What Happened to Tyre Nichols - January 30th, Hour 2
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Hour two, Sean Hannity show toll free.
It's 800-941-SEAN.
If you want to be a part of the program over the weekend, the narrative, the commentary of now even elected officials that what happened in the case of Tyree Nichols had to do with race is is kind of jarring to me in many, many ways.
As everybody involved in this case were African-American, black Americans, I'm trying to understand where where this narrative is coming from, despite the fact that the victim, all five now accused perpetrators in this in this case were black.
You have New York city mayor, Eric Adams on fake news, CNN this morning saying that race played a major role in Nichols murder.
Uh, Don Lemon over there brought up the previous conversation with the Memphis police chief, where she said, quote, races off the table.
Now the question was, Chief Davis says that because all the officers were black, it takes race off the table.
Do you agree with that?
No, I don't.
I think race is still on the table when a culture of policing historically has treated those from different groups differently, even when the individuals are from the same group, that culture can still exist.
And you have over at fake news CNN's Ben Jones writing an editorial opinion that police who killed Tyree Nichols were black, but they might have been driven by racism.
You know, and said black people are not immune to anti-black messages.
And one of the sad facts about the anti-black racism is that black people ourselves are not immune to its pernicious effects.
Society's message that black people are inferior, unworthy, and dangerous is pervasive.
And, you know, and then we had other comments.
The communications workers of America uh workers of America said, once again, our country's confronted with the brutal, deadly reality of the effects of structural racism on black Americans, and once again a man has been murdered by police officers during a traffic stop.
Uh the Philly Inquirer, they had an op-ed as another black man dies at the hands of police.
A lesson in whom the system stands up for.
Perhaps like so many who get caught up in racist systems, they they, the officers, believed it when they were told that they were part of a team.
MPR, same thing.
Al Sharpton, same thing.
You know, race is involved, and it goes on and on and on.
Um let me play a montage of some of this, then we'll bring in our panel.
This is an outrage.
And race still is involved, Joe, as you and I spoke about on the phone.
Because I don't believe those five cops would have done that to a young white on a uh on a traffic stop.
I'm not surprised the officers here were black because when we talk about race and policing, we talk about the way black men, black women, black people are perceived in the way they are perceived by all of us.
And so anti-black racism, uh, the idea of thinking of black men and women as prone to violence, as dangerous, as bigger, stronger, or or or more insidious than they really are, something that can infect all of our minds.
Um, and black people are not immune from that as well.
There's this very simplistic notion that says, well, if a white cop is doing something uh to an unarmed black person, then that's racism.
Um, but we sometimes forget, unfortunately, um the uh African Americans can also be guilty of hatred and bias and bigotry against other African Americans.
But I think uh race is still on the table uh when a culture of policing historically has treated uh those from different groups differently, uh even when the individuals are from that same group, that culture can still exist, and we have to zero in on it, being honest about it, and making sure that we properly train police for the realities of the cities that they are policing in.
It shouldn't be a surprise to people that uh individual black people can actually do anti black things.
Anyone who knows the history uh of enslavement, anyone who knows the the history of policing knows that black people can do anti-black things.
And communities of color, they often have different types of policing than many of our white brothers and sisters have in their community.
And this video illustrates it that it's this culture that says it doesn't matter whether the police officers are black, Hispanic, or white, that it is somehow allowed for you to tramp on the constitutional rights of certain citizens from certain ethnicities and certain communities.
All right, so there you hear it.
I mean, it was almost uh a narrative that was so widespread it kind of shocked me a little bit.
But anyway, here to put shed some light on it.
We have Dallas police sergeant uh Sam Digby is with us.
He's from Memphis.
Uh Trey Penny, president of the Fallen Officers Foundation, 22 year uh retired uh Dallas police sergeant, our friend and colleague Gianno uh Caldwell.
Uh don't forget he wrote his best selling book, How Conservatism Can Win Back the Americans that liberalism failed.
Uh you might recall uh back in June of last year, he lost his younger brother, uh, who is a victim, an innocent victim in a shooting on the streets of Chicago like so many others have.
Uh welcome all of you back to the program.
Uh Trey, let me start with you.
You've you've been at this and now retired, and um I'm listening to these comments and I'm thinking, no, we had four we had five cops that are supposed to be part of an elite unit that had no clue about basic policing one on one.
There were five big, strong, supposedly trained cops that were incapable of c cuffing one suspect.
Yeah, absolutely.
Sean, look, th this is a case uh of police misconduct.
I'm I'm looking at the whole thing from this broad spectrum.
Uh look, I want to offer my condolences to that family.
But the reality is we cannot allow that one incident involving these officers of the of the Memphis police department and law enforcement as a whole.
And we do have to remember in the days after this, we've been hearing all this stuff about uh racism and training and police leads.
That's not the case.
Guys, you have to realize that there is a there is a reason for these type of groups to exist.
The Scorpion unit existed for a reason, right?
They go after the Bolling Crown.
They the every police department across this country has a unit similar to that.
And you have to have them.
In Memphis, they had 300 murders last year.
35 of them were kids under the age of 14.
And you gotta this unit is gonna be the unit that's going after those individuals.
So I think the response to what happened on that day to this to this young man, I think the response was to that was wrong, Sean.
And we gotta bring that into focus because it's gonna hurt law enforcement going forward.
I heard a lot of egos involved here and anger on the part of the officers.
You know what I was looking for the whole time, uh Sam uh uh Digby.
I mean, you're a police sergeant.
You you know better than me.
I was waiting for one of these officers.
You know, obviously this young man was was shocked uh and disturbed in the sense that he didn't know what was going on.
He felt like he was being manhandled, he didn't understand why he was stopped.
And and that seems to be I'm sure that's a frequent occurrence, to be honest with you.
And anyway, there was there wasn't the one cop that said, All right, everybody, just calm down.
I need you to take a deep breath.
I need you to listen to me.
Well, nobody needs to get hurt here.
There are five of us as one of you.
We have reason to believe you are driving recklessly.
And we need to Do our job.
We don't want you to get hurt.
So we're gonna need your cooperation to make sure that that happens.
Instead of cops literally, you know, running five steps and then and then kicking this kid in the head and then you know stepping back three steps and running again and kicking him again in the head or just beating the crap out of him, which is what we witnessed.
Well, Sean, uh you're absolutely right.
And uh thanks for having me.
Um to the family, the Nichols family.
No family should have to endure uh watching their loved one or anyone uh uh be abused like that at the hands of police officers.
Police officers are in the community to serve and protect, and that's what we are supposed to do.
Um nothing in that video that I witnessed um um said to me that this that was police protocol.
What I witnessed was uh what appeared to me was uh some police officers that were out of control and uh and it went bad and it went bad real quickly.
It almost went bad from the start, didn't it?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
There was no uh de escalation done.
That was like you said, uh, it appeared to me, nobody stepped up and said, Hey, wait a minute.
Everybody calm down.
Uh this you know, let's explain to this individual what's going on.
It just looked bad from the beginning.
And, you know, uh, that's troubling.
That that video is troubling.
I know a lot of Memphis police officers from that area.
And um, I can truthfully say it is my prayer that the Memphis community and society as a whole to not indict the entire Memphis police department or that unit on the actions of these five individuals.
Well, that unit has now been disbanded.
Right, right, right.
So but uh but I would agree and and people look at this tape and and maybe think the worst of the police officers.
Um and would it have been a different reaction if the officers in this case or some of the officers were of a different race?
Um I don't know the answer to that.
Uh I know some agitators might try to uh use it politically, but you know, in every profession you have good people and you have bad people.
I can tell you in my profession.
There are some jackasses.
I can name names, I won't uh otherwise it'll consume my entire program.
Uh one that is not on that list for sure is our colleague and our friend uh Gian O'Caldwell's with us.
Uh Gianna, uh, what did you see when you were watching this and you were on the ground for us Friday night?
Yeah, Sean, uh I absolutely was on the ground for you guys, and we actually talked to the family attorney, Ben Crump, who gave us an exclusive.
You know, I couldn't believe that the officers were willing to so brazenly do this on their body cameras.
And my only conclusion that I can draw from that is they believe that they can get away with it.
Um and I say that because and I'm gonna be frank here.
He was a young black male, these are all black officers.
You know, maybe it's just paperwork and we move on.
Maybe that was the conclusion in which they draw on at the time.
But what this says to me is we need to open back up that discussion that Tim Scott was having with uh the Democrats.
He was the negotiator when it came to police reform uh after George Floyd.
I think those conversations need to uh resume.
Uh Democrats were not willing to really negotiate on issues of critical importance so we can get something done, and that was their failure.
That's what that was.
But now we need to get back to the table because we see that bias and bias training is absolutely needed no matter what color the officer is.
You can be from a totally different background and go to a place like the South Side of Chicago in Englewood where you'll find a lot of aggressive people who would cause a police officer to pull his gun out.
So to understand, to understand uh these intricacies, I think it's necessary for us to go back to the table and start having those conversations so we can ensure that everyone is safe, the officers included.
Wait, Sean, Sean, you know, my my Gianno's my brother.
I love him to death.
But we this is not uh this is not a legislation issue, man.
This is not something that needs to be fixed like that.
Our officers have enough, they have enough policy, they have enough legislation out there controlling their actions.
We gotta we what what this was was bad that bad officers behaving badly in the field, right?
We have mechanisms in place to address those type of behaviors.
We don't want to we don't want to push this down the line and say, hey, we need new legislation so we can uh put officers in the classroom and tra and train them how to treat black black people.
Man, this is a city that's sixty-five percent black.
Most of their police officers are black.
They know how to treat black people.
This was a behavioral issue with these individual officers.
So we have to move away from that, man.
Look, I don't want to take take anything away from the Memphis Police Department.
I don't want to take anything away from the training that these officers have had over the over the long period of time that they've been with this agency.
Right now, we have Democrats, we have liberals hijacking this narrative so they can use it to press for this joy this George Ford bill.
Man, look, we are all about train, we're all about training.
We have enough of it.
But we don't need to keep blaming all police officers for the actions of fire.
But let me ask you this, because this is important.
I don't see officers here that implemented any of the training that I know that officers go through, because I'm friends with the ton of police uh officers, people don't law enforcement.
Uh none of their training seemed to be utilized that with this young man.
None of it.
And and you know, I could tell you, you know, simple, simple jujitsu maneuvers.
You know, when you have five guys on one young man, uh, this should be, this should not have been that difficult to cuff him.
You manipulate his fingers, you manipulate his wrist.
He's going to comply, and he's gonna comply quickly.
You've got five guys there to help and assist with getting those cuffs on this young man.
That was the culture of that particular unit, right?
This unit, you gotta think about these disruption units.
I want you to think about this for a second.
They take these groups and they assign them to the hot spot.
These are these are areas that either have a hot a spike in in crime, murders, rape, whatever, and they take these groups and they put them in these specific areas because they want them to be aggressive.
That's why they create them.
They want them to be aggressive.
And you know what?
These guys, it they took 800 guns off the street last year, right?
They they probably made I don't know how many arrests that they made, but if you look at uh these disruption units across the country, they're the ones that are breaking up these games.
They're the ones that are pulling the drugs off the street, Sean.
So we gotta have let's keep those units in place.
Let's keep this with a bad action of these.
I'm not saying not to keep the units in place, but I'm saying that we need people with the right temperament and the right training uh that would be better able to handle a what should have been a routine case.
This this did not need to rise to this level.
I gotta take a break.
We'll come back more with Dallas Police Sergeant.
Sam Digby is with us, Trey Penny is with us, Gian O'Colwell is with us.
We'll get to your calls uh also coming up soon.
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I'm Mary Catherine Hammond.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
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That's why we started normally a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
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Benghazi, the truth became a web of lies.
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Will we ever get the truth about the Benghazi massacre?
Bad faith, political warfare, and frankly, bullshit.
We kill the ambassador just to cover something up.
You put two and two together.
Was it an overblown distraction or a sinister conspiracy?
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This is Fiasco Benghazi.
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Listen to Fiasco Benghazi on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey there.
I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started normally a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass.
You're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
I'm Ben Ferguson, and I'm Ted Cruz.
Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
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So Dow, verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
What I told people, I was making a podcast about Benghazi.
Nine times out of ten, they called me a masochist, rolled their eyes, or just asked, why?
Benghazi, the truth became a web of lies.
It's almost a dirty word.
One that connotes conspiracy theory.
Will we ever get the truth about the Benghazi massacre?
Bad faith, political warfare, and frankly, bullshit.
We kill the ambassador just to cover something up.
You put two and two together.
Was it an overblown distraction or a sinister conspiracy?
Benghazi is a rosetta stone for everything that's been going on for the last 20 years.
I'm Leon Nafok from Prologue Projects and Pushkin Industries.
This is Fiasco Benghazi.
What difference at this point does it make?
Yeah, that's right.
Locker up.
Listen to Fiasco Benghazi on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
All right, 25 to the top of the hour.
We'll get to your calls in just a second.
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All right, we continue with our panel.
We have Dallas uh police sergeant Sam Digby is with us, uh, Sergeant Trey Penny, uh president of the National Fallen Officers Foundation, 22-year retired Dallas police sergeant, uh, our friend and colleague Gian O'Caldwell, who he was on the ground in Memphis on Friday night.
Um, I'm not exactly sure where Joe Biden is is coming from on this, but you know, we now know that Joe Biden has uh is opening a civil rights investigation into this murder.
Uh, Gianno, I know you wanted to respond to what Trey Penny was was saying earlier.
Yeah, that's right.
Uh Trey, I understand what you're saying.
If an officer is nefarious, they're gonna be nefarious.
But we also recognize that patterns, not patterns, but practices, training isn't universal.
That was a part of what they were looking to do in Congress and ensure that everyone would have a very similar training.
So I get what you're saying, but I also understand and know and recognize my work with the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives that it is necessary for them to have greater training.
Now if an officer is gonna uh try to take someone's life, they're gonna go against their their protocol and their sworn duties, they're gonna do that.
And certainly there should be greater penalties for that kind of thing.
But we do need more training bar none.
And and and just to jump right in there I'm not gonna um even try to attempt to justify no good law enforcement officer would look at that video and just try any of that.
Um my concern my concern in the whole uh deal is uh um the the amount of time or lack thereof that we uh was taking to draw this conclusion.
I'm a firm believer that those officers should be terminated and should be fired for their actions but it's even more important that we do it the right way.
We have due process uh the maintenance of the rule of law all of that comes into play.
I would like to have seen you know a situation whereby we gathered all of the evidence and all of the evidence including the autopsy report the videos and then once we gather all of the evidence and put it together then presented a case that's rock solid to the to the grand jury because when I look at this case I think about Freddie Gray.
I think about what happened up there in Baltimore here a few years ago where the rush to judgment and the the the playing into uh the political scene and social media every one of those officers was acquitted.
Every one of them was acquitted that's that's that's why I'm going with that because there was such a rush to you know we want justice.
What do we want it now?
I mean, we had that going on.
Well, Ferguson, Missouri is another case where hands up, don't shoot.
That never happened.
And in fact, it was the eyewitness testimony of numerous African-Americans in the community that confirmed that what the officer had said happened and indeed had happened, that this guy had reached into his car, tried to grab his gun.
That was when the first shot was fired.
And that, in fact, the guy turned around, charged at the officer, and that's when he had to defend himself.
And that all came out after the fact.
But his career was over.
But by that point, he had he couldn't.
a policeman in that community any longer.
And I just want a situation whereby when we fire these officers bad officers that deserve to be fired we fire at one time and they don't end up getting their jobs back on some technicality because we were so overzealous and falling and caving to political pressures that we were willing to do any and everything to ask.
Well one of the things that's gotta happen too they have yet to bifurcate out the role of each and every individual officer in the situation.
For example the one officer you know that made the run to kick uh to kick Tyree Nichols in the head and then kick them in the head again um I would say probably was properly charged.
I think those guys wailing on him, they probably were properly charged.
But I don't know if every officer was involved in that level of contact.
Doesn't mean they didn't do things wrong.
But is that second-degree murder?
I can't tell because we've never differentiated what officer did what, Trey.
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
But you know something?
This is the thing, Sean.
Even if it's the same way as if there's a – you and a group of people going to a store, you rob that store, and during this process, you kill the clerk.
everyone in that situation is going to be charged with with capital murder okay and in this situation that's kind of what was happening.
Now what's going to become a a mitigating circumstance to the prosecution would be what each individual did once they actually get it to trial.
The problem is we we don't we none of us have even seen the full video.
We only get bit in pieces we don't know what led to that initial interaction we know the chief said that they didn't have a reason to stop but we don't know what the officer perceived or what that officer saw.
Now everything that happened after that I would say there were definitely some training issues or or maybe that was just a pattern in practice of bad behavior, right?
And like I told you, I talked to you before about these these different disruption type groups, they're designed to be more aggressive.
So if if they and if they didn't, if we didn't have the video, we would have never known what these officers were doing out there in the field.
So I'm glad to think we that we do have the video, but that's going to be a big part of the criminal case going forward in determining who's going to be charged with what or who or which cases are going to be more so uh they're gonna allow some some uh plea bargains in in these cases going forward.
Let me ask you Gianno is somebody that lost his own younger brother in in the senseless shooting and he was just an innocent victim in the wrong place at the wrong time but that they've not done a thing or lifted a finger to protect the innocent people that live in Chicago.
I've been scrolling names of people whose names nobody ever hears of for since 2009 and nobody seems to care and the police there have made no dramatic change that I can see the the the murder rate continues you know on any average weekend you can predict with some degree of certainty how many shootings will occur, how many people will be shot and how many people be shot and killed.
Yeah and things have gotten much worse in Chicago with uh with Mary Lori Lightfoot who implemented a no no chase policy which uh ensures that officers cannot chase a suspect on foot and if they're in a car they have to call their supervisor to get permission to chase them in the car.
Things are dramatically worse since Lightford has taken over and she's insured the the crime crisis continues.
The only sign of relief I think anyone in the city of Chicago could potentially have is her losing her re-election bid which her reelection the election is on February 28th I think it is.
So yeah with that consideration I think we all need to be considerate of um the the crime crisis we need to know what laws are um on the books and what laws may potentially come on the books to ensure that our our our safety and I'm um hoping that those that live in the Chicago Chicago area will work with the police because they need to end that no snitch culture.
That's a part of the issue.
They're not working with the police they're not telling who's committing the crimes because they believe that um their lives could be in danger but the truth of the matter is their lives are in danger already with them not telling because someone can shoot through their window at night.
But Gianno it even goes deeper than that the cops that they don't feel like they're gonna be defended if they go to do their job and when they probably should be turning left to protect innocent people and serve their community they're turning right on purpose.
That's true too.
That's very very very true.
So they want to stay out of the way of what could potentially happen to them especially with you have a mayor who's willing to throw you under the bus just to save her own high.
So yeah those those are a bunch of different considerations that people have to think about but at the end of the day you become a police officer so you can serve and protect and that's what people should want.
So the elected officials have to stop making it hard for those who are in the job for the right reason who want to serve and protect who are honorable which I would argue is the majority of those who uh swear the oath of office or the oath of the badge they need to get out of the way so these police officers can do their job and make sure that they have the proper training needed.
Let me ask all three of you would would the reaction nationwide have been different if the officers in this case were of a uh another race Trey?
No, I mean the bottom line is um it it it's it's a as bad as it and it exists the behavior in itself is really bad.
But I do think that the that the race baiters like the Al Sharptons and those kind of guys they would jump out there.
If this was if these were white officers doing this they would have wrapped this up you would have Black Lives Matter and by the way I did ask Congress back in back in July to create investigations to actually launch and guess again investigations into the George Floyd riot and nobody has chosen to go take that direction so we can actually get something make sure that this doesn't happen again.
But yeah if if this was uh uh white officers involving in black officers that would be amplified to to make it look like more of a race issue than and they're trying to do it now but it ain't gonna go nowhere.
But they would absolutely if it was white officers and that's only because of the the the rake baiters that are using social media to wrap that message up.
Alright final moments with Sam Digby, Trey Penny and Gianno Caldwell.
I'm trying to understand, Sam.
How is it?
Why were these officers so jacked up and so pissed off and so angry and s frankly lacking in all professionalism that you I would expect from a police officer.
Well, Sean, you know, let's face it, our our police officers come from our communities.
Um a lot of people, um, I'm not gonna say a lot, but there are some.
They go into this profession for the wrong reason, unfortunately.
And we had to be very careful that we're not creating an environment which is discouraging the good people from wanting to serve.
Because make no mistake, police department's gonna have to hire somebody.
And if all of a sudden we create an environment where the good people, the good men and women who would be good for this profession, are choosing other professions because of what's happening, that leaves the drug dealers, gangbangers, and the street hoodlums, you know, to pick from.
And you know, then you look if you have a situation where that's what's filling up your ranks.
And we can't have that.
We cannot have that.
So, you know, we have to do a better job.
Well, I'll give you an example.
People ask me all the time, young people will ask me about, you know, pursuing a passion or a career, and I'll ask them what they're interested in.
And if they mention policing or law enforcement, um, I'm like, well, where do you want to work?
Because being a police officer, you you really do get to do your job in other states, like the state of Florida, you can do real policing.
I know cops down there.
They're allowed to do their job, and they do it with great courage and professionalism.
And yet, if somebody asks me if they want to join the NYPD or the Chicago police force, I tell them to go run a country mile before they even think about it.
Am I am I wrong?
Gianno, you lost your brother.
Am I wrong?
No, I don't I don't think that you are wrong, Sean.
I mean, at the end of the day, when you're talking about what profession was the golden at any given time, has it's been law enforcement.
Uh to be a police officer growing up was actually a dream of mine when I was uh a young man, uh, and then it became politics and uh a bunch of other things, but uh I think that there are reforms that have to take place in order for the integrity, the thoughts around law enforcement, we can get back to where they were.
I understand that there's a lot of things that need to change at this particular time.
There are considerations to be had, but those things can happen if we can unite and come together as a country versus dividing around racial and political lines.
Can I add this to you?
I want to add this.
You you we brought up New York.
I will say that the citizens of New York, they need police as well.
And and and these are police that are come from the communities that are gonna understand these communities.
My situation, I would then Well, by the way, New York is a majority minority police force, as are many police forces now across the country.
And you need officers that want to that want to come in and help their community.
So I I'm gonna encourage every young man, every person that's listening to every young man, every young woman that listened to this radio station, please consider joining law enforcement.
Don't allow allow these situations to deter you from going into this profession because these communities need you.
I don't know if I could give that advice in certain cities.
I really don't, Trey.
And and you know how much I love law enforcement.
And I have a family full of law enforcement.
But things have changed and changed dramatically.
And I'm not saying that they weren't bad apples back in the day either.
There's bad apples in every profession.
I mentioned my profession.
Uh Sam, we'll give you the last word.
Well, uh, I just want to say that for all the hard working men and women out there in uniform, you know, keep keep up the good work.
You know, we need you for those young people out there that's considering joining law enforcement, we need you as well.
And I agree with you, Sean.
Yeah, in law enforcement, depending on what part of the country you're in, it's it's localized.
And some areas you're able to do more, some areas you're able to do less.
But regardless, you know, we have to adapt to just and overcome to the areas in which we serve, because you cannot police a community that does not want to be policed.
Well said, and that was my point.
You know, if a community does not want to be police, if a city doesn't want to be policed, if it's leadership doesn't want real policing, that's probably not the place to do your to try and do that job because you're not gonna have support.
Um, appreciate all of you.
Uh Sam Digby, thank you.
Trey Penny, thank you.
Gianno Caldwell, thank you.
Thank you all.
We appreciate it.
800-941 Sean, our number you want to be a part of the program.
Uh we'll get to your calls, some of the other news of the day on the other side of the break.
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