financial decision to separate assets and that she would be kind of shielded from any civil lawsuits against him.
I don't know.
I mean, the other side of that is you just wonder, is that guy just a miserable guy?
He's not nice.
And this was the final straw.
Yeah.
Yeah, being out there, Mr. Grumpy Pants, went too far.
Yeah, I kind of see things like that.
And you wonder if someone is just under a lot of stress and they get caught up in the heat of the moment.
And the problem is when you're in a life and death situation, like you are all the time as a police officer, you don't get that.
Yeah, you don't really get that leeway.
I could be wrong in this.
I thought I read that she filed for divorce three days before the video came out.
So I could be wrong or before the day that he did that.
I thought that they were already, he was in the middle of a divorce.
I just imagine, so I'm a father and I have kids, and sometimes you come home and you're just not in the mood for any crap.
Right.
And so when your kids resist arrest, you're rougher with them than usual.
You're just like, okay, get the diaper on, you know, and I wonder if a cop has those days, not that it's an excuse at all, but you have to be way more conscious of yourself when you got a guy resisting arrest and you're just sick of, you're sick of it.
I assume you're dealing with some of the worst people in society.
A lot of them are giant children a lot of the time.
And how do you, how do you, and I guess I could ask you that, like, how do you maintain that level of composure and continue to see them as humans, even when they aren't acting like humans?
Not saying that George Floyd was one of the worst people.
Not saying him, but I'm just saying that's your life as a cop.
A lot of the people that police do that.
Yeah, that's a good question.
And all I can say is we are held to a higher standard and it can't, it can never be personal out there.
Well, it can be.
When you're fighting with me, it's personal.
When I get the handcuffs on you, it's not personal anymore.
I'm going to pick you up.
I'm going to dust you off.
I'm going to ask you if you're okay.
And it's not personal at that point.
But cops are humans and humans are fallible.
And they're not perfect.
And I think it's easy to look back on a situation and Monday morning quarterback it without knowing the context of, like you said, I mean, the man's going through a divorce and I'm not making excuses for him.
I want people to understand that there are a lot, you know, financial trouble is a huge thing with a lot of police officers.
Divorce, the divorce rate on police officers is, everybody knows that cops get divorced a lot.
Financial trouble, divorce, you never know what else is going on in his life.
Maybe he's cheating on his wife.
Maybe his wife is cheating on him.
There are a lot of factors that go into that.
But the bottom line is you can't take that stuff that's going on in your personal life.
You can't take it out onto the street when you've got a badge on.
Can't happen.
So one of the things that people are bringing up a lot in the discussion of this George Floyd thing is, you know, systemic racism and how much that's true in the police force, how much that exists in the police force.
So we're wondering if, I don't know, a lot of the picture we're getting painted is like, you know, cops go out and how many black people can I arrest today?
You know, that's, I was just wondering if you had any experiences, you know, on the force with that kind of thing.
Guys, what's your perspective?
When you hear the people talking about that, have you seen racism in police work or is there, what is the truth to it?
What are the lies to it?
Well, you know, I can't speak for other departments because I've never been a part of another department.
I was a part of my department.
Right.
And where I worked, to call it systemic to me without empirical data that it's actually a thing, it's just a lazy argument to me.
And it's a blanket term that gets thrown around a lot.
I'm not naive to think that there are no racist cops out there.
I'm sure there are.
I'm certain of it.
In my experience, and that's all I can speak to, is I have not encountered that.
I've encountered good men and women who actually want to go out and make a difference.
And on every call they go on, it's about the greater good.
And sometimes that doesn't even involve arresting somebody when you're justified in doing that.
What's the greater good?
How can I most greatly impact this situation?
And some officers lose sight of that.
Discretion is a thing in law enforcement that some people agree with, some people don't.
But there are so many factors that go into any situation.
I never once went on a call thinking, I hope this person is black so I can arrest them.
And I don't know any cop that I ever dealt with that I worked with that would ever say that.
And I worked with African-American colleagues.
I just, I didn't see it where I worked.
So I can only speak to that.
Yeah.
So how about all this abolish the police stuff going on?
I don't know.
I don't even know what that would look like, like if we got rid of police.
And a lot of people are saying that's hyperbole, but there's literally people.
We just saw there's a video in Minneapolis.
There's a giant crowd commanding the mayor to tell to abolish the police.
Will you do it right now?
And he says, I can't just completely wipe out the police.
And so they named his walk of shame out of there.
And, you know, there's booing him.
So there's people that really think that.
If you're calling, there's an article we just read this, or I know it was actually on the news.
She was asked, if we go to the police, who do I call when there's someone broken in my house?
She says, well, you just have to recognize that you're coming from a place of privilege when you say that.
And I was like, did you see that?
The Minneapolis City Council or something.
Yeah.
So what do you, oh, really?
So she's not just some blogger.
That's a head scratcher right there.
All right.
Yeah.
I'm curious about your reaction to all this talk.
What's it even look like?
Because I know that LAPD, they've taken a bunch of money from a lot of them are doing defunding.
So even that, what's that look like?
So, you know, I think people would be surprised that a lot of cops actually do support some defunding of our police department.
As long as you reallocate and redirect those funds to programs that are going to address problems that police officers have been now directed to address, the homeless, substance abuse, people in mental crisis.
Those are three things right there that the police have been forced to have to encounter out on the street over the years.
And we don't specialize in that.
And I really want, I think, you know, the citizens of the United States need to at some point decide what they want the police to actually do.
Do you want us to be crisis workers?
Do you want us to be social workers?
Do you want us to be child juvenile workers?
Do you want us to just be warriors out there and handle only violent crime?
Because you're asking us to wear a lot of hats.
And when you divvy up those kinds of skills, you're going to have some people are going to be lacking in certain areas.
And you don't get, when you call the police, you don't get to say, hey, I would like a police officer who specializes in this to show up.
That's just not how it works.
You get sent to a call because you're free.
You're a free unit.
You're not actually on a call right now.
And you show up and you deal with whatever it is you deal with when you get there.
And it's really easy to Monday morning quarterback, a lot of decisions that are made out there.
But defunding the, if you're going to, if you're going to defund the police, please put that money into a program that you have dedicated people who respond to mental health crisis.
You have dedicated people that respond to homelessness calls or calls dealing with the homeless, children.
If you can do that, police officers will say, thank you.
That's off our plate now, and we can concentrate on things that we're actually designed to do is go out and catch bad guys.
Interesting.
Yeah, I think that's a good perspective on that because I think there's been a lot of reaction to, oh, we're going to defund the police and put out more social workers.
And on his face, that sounds kind of funny, like social workers patrolling the streets with their clipboards or whatever.
But when you put it in perspective like that, that makes a lot of sense.
And I just want, you know, it is hyperbole.
I want you to actually define what exactly you're asking for.
Yeah.
Yeah, we can have a conversation when you define exactly what you're asking for.
The actually abolishing or dismantling of these police departments, there are some examples out there of departments that were abolished.
Camden County in New Jersey did it a few years ago, and they've had great success.
They stripped it all the way down to the frame and then built it back up with new police officers and new mandates.
It was a more community, they worked hand in hand with the community on addressing actual needs of the community, and it's been a huge success.
They've had a huge drop in violent crime there.
I mean, it's not, crime's never going to just disappear.
The only way for you to make crime to disappear is to decriminalize everything.
Because that's not a crime anymore, right?
Good idea.
People are going to still going to take advantage of circumstance and victimize people.
It's just human nature.
Right.
Well, with the talks of defunding, there's been a lot of focus on like the militarization of the police.
So should cops have tanks?
Yeah, what do you think?
Can cops have tanks?
Do they have tanks?
That's what they always say is cops have tanks, but they kind of pull up in these SWAT vehicles and they go, the cops pulled up in a tank.
We have armored vehicles.
We don't have tanks.
Yeah, that would be fun, though, just on training for training purposes alone, just to go out and fire the big gun.
I wish we didn't need armored vehicles, honestly.
I wish we didn't need them.
But if you look at situations, the San Bernardino mass shooting that happened a few years ago, if police officers didn't have any armor, that situation may have turned out different.
It may have lasted longer.
We just did a case on our podcast where a man set a fire to his house to draw firemen into range and he began shooting at him.
And the reason why that incident really was accelerated is because we had access to an armored vehicle that could buy some real estate.
And that's a law enforcement term that we use.
It's we're gaining ground and trying to get closer to the bad guys so we can get eyes on them.
So that armored vehicle really gave us an advantage in that situation.
Active shooters, there are a million reasons why we need an armored vehicle.
And we don't use them that often.
I think the problem is that some departments rely on them too much.
And I think you have to really pick your battles, so to speak, with that armored vehicle.
You can't, it just can't be the automatic default that we're going to go to the armored vehicle because the optics of it for the general public is not good.
We had some ideas of things you could replace the police with.
Maybe you can give us your quick analysis on these.
Like Portland has Antifa, so they don't even really need cops, right?
They could just have Antifa take over.
Wipe out fascism.
I would love to see what that looks like.
A lot of street art, if you want to call it that.
Street art, vegan coconut milkshake, splatter art.
I mean, I always thought the concept of RoboCop was pretty good.
Yeah, like just some drones flying around or something.
It's just cops who have passed on, and they are now inside of robotic shells.
Yeah.
They have no hopes or dreams.
I actually met the guy who played RoboCop.
Very nice man.
Yeah.
And I just, I couldn't stop seeing RoboCop.
I was looking at him.
Yeah.
Nice.
And the voice.
There's also the Ed 209, the giant robot that, and it's known mainly for shooting CEOs and things.
So people might like that.
I don't know.
Raccoons, there's a ton of those, and they're very violent and aggressive.
So he could train them.
Maybe cops could have a gang of raccoons with them helping out.
Just an army of trash pandas.
Yeah.
They got great hands.
Yeah.
Well, we were thinking maybe that we could have like a traveling band of hippies that just drive around offering free hugs.
They just offer free hugs.
They sing John Lennon's Imagine.
You know, if there's a crime, they just call him into kind of singing.
I don't know what your take is on that.
Imagine solves everything, doesn't it?
Yeah, we were playing, we actually did an article.
We do satirical articles, kind of like The Onion.
We did one where police are being retrained by slam poets.
Socially conscious slam poets.
I was thinking if you could throw toxic waste into the sewers and just have hope that one day the ninja turtles would arise, that might be good.
Yeah.
There you go.
Anyway, sorry about that.
Sorry, I didn't do that.
Tell our jokes real quick.
Who's your favorite fictional police officer?
Yeah.
Well, it's got to be Axe Cop, right?
Oh, man.
Wow.
Did your homework.
I was curious, what do cops think of Axe Cop?
I've had some cops don't like him.
I was unaware of Axe Cop until you and Yardley met and started working together.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, Axe Cop is, he's, he's problematic.
Do you want to talk about police brutality?
Yeah, his technique is to remove criminals' heads.
He just comes in the situation, I'll chop your head off.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'll tell you what, you know, the show Southland that used to be on television, it's been canceled for a few years now, but Southland was actually a pretty decent look at police work.
You could tell that they had some technical advisors on that show that had been on the street.
And the same with the movie End of Watch, Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena.
You know, obviously Hollywood takes some liberties with the amount of shootings that they get in and all that.
But it gave you, it was, there were some, some moments in that movie that were very authentic and that resonated with me.
Cool.
So that'd have been an interesting list to go down like fictional cops.
Yeah, yeah, what's his opinion on?
What do you see as the most common misconception, maybe from Hollywood or just that you see out in the public of what the police do?
To me, and this is really in the last couple of weeks, it's become even more apparent to me that the general public doesn't understand that every police department out there is basically an island.
You have your own leadership structure, you have your own culture, you have your own training policies, you have your own hiring policies.
And that to me, I think the public generally believes that every day that all police departments in the country get on a Zoom call together and say, what are we going to do today?
It's just that's not, that's not true.
One department that is in one city and a neighboring city, they could have two completely different structures to them and cultures to them.
And I want the general public to understand that, like, when you see, I mean, Minneapolis PD right now is really easy to pick on, right?
There are probably incredible people that work for that.
I guarantee there are incredible people that work for that organization.
I just want people to know that every department is different.
And don't get caught in the trap of lumping every police department and every police officer together because you're basically doing the same thing that you're accusing the police of doing is lumping and saying that there's, you know, that we're, that we're racist and because that's just not the case.
It's, and there are, I'm certain that there are examples of it.
And, you know, people may hear this and they'll say, this cop is naive and he doesn't know what he's talking about.
I'm just speaking from my experience and from what the little corner of the world that I worked in.
Right, right.
It's almost like the world is nuanced and complex.
Yeah.
Right?
Will he change the name, the meaning of the word chauvinist?
Chauvinist?
Oh, it'll be even worse now.
Yeah.
Not all cops are chauvinists.
Chauvinists.
Chauvinists.
Do cops really like donuts?
Is that true?
Is that true?
Stones and lattes, really.
It's not costume donuts so much.
I really love a good.
Oh, blueberry scone.
Can't beat that.
Not all cops.
Not all cops.
Well, it's going to be some fun stuff.
You know what?
We'll do the, let's plug you now, and then we'll do a little bit of fun stuff for the subscriber portion.
So Small Town Dicks is an awesome podcast.
My recommendation to people about it and why I like it so much.
There's kind of like two kinds of true crime podcasts.
And a lot of people like true crime podcasts.
You either have the really dry, like investigation discovery where there's like a guy with a deep voice and it's super produced.
Or you have ones that are kind of like put on by, I guess they're improv comics or something and they're laughing the whole time about murder.
And I have a tough time with those ones, but they're really tough for me too, especially when you're speaking to survivors.
Yeah, and you guys are talking about the real cases.
Yeah.
We were there.
We investigated them.
I smelled the smells.
I saw the body on the floor.
And the thing about our podcast is we really show, we're reverent to the victims and the families because, and that's part of the reason why we change names and locations and keep some of it anonymous is because out of respect for those people.
But what our podcast really does is we try to show these cases through the lens of the police officer who actually investigated it.
So not all the cases are my brother and I. Actually, very few of the cases are actually my brother and I investigated them.
But a lot of them are cases that I became aware of or that my colleagues have done.
And we just talked to them.
I should say that my twin brother, Dave, was a sex crimes and child abuse detective.
And he's the other host on the show, along with Yardley and I. We're all co-you know with a three-headed monster.
Yeah, that's what's great.
You have Yardley, who's kind of an outsider voice asking questions.
And then, but the thing about the cops on the show that you have on and you guys, you're a little more real.
You guys swear.
Warning to our, you know, delicately eared listeners, but you guys are just, you talk as you would talk.
And it feels very real.
So I really like it.
It's also really well-produced.
So you guys play interviews.
You play interrogations, 911 calls.
It's really well done.
So highly recommended.
You guys don't need our help.
You guys already have a huge audience.
You can see a huge spike from this.
Yeah.
Huge spike.
Well, Kyle, the libertarian, talked to a police officer without raging and yelling, redes that offensive.
Yeah, were you okay?
Oh, yeah, is that a big sound they made?
No, I think they said it's like.
I thought that was you doing like a demon, like a demonic.
It's a meme, but they'll do it for like autistic people on the internet.
But it's not really autistic.
They'll just say like the triggering intensifies person?
Yeah, that kind of thing.
Yeah.
So I'm not making fun of autistic people.
I would highly recommend the because we put a good chunk of our conversation in the subscriber portion.
Yeah.
Was that where he talked about the code Brown?
Yes.
Yeah.
So if you want to know what a code Brown is, that's in there.
There are some funny stories, some embarrassing stories, and some heartwarming stories.
Yeah.
I do think the best portion ended up being the subscriber portion with him, but that's kind of a lot of times deeper into a conversation.
It gets better as it goes.
So subscribers get that.
And I don't always feel like that's the case.
Yeah, not at all.
We're not just saying that just to get you to subscribe.
It was, I think, the best portion.
All right, let's move on to some hate mail.
I really miss Adam Ford.
Okay, so we wrote an article that Nancy Pelosi tore up the Bible because Trump did the Bible thing and then she did the Bible thing.
Trump held it up.
And then she's always opposed to everything Trump's.
So he's pandering to the Bible thumpers.
So she's going to pander to the people who hate the Bible.
And she ripped up his speech when he did that.
Yeah, so it's easy to find a photo thump.
I was like, oh, great.
I actually didn't think it was going to work because it actually looks bad on the Photoshop.
That's really bad.
Two pieces of rectangle.
It's like that.
It's bad.
And I had to come into the office.
I was like, ah, forget it.
I'm just, that's fine.
And it got snoped, actually.
So some people got confused.
Even though Nancy Pelosi is like sitting in the State of the Union from four months ago.
Yeah.
The exact clothes she was wearing in everything.
It doesn't take a lot of detective work.
I'm curious.
We should have Detective Dan.
We should have had him look over some of our Photoshops and see if he could tell.
Yeah.
He used to do a real detective.
I don't know if he's a Photoshop detective.
If you're a detective, you can do me a detective.
No, you just send it off to the lab.
Yeah, send it off to the lab.
Send it to the lab.
And then like 20 minutes later in the show, the results come back.
That's how it works.
We should ask them more questions about CSI because that's always the stuff that interests me is the stuff in those shows.
We did ask him about misconceptions.
Yeah.
I think that was in the subscriber portion.
But I'm always interested in those CSI shows when they're like coming back.
It's the DNA.
It's him.
And it's like 15 minutes later.
I don't know.
Maybe down the road we have him and his brother come on and do like an interview show with them.
That'd be fun.
Cool.
All right.
So I was not happy with this article.
Okay.
And she says, I cannot believe you would fake an article on Nancy Pelosi.
You stated that you do it quite often.
that she tore up the Bible and supported it with quotes and a bunch of...
Sorry, I should have warned you.
There's bad words in here.
Flowerbed.
When in reality, all you did was paste a photo of the Bible over her tearing up Trump's speech papers from four months ago.
Uh-huh, they're on to us.
Flowerbed.
You guys and your fake news.
Absolutely disgusting low-life pieces of trash.
I hope you sleep good at night knowing you lie to support your family.
Flowerbed.
Piece of garbages.
That's part of this piece of garbages.
I don't know why that's so funny to me.
What was funny is that she says pieces of trash.
So she gets the plural corrupt there, right?
Pieces of trash.
Pieces of trash.
And then at the end, piece of garbages.
That's just funny to me.
I wasn't sure if she was a natural-born American citizen until that last part.
Maybe this isn't her first language.
Piece of garbages.
Doesn't that sound like something that...
Piece of garbages.
Yeah, Italian or Mexican.
Definitely could be Italian.
You shatter a window at like a Mexican restaurant, and then you're running away, and the guy's like, piece of garbages.
Is he shaking a breadstick at you?
Shaking a piece of garbages.
Yeah, I don't know.
Oh, yeah, we're into the Italian.
It's safer to joke about Italian.
Yeah, they haven't quite made it into that.
Yeah.
You can't make fun of it.
You can't do the Chinese accents, the Mexican accents.
You can do the Italian.
We can do Swedish too.
So then our staff replied, we are a satire publication.
You can read more about us here.
Did they reply to that?
And then they replied to that.
You want to read that?
Do you see that there?
That's not satire.
That's straight up forgery and slander to someone's image.
I would like to see where on that page it says it's not true.
She's pointing at the computer screen.
Show me on this page.
Show me on this page.
Where it says it's not true.
Should we have that on their article in giant letters?
This is not true.
It used to say at the bottom of our site, fake news you can trust or the world's top Christian satire site or something.
But it doesn't.
But Seth took that off.
He wanted to fool more people, I guess.
It is definitely on the about page, at least.
Or on our Twitter.
It says right on our About Us.
I think The Onion doesn't say it's satire anywhere on the website.
You have to really dig.
There's one place where they're saying it says like, can we sue you?
It's like the FAQs.
And it goes, can we sue you?
And I go, no, because we are satire.
Like it's the only place it says there's satire anywhere.
Even their tagline, if you Google The Onion, like that's the only thing that's America's trusted news source.
America's finest news source.
Yeah.
So they're purely going on reputation, right?
That people would know.
They would just know.
Yeah.
And ours, if you Google it, it says your trusted source for Christian news satire.
Yeah.
So we're a little more upfront.
If news seems a little weird, Google them.
Yeah.
Or if it's a really horrible Photoshop of like two pieces of the Bible that don't look real at all.
Because Kyle didn't have time to ask Ethan to do it.
Rarely does.
I don't know.
Sometimes, though, yours can be fooled.
Like, yours are more recognizable as jokes, I think.
Yeah, I'll try to make them...
Because you kind of have like more, I don't know, it's more color and focus.
And it looks like a manufactured photo.
Yeah.
It looks better.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
It looks staged because you try to make it really like dramatic.
And a lot of times my Photoshops are already so ridiculous.
I'm kind of embracing the ridiculousness.
Right.
So yeah, that one's a little bit more subtle.
She's just ripping it.
I probably would.
I probably would have done something more.
She'd like throwing up pages.
She's screaming.
Yeah, she's laughing, slobbering.
And then we wouldn't have fooled this person.
Sadly.
All right, we're going to move on to our paid subscriber portion where we continue to talk to Detective Dan and we hear poop stories.
And we get to hear about his duty belt.
His duty belt.
I need one of those someday.
The old duty belt.
Yeah.
You got to get the old duty.
You got to keep things buckled in.
Did you remember the baby's duty belt?
I don't know.
All right.
Well, thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next time.
Bye.
Bye-bye.
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