Michael Wood Jr., a former Baltimore police officer with 11 years of experience and a master’s degree, reveals how arrest quotas—90% for guns or drugs—pushed officers to fabricate charges, like targeting young Black males while ignoring traffic violations. His "alpha dog" mentality in drug units clashed with the reality of dealers as community caregivers, exposing the drug war’s futility and systemic racism, from segregated neighborhoods to the prison-industrial complex. Criticizing Batts’ leadership post-2015 uprising and prosecutors’ cover-ups (e.g., Ferguson), he argues poorly trained cops—qualifying at just 70% accuracy—fuel cycles of violence, risking conservatives’ gun-rights narrative as reform stalls. [Automatically generated summary]
For folks who don't know the story, Michael, as he prefers to be talked to as, directed as, referred to as, you were a cop in Baltimore, and you put a string of tweets that I read that was on Huffington Post.
And that's when I got interested in this whole story.
Because it's very rare that someone who's a cop comes out and tells about all the shit that they experience.
I have friends that are cops, and I know there's a lot of good cops out there.
Just like, there's good everything.
You know, Sam Harris and Dan Carlin just did a podcast recently together.
It's a really excellent podcast.
And one of the things they were talking about, they were talking about People in power people that were our politicians that they there's a the whole spectrum You get great people people that are genuinely trying to do good and you also get psychopaths It seems like you ran into a lot of fucking psychopaths How long were you a cop for?
My idea of what an officer should be Was to be more Robocop-ish, like where I took my emotions out of the job and handled it strictly as enforcing the law.
So if I was spit on, I realized they weren't spitting at me.
They were spitting at the uniform.
It was just irrelevant.
I understood it wasn't personal.
So I separated that as like a role, maybe, like I was acting.
So if I looked at it as whether I was talking to somebody of Latino descent, of black, whatever, male, female, I looked at them just as equally, regardless.
So if you do that, then you don't see that you're disproportionately enforcing things against somebody, because I'm literally not trying to see that.
So, by trying to treat everyone as equal, you weren't taking account of how many black people you were dealing with, how many Latinos you were dealing with, how many people of color, how many minorities?
It is fair to the extent that I'll admit that when I was in the Eastern District, I would intentionally lock white people up.
So that I could make sure my numbers weren't, like, my squad, it wasn't like, oh my gosh, look, they look up 95% African Americans.
I didn't want to see that.
I wanted to see some kind of balance, so I was, like, aware that, hey, we're locking too many black people up, but I don't think I, it just didn't compute at the time.
Punting a handcuffed, face-down suspect in the face after a foot chase.
Um...
Pissing and shitting inside suspects homes during raids on their beds and clothes Jacking up and illegally searching thousands of people with no legal justification This is crazy man.
Ohio was a case law that established, I could be slightly off in the particulars, but If somebody was displaying the characteristics of an armed person and you had suspicion or a hunch that criminal activity was afoot, you could stop that person and conduct a frisk of the outer garments.
Right a jacket so if you had if like you thought there they had a weapon on their hip you could pull back the jacket and kind of pat it down But it seems as the laws written it would have to you'd have to even like squish it and it's just what you can touch from the outside So if you patted the outside of the jacket and felt a gun that was in his waist Then you could you could arrest him or take that gun, right?
Well, you can if you have what that's plain field doctrine.
So if through my expertise, I can tell that that is packaging that is consistent with narcotics that are distributed in the area, and I can justify that, then I can go and retrieve those narcotics.
That's an extremely, I mean, if you can just think about that, how do I really know that that bag in your pocket is marijuana, not oregano?
I'm not sure if that should be legally justified or not.
I'm going to tell you that 99.9999% of them have nothing on them because they're not even usually documented.
So in Baltimore, we'll do stop and frisk, and if you do a stop and frisk, you have to conduct an entire specific report called a stop and frisk report that justifies everything you did.
And so it's a big pain.
So no one's going to write that.
So they just do it and they move on.
So your stats are, any stat you see is junk.
And the stats that you see that are junk sit there and say one in a thousand actually have something on them.
I got injured in like late 2009, but it took time to do the surgeries, try and come back.
I mean, I tried to come back.
I came back and I was going coded to a call with lights and sirens.
Went to turn down a street and the shoulder popped out.
So I went up onto the sidewalk because I had to grab it with the other hand and that's why I had to go back in and then they said I need another surgery.
So you decided once you were out, once you knew you were out, you'd done the surgery, you couldn't be a police officer anymore because your shoulder blows out.
What made you decide to go public with all this stuff?
Well, I've actually talked about this for a long time.
When I have, we had a lot of local media and local street reporters and stuff like that that I was friends with on Twitter, and we would talk about these things for the last couple years.
We would just go back and forth talking about things.
And I had no idea that anybody would pick up on this.
I thought I was just going to be talking to the same reporters and the same local group of people that I've been talking to the whole time, so I came back and saw that somebody started paying attention.
So when this most recent Baltimore incident took place, the Freddie Gray incident, the eruption of public attention on police brutality in Baltimore, and the marches, and all the news stories, then people started really paying attention to you.
I mean, I literally have no comprehension of what happened.
I decided that I was just going to talk about some of the things we do, so that it's like, look, this is what we do.
Let's not try to pretend that we don't do it.
We do it.
So it's not about Whether we're going to blame the cops that did it or whether we're going to go back and have retribution, we need to realize that this is what we do.
Stop denying it.
The black community has been lying for the last 50 years.
We need to fix it and in a realistic, scientific way where we have some empathy and treat people like human beings because we don't.
And the way he describes it is, I mean, I've been there a few times for the UFC, but I haven't, you know, gone into the bad neighborhoods.
I didn't watch The Wire.
So...
But watching this this whole incident and seeing these people talk about how many times they've been arrested and how many times they've been fucked over by cops and how crazy it is there and how much crime there is there and how much violence there is there What it's like trying to grow up there and become a normal person and what a fucking uphill struggle that is Describe Baltimore to somebody like me.
Okay, so Baltimore like anywhere else is largely good, but it has a microcosm of It's like the prototype for the prison cycle.
So somebody comes up in a neighborhood and they just have no hope and they keep feeding that school to prison cycle over and over and over again.
And it has a deep history in Baltimore.
So it invades everything.
So whether you're talking about...
I think that's true.
Baltimore, I can't even say how long ago, maybe 100 years ago, and you still have deeds now that say you can't sell the house to an African-American person.
So even if you were a doctor there, if you were a black doctor, you couldn't buy a house in a nice white neighborhood 60 years ago.
So you had to still go buy a house in that little area.
If you're clustering everybody like that, it just pulls everybody down constantly, constantly, constantly.
So if there's a white neighborhood today, there's a possibility that some black person who wants to move into this white neighborhood might encounter some resistance because of this.
So what people are saying, these cops aren't racist.
I'm not saying they are racist.
What I'm telling you is they're participating in institutionalized racism, just like everybody in Britain was doing back in Kenya with the Mau Mau's, however long ago that was.
That was a long time ago.
And you're seeing it come out how it's just the whole thing.
We've had this conversation a hundred times in this podcast where I have always wondered why is it that we put so much emphasis in trying to repair damage that we've done in other countries, so much emphasis in nation building.
So much emphasis in invading places because of whatever perceived threat or whatever natural resource we want to dominate and monopolize, but no emphasis whatsoever in fixing our own inner cities.
No emphasis whatsoever in fixing the ghettos.
And just constructing social centers, giving people places that are safe to go to, and somehow or another educating people and lifting them out one by one out of the fucking constant cycle that they're in.
This never-ending cycle of poverty and crime.
And being surrounded by it, man...
Everyone knows that people imitate their atmosphere.
It's just a part of being a human being.
That's why accents exist.
That's why people in some parts of the world do weird things because everyone around them does it like, you know, weird clothes that they wear, weird rituals, scarring of their face, you know, what have you.
We imitate what's around us.
And when you're around a lot of fucking crime and you grow up around a lot of fucking crime and a lot of people with Records, criminal records, and it becomes normal.
And I don't know how to fix that.
And I don't see any effort whatsoever in really engineering some sort of a solution to what these poor, unfortunate people are born into.
Well, for police, it's even worse because we're perpetuating that situation.
So we're the ones doing that cycle.
So when we see a 16...
One time I was a chief commander in the Eastern District, and I'm telling my guys, stop pulling over old white ladies.
Stop pulling over that young cute girl.
Stop.
We focus on who commits the crimes.
And who commits the crimes in Baltimore?
16 to 24 year old black males.
That's who's committing the crimes.
So focus on them.
That makes sense.
Until you complete the cycle and realize that you started doing that because of institutionalized racism in your organization.
And so when you are jacking up those guys in the corner and you do find that dime bag, so you sent him to jail, now he can't go to work the next day, so he loses his job, and then he can't make it to court, so he gets his license suspended, and then he's driving, and then you are focusing...
On those 16, 24-year-old black males.
So now you're more likely to pull them over.
Now you pull him over.
Now he has a suspended license.
Now he gets his license revoked.
And now he can't get to the job legally.
And now he's left with selling drugs on the corner.
So we're creating it.
We have to step back and realize what the facts are and what we're doing.
And the number one problem is the drug war.
And then we have money and politics.
Those are two big issues that we have to solve before we get anywhere.
So I don't think we can change anything until we stop having politicians that are serving their donors versus serving the people.
So somebody that's talking like me is never going to run a police agency as long as all their corporate donors are saying, no, no, no, you keep those animals in the cages, because that's what they do.
I mean, that's like a joke in Baltimore that police are actually the zookeepers.
You keep everything in and don't let it hit the county.
So that's our role.
That's what we're doing.
So your mayors and your politicians are going to continue to encourage that.
They're not going to take a risk and say, all right, how do we lower juvenile possession of marijuana?
Whether we're overseas or we're in Colorado, your possession rates for marijuana will go down among juveniles.
But we don't do that.
We keep looking at everything, like we're hammer searching for nails, and we keep looking for what we're going to hit to stop it, instead of standing back and using science and figuring out what are we actually going to do to fix this problem.
And they're going to be upset with me because what I'm really trying to do is take power away from them.
I mean, I really am.
I'm trying to take power from them and give it back to the people because we're supposed to be serving them.
We're not supposed to be this occupying force.
And this pretty little white boy from the county looks like an...
An occupying force in the city.
There's no way around it.
So I have to be aware of that and think about that.
Think about what I'm doing.
Not be an occupying force.
Intentionally actually go out of my way to lift up a situation and de-escalate it and do better than to come in there and be like, you're going to jail, you're going to jail, shut up, let's go.
So you got caught up in the cycle yourself, the cycle of law enforcement and the way law enforcement behaves in Baltimore, and it just became habitual.
So when I say that I have that suspect that I chased and the guy comes up and kicks him in the face, I think to myself, God, that guy's a fucking asshole.
We're starting to see more and more videotapes, police stories of police brutality.
Do you think this is just a result of cell phones or is the violence escalating or has the violence always been there like this but people are finally finding out about it?
I think it's actually de-escalating, the violence.
Yeah, I think your cell phones are certainly scaring a lot of cops from doing things, but the only variable here is the proliferation of video cameras.
So, as you get more and more cameras, you're seeing more and more, but imagine what it was like before the cameras.
Cops know the cameras are there.
We've known it for a long time.
So, like...
We have pole cameras in Baltimore and So if we were gonna do something or so there's a street called Monument Street That's full of these cameras that are monitored by the city So as an officer I always knew that if I was on that street I kind of had to behave in a different manner because I knew the camera was there now We know that the camera is there all the time.
So it's it's got to be much smaller Well, there's always these guys they say that you can't even believe they're real humans and Like that fucking cop in Texas that showed up at the pool party and did the fucking roll like he's Paul Blart mall cop.
Holy fucking shit.
When you find out that that's a real person, you're just like...
So that's the McKinney situation, where you have a guy assaulting a 14-year-old girl, and that chief still comes out, and still he has that blinder, that blue blinder, where he's saying, there's 11 good cops there.
My ass there are.
There are 12 bad cops there, because he just witnessed an assault on a 14-year-old girl in a bathing suit and did shit about it.
So you have 12 bad cops.
But the reason why I'm talking is because I do think those 11 other ones can be spoken to.
I think the guy that comes up and pats him on the back then is like, yo, what are you doing?
Why is your gun out?
If we keep talking to him, then maybe he'll be able to go talk to two more people.
Maybe he'll realize what he's doing.
And we can kind of at least on a grassroots level kind of change what police think they're supposed to be versus what we are.
We've talked about it on the podcast many times, and I think that it's one of the most difficult jobs that a person can do, and one of the jobs that has the least amount of respect.
Cops, like, almost routinely are treated with disrespect, and also, no one thinks about PTSD for cops.
People think about it all the time when it comes to soldiers.
It's become much more in the public eye, but the amount of stress That's a part of being a police officer.
What is that like?
When you're going into these bad neighborhoods and you're dealing with murder, when you're dealing with all sorts of different assaults and domestic violence and theft and robbery, what is that like to be a person who deals with that every day?
And how much of a factor does that play in these people snapping on people?
The banter back and forth in that movie is very realistic of what cops act like.
You think cops are all professional, but we're sitting in the car talking about the same things that anybody else talks about, and then you're, oh shit, something's going on.
I think he had an old car accident or something like that, and the case had some kind of final disposition that was entered into the court records, but it was harkened back to something a long time ago.
Think about if you're in a police car, and you have the lights and sirens, and you're going down, like, Coastal Highway, or you're going down your favorite 101, or whatever it is, and you're going through your side roads, and you're chasing this guy.
There is no adrenaline rush that's ever compared to that.
Is that one of the reasons why so many cops shoot people?
It's like the idea of the rush of being in a gunfight, the rush of finding someone who deserves to get shot.
You know, it's like when you're hunting, right?
You know, you see animals that you're not supposed to shoot.
But I swear to God, there's a part of your fucking brain that wants to shoot a squirrel.
It was like a 300 Win Mag.
You don't do it, but there's a part of your brain, like, you have a rifle, you're looking through the crosshairs, squirrel doesn't even know you're there.
You don't do it, but there's a part of you that wants to, and I'm like, why does that even exist?
Because people like hitting targets.
The same reason why you like going to the range and shooting at those steel targets.
Like, why do you, because people like hitting things with guns, because you have a gun, like you said, when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
And when you're in your cop car, And someone takes off, whether or not it makes sense to chase them, it must feel like the right thing to do, right?
I was trained from 17. I went to the Marine Corps at 17. I was handled a rifle in boot camp, and I went into special ops, and I was trained day in and day out to kill.
That's the honest truth.
And then I have to transition into bringing that skill set into the police department where, luckily, I was able to separate myself and it wasn't an issue for me.
But I don't think that's where the shootings come from.
I'm pretty convinced that your military members actually won't shoot.
Whereas the people that come from civilian life and, you know, there's a fucking video of this guy who's this big fat slob who's a cop and he's trying to...
Get a hold of this guy and the guy winds up beating his ass and there's like this chaos thing running around.
But I'm looking at that guy and I'm like, this guy does not, there's no way this guy should be a fucking law enforcement officer.
He's just way too out of shape.
He's just way too undisciplined.
His body is just not serving him correctly, and he's involved in physical altercations with criminals.
And to be a person that is in day-to-day contact with people that may or may not want to kill you, you have to have a certain amount of awareness, and you have to have a certain amount of physical ability.
You have to realize that you're going to be able to handle that situation.
I think it's easier in a city than it would be for a Pennsylvania State Trooper or something.
I don't know what I would do in their shoes, and they're stuck out in the middle of nowhere by themselves.
In a city, all you got to do is hold on for 30 seconds.
You're going to get help.
But how they do it in those environments...
Baffling to me, but they don't get into a lot of shootings as much as urban environments because I think it's that fear, but I think as a nation we fear the black man.
He's the demon.
So you saw that in Mike Brown when that cop says, oh, he had a demon's look in his eye.
A demon's look in his eye?
What are you talking about?
Do you ever see anybody say that Dylann Roof, oh, he looked like he had a demon look in his eye?
They don't say that.
They say, oh, this troubled youth.
But the black guy is the demon.
So we have that in our society that that's the criminal.
So that's who we're looking at and that's who we're fearing.
We're fearing the black man raping our daughters.
We're fearing that.
Whether we want to face it or not as a nation, it's real.
And we have to face it if we want to learn how to police properly and we actually want to get our nation back to where it is.
And we tear down these borders, these things that we do, these social constructs, your flags, your Whether we have a line down at Mexico so that they can't come over here, and we don't help them, and we have our states, and we do all this, oh, there's so much dumb shit that we just make up to separate ourselves, but there's no difference.
If someone is looking for a good job and they get out of the military, it's a logical progression.
I would trust military members more than I would trust a civilian who's never seen any real gunfire or any real shit.
You know, someone who has never experienced any sort of altercation like that and all of a sudden being thrust into it, you just gotta hope they can keep it together.
I know some people can, but a lot of people can't.
Someone who's been through the Marines, someone who's been through Anything, a Navy SEAL, someone who's been through war, that person, in my eyes, is a much more qualified candidate than the average person.
It makes sense.
So when you're talking to me and you're saying that you had a certain amount of discipline and you had a certain...
But you're also being very honest about you wanted them to come at you.
Which I think is a natural human instinct.
I think it's very important that you're talking like this.
I really do.
Because I think there's a lot of people that would shy away from talking like that.
Especially someone who's still out of a career in law enforcement.
Yeah, but also, I support their right to get fucked up if they want.
You know, I've been drunk a lot.
I've never hurt anybody never never did anything fucked up never caused any crimes never hurt anybody never You know, I just don't think that Human I think human beings should be able to do whatever the fuck they want.
I think when you when you violate Somehow or another you violate either other people's rights or other people's safety or other people's health and welfare, then it becomes a real issue and you should be prosecuted based on whatever transgressions you've committed.
So we would go up and we would go in covert and into the projects because the projects had heat and it was winter time so you could break into one of the doors and it had heat in it and then you could watch...
What happened in the courtyard and people would sell and one of us would run down out of the room, circle around.
Because College kids that are going to University of Maryland think that they can just walk down the street into the bad neighborhood and everything will be fine They think they could drink and walk down the street and nothing's gonna happen to them The the and what does happen?
They're gonna get robbed They know it we know they didn't know it we know it was like hey, what are you doing?
Don't do that The whites in the neighborhood, you would have a really hard time figuring out your reports because you were supposed to put in who the person's relationship was.
My one sergeant had to defend me constantly, because I went to a post in that same district where I started bringing the crime numbers down, but I didn't have the arrests.
And he had to defend me to his bosses, saying, like, look, he hasn't had a serious crime in a long time.
That's his job.
And I was getting criticized the whole time because I didn't have as many arrests.
But if we all had no crime, like I've often proposed this, like if we had a moratorium on crime, if the whole country got together and said, alright, no one for the next month, we can go 30 days without speeding, 30 days without illegal turns, 30 days without any violent crime, 30 days without any theft, what would happen?
So, like, my liberal idea of policing would be to empower that officer that's on the street.
So even if there wasn't crime, then what he would really be doing is making sure that the alley was cleaned up, solving problems that are in the neighborhood.
So whatever the problem could possibly be, you know, there's this guy that constantly parks on this corner and the street sweeper can't get it.
Well, fix all those problems.
So even if you don't have crime, the peace officer, the protector, should still have plenty of things to do.
I mean, maybe a district here or there might have one guy that kind of primarily does traffic, but it's just patrol officers are expected to handle traffic.
And again, remember, I'm not being judged on that.
So why would I care?
So my car stop, the only reason I do a car stop is to get guns or drugs.
Maybe a warrant.
So you'd run a plate?
Right, right.
And the guy has a warrant, driver has a warrant, then yeah, I'm gonna do that.
So I'm not gonna do it unless I have a possibility of an arrest.
I'm not gonna sit there and write bullcrap tickets.
Yeah, yeah, plenty of times, especially when I was doing narcotics.
So after I went from the Northern, I went to a unit called the Violent Crime Impact Division, and I was like playing clothes, got to have the tats out and be all tough and run around like you're, you know, they're called knockers in the city.
And So from there, you're dealing with the same street-level dealers all the time.
And one of those kids actually really struck me.
So a great irony that I had in doing drug work is usually drug work sends you deeper into it.
And it actually pulled me out.
Because I would interview these guys in the little rooms, and this one guy, Daniel Taylor, is the one I'm specifically remembering, and he was just a marijuana dealer, and he had a kid, and he was struggling to have this kid.
He was young, he was trying to help, but he had gotten locked up a lot when he was younger, so he was selling weed to just buy diapers for his kid, and he would tell me his stories, and we would be there, and he would be crying, and it was just like, fuck!
There's no difference between this kid and me.
There's nothing.
The only difference between this kid and me Is that when I had a dime bag in my pocket, there wasn't a fucking chance in hell someone was going to look.
But him, he was going to get caught eventually.
And it sent him into that spiral.
And this could have been a good kid.
And I wouldn't be surprised if he was still in jail now.
You know, I've never, obviously, never been a cop, but I worked as a security guard for a while at this concert place, and one of the things that I recognized really early on was that there was a us-versus-them mentality just from fucking security guards at a concert place.
And I would imagine the us-versus-them between cops and the people on the street gets pretty fucking intense.
It started when I was in but it started with like talking to that kid that was right and then I would also sit in covert and watch so you'll love this one time I was We were doing a long investigation and I had this vacant building that I would hide in a homeless dude was there and homeless dude would like leave magazines for me and then like I would come in during the day and he would come in at night It was the weirdest exchange.
We never crossed paths though He would leave magazines for you?
So I was actually standing behind him watching all the drug dealers on the investigation.
But while I would watch all these investigations like that, you would see everything for what it was and not for your perceptions because you were there for so long.
So I would see the dealer sitting there, but then I would see him take care of his kid.
I would see him sit down and make food.
I would hear the other people in the neighborhood talking about their lives and hearing the sounds, smelling the smells, and realizing that...
This wasn't a war.
This is ridiculous that we were doing this.
This was not the enemy.
This was a socio-economic problem that we had to deal with, but this isn't the enemy.
So by being embedded in their community, you recognize that we really are, or you really were, an occupying force In just a community that's trying to get by, just a bunch of people that are just like you or I, but their circumstances were unfortunate.
They were born into this situation where this cycle is perpetuated over and over and over again, and you've got a chance to see it.
Did other officers share your, I want to say like, I don't want to say humanization, but your recognition of the fact that these folks are just like you?
There's no way I would live in Baltimore City because I didn't make enough money for my daughter to go to a private school and I wasn't sending her to that school to prison cycle.
Right.
I moved the PA where I could send her to a good school and actually afford to.
Now, sure, if I made enough money, if you're going to pay an officer $150,000, $160,000, yeah, he can stay in the city.
I remember a case we had where there was a group that was selling drugs, and we worked on it for about a week or two, took down the whole group, and two days later, there was a whole new crew running the exact same neighborhood, throwing the same product, and we were just like...
The people that you feel like you can demonize the easiest.
When that judge got arrested in Pennsylvania for sending kids to jail and juvenile just for money, we really got a view into this world I think a lot of people that opened their eyes, they went, whoa, a fucking judge?
Judges can be that bad?
Judges can be so evil that they would ruin a child's life just so they could profit off of it.
But that's essentially what's going on by keeping the system the way it is.
Let's say this thing becomes bigger, and I think what you're doing today is very courageous, and you're speaking very eloquently and very articulate, and you're honest, and I really believe you, man.
I believe you from the heart, 100%.
There's a possibility that people like you and all these activists that are making these giant protests happen and causing all these people to be aware of all this police brutality and this fucking horrible cycle that these people are thrust into.
A guy like you could really change something.
A guy like you, if you were in a position of power, there might be something that you could do.
What if, this is a big hypothetical, but what if we went into some sort of a situation in this country where drugs became decriminalized?
Where the United States woke the fuck up and realized we've been doing the same shit that they did during the fucking 20s, During the Prohibition, We're doing the same shit.
We're telling people what they can't do, they're not listening, and we're feeding organized crime.
We're feeding crime that is filling a vacuum, just like it's going on in Mexico right now.
Just like these poor fucking people that live in these border towns in Mexico.
It's all being fueled by the fact that drugs are illegal and they're selling these drugs to America.
If all of a sudden that changed, how much of an impact would that have on police?
Now, if he does that, and if the next step is obviously not arresting non-violent drug offenders, not arresting them at all.
Like, there's no more arrests for drugs.
Unless there's violence involved, and then you're arresting someone for violence, which is totally reasonable.
It doesn't matter if they're violent over fucking stuffed animals or cocaine.
Who gives a shit?
They're violent, right?
They're hurting somebody.
That's why they're arrested.
How much would that transform neighborhoods?
How much would that transform this entire cycle of people going from communities that are just engulfed in crime and becoming a part of that themselves because they were unlucky enough to be born there?
I think it's the biggest thing we could do as a nation.
I only put Wolfpack and getting money out of politics ahead of it because I question that we can actually do that as money continues to fuel the politicians.
There's another thing that my friend Steve Hilton put together called CrowdPak, where you could see exactly which politicians are being supported by what, where they're getting their donations from, and what they vote on.
Get a real clear analysis of their position based on influence, based on the amount of money they're receiving and where it's coming from.
It's all shocking shit, because I just would hope that as we move forward as a human race, as we move forward as civilization moves forward, and we embrace technology, and we understand that we have more access to information now than any human beings that have ever lived ever, to keep living the same way, even though we have all these...
Obvious problems right in front of us is ridiculous I mean it's it's literally the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again hoping for a different result That is the definition of insanity right totally agree There's just there's no way around it that we're doing this wrong and that's why I'm saying the only reason I'm saying this is because We are doing it so wrong, and it's so blatantly wrong.
It's like you have to have a cognitive bias to not see this.
It's really the older generation.
I kind of have pretty much confidence that our generations and younger will be able to solve this once we get in power.
But how they don't see this now is absolutely baffling.
And I think they don't see it because it doesn't affect them.
Well, I agree with you, but I think you having these kind of conversations live, online, in a...
A forum like this where it's going to be distributed to millions of people you have the opportunity to influence people that might not see things your way because you have a genuine insight and a real perspective that very few people including me could ever hope to have.
You saying this kind of stuff and you talking about this kind of stuff can shed some light in a way that other people can't.
I'm listening to you talk here, man.
I'm like, you're the fucking perfect commissioner.
You're the kind of guy that I would want running a police department.
You!
You're a guy who's been there, a guy who's served the country, been there as a cop, understands what the problems are, and has solutions, and has empathy, and really is saying all the right shit.
I mean, this is what we need.
This is what the police departments of the world, of this country at least, need.
I think human beings inherently have a problem with power.
You know, that's why you see, I mean, you see it across the board.
When people have power and influence over people, like, it seems to be a natural inclination to abuse it, and it takes someone of very strong character and insight and objectivity, like yourself, to not do that.
Or at least to recognize that you have done that, and that it is wrong.
Or that it was wrong.
It seems to me that, like, whether it's politicians or whether it's the military or whether it's someone like fucking Bill Cosby, you know?
Like, how does a guy become that guy?
Well, it has to be out of power, you know?
I mean, it's the power, even just...
It might be a stretch, but the power to drug someone, the ability to do that.
What is it about human beings that makes them exploit people that are below them instead of trying to raise those people up to their level?
There's some fundamental lack of understanding about the brotherhood and sisterhood of the human race.
It all gets fucked up when you have a job.
And it seems to me that if you have a quota, and if you have a boss that's telling you you need to arrest more people, you need to lock up more people.
Like, these streets are too safe.
Either you're doing...
The right thing, or you're not doing enough.
And they almost always think you're not doing enough, right?
They never would think, oh, this guy got lucky, and he created a good relationship with all these people, and we locked up all the bad guys, and all the people in the community that are left are all safe.
There's no more violent criminals.
It's a beautiful utopia of a neighborhood, and we never have to arrest anybody there ever again.
So cops would just be there, just sort of to say hi, and patrol the streets.
And so do we have a problem with power as human beings?
Maybe we do.
So let's acknowledge that and put measures in place so that we don't exceed our power boundaries.
Have some checks and balances in law enforcement because we have zero.
We get away with everything we want to get away with until there's a camera.
The only difference, all these other things that you've seen in the past, you've heard these stories of guys getting shot unarmed, but yet he was attacking my gun or he was taking my gun.
This guy, D-Ray, is a really noble activist, and I appreciate everything this guy's doing, and I appreciated him making Wolf Blitzer look like a fucking idiot on TV. But he had me blocked for some reason, but you got him to unblock me.
I'm so trustworthy, but I understand what he's doing.
I think it's spectacular.
He to me is a real activist as opposed to Al Sharpton who just makes my fucking blood curdle when I see that guy show up at any fucking event that has anything to do with black people.
Jesus fucking Christ.
That guy has more harm than he does good just by his just greasy The past, his history, and there's so much about him that's just so wrong, and it's nice to see someone like DeRay come along.
It's nice to see a real activist, someone who is intelligent, is articulate, is doing all the right things.
And I think between a guy like that, between many people like him, I'm sure there's a lot more people like him that I'm not aware of, and then someone like you, who's shedding light on this from the inside, I think things are slowly but surely turning.
I think the battleship is moving in a different direction.
I really do.
I really think the whole country is moving in a different direction, and I think that when we see the way people are approaching gay rights now, the way the world is just more sensitive about things.
Some people are angry at it.
They're saying everyone's oversensitive.
I think it's probably better to be oversensitive than to be insensitive.
Like, that motherfucker is curing cancer, all right?
This guy's a Nobel Prize winning scientist, and he says something that's a little goofy, but he doesn't have some history of oppression.
He's not some terrible person.
It's this massive oversensitivity by people.
Where you can't even just, you know, say that's probably not a good thing to say.
And he, you know, can kind of correct it and you can kind of smooth it out because you understand that people talk off the top of their head.
This is not like a fucking story wrote for the New York Times where he had a clear position on women in science and it became a real issue because he criticized people that might have gotten into science and done some real good work.
No, the guy's just talking.
You know?
And I think symptoms like that, like these issues that we face, it's way better to have that than it is to have insensitivity.
I think the oversensitive things, like, it sucks that this guy got fired, but, or that he resigned, but he shouldn't have.
And I blame the institution.
I blame the people running for that, that are so fucking sensitive that they, and so terrified that they're worried about any criticism whatsoever, that they reacted to it in this way.
And him, he shouldn't have fucking backed down from it either.
He should have talked about it and Explained or maybe even apologized.
Maybe even said it was an off-color joke or it was just I just think that that Balance is is because we're moving in the right direction.
I really do I think I even though I've been a victim of oversensitivity I shouldn't say victim.
That's very grandiose It's it's it's affected me or it's impacted me or I've felt it I've seen it rather I think it's better.
It's better to have all those fucking crazy people running around looking at things to be offended about, looking at, you know, examples of sexism or homophobia or racism.
It's better to have people reaching too far than to not reach at all.
And I think because we're seeing all this stuff, I think it's evidence That society as a whole and our culture in America is tipping towards being more aware.
And I think that's a good thing.
I really do.
I have a lot of hope.
A lot of people think that I'm overly optimistic about the future of this country and the human beings in general.
But I see plenty of evidence that people are aware and that they care and just all the people that are paying attention to your story and all these different protests and marches and all these different news stories whenever we see these examples of police brutality.
They're so highlighted now.
This is not swept under the rug at all.
And if anything, the cops are fucking thrown under the bus immediately.
I mean, it's a different world.
And I think there's going to be an adjustment period.
But I think ultimately, when we look back at this time, 10, 20 years from now, I think we're going to look at this as a shift, as a shift in our culture that we didn't see in the 60s.
You know, there's...
I think when the when Martin Luther King was around and when There was a shift then there was most certainly an awareness civil rights awareness But I think it's even bigger now.
I really do.
I think this is a great time to be a human being I really think that We have the real potential to make some real change inside our lifetime and change that can Give momentum to the future I think there's without question that you're completely right.
We just have to be human and recognize all of our flaws and everything will be fine.
With your doctor, if we could have some empathy for his position, Because empathy is a two-way street, then maybe you can work out a solution for understanding in that ballgame.
And that's what we're doing now is we're working out the understanding, and it's going to have this ugly period in policing, for sure.
But we'll get through it, and it's going to be better.
It's inevitable.
I don't think it's me.
It's going to be somebody that comes behind me, but it's going to work.
I think someone like you is uniquely qualified to be a part of it.
You know, the fact that you actually were there on the street arresting a dude who's wearing somebody else's pants.
I think it just shows you're uniquely qualified to talk about this.
And I think that there's a real potential with this kind of dialogue and with people just being more and more aware of it that a young kid that might be like 16, 17 years old right now that is about to go into the Marines and has the same idea that you had He has a leg up.
Maybe he can learn from your experiences and maybe his comrades and maybe his peers can also learn from what you're saying and your experiences and maybe someone like you one day becomes a commissioner and maybe that time while that's happening That one commissioner starts listening to good politicians and gets influenced by good leaders and doesn't have to start arresting people just for drugs.
Doesn't have to just perpetrate the same stupid fucking cycle that's been going on and on.
I mean, is that too much to ask?
Is that too unrealistic to hope that we can change things?
I mean, you can't think that we're not going to improve.
If we're not going to improve, we're going to stay stagnant as a culture.
Okay, so you have this philosophy where you are like, it doesn't matter what you do.
Just fucking be nice.
Just be nice.
And listening to you through these years, that has invaded my mind as well.
So if we can just talk...
Start opening up as humans and be nice and be empathetic then we're going to work all of this out regardless Bernie Sanders might even be a good example of that with his message right now absolutely huge following right yes and Like vote for this guy.
Yeah, I mean we're going to make changes It's like if you're a progressive Then you want to make changes.
If you're a conservative, you want to stay in the past.
That's what these words mean.
It doesn't make any sense.
Who would want to be conservative and stuck in the past?
The only person that's going to be stuck in the past is the one with the Confederate flag that's collecting money off the backs of somebody else.
I mean, we live in a weird world right now, and I think society is being redefined right in front of our eyes.
I think when we look back at this time, a hundred years from now, when people look back, when we're dead, they're gonna look back and go, God, it was a fucking crazy time to be alive.
That internet just fucking threw a monkey wrench into the whole gears.
Clank!
I mean, that's really what's happening.
This ability to communicate just didn't exist before.
You being able to come on a show like this, this wasn't supposed to happen.
If this show was on the radio or something like that, first of all, we'd be interrupted by commercials.
And then second of all, someone would probably tell us we can't talk about these things.
Or we can't talk about the way we're talking.
You can't swear.
We've already been arrested for swearing.
You can get a fucking fine of some insane amount.
I think it's like $250,000 for swearing on the radio.
For swearing.
Like just saying, get the fuck out of here on the radio.
You can go to jail if you don't pay that fine.
If you don't pay that quarter million dollar fine.
The vig to the government.
That's where Howard Stern came in, man.
Howard Stern fought all that shit.
That's why that guy's always going to be a hero to me.
I don't give a fuck what he says about podcasting or Ari Shaffir or any of that crazy shit.
If it wasn't for that guy, that guy fought the fight.
And the powers that be that have set this stupid thing up, they didn't anticipate that a guy like you would be able to go on the Young Turks later this afternoon and say anything you want, man.
And that Young Turks thing will be seen by a fucking million people.
Easy.
And that's hope, man.
That's hope because...
What we're talking about where you listen to some of the things that I've said, those things that I've said, I've heard online.
You know, I've read.
I've watched documentaries.
I'm expressing things that I've learned.
And we all learn from each other.
And we all...
The community that we create by...
Finding like-minded people or by saying things that resonate with people or by influencing people in a positive way where it actually helps their mindset and helps their life and they become thankful of that and then they spread the same kind of message and we help spread it to each other and I have a guy like you on and you change the way I think about certain things and you influence like I'm Genuinely honored to have you on the show.
I'm genuinely I really admire what you've done and what you're saying and I think other people will as well and I think it spreads it's like a good virus like it gets out there and This this wasn't available before something like this wasn't available And I think that's part of why we all got locked into this us-versus-them mentality.
We didn't have a voice that distinguishes or differentiates from the fucking same bullshit corporate voice that we keep hearing over and over and over again that doesn't differentiate.
You don't hear any we are all brothers and sisters on Fox News.
You don't hear that.
What do you hear?
You hear crime statistics.
You know, you hear Nancy Grace with 2 Chainz debating about marijuana.
I mean, really, that's what you hear.
You hear bullshit, nonsense.
You don't hear any soul.
You know, no one's got a goddamn heart.
No one recognizes the fact that this is a temporary existence.
We're going through a temporary existence, and there are so many of us.
And there's pockets that seem almost unmanageable, because they've been fucked over for hundreds of years, and there's just a swarming chaos in these areas.
And they're riding on momentum, and they're riding on the momentum of decades and decades of poverty and crime and a cycle of despair.
And it's going to be hard to fix that shit, but it's critical, and it's one of the most important aspects of our civilization.
If we don't fix that, our civilization is nonsense.
Our civilization is only as strong as the weakest links.
And it just makes sense to me, and I've always said this, the best way to strengthen America.
People want to talk about a strong America?
Are you a patriot?
Do you love America?
Good.
Less losers.
Make less losers.
Then you have a stronger America.
Go to the fucking neighborhoods that are fucked.
Go to the communities that are fucked.
Go to these deeply entrenched in crime areas and fix them.
You fix them, then you got winners.
Instead of 10,000 people in jail, you've got 10,000 people that are starting small businesses.
You've got 10,000 people that are venturing out into the world and trying to do good and influencing other people to do the same and spreading a positive message and influencing people with inspiration.
And then other people see, hey, this guy became this.
I can do this, too.
And then they do it, too.
And then other people say, then you've got a better country.
It's not that hard.
Instead of being a fucking vampire and arresting people for crack and pulling people over and doing the same goddamn shit that everybody's been doing for the last hundred years.
One of the things we found when we were messing around digging through files is we found an action plan.
And these action plans, like, so a big crime happens and the shift commander will draw up an action plan and send it up, what he's going to do to address this problem.
And this action plan was from the 1970s.
We found it in like 2010. Whoa.
You found it?
We found it in a drawer.
And it was the exact same action plan as the other ship commander was doing.
It was like the same corners, the same response, the same plan.
So like for 40 years, nobody's changed anything.
And you have the same corners being the same problems with the same families and doing the same things.
And the police are doing the exact same goddamn thing in response.
Wow.
It's unbelievable how we're doing this, and that's what these talks have to get us to do, is to do exactly what you're saying, communicate, lift up the country.
It doesn't make any sense that we would treat a medical problem like it's a criminal problem and put those people into a jail cell.
When you have an indictment, the old saying is, is you can indict a ham cheese sandwich.
Because the prosecutor goes up there and his job, or her job, is to select the evidence that will get the charge.
So the way that system actually is, is if there's four of us in the room right now, if three of us think he did it and one doesn't, we don't even listen to the one that does it.
That's how an indictment works.
If you're not a reliable witness, you don't even come in for the indictment.
But in that case, he brought in unreliable witnesses, brought in everybody to taint the whole thing, when all he should have brought in was the case that, okay, so this guy was shot, and he was found this way, and these witnesses say that he put his hands up.
But I think that institutional racism that we have throughout our society, it wasn't that long ago that we're having slaves, and we're still arguing over the Confederate flag.
If you can get oil from Saudi Arabia, buy millions and millions of gallons in tankers, and bring it across the goddamn ocean to America, you're telling me you can't take water from somewhere and bring it down here?
That's stupid.
Of course they can.
The problem is...
Can they get enough water?
Because we use a lot of fucking water.
There's a lot of golf courses here.
People like to golf.
A lot of white people.
And there's almonds.
Almonds apparently suck up a lot of water.
And a lot of people have pools.
There's a lot of issues.
But I think they can be engineered.
You know, the real issue is...
You know, there's a lot of global warming talk, but I think places have always turned.
You know, there's always been like...
I mean, all you have to do is just look back to the Ice Age, and you realize, well, there's not an Ice Age anymore, so something happened.
There's some change.
We don't live in a static place, but we're so arrogant, we feel like if we build a city, we could stay.
You know, this is it.
We're here now.
But if this becomes a Sahara, you know, go to the Sahara Desert.
What do you find?
You don't find a lot of fucking people.
There's a reason.
There's nothing there.
You can't live off of it.
What are you going to eat, man?
You going to eat your camel?
If you don't eat your camel, there's not a lot to eat.
You know?
And that's just the reality of being a human being.
If we live on this earth...
Occasionally you have to move.
Because the spot sucks now.
You know?
This spot is fantastic.
You're here for the first time?
But listen.
There's a reason why there's 30 million fucking people stuffed into this area.
It's because it's a sweet spot.
But all it would take is one of those...
The rock-style earthquakes from that new fucking movie, one real one, which has happened before.
They've had some giant ones in spots all over the world that we know of, you know, that human beings don't have a record of, that have just been just unbelievably devastating.
All we'd need is one of those.
Just one.
And everybody would scatter like ants.
And then you go to Boulder, Colorado, it'd be overrun with chicks from Santa Monica.
It'd be dudes on Adderall with fucking Botox faces.
It's better if we drive Tauruses and shit they try to give us.
So we go down the road.
The guy makes a turn.
We lose him, but we kind of know his area, where he is.
And I see a guy that's running.
He had a blue bandana on.
He was a black guy, white t-shirt.
So I see a guy going down the alley, blue bandana, white t-shirt.
I'm like, fuck, Kareem, get out.
So he gets out, and he's coming from the guy behind.
I circle around with the car and come up.
And I come around the corner.
That guy's looking at me, and I'm like, get on the ground.
And he starts getting on the ground, and I'm looking at him like, fuck, this is not the same guy.
So I'm watching him and Cream's coming up behind him and he's like, "Pfff, coming hard." I'm like, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!" Just as he's getting ready to hit him and he pulls back as he's getting ready to slam him to the ground.
I'm like, this is not him!
So we leave him go, we run, and we actually find the car.
So the guy bowed out, and he left his cell phone in the car.
So we picked up the cell phone, and we called the most recent number, and a girl answered.
We're like, hey, you know, I'm so-and-so.
I found this phone on the side of the road.
Do you know who it belongs to?
I'll try to get it back to her.
She's like, oh yeah, it's so-and-so.
Pulled him up in the computer, and that was who had the car.
You're breaking the rules to do a high speed chase.
In Baltimore, you can't do more than 10 miles an hour.
In Maryland, you can't do more than 10 miles an hour over the speed limit according to the rules.
So the law says you can do it, but the rules of the agency say you can only do 10 miles an hour over.
So every cop that pulls you over and you're doing more than 10 miles per hour over the speed limit, he had to violate general orders to even pull you over.
They tell you all these things, but they don't have time.
So the instructors, they know what they're doing, but they don't have time to take somebody that has no idea what the hell they're doing, or what's even worse is somebody that has bad habits, and break those habits so they can be a decent shooter.
There's no time for it, and it's not going to happen.
There's no standards.
So if they don't pass, they just keep shooting them and shooting and shooting until you pass.
Well, I could, you know, I could give my opinions about some shit, but you should bring in legit striking coaches that teach people all the time, and then legit jiu-jitsu coaches.
The idea of only defending yourself by grappling, I think mixed martial arts is the best way to learn self-defense.
I'm essentially a mixed martial artist.
I started out as a striker, and then when I got older, when I got into the UFC, that's when I really learned grappling.
But I think if I had to choose one martial art that I would teach someone to defend themselves, it would definitely be jujitsu.
But as far as what I would teach police officers, you've got to understand striking.
Because if you don't understand striking and a guy can keep you off him and punch him in the face and you don't know how to deal with it, You gotta understand the way he's moving.
Like, if a guy is gonna jab you, there's a certain stance.
If a guy's gonna throw a right hand, there's tells.
If you don't know those tells, you're just gonna get mollywhopped.
You're just gonna get cracked.
I think you have to understand, at least understand striking.
And the only way to understand striking is to spar.
You have to do some sparring.
You have to definitely learn the mechanics of striking.
But you also have to understand the distance.
You have to understand when a guy can hit you, when he can't hit you.
Even if it's just defensive.
Even if you don't have any intention whatsoever of hitting somebody.
Just knowing how to get the fuck out of the way.
Knowing how to cover yourself up.
Knowing how to protect yourself.
There's a lot of people out there that are grapplers that would be fucked if someone punched them in the face.
Judo is good for cops too because people most of the time are wearing clothes and like if you ever fought Ronda Rousey and you were wearing a fucking like a winter coat, that bitch would fuck you up.
You're going flying.
You're landing on your head.
Carl Parisian gets a hold of you and you got like a leather jacket on, that motherfucker is gonna throw you and hit you with the earth.
That's what it's like when someone slams you, they're taking the earth and hitting you with it.
Boom!
They're hitting you with a giant, immobile, fucking 24,000 mile in a circumference ball.
That's what they're doing.
The earth doesn't give.
If someone slams you in the concrete, they're literally hitting you with the earth.
I think if a judo person gets a hold of you, some Jimmy Pedro character, gets a hold of you and you have a winter jacket on, you're a fucksville.
I think judo would be a very important thing to learn.
Wrestling, very important to learn too, because if you could hold someone down, you keep someone down, you can control someone.
Because I've seen situations where cops get flipped.
They're holding someone down in some sort of a rest video, and they just have no idea how to control someone's body.
They have no idea where to place their weight.
They have no idea how a person would move.
A good jiu-jitsu guy gets a hold of you and puts you inside control.
You don't have any jiu-jitsu training, you're not getting up.
This is just it.
You're stuck.
You might be really physically strong.
You might be able to push him a little bit, but he's going to grab a hold of you again and repeat the process.
That's what we saw in UFC 1 when Hoist Gracie was fighting chemo.
What did we see?
We saw this fucking enormous steroided up dude that's way stronger than Hoist Gracie.
And he just, chaos!
But eventually Hoist got him.
And why did he get him?
He got him because he understands the technique and he understands how to grapple.
I think that for one, if you only had one, I would say Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
But if I was going to teach something to cops, I would definitely teach them striking.
The last thing you want to do is be someone who doesn't know how to strike and you get punched in the face and you're seeing stars, your eyes are watery, your legs are buckled and you don't know what the fuck to do because you've never been there before.
Someone who knows what to do, someone who's been there before, has been popped in the face before, you gotta go, uh-oh, alright, gotta keep my hands up, gotta move, gotta move, gotta move, you know, you'll instinctively have, like, a path that you'll go to to preserve yourself.
The scariest thing in the world is watching someone in a street fight, and you know they don't know how to fight, and their neck is up in the air, and they're flailing fists, and you know it's coming, you know, you know it's coming.
We've all seen videos.
You can go online and watch a guy gets KO'd in a street fight, and there's a million videos of that.
I just can't believe that they don't force you guys to train, first of all, in firearms on a regular base.
I would have thought that it'd be a weekly thing.
I really thought that there was like a weekly thing that you guys had to do.
They don't have to have, uh, they don't have to at least be able to, like, lift their body weight up or something or do a chin-up or something like that?
In Baltimore they had an issue with a fire cadet who ended up dying in training because they just didn't maintain the physical standards they needed to make.
And they come out and they say, police lives matter.
No shit.
I don't know a life that's mattered more than a police life.
I don't know if a single cop has been killed where the killer wasn't called, which is embarrassing for our profession.
Why do we always catch the ones that hurt our own?
Maybe we're not trying hard enough in the other ones.
We go around and we say these things, but the police, everyone comes to their aid when something happens to them.
But when somebody says black lives matter, we just, oh, oh, oh.
But all they're saying is that in our society, black lives haven't mattered as much as the other lives.
And that's clear when you see something like Tamir Rice.
Because you know that doesn't happen to one of your kids.
There's not a shot in hell that that happens to my daughter or yours.
No way.
Whether they're a 12-year-old sitting with a BB gun in the middle of your street, in front of your house, that is not going to happen.
Because they're going to say, oh, well, we're going to handle that situation.
We're going to approach her.
We're going to see what's really going on.
And they're not going to be a hero.
Because a hero is the person that goes up to Tamir Rice and approaches and tries to figure it out, risks getting shot, because he wants to make sure he's doing the right thing when you take away a life or take away somebody's freedom.
But we go and we treat black lives like they don't matter.
And when you are putting that, oh yeah, all lives matter shirt on, or oh yeah, police lives matter on, you're proving that black lives aren't mattering as much to you.
Otherwise, you would just fucking say yes, they do.
When I say that I want to team up with DeRay, so if I took a police commissioner job, the first thing I would do is say, DeRay, please come join me.
Please.
Because I need you.
I need him.
He's a community leader.
The idea that we don't integrate people like him into our system is ridiculousness.
He is a leader of the black community.
I need him if I'm going to run a police agency.
And we should not be turning those kind of people away and making like they're some kind of instigators from out of town is what they would call DeRay.
I went down to where Freddie Gray was, the incident happened, and where the uprising was the very next day.
You couldn't have told me that there was a difference between that day and two weeks ago.
The problem is that no one gave a shit about Gilmore Homes two weeks ago.
But when it went on the news and you saw the CVS burning and they cycled it over and over and over again, it was one goddamn building that was burning.
You just kept seeing it over and over after the fire department had already put it out.
And does anybody sit there and say, oh my god, why did they just throw their own tea into the water?
That's ridiculousness.
But they don't hesitate to say, why are they burning that CVS down?
Well, that's the only symbolism of corporate America that they even have there.
Because they don't have a grocery store like you and I do.
They don't have anything that we think of as normality.
They live in an area that...
has food deserts that doesn't have good schools where the kids ride MTA buses to go to school where life is and their parents get their father gets locked up because he has that dime bag and he perpetuates the cycle but yet society keeps telling them well pick yourself up by your bootstraps they don't fucking have bootstraps Because you took them away.