Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello, welcome to Call It Like I See it, presented by Disruption. Now, I'm James Keys, and on this episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to take a look at the financial ramifications of police officer misconduct, consider the long history of conspiracy theories in the US and take a look at reports that ICE is performing mass hysterectomies on detainees in the United States.
And these are not voluntary.
Joining me today is a man who comes to bring the pain hardcore from the brain. Tunde. Ogunlana Tunde. Will you be taking us inside your astral plane?
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Of course. All the way to the top, baby.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: All right. Now, we're recording this on September 20th, and the first thing we wanted to discuss today was a piece from NPR which went into how the cost of police officer misconduct impacts cities and taxpayers.
Now, we saw last week that the officers involved in the Breonna Taylor break in and homicide were not going to face any criminal charges for killing her.
But we already know that the city of Louisville will be paying 12 million to Taylor's family, instituting a number of police reforms as part of a settlement with the family.
So, Tunde, what's your reaction to seeing these large amounts being paid principally by taxpayers for police conduct, police misconduct? Excuse me.
[00:01:43] Speaker B: Obviously, they're paying out these settlements for a reason, because there was a court of law must have found that something didn't go right in terms of the conduct.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: Well, no, the city did this by agreement. This is settlement agreement.
Taylor's family says, look, we're gonna sue you guys. This is what. This is what it is. This is wrong. And they said, and the city writes a check, you know, so it doesn't even get to a court of law. Like, so the city looks at it like, yeah, we're going to lose this.
[00:02:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I was going to say, obviously, I could have probably chosen better words. Then you're right.
The legal process hadn't begun yet. Let's say the family didn't sue them. But you're right that the fact that a settlement was reached and agreed upon so quickly by the city probably told us that they didn't think they. They were going to win in court against the family, you know, and not pay damages out. So. But I think it speaks to the bigger point to really get to the media question is, you know, it just seems a little bit imbalanced and lopsided, especially reading how many settlements.
And if you really total, you know, clearly it's probably well over hundreds of millions of dollars over the last decade in settlements paid by taxpayers for misconduct by law enforcement. And it's just interesting because I think kind of like what's happened, you know, to parallel it with what's happened with Wall street and the economy, you know, it's like these, what they say, privatized profits and socialized losses. Yes, I know this is a different example because, you know, the police or the. Or the law enforcement community is not necessarily profiting financially off of anything in these conversations, but it's more of the fact that we have a group of people.
And again, this isn't. We're not here to have a conversation about beating up law enforcement. I want to start with that.
We recognize that most cops do the right thing, and law enforcement is a very hard job. So let me just say that. But no matter how few or how small that pile of bad apples might be, in any organization, just like with Wall street, most people on Wall street are doing the right thing. But you can have a small group within any kind of organization or society that if they are not doing the right thing and are not held to account, it can have a big effect on kind of everything else. And I think that's what I feel like when I see this is you've got this small group of officers that may not be doing the right thing, but the taxpayers in those communities are the ones that are on the hook for paying all this stuff out. So when you're looking at a place like Louisville, I mean, 17 million coming out of that budget is a lot. I mean, that's. That's money that's not going to be going to schools, maybe not going to improve things for, you know, law, law enforcement that are still working in that city, roads, bridges, you know, the whole thing about city budgets. So I'm not sure what the answer is, but I feel like it's interesting that that's why it reminds me of the Wall street thing. It's like the law enforcement community may have acted inappropriately in a certain situation, whether this case or some other, and somehow the people involved in that are not asked to pay any penalties out of pocket, but yet the taxpayer is on the hook for that. So that is a little bit of an imbalance. And so I don't know. That's what I'm saying.
Seems like there's something not right.
[00:05:09] Speaker A: Yeah, that's the core issue that I think you jumped to initially is that normally in our society, like everybody's heard the thing, with great power comes great responsibility. Well, in both of those examples you gave one with the Police officer misconduct and then taxpayer funded settlements or taxpayer funded insurance premiums that go towards paying settlement, whether it's directly or indirectly, it's paid through money that's coming from the taxpayers.
And the same thing with Wall street, what it is is that people want the power, people want the spoils without the responsibility. And so that's to me is what jumps out. Like that someone could incur that type of liability on the city and have no accountability on themselves is jarring to me. Like that creates one of those systems. Like a lot of times people talk about law and order and things like that and they reference it in a way where you have to have penalties in order to stop people from doing bad stuff. Well, in this case, I just don't see where are the penalties that are going to keep police officers from trying to do bad stuff. And again, that's not to say all police officers are bad, but they're human. And so we as humans have determined that we need to set up a system where there are penalties for doing things that are bad so that we can set it up so the people aren't incentivized or at least sufficiently are disincentivized from doing bad acts. And so in this case, it just doesn't seem to be there. There doesn't seem to be any mechanism set up to disincentivize the overzealous person, the person who violates the rights, the person who, like, if you look through this in this, NPR did a good job of really laying out a lot of different scenarios where they're setting people up, where they're doing all this officers, they'll retire with their full pension. And so it's like, wow, what would be, other than their own independent mentality, their own independent, you know, just thought process of how they go about business. What would, what would disincentivize them from doing any of this stuff? Because there's no, there's no criminal law penalty. Because the way that the system is set up, it's clear, like it's clear that it's very difficult that they'll ever be criminal or to establish any criminal liability.
And there's no civil liability to the actual perpetrator of the actual. That led to these massive payouts. And so it seems like we're set up in a situation where right now, as it exists, there is no mechanism to disincentivize bad behavior. And so then we look up when bad behavior happens and it's like, well, what do we do? How does that happen? And so that, to me, I think, is the big takeaway.
And also one other thing I think that you can get to a $12 million settlement really reveals how bad that misconduct was with, with the Taylor situation. You know, like in that situation there, they're. The person they're looking for is already in custody.
You know, it's. It's a really bad scenario, you know, and, and that they could, they can escape criminal liability because the union is able to lean on the political mechanisms, you know, that exist out there.
And they're really good at that. And they've done that. This isn't. They didn't just start doing that now. They've done that. You know, as far as getting things with qualified immunity passed and other mechanisms to just make it very difficult under the system to ever establish criminal liability. Okay? That's the system as it is right now. If you want to change that, it's not. You don't just complain. You go in to try to change the system as it's set up. But that something can. Cannot draw criminal charges. Not a conviction, but charges not even charged. Not even, you know, enough to bring charges. The actions cannot even bring criminal charges yet get a city to voluntarily pay 12 million. Meaning they thought they estimated their liability to be higher than that. If they defended it, if they said, hey, we're going to fight this, they thought their liability could be higher than that. So they agreed as a compromise to say, okay, well, we'll give you 12 million now if you just, you know, drop this.
That. Like there's something there that is very imbalanced, like, how can you do something that's so wrong that you would voluntarily give up $12 million for it, but yet is not something that you could even be brought. Charged that charges couldn't even be brought against you.
[00:09:30] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's. I mean, it's a lot there. I got a few things to kind of that observe from your statements. It's interesting is that as you were talking about the police unions and their strength, it kind of reminded me how we have such an interesting relationship with unions in our country because, you know, in some areas they're. They're seen with disdain and that they, you know, they stifle certain things and. But this is an example where a union is absolutely powerful and we see, you know, it's effective in protecting the current status quo of the organization and kind of those within it. So it's just an interesting.
[00:10:12] Speaker A: Changing the status quo to the, to their. In their favor. Changing the status quo in their favor. Yeah.
[00:10:16] Speaker B: Well, you know, I guess they perceive that whatever they're doing is in their favor. I mean, obviously we disagree, but.
[00:10:23] Speaker A: No, I wasn't disputing your point. I was saying either changing it or advancing the balls in ways that they think are more favorable for themselves. So it's not. They want to maintain certain things and other things they want to move in their favor. I have a comment on that, but go ahead.
[00:10:37] Speaker B: No, but it's just, you know, it's sad because history will probably show that by taking this digging in their heel stance, you know, long run is probably going to be a losing position.
So, you know, instead of kind of working to try and meet those who want to see change, maybe somewhere in the middle, you know, they're going to continue their own behavior and, you know, we'll see how that plays out. But like I said, historically, any, any response to these type of challenges in society like this usually are overcome over time.
[00:11:10] Speaker A: But let me, let me speak on that real quick because just before you move, you know, what's interesting to me about that is that this is like, yes, these, the police union doesn't come with the same, isn't attacked in the same way that the unions, the trade unions we see in business normally. But you know, one thing that would be distinct, one point of distinction there would be the fact that the police union is not opposing capital, they're not opposing organized capital, they're opposing municipality, so to speak, or they're trying to influence the course of conduct in a municipality. There's no capitalists on the other side of them that they're trying to secure equal treat or fair treatment from.
So maybe that's why there's been no effort to demonize them, because it's like, well, hey, they're not asking for a bigger slice of the pie from the Capitol, so let them have their fun. But go ahead.
[00:12:02] Speaker B: I didn't want to get caught off on that tangent there because what I wanted to get to was, was really, I think, a little bit broader because you made some good points in your earlier kind of comments. And one of the things I picked up was the disincentivizing of bad behavior within law enforcement departments or communities.
I think we focus a lot on that, but we also should figure out, I don't have necessarily answer this second, but we should figure out how to promote good behavior. You know, many of us have seen positive stories about whatever some cop in some community has done. And I'm thinking, how do we promote those type of law enforcement officers to be held up more as shining examples? And then also, how could we empower the cops that want to do the right thing, report on the bad cops to be stronger internally? Like, that's kind of my question is who really benefits from allowing bad apples to continue doing what they're doing? As much as a small percentage as they might be, they kind of mess it up for the good cops. And like we're talking about here, they're costing society a lot of money. And I feel like most other industries, like take my industry for example, what I do for a living in financial services, I don't want Bernie Madoff's and guys like that running around.
It would make my life harder if they didn't go to jail forever because the public would have a much harder time trusting individuals like myself. So I feel like we know that it's a dangerous job for cops, and if the public sees them with more suspicion, it's going to be more dangerous for them and the public will see them with more suspicion. If things like this continue to happen, where the public sees that they do, even when they do wrong, they are protected by or shielded, and then on top of it, it's costing the system money. So I just feel like this is a. It's like a whole dysfunctional way that we're dealing with this whole thing.
[00:13:56] Speaker A: Well, yeah, because what they've done, what we've seen, basically, when you speak, it seems like that law enforcement has taken a generally adversari. Like, yes, the public has turned, or large segments of the public has turned on them, and then they just take a equally adversarial approach to that segment of the public. So, yeah, and that doesn't. That's not good for society. So, yeah, we would want something out of that. We don't want the tensions to. And animosity to be escalated over time.
But I think, and I had mentioned this previously in a show, but I think the problem though, which you look with that is that the problem is not the bad apples. The problem is the system that allows people to do wrong and to escape accountability from it, because the bad apples would not survive in a system where there was accountability. They'd be, they'd be gone. They wouldn't be creating a bunch of problems either because they wouldn't want to be there. They wouldn't choose that as a vocation because the penalties are very harsh, or if once they did something, they would get them out the paint and that would be that. And so when you have a system that allows for them to continue to succeed, Then that's what I mean. Like, your incentive structure has to be set up to where bad conduct is not rewarded and. Or if it's punished. So I think that we're in kind of a pickle basically with that because the union, their approach right now is to just not give any ground.
It's just a very. Hey, that's the other side. And we don't want to give any other, any ground to the other side.
But you would hope that someone.
And then on the other side, there's people are going to another extreme saying, defund the police. And it's like, well, no, like, no, no, no. You would hope that there would be leadership that could bring two sides together and make them realize that their interests aren't actually diametrically opposed. That's the problem right now is that leadership is not making sure that, like, we're not bringing people to the table and saying, look, 90% of what you want and 90% of what you want. There's an overlap there. There's a disagreement here over 10% of the stuff. Let's. Why don't we try to bridge the gap on that 10% as opposed to just throwing the 90% out and saying we're just going to fight over the 10%. And then, in fact, we won't just fight over the 10% things that we otherwise would be able to agree on. We're just not going to agree with on that stuff either because we're mad about that 10% of stuff. And so some of that, I think, is a failure in leadership.
And I don't know, like, I don't know if I can call it a true failure, though, because it does seem oftentimes that there is segments or elements of the country that benefit from fragmentation and from people going at each other's throat. And so that may not be a failure in their mind. That may be something that's part of a strategy that. To keep people at each other's throat because they then either perceive that they derive power from that or they in fact derive power from that. And so. But nonetheless, people of good conscience, people of good faith need to see issues like this saying, okay, like there's something wrong if tens of millions of dollars in settlement can go to someone because.
But the acts that led to the, to the conduct that led to this tens of millions of dollar payment, that stuff goes unpunished. It's not disincentivized in the future. It could happen again tomorrow. And, you know, no, like, we would just be paying again, you know, Taxpayers would just be paying again. And like, what are we doing to try to set up? Because that's the thing that stands out to me about the Breonna Taylor situation, and I know I've talked to you about this off air, is that it's really. It's a. That's a system problem. Once you actually get to the police officers coming in their apartment, all everything else that happened kind of made sense. You know, if you bust into somebody's house then. And According to their 12 witnesses, 11 of them said that they didn't announce anything.
So, I mean, I would take the weight of the evidence there. And you bust into somebody's house and then they start shooting, you're gonna shoot back. I mean, all of that, it seems like it makes a lot of sense. So I want to look at what happened before they busted into the house, because that seems to be where the disconnect was. And all that stuff is systemic stuff. All that stuff is how the system operates.
So it seems like we can avoid situations like that if we make some changes to how the system operates. And that's more where more of the discussion needs to be on both sides of that. I'm upset about what happened, but just being mad about it is not really going to change it.
Demanding you make demands, everything like that. But I think we need to make sure we're identifying where things went left, and in this case, where things went left was much more systemic as opposed to something like where things went left with George Floyd, where you just have a lack of humanity, just putting your knee in somebody's neck for ten minutes.
[00:18:49] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's good points. And I think, just for the audience, that the nature of the systemic. A lot of people I think I've talked to don't understand that premise sometimes. And I think that, to your point, that the systemic nature of it is the fact that going back through the system itself and looking at how do we get here, and that, to your point, is the no knock warrants.
It's what in the system set up that night to happen like that. And I think you're right because I agree with you. I mean, obviously, and this is where it is sad, James, you're right, that we see, because I understand the sentiment and the pain and the emotional side of seeing another unarmed black person, and in this case, apparently she was sleeping, being killed by police.
But you're right, I mean, we don't know, you know, there doesn't seem to be evidence that they. That they went up in there and shot it just because she was black or they're racist or anything. It seems that the system in place put them at that apartment and the ability to bust in there without, you know, I guess letting somebody know who's in there in the middle of the night, in the middle of the night. And I mean, look, it's just a sad situation all around. You're right that if obviously he got scared, and rightfully so, someone's busted in your house in the middle of the night and he fires his gun and obviously the cops are going to get scared if they're fired at and they're going to fire back. And that just is what creates the tragedy. But the systemic, the way the system is set up currently is what led to the incident, the police being there. So I think that that has to be looked at. One of the things I wanted to mention was, you know, in preparing for this conversation, I did some. Just went to Google and kind of Googled in, you know, police settlements. Then just started seeing there's an interesting website called themarshallproject.org, marshall M A R S H A L L And basically they talk about settlements around the country. And what kind of stands out to me is how many there are. And they're like, they're not in the news all the time. You're talking $750,000 settlements, 975,002 million. So there's a lot. But what I found, there's an article from 2019. It says NYC spent 230 million on NYPD settlements last year. So that would have been 2018.
There's another one from Santa Monica to pay 42.6 million to settle a child abuse claim against a police volunteer. I mean, when you start seeing some of these numbers, I didn't realize how much it is because that is siphoning a lot of money out of what otherwise would have gone to probably more positive things within those cities and those communities.
[00:21:38] Speaker A: Well, anything could be more productive than paying settlements.
[00:21:41] Speaker B: I know. That's what I'm saying. I'm just thinking like, wow, 230 million from NYC. I mean, that's a lot of money if you paid out in the. Yeah, I mean, I know New York has a big population, so they have a lot of cops. And I'm sure a lot of chances for more complaints and things to go wrong. But it goes back to just, you know, seeing these numbers is jarring. And it's like, how can we do better as a society? Because I think not just on this law enforcement thing. We're always talking and criticizing each other in our society. And, you know, there's not money to pay for this, not money to pay for that. I think this is another example of we just have a lot of inefficiencies in our system.
And if we could somehow straighten up the idea of the misconduct or the systemic nature of some of this stuff, it's like, if we could catch it before it got to the night of Breonna Taylor incident, then we don't have a dead person.
We don't have cops that lost their job, you know, or whatever, or the one that's indicted. And we don't have a $12 million sentiment.
So it's like. And, you know, and to change that,
[00:22:44] Speaker A: that's the point of the systemic aspect, to change that outcome. In this instance, it's pretty clear that the changes would have needed to happen to the things that happened before the cops showed up there.
[00:22:55] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:22:56] Speaker A: And to the things that way the system operated, that they got a warrant to go after somebody who was already in custody, that the warrant allowed them to bust in without knocking. Those are system. Those are. Those are rules and things that are in place by the system that set up the scenario to where we have this outcome that has the tragedy, the tragic death of Breonna Taylor. And it has the city paying out that. I mean, paying out that amount of money. And what I'm saying is it's a red flag.
People want to argue about the criminal stuff, and I think that the criminal stuff, there are thumbs on the scale of justice. So we see that, and so it creates these arguments and so forth, but these dollars and cents being paid out, that is a very clear and unambiguous signal that there was some wrongful conduct. And when we have that, that's a red flag. There's no argument about that. Like, that is the.
That is the city making a decision that we do not want a jury to hear this stuff and then determine how much we have to pay. We'll just write you a check, don't even take it to a jury. And that's. It's not. Those aren't. Those decisions aren't made just off the top of your head.
You have people look at the numbers, people look at the risk, everything, and they evaluate that, and they write a check for 12 million voluntarily. So, I mean, it's one of those things.
[00:24:17] Speaker B: One of the things I want to say, though, is just I know we're going to move on soon.
As you said, it kind of. It saddens me like hearing it, because it makes me realize that what you're saying is absolutely right in terms of we need to look at the system and kind of these events happen and then it's like this flashpoint, this powder cake, and then we have this explosion in the media and everybody takes a side. You know, you've got your, you know, the one side or the other side type of thing.
But like you're saying that it keeps happening, right? And that's to me, where I think, you know, everybody keeps saying they're tired of the fighting in our country and all this stuff. Well, let's stop being so lazy intellectually and let's do some heavy lifting and continue if we really care, all of us as Americans, about kind of getting over some of these moments.
You made a good point earlier about, you know, everyone's got to give in, even the police unions a little bit. You know, how can I get better? How can, you know, we agree on, on a majority of stuff, the little stuff we don't agree with. Let's, let's sit down and try and hash it out. But then it's also, when I say about don't be intellectually lazy, it takes some curiosity to get to what you just described about the systemic nature. People have to want to understand all that stuff about the no knock warrants. How, how could they think that a guy is in a address when he was already incarcerated? You know, what, what's going on with those systems? I mean, it's as simple as, you know, maybe just like we learned in 9 11, the cops and the firefighters and the FBI couldn't communicate. They weren't on the same, like radio waves, you know, and it messed up stuff that day. Maybe that's as simple as that. Maybe what, what's the system that communicates between a guy being incarcerated and another the part of the system saying that he's at an address.
You know, these little things like that, if they can just be addressed and fixed again, maybe the cops don't show up that night and, you know, this event doesn't happen and our country isn't fractured and we don't have again people's lives ruined.
[00:26:18] Speaker A: There's no winners here. There's only degrees of how much you lost. Like, obviously Breonna Taylor loses the most. But nobody comes out of this in a better place than they were, you know, before it started. So, I mean, it seems like it's in everyone's interest to come up with a way to stop these types of things from happening. And then like I said, in this case, as opposed to many instances where you just have somebody who is just showing a callous disregard for life, this is kind of a setup, a bad setup, a bad situation.
But no, I mean, we do hope that people can kind of, you know, connect dots and figure out ways to address this now on the other end of the spectrum, and there's no good way to transition away from a topic as heavy as that. But, you know, we also took a look this week at perhaps the connecting of too many dots or finding dots that aren't necessarily there to be connected, but still creating a narrative. And that goes back to.
In modern society. Right now in America, we see a lot with conspiracy theories, some that are becoming very popular. And we saw something in time this week talking about one of America's first conspiracy theories, which we found to be, you know, it's. It's pretty interesting.
It goes back to, you know, all the way back to the late 1790s. And it's talking about a secret society, a secret organization, the Bavarian Illuminati. And it was a conspiracy theory, and it was a conspiracy theory. And the Bavarian, the Illuminati, where they were. They were working in secret places in the government to root out and abolish Christianity and overturn all civil government.
And so in this, it got embedded in a political party in the Federalist Party, which was, you know, like one of the main parties at that time.
And it accused the other party, the Democratic Republicans, of being all these evil people and trying to do all this evil stuff. And so it was just a refreshing reminder to see that there's nothing new under the sun, so to speak, that these conspiracy theories are a part of us as humans. And so, Tunde, what were your reactions? What was your reaction to reading this and then just kind of reflecting on just the parallels that we see today?
[00:28:27] Speaker B: I was just extremely disappointed that this QAnon thing isn't brand new, the first interesting hypothesis of conspiracy by man. But it just, you know, it's interesting because it just shows you again that the history kind of rhymes, repeats however you want to say it, that in times of change and societal change, that things like conspiracy theories tend to grow legs and run far as opposed to periods of time when the order has settled and things are a little bit less chaotic.
So I think it's an interesting read and kind of something to have some fun with because of what we're seeing in this time. That's why I make the joke about QAnon and all that.
What I found interesting Though, in reading about it, because having some knowledge about some of the Middle Ages, into the Renaissance, what was going on in Europe, and especially in France, remember, you had the French Revolution around kind of that era. And what you had in Europe going on was the Enlightenment period, where for the first time, you know, science. And that's the whole point of, you know, the definition of Illuminati is the enlightened ones. This idea that you had societies meeting in secret to discuss things like science and democracy, both of which were basically heretical at the time. You had the Catholic Church still dominant in its doctrine and its control over most of Europe.
And basically they were in cahoots with most monarchs in the European continent. You know, the kind of melding of religion and power and wealth and to control the population. So you would have these groups, whether it was the Illuminati, the Freemasons, others, meeting in secret to discuss things like science and free thought. And there was also, you know, different classes would meet together. So, for example, in France during this time, you know, it was Masonic lodges that were the first democratic institutions, because you had the nobility also in the same lodge and conversing with the lower class.
And there's actually a story where King Louis, I can't remember which number Louis, but of France somewhere in the 1700s, got extremely upset when he found out that one of his people from his royal court was a member of a lodge.
And he learned that his. He had said in the. I found it interesting. And the thing I read, it said his black trumpeter, you know, one of the trumpeters from his court who must have been black, was also a member, but that the trumpeter inside the lodge had been elected to a higher position than the royal guy on this court.
And what happened is Louis got very angry because he saw that as a threat to power. How can you have this organization where this guy who's a trumpeter is over my guy and he wanted to break it?
[00:31:30] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I think that it's interesting. I'm glad that you gave us that rundown just as far as that background, because one of the things that I think that is implicit in what you were saying and that you alluded to was the fact that upheaval oftentimes really brings about this.
The upheaval in whatever established order people are in creates this anxiety. And then people want answers, people want certainty amongst that upheaval. And conspiracy theories can provide that. Conspiracy theories can tell you that all of these things that are happening that you aren't able to make sense of, actually do make sense in some way. Even if it's some fat, fantastic, you know, fanatical way crazy way like that, all these dots are connected or there's just pure evil of these people that are walking around next to you are just like evil incarnate or. But it's still, it's, it's an answer. It's an answer that is easy to digest and easy to understand, even if it is very far fetched. And so I think that it's no coincidence that at this time, the 1790s, something like this would pop up and become very prevalent because that's a time of great change.
And then as right now, at the time of social upheaval, of change. And when I say upheaval, I mean just of the existing status quo.
The existing status quo is being threatened in many different ways.
And so they're going to have people saying doom and gloom, hey, if you challenge the status quo, the world's going to end. And then conspiracy theories can really find a lot of space in that. So that's the thing really. I think that a parallel that you can draw between there and here.
[00:33:10] Speaker B: I agree and I think there's a lot of evidence just we could always find throughout history and whatever time that people will draw these conclusions. But you're right, as there's more conflict and uncertainty, I think the percentage of people who are susceptible to believing these things grows. And it's fun. And it's not, I guess, looking at these things.
[00:33:31] Speaker A: Right.
Well, I think it's, it can be somewhat amusing just to see the extent in which people can, without evidence, without concrete evidence, believe stuff. But it's concerning for the same reason.
[00:33:47] Speaker B: Correct. That's what I mean.
[00:33:48] Speaker A: So yeah, you talk about it, you look at the parallels and so forth. I think trying to find insight in how you get there and then how you get out of it can be helpful. So it's good to look at it because there may be lessons which this piece in Time magazine did try to get into some of the lessons of it as far as like, one of the points that was made is that the conspiracy theorists, in this case in the early US just overplayed their hand eventually and the public got tired of it, so to speak. So it's one of those things that we always should try to take a look at what has happened with human beings in the past because there is insight to be there because human beings are human beings. And like the, the, the specifics of the engage engagements or interactions or the directions people went can change. But just the way people react in situations, the way the, the way things can unfold, there's lessons to be learned. So I mean, I think that it was worth it to take a look at that just for that reason, you know. And then one other thing we wanted to look at today was really just a very terrifying or just shocking. And it makes you uncomfortable. It reports now we have a nice nurse, Immigration Customs, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement nurse, coming forward as a whistleblower, saying that at a private immigration detention center in Georgia that you had people on behalf of the US Government doctors working there performing mass hysterectomies, which are involuntary. And there's a lot of ways you can go in this. We've been made familiar with lots of history as far as involuntary medical acts, conduct, things that have been done to people throughout human history, throughout US history and so forth. This has happened in the 2020 right in Georgia, you know, and this is what we know about.
One of the things that concerns me about a lot of these ICE facilities is that nobody knows anything that's going on there. And there's been a lot of care to make sure that the people have no rights, so to speak, that we believe that are fundamental to human beings, but we don't, we don't give them any rights. They're not getting any information out. So I had somewhat assumed that there was kind of some crazy stuff going on because again, it's a situation where there's no accountability. When there's no accountability, we know that human beings oftentimes take advantage of that. So to hear this was on one hand not surprising, but just heartbreaking. And then it's happening on my, in my behalf, in my name, me as an American, you know, it's just like, well, hold on, what are you doing performing hysterectomies on people involuntarily in the name of the US taxpayer who is your employer? If you work for ICE Tunde, what was your reaction to seeing this in any direction that you want to take it?
[00:36:32] Speaker B: No, I mean, it's horrible. I mean I was very.
Just shocked and really disappointed to even see this as happening. And to your point, right, that's just kind of like, eh, there doesn't seem to be any accountability. And you know, I love history. And unfortunately, you know, throughout history, like you're saying, whether it's the Tuskegee experiments Here in the US Dr. Mengele during the Holocaust in Nazi Germany days, or even what the Japanese did to the Chinese during the Second World War, you know, we've got all these examples of horrible kind of things being done to people by people.
By people that are medical doctors. And I think we've all kind of grown up in a culture that.
What's that? Hippocratic oath. The first rule is you should do no harm as a doctor. And that most doctors are kind of. We all look at the medical community normally as the top of the ethical space in our society that we want to believe that the doctors are going to do right.
[00:37:35] Speaker A: We hope.
[00:37:37] Speaker B: And. Yeah, you hope. And that's my point. Right.
When I read this thing, it's pretty jarring because it seems like every woman literally that's gone to see him comes out with her uterus removed. And like, why. And it's.
And you know, first of all, I mean, look, I'm not a woman. I never had a uterus, but I can't imagine going and being put to sleep and having a part of my body removed. You know, imagine, you know, someone moving our testicles or something that's.
[00:38:01] Speaker A: I'd prefer not to.
[00:38:02] Speaker B: Personal and important to you.
Yeah, exactly. And, and so, you know, and then it's like you said, like, this is. We're Americans. This is done in our name. They're going to do this to these people and send them back to their country. I mean, what does that say about us? And, and kind of reminded me of that whole thing, like with the Marines, you're only as strong as your weakest link.
And you could say that poor immigrants in detention centers may be kind of one of the weaker links in our society. And how we treat people like that says a lot. Because I'm not here to advocate for open borders and have this whole conversation. I recognize the need for a strong immigration system in the United States, and I support that. But I also think you can have that and treat people like human beings and don't treat them like animals. And, you know, to violate a woman's body like that and just take out her reproductive organs for no reason and to do it on mass. And that's my point. Like, it's weird. Like, either this doctor is absolutely terrible or psycho or he's being instructed to do this by someone else in the government. I mean, something just doesn't sit right and why this is happening. And, and that's what I mean is like, where either is the accountability for a rogue doctor? Because that could be one way that we kind of atone for this as a nation where the guy gets fired and he gets put in jail or something. You know, we, we get Some accountability as to maybe why he did it and then how. What's his punishment if he was truly rogue and if that's not the case, then what the hell is the program that is, you know, what's. What's the real thing going on behind the scenes where he's being instructed by someone else to do this?
And so, yeah, there's a lot of unknown.
[00:39:37] Speaker A: There's a lot of un. There's a lot of unknown with this because the whistleblower whose name was Don Wooten and the detention center was Irwin County Detention Center. And in this instance, you know, like, she came forward as a whistleblower because she said she initially tried to raise alarm internally and that was not. They weren't receptive to that. And I think she got fired for that. So, yeah, like it.
This is what you mean when you say that there's no accountability for certain types of behavior? Is that when. And this is where. This is like, similar to the Catholic Church. I mean, and they're the example that people point to oftentimes because we know about it so much now. It's. So much of it is public. Fifty years ago, you couldn't really say, use this as an example as well. But the issue that always comes up, whether this is with police misconduct, this is with ICE misconduct, is that when bad actors within the system are caught doing something or are revealed to be doing something wrong, the system protects them. And that is very analogous to what was happening with the Catholic Church where when you had priests that were doing things with children that they shouldn't have been doing when they were discovered, they weren't banished, they weren't turned over to criminal authorities, they were protected.
And so it makes it look like that the whole system is operating in this space in this way, and it makes it look like that because, in fact, by default, the system is. Because if the system is defending as protecting certain behaviors, then it is, at minimum, endorsing them implicitly. And so that really, to me, is the problem. If we heard of this story where it was, okay, well, this person was doing this, they got caught, and now they're in jail, It'd be like, okay, you feel good about that? Okay, that's good. Our.
We had a guy acting crazy. They caught him and then they put him away. But we hear about this and it's like he's acting crazy and he's being protected, he's being shielded, and we don't get any more information. All we have is what the whistleblower is saying and everything else is a closed box. And so I see the same thing with the police misconduct. If we heard about the Breonna Taylor thing and saying, okay, yeah, this happened, we've banned now, we're not doing no knock warrants anymore. We've made these changes procedurally so that officers aren't put in this type of situation where they're running up in somebody's house potentially unannounced with their body cams off.
If that's how we hear about these situations in conjunction with or along with the things that people are doing to make sure it doesn't happen again, then that would give us more confidence in the system. The fact that it happened would still be terrible and tragic, but actually it would build our faith in the system. Say, hey, the system saw it and the system tried to address it. Instead, what ends up happening is that the system undermines our faith in the system. Because when these types of things happen, the system covers them up, and that's what you can't have. And that's, I think, what the focus needs to be on fighting against these things is to make sure that the systems we have in place, the things that represent us as citizens, don't endorse bad behaviors or don't excuse bad behaviors. It's always, you know, we're always quick to throw the book at someone who is breaking somebody's paying with a counterfeit $20 bill. We're good with any justice that they can get or that we'll give them. But if somebody's doing the mechanisms, using the arms of the systems to do dirt, then we want to look the other way, and that's backwards.
That's something that I don't think that, or I think that 90% of people can get behind that is let's hold everyone accountable. But a lot of times these things get, as you've pointed out, it's almost reflexive. They get framed into this side and that side. And we never get to the point of, well, hold on, are we good with this type of conduct? Are we? Or do we think that if somebody does something wrong, no matter what position they're in, that they should be accountable for that?
[00:43:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree, man.
I think it's interesting because you point out in a lot of different areas, right? Whether it's Catholic Church, whether it's this issue with the ICE detention center doctor and what he's doing, whether it's law enforcement, bad apples, you know, can only operate if they're being kind of shielded, right? If we know something's wrong and you know, people let it go or look the other way, it'll keep happening. And I think whether it be what we started with, with the law enforcement side and trying to find better ways for, let's say, those who want to do right in law enforcement to be empowered to speak up and be supported.
I think it's the same with this whistleblower, Ms. Wooten, for this ICE thing. You know, she bravely comes out and reports on this. But, you know, is anything happening, is the next person that's thinking about when they see something bad, that they want to report it, are they going to be discouraged because this lady now might be fired and kind of maybe she was targeted and reprimanded for coming out. And I mean, we've seen the same thing in other areas of the government as well. And so. But that's my concern. Just kind of wrapping up this thought here with this story is part of this is, remember, as I've often alluded to, is part of what keeps America dominant in the world stage is what I call our soft power.
Our hard power to me would be something like our military, our ability to wage war and all that. And I've said it many times, our military is second to none of us in the world currently.
So I don't think anyone can kind of beat us right now. Head to head in a kinetic war, however, where we can lose a lot of our standing over time, is the erosion of the soft power. When people believe that you are a leader, part of it is because you have a moral authority and you have the ability to stand up and say we do things right.
And, you know, things like this, the rest of the world also sees.
And again, when things like this are allowed to go untouched, the rest of the world also remembers the stories of other atrocities made in the name of medicine that have happened around the world. And again, it's another thing that, like I was thinking about, like our rendition program that the CIA had after 9 11, and that was the argument back then for that decade, you know, is America going to be the place that accepts torture?
And you had some arguments that, well, you got to stop the next 911 and all that and others that said, well, no matter what it takes to stop something, are we losing a little bit of ourselves if we use these tactics that America has not been known to use publicly? The rest of the world never saw America as a place that kidnaps people off the street and then puts them in some black site prison somewhere and kind of never sees them again. We used to think of the Gestapo and Stalin's, you know, secret police and guys like that doing that, not the Americans. And so I would say this is worse because at least back then you could have that excuse. Well, shit, we just don't want to get hit again. The CIA is only going after, you know, maybe guys they think are terrorists or have things like that going on here. It's like this doctor's removing women's, you know, reproductive organs for no reason.
[00:46:50] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:46:50] Speaker B: There's no reason for poor women that are just trying to sneak over the border to find a better life for them and their kids. I mean, you know, again, I'm not condoning someone coming in here illegally, but that kind of person is not the same threat. That maybe a student of bin Laden, you know, in 2005, trying to come here and do us harm was, you know, there's two different.
[00:47:10] Speaker A: Well, but it's still, even still, though, if they were doing that stuff in, you know, after 9, 11, that was to try to prevent attack. Like, that's what I'm saying is they're not removing uteruses to try to prevent an attack.
[00:47:21] Speaker B: Yeah, that's my point is saying this is like 10 times worse than the rendition program.
[00:47:25] Speaker A: You can make an excuse that that
[00:47:27] Speaker B: was trying protect the country. This doesn't seem that.
[00:47:30] Speaker A: I mean, but you're right, though. I think your overall point, I mean, like, Americans of all stripes have considered America and presented America to the world as, and I'll quote Reagan, the shining city upon a hill. And that's not because of how big our gun was.
That was because we set an example of the type of conduct that other nations could aspire to.
And so, I mean, that's something that I guess that's been lost, you know, that we no longer aspire to that maybe, or enough of us don't, or it's not important to enough of us. And so, I mean, it's a shame from that standpoint. I mean, it's nice to see that the whistleblower came forward. You're right, though, as far as, you know, how we treat whistleblowers definitely affects whether we learn about things like this in the future.
So, you know, while it's encouraging, you know, you have to keep an eye on it to see what ends up happening now to her and then what ends up happening to the practice, you know, and whether anyone is going to be accountable for it. Because the thing is, is that in any group of human beings, there are going to be some good people. They're going to Be. Most of the people are just going to be, you know, good or bad, you know, kind of just average. And then you're going to have some bad people. And if your systems aren't in place to disincentivize bad behavior and punish bad behavior, then the people who are just the bad. The bad people, the bad apples, are going to commit bad acts with impunity.
And so we need that. I mean, that's why we have law. That's why. That's why the law is supposed to apply to everyone, you know, because the people who we generally don't know in advance, the people who are going to. Who have general, kind, good disposition, or the people who are always trying to scam the system or scam each other. So, yeah, I mean, I hope that by bringing light to this that more can be done to prevent stuff like this, you know, but it's one of those things. Yeah. Like, what standard do we hold ourselves to? Are we still going to be the shining city on a hill or we now just gonna be no better than anybody else, but we're just gonna be the guys because we got the biggest gun and biggest stick?
[00:49:28] Speaker B: Maybe. Maybe we'll just be human. How about that? That's. That'll be our flaw.
[00:49:32] Speaker A: Well, no, because humans either aspire to do better or not, you know, so there's the human. So, I mean, that's what I'm saying. More so is whether we're gonna aspire to be more than just our animal instincts or not.
So, yeah, I mean, we, we. It's a good conversation.
Glad we're able to have it today. We appreciate the audience for joining us. Subscribe Rate Review Check us out on Twitter. Also call it vn. So until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:49:58] Speaker B: I'm Tunde Oglana.
[00:50:00] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you.
