Sane-Washing Trump, AI + Cops = Bad As It Sounds 08.30.24

In episode 1735, Jack and Miles are joined by co-founder and Executive Director of Partners for Justice, Emily Galvin-Almanza, to discuss… Mainstream Media Actually HELPING The Trump Campaign…, AI Police Reports Are Here To Save The Police From Doing Any Work, Bad Faith NYTimes Article About Alternatives to Policing and more!

1. Emily Galvin-Almanza's 'Project 2025' Twitter Thread
2. Mainstream Media Actually HELPING The Trump Campaign…
3. CNN focus group of conservative women turns out to be comprised of GOP operatives
4. AI Police Reports Are Here To Save The Police From Doing Any Work
5. Cops Are Using AI to Write Police Reports
6. Axon Facing Class Action Over Alleged Monopoly on Taser, Body Camera Markets
7. Axon reports Q1 2024 revenue of $461 million, up 34% year over year, raises outlook
8. A firm proposes using Taser-armed drones to stop school shootings
9. Axon’s Ethics Board Resigned Over Taser-Armed Drones. Then the Company Bought a Military Drone Maker
10. Taser maker Axon has a moving backstory. It's mostly a myth
11. Taser Company Axon Is Selling AI That Turns Body Cam Audio Into Police Reports
12. Bad Faith NYTimes Article About Alternatives to Policing
13. Congress Is Investing in Alternatives to Police. Can They Work?
14. A study gave cash and therapy to men at risk of criminal behavior. 10 years later, the results are in.

LISTEN: Selfish High Heels by Yung Bae feat. Macross 82-99 & Harrison

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
I couldnot fucking sleep all night, all night, been up
like a fucking owl, like THEO Vaughn was telling Donald.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Trump, I should have you like an owl.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Oh man, you be your own fucking not you being
a street light light, just like and that's good. No,
that's good, that's good.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
And that feeling you like that feeling.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
No, no, no, no, I do not want to feel
like a vampire with a heart condition. And yeah, for
the record, it's not because I was doing cocaine. This
had been a low, great anxiety that kept me up
all night.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
What they're calling it, Okay, okay, I'm like an owl.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
We call that. We call that poor people's cocaine anxiety. Yeah,
just a.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Little anxiety, the poor man's cocaine. Hello the Internet, and
welcome to season three, p. Fifty three, Episode five of
Daly's Like I Say production of iHeartRadio. This is a
podcast where we take a deep dive into American share consciousness.

(01:17):
And it is Friday, August thirtieth.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
Twenty twenty four. Yeah, yes, last day. No, well, thirty
they're thirty one day. They're thirty one days half August exactly. Also, Hey,
guess guess who I get to shout out today, shout
out to my dad is his way seventy years old
up in this place. Congrats to you.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
I was just at a friend of my youngests and
they have an amazing work from your dad on their wall.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Oh they do? Yeah yeah, oh well you know, yeah,
you're very white. My dad is internationally known and locally
respected as an artist. So I appreciate, appreciate the support
from everybody. But also August thirtieth is National Beach Day,
National Grief Awareness Daytional Toasted Marshmallow Day, and for all
you college fans, it's National College Colors Day. I am
not wearing mine, sadly I should normally maybe kind of

(02:09):
I need, I need some more gray. But I feel
like I wear like my alma matership because I'm like, well,
I gave these people so much money, like I have to.
I need to get something out of it, where like
they should brand me.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yeah yeah, the amount of money I gave them.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Yes.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
All right. Well, my name is Jack O'Brien aka my Doughnuts,
bring jd Vance to the yard. And he's like, whatever
makes sense, damn right, whatever makes sense. That one courtesy
and Macaroni on the discord. What new jd vance flub
just dropped? I'm sure we talked about it yesterday's trending,
but his uh did you did you see? Don't worry

(02:49):
any every everybody. I'm not gonna take my shirt off. Okay,
it's a banger. It's another Certifi.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
He was being booed by firefighters, so he just silence. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Anyways, I'm thrilled to be joined as always by my
co host, mister Miles.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
It's Miles Gray a k. A whale was beached? Yeah,
be headed it with the chainsaw and it strapped it
to the top of the car. Whale was beached? Yeah,
because I'm a normal hunter and whales are cool. You
know that they are whales? Okay, shout out to cleoly

(03:33):
dot universe for that creep. Tlc RFK hunter another creep. Yeah,
a true true creep. But yeah, that whale was beached
and hey, whale. As Michael Knowles on the Daily Wires,
and whales are.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
Cool and he's a hunter, so it's normal. Find a
new angle exactly, chainsong of whales head? Does normal? Find
a new angle? Miles whale juice thrill whale juice is wonderful.
Thrilled to be joined in our third seat by a
poet and a lawyer who is the co founder and
executive director of Partners for Justice, which is designed to

(04:10):
create a new model of collaborative public defense designed to
empower You probably read her deep dive on Twitter into
Project twenty twenty five. Please welcome to the show, Emily
Galvin Omonza.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
Very happy to be here, and I'm so sad that
I don't have an Internet supplied jingle or joke to
go along. I'm just sitting here like horrified at you
guys having unearthed my deep poet history.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
Yeah, you do a little googling do the math is
a public You are a published poet.

Speaker 3 (04:41):
I am. Math Poetry is the most marketable genre of literature.
I don't know if it's a top seller.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
Yeah, yeah, you were doing math poetry.

Speaker 3 (04:51):
Yes, poetry is math, right, like when you have a
rhythm of word, you know, the same way music's math.
Poetry is math. I just started with other math first
and then tried to create poetic forms that adhere to
that math again.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
Real bang yeah wow, Okay, that's like some like tool
type shit. You're like I'm using a sacred geometry to
write my words down. Yeah yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:15):
Oh if only I could be in the same category
as Tool, I would be. I mean, that's that's the best,
that's the that's the height of my poetic career. You
just you just made it right there.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
Yeah, that's exactly right. I get it. I get it.
I get it.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
So we did reach out to you on the strength
of project your Project twenty twenty five, Twitter thread, Deep Dive,
and and then we found out, like, we have a
bunch of mutual friends and we're a big fan of
your work otherwise, but the Project twenty twenty five thing,
you were just like kind of reading it because you
can read and comprehend lots of text, and you're like, oh,

(05:48):
this is worse than I imagined.

Speaker 3 (05:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (05:52):
No.

Speaker 3 (05:52):
What makes the Project twenty twenty five texts really really
dangerous is that it's written to sound super normal, and
it's also in credibly long. It's like nine hundred pages long.
And so if you are a lay person who's just
a little bit concerned about what the Heritage Foundation might
be putting out there, because you recognize that they were
heavily influential in Donald Trump's last administration, and you see

(06:13):
that a lot of his administration cronies had contributed to
this document. You want to peruse it, it might not
seem as scary as it actually is, because it's written
again to sound very very normal and that sort of
like policy speak. But having you know, gone to law
school and been forced to read lots of stuff, I

(06:34):
think it was a good use of time to try
to kind of get in there and translate for people
some of the scariest aspects of the policy plan. And
then I got really far in there and wrote like
a four hundred tweet thread about how bad it is
and also how insane, like they're weird obsession with boyfriends
and like how scared of boyfriends they are?

Speaker 1 (06:54):
Yeah, wait, what is their obsession with boyfriends?

Speaker 2 (06:57):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (06:57):
My yead?

Speaker 3 (06:58):
So they think that single terrible, right, super popular PRESI
let's all hate on single moms. Yeah, they had this
fixation on fatherhood. They're of course very very interested in
preserving the nuclear heteronormative family, right, But from that flows
this like weird paragraph where they actually talk about how dangerous,
like a single mom is bad, Like a single mom

(07:20):
with a boyfriend it's the worst possible outcome for children,
and like this part is actually not done in like
very elegant policy speak. They like actually hate on boyfriends
for a while. It's just there are these twists deep
within the document that are worth.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
It's like, yeah, they're probably named Craig, and like they
eat your cereal and like and they don't even ask
you when you're twelve or when maybe your kid is
twelve whatever. Maybe my life is bleeding into what I'm
writing here policy equivalent.

Speaker 3 (07:44):
If you're not my real dad, it's just right, yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
Which is so weird. But yeah, but I mean so
many conservative men have that energy of like you're not
my real dad, and you're like, wow, dude, you weren't
even talking about anything related to that, and you went
with that. Okay, okay, you seed to.

Speaker 3 (07:59):
Say get down like six notches, yes.

Speaker 1 (08:02):
Right, yeah, yeah, absolutely, all right.

Speaker 2 (08:04):
Well, we will link off to the entire thread in
the footnotes. We are going to get to know you
a little bit better in a moment.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
First.

Speaker 2 (08:10):
A couple of things that we're talking about later on
when we get to the news. The mainstream media, it
has been pointed out recently, seem to actually be for
all the talk of there being a anti Trump bias,
they really seem to help him in a lot of ways.
So we just want to cover a couple small examples.

(08:31):
The Right has their new case closed winning strategy against
Harris Waltz. This time it is taking down Harris's Donald's
job story in the least convincing way possible.

Speaker 1 (08:46):
Oh, she's being mixed. Swift voted to.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
Be mc Swift voted yep. And then we're going to
talk about a company called Axon. Now I know you're
hearing the name Axon and you're like, that company sounds
like they do good in the world and probably not scary.
Axon is actually a terrifying fucking company that is like
the private arm of America's police, and they are experimenting

(09:13):
with using AI to help police do more damage. So
we're going to talk about that and just some of
the other shit that they've done. There is a photograph
that our writer JM put in the doc that is
their CEO addressing a crowd and he is not him.
Like the person addressing the crowd is in an all

(09:34):
black suit and has a motorcycle helmet on and then
an iPad strapped to the front with his face on it,
but is like gesture as he delivers the speech from wherever,
bunt whatever, like volcanic layer. He's at. The person is
like gesturing with his words too, So it's like a
weird avatar situation. Sick is just it's all so very.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
On the nose.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
Also talked about this New York Times article about alternative
policing and just where we're at with the mainstream media
when it comes to, you know, things that aren't police,
that aren't armed police, and how that's being talked about
these days in the mainstream All that plenty more. But first, Emily,
we do like to ask our guest, what is something

(10:22):
from your search history that's revealing about who you are?

Speaker 3 (10:25):
Oh man, So it's actually really great that you guys
asked me this because a few months ago, Okay, so
the story is gonna get weird, a deer impaled itself
on my colleague's fence. Oh no, And my colleague, of course,
shared a photograph with our entire team to ask Jesus,
what do I do now? There's a dead deer on
my fence, And it just so happened that I dipped
into my own Google search history to demonstrate how ready

(10:48):
for this topic? I actually was, and I took a
screen grap I'm actually going to show you guys to
prove that it's really a screen grab of my search
results from that day, which were as follows wordle how
to gut a deer at home? Oh no, how to
dress a deer at home? Inflation Reduction Act Rebates twenty

(11:09):
twenty four Massachusetts driving directions to the Magical Bridge Playground.
That's there? You go, wo.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
Wait, what's the Magical Bridge break? I'm like, more like,
what's the Magical Bridge?

Speaker 3 (11:22):
You know it's there. It's actually really cool. In this
area where I was living in California at the time,
because I teach at Stanford during the winter, there is
this playground that was actually designed to be really accessible
for kids with disabilities. And it turned out that the
playground that's accessible is actually the best playground ever made,
and it's everybody's favorite playground. So that's the one I
was taking my kid to.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
Yeah, this place.

Speaker 1 (11:42):
Looks like a fucking theme park.

Speaker 3 (11:44):
It's amazing. There's like three there's more than three of them.
They're they're popping up everywhere. They're they're the next generation
of playgrounds.

Speaker 1 (11:50):
Really wow. Wow, wow wow. Okay, I like to see that,
and you can tell us gott that like tartan on
the ground, like that makes it real soft and sunshine,
like yeah, yeah, hurt.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
Their little heads on, like when they've grown up and
it was just all concrete.

Speaker 1 (12:03):
Yeah, or i'd get like wood mults stuck under my
toenails or something, because like try to go barefoot down
the slide.

Speaker 3 (12:10):
Yes, the slide burns you, and then the wood impales
at the bottom and that makes them.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
Stronger and then you get that nice aroma of like
smoky playground for sure.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
Yeah, safe for my kids, the tartan. And also I
feel like I jump higher on it, and so I
like to show that off when I'm at the playground, like, look,
I'm gonna dunk on these monkey bars.

Speaker 1 (12:30):
Oh it's five feet high.

Speaker 3 (12:34):
Cristiana Ronaldo of the Magical Bridge Playground.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
Why was your partners or the person who texted you?
Why was their fence so sharp? Is that a thing
that is normal?

Speaker 3 (12:47):
Great question. I don't know. They live in the South.
I can't speak to Southern fence practices. I don't I
have a lot of fence experience. I've myself constructed a
lot of four string barb wire fence grown up in
ranch culture, but never something with an impalable top.

Speaker 1 (13:02):
I have real questions, right, yeah, yeah, like that is it?
Is that by design?

Speaker 2 (13:07):
Is he like I'm going to leave the deer there
to tell the other deer what happens when you try
to come on our property? Or is it just like
an accident because it was, So I'm.

Speaker 3 (13:17):
Going to go with the former. I'm going to decide
that whoever install that defence wanted it to be a
place where you could impale ahead just really.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
Yeah yeah, oh yeah, like what like in Game of
Thrones when like Kalisi takes over that place and all
like the heads are like on pikes and stuff or
yeah yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (13:31):
Guess, or in real life in human history, yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:33):
Yeah, that was like everywhere that was just interior or
exterior decorating.

Speaker 3 (13:38):
Back in the day need like a wisconce and then
a head.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
Yeah, and it was like we like to around Christmas
have points set. He has the rest of your heads
just heads decorating everything.

Speaker 1 (13:48):
What is uh? What's something you think is underrated?

Speaker 3 (13:51):
So I I thought about this question a lot. I
think that tea time is underrated. And I'm going to
make a defensive of tea time because when I see time,
say tea time, people usually think of sort of like
stodgy British, pinky raised, unpleasantly meticulous. Okay, tea time is
supposed to be an incredible spread at like four o'clock

(14:12):
in the afternoon, where if you are like me, you
are most ravenous. There should be pastries and cakes and
like sa every things. My husband is Bolivian. Bolivians really
do tea Time like they do. They will fill your
table at tea time and then dinner is like a
light snack. I think this is a really underrated way
of living one's life because that's when I actually want
to just become a complete glutton and move my way

(14:34):
across a full table at four o'clock in the afternoon,
when I'm just when I've had it with the world.
So I think tea Time we should bring tea Time back.

Speaker 1 (14:42):
Wow, I didn't know like Bolivians are really I'm just
reading about these. They got salon the Olivion. They love
the tea time.

Speaker 3 (14:53):
Tea Time, it's a whole it's very elegant, it's very comforting.

Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, snack time. I'm for me, like I'm just wondering,
Like I feel like I basically recreated this in my
own life, but with a snack drawer, because you know,
being raised Catholic, I have shame and so like I
just have all the snacks, but they're like in a drawer,
and I just like eat over the drawer all.

Speaker 1 (15:17):
The different snacks.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
Bullets leave it in there, my tea time, shame drawer.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
Wait, what do you wait? What do you got in there?
Like loose bread slices or just loose breads all stale,
A couple of pieces of wonderbread.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
No, I got got chips, I got some some pretzels,
I got cashoes, maybe maybe some sort of nuts in there.
And then you know, I'll bring out one bag of
either chips or pretzels at a time to accompany you know,
some things from the.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
Cold cut drawer.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
Oh wow, or some you know or hummus, how dignified?

Speaker 1 (15:59):
Wait, what's a dead time? What's the spread out of
Bolivian tea time? Emily?

Speaker 3 (16:03):
Oh my god. So you're obviously gonna have different beverages,
including tea, but you're also going to have both an
array of savory and an array of sweet options. Okay,
and I'm going to state right here that asking an
actual Bolivion would get you a better answer, being of
course being there, you know here without a Bolivion on
the call. I'm going to highlights like Southenia's, which are
a breakfast food as one of the best Bolivian foods

(16:24):
you can get. You can get a ton in like
the DC metro area, a ton of Bolivians there. You
can get them sort of all across Virginia and some
in California. But South Anias is basically like a like
a savory pastry full of delicious stew and you can
kind of bite off the end and sip the stew
and then eat the pastry.

Speaker 1 (16:40):
Oh shit, it's souping because like when I see a picture,
I'm like, oh, this looks like an empanada, but.

Speaker 3 (16:47):
Oh my god, you will never touch another panada now, Like, no,
South ania is our next level.

Speaker 1 (16:51):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (16:52):
We have counez, which are like a like a cheese
pastry that are really fluffy and delicious. They're kind of
like a powered casual but better, oh better than oh
way better, way better.

Speaker 1 (17:03):
Okay, Okay, go on, go on, will I'm.

Speaker 3 (17:08):
Here to talk about Lyvian food, and I will tell
you some of the best in the world. No, they're
gonna have all kinds of like real dishes, like meats,
prepared meats, and maybe a stew. And then you're also
gonna have a lot of like cakes and pastries and
the sort of usual like.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
Yeah, so I just started sweating, like the peel meme.

Speaker 1 (17:26):
Yeah, because I love paladaccasual. Like when I first had
that the first I'm like, my god, what the fuck
are we doing up here? Like I love and now
seeing the other one we say is the fact that
it's sort of like a soup dumpling, but the Bolivian
version was like first you got to take the bite
and then get the soup out and then keep going.
I'm also intrigued by the structural integrity of the pastry

(17:47):
that can contain a stew within it. This comes down
to scale.

Speaker 3 (17:50):
I mean the pastry is like really robust and like
almost has a slight sweetness and thick chewiness to it.
But it's also like you're gonna get judged on your
skill level, Like some people are beginners and they need
to use a utensil or they might get stew on
them once they're real pro you're just holding that southenia
on one hand and like longboarding down the road. Uh
no stew anywhere on your person.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
Bottle?

Speaker 2 (18:13):
Yeah, what is something you think is overrated?

Speaker 3 (18:21):
I'm gonna stay with my food theme. I actually think
we've gotten to the point where where brunches is overrated.
I think, yeah, what do you think Everybody's doing brunch
every weekend? And it's getting the point whe it's just
like flat, flabby breakfast food at a different time of day,
and I'm no longer excited by it. I'm no longer
inspired over it.

Speaker 1 (18:38):
I think brunch like loses its appeal the earlier I
wake up, Like when I was like younger and like
like you know, going out and ship like that, and
I'd wake up Lane, I'm like, yeah, brunch, but yeah,
let's eat at one that's breakfast. But now I'm like,
not that already eight or it's depends on, you know,
if there's an occasion, but yeah, I get that. I

(18:58):
guess is that is that maybe one of our latest
food fads that's going only now it was a brunch.

Speaker 3 (19:03):
Oh it'll never go away? Yeah, maybe maybe actually the
right answer to how to live one's life is to
only have brunch and tea. I mean maybe breakfast, lunch
and dinner.

Speaker 1 (19:11):
Two meals.

Speaker 2 (19:12):
Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, two meals. Give me a brunch,
give me a tea, give me that tea. I mean,
does the enthusiasm for tea just like make you less
likely to have anything at dinner? I feel like dinner
becomes an afterthought at that point. A little snack for dinner,
spread for tea.

Speaker 1 (19:29):
Okay, I like that.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
Yeah, brunch is not a natural time for me to
be hungry. If I've eaten breakfast, then like brunch is
not real.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
Or you do the thing where you wake up you're like, fuck, dude,
brunch is in four hours, and you're like, I don't
want to like go and not eat anything. So then
you're like walking this tight rope of not eating before
or showing up hangary and you're like this showing up mean.

Speaker 2 (19:51):
Yeah, yeah, all right, Uh, let's take a quick break
and we'll be right back. Mm hm.

Speaker 1 (20:08):
And we're back. We're back. And yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:12):
So there's been some talk it's being called sane washing
when it comes to the Trump campaign, like that, how
the mainstream media covers President Trump former President Trump's long
rambling press conferences. Yeah and yeah, but it just it
does feel like there's a different standard when it comes

(20:35):
to him, possibly because of the glut of insanity that
is like coming at us, or possibly just because I
don't know that you want to make it a good
a good game. Everyone wants to see a good game,
so we gotta we gotta make sure it's close.

Speaker 1 (20:51):
No one likes to blowout, So we got to prop
up the orange guy who's deteriorating before our eyes. But yeah,
like you, like you said Aaron Rupar like on a
lot of his videos that he clips out and puts
out on Twitter, like whenever he cut Like, We've played
a couple of those clips where Trump will be rambling
on and they'll cut back to someone in the student
Like what he means to say is actually this not
that Hannibal Elector was a real person and a good guy.

(21:15):
What do he means A.

Speaker 2 (21:15):
Late great Hannibal Elector represents our democracy? I just wanted
to talk about.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
He's a poet actually, But like, two recent events in
the presidential race have kind of underscored how the mainstream
media tries to normalize Trump and like his circus of
political aids. So this week, obviously he made headlines for
insisting on taking photos and filming a TikTok video for
his campaign in a section of Arlington National Cemetery that
prohibits that very thing. In fact, it's a violation of

(21:42):
federal law to use a military cemetery for campaign purposes.
So while this was happening happening, there was a press
release that came out of the Trump campaign to sort
of like paper things over, and journalist Brandon Friedman he
pointed out on Twitter how the Trump campaign's press release
had a very dumb typo in it. Quote the statement
campaign manager Chris Losovita incorrectly used the word hollowed instead

(22:05):
of hallowed on this.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
Hollowed hallowed out, Yeah, knocked on like a hollowed gesture,
hallowed ground exactly right, precise almost precisely Fredian slip.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
Like so Axios, the Daily Beasts, they added the sort
of parenthetical sick to sort of say like that they
misused the word this is what they meant to say.
But a few other organizations, as you pointed out, sort
of caught the misuse but then corrected it. On behalf
of the Trump campaign, like CNN did, and just like
they're like they meant hallowed, dude, just change it so
people don't make like, you know, point out they made

(22:40):
a typo. The New York Times predictably ran the story
with the typo unedited, and then but like so if
you searched in Google, you'd be like, oh, yeah, they
wrote hollowed haha. But when you click it, they republished
it and edit it, edited it to be hallowed without
any sort of reference to the fact that there was
a typo. And then they had you know, dud you basically,
we're doing some copy intern stuff for the camp, the

(23:02):
Trump campaign. But this is like a subtle example, but
like worth noting because these like small accommodations are at
the very least bad journalism and at best being like, no,
we're helping them because like they we just need them
to look a little bit more like together than they
obviously are. So the other thing that has been like

(23:23):
being pointed out across the media is from like the
CNN shit, Like during the DNC they would have these
panels of like quote undecided voters to be like, well,
so would you think about that You're undecided. And right
after Kamala Harris gave her acceptance speech, they spoke to
a panel of supposedly undecided voters in Pennsylvania, and one
man was clearly an outlier. Like after the speech, he's like,

(23:46):
I don't know, that thing was like bad. Most people
are like, yeah, that was that was pretty good. That
that wasn't that wasn't fun. That yeah, that was fine.
He's like, nah, there's nothing. There's a big nothing burger.
And then when the panel, like the person who was
hosting the panel said, has anyone decided yet after this
beach who they're going to vote for? This guy immediately
raised his hand. He's like, yeah, I'm voting for Trump.
They're like, oh, okay. Midas Touch looked into this guy

(24:09):
and his social media is like littered with MAGA crap,
Like he's very much clearly like a Trump supporter. And
when they pressed CNN and him on it, they both
kind of had conflicting stories. The man said, yeah, dude,
I told CNN I was a Trump like, I'm a
Trump guy, and they just asked if I could keep
an open mind, and I said, yeah, I can keep
an open mind. So I went and they called me undecided.

(24:30):
CNN was like, well, technically, when we spoke to him,
he said he hadn't decided who he was gonna support,
so we invited him to speak on the panel. And
that's where you're just like, what the Like, I'm always
confused when they do these like undecided sort of panels.
I'm like, who, Like, who really are these people? Like
are they really that undecided? Because they seem pretty informed

(24:53):
for being undecided. And then I'm like, what is it
that you're waiting for on either side for you to
be like? All right? Trump said the thing I needed
to do here, all right? The Democrats that the thing
I needed to hear. And this could be like a
one off or like a you know, simple mistake, but like,
you know, Parker mcloy pointed out that CNN has like
a pattern of this shit, Like in twenty fifteen, they

(25:15):
had a roundtable with Trump supporters where like a woman
went on like a viral tirade against Obama and the
issue here. It's just that this wasn't like some fox
brained normal person. This was like a sitting New Hampshire
legislator Birther who tried to keep Obama off the New
Hampshire ballot, who's just presenting as just a citizen in
New Hampshire. Then in twenty eighteen, CNN also had a

(25:38):
discussion with quote five conservative women from Florida to discuss
the sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, and the women's
responses were, yeah, here, I just I'll just play the
supposed five conservative women from Florida talking about the allegations
against Kavanaugh a.

Speaker 3 (25:57):
Show of hands. How many of you believe Judge Kavanaugh
when he's says this didn't happen, Abalida believe believe Abalea.

Speaker 5 (26:05):
How can we believe the word of a woman or
something that happened thirty six years ago? When this guy
has an impeccable reputation. There wasn't nobody, nobody that has
spoken ill will about him. Everyone that speaks about him.
This guy's an altar boy, you know, a scout, he's
you know, because one woman made an allegation, sorry I
don't buy it, but in the grand scheme of things,

(26:25):
my goodness you, there was no intercourse.

Speaker 3 (26:28):
There was maybe a tip. Can we really thirty six
years later, she's still step on that had it happened?

Speaker 4 (26:35):
I mean, we're talking about a fifteen year old girl,
which I respect, you know, I'm a woman. I respect.
We're talking about a seventeen year old boy in high
school with his thoughts ll running high Tell me what
boy hasn't done this in high school?

Speaker 1 (26:48):
So the thing is a HU journalist looked into these people,
and at least three of them are political operatives, like
like one woman like was hosting fundraisers for the GOP,
another was running for like was a candidate for office.
So they had people that were like part of like
the GOP, like machinery go in there to sort of
provide intellectual cover for people to be like, yeah, whatever

(27:10):
happened to our kavanall is out that bad? I mean
these five normal people just said that it's nothing, so
maybe maybe it is. They just framed them as like
some people with conservatives, Yeah, just as conservatives that were
living in Florida and their take on it. So it's
just a very Yeah, it's just an odd, odd practice

(27:31):
but may be quite intentional. But I guess it depends
on how you look at things. Emily, how do you
sort of see this kind of journalism? What's your take
on that, Well.

Speaker 3 (27:40):
It's not happening in a vacuum. When I look at this,
what I see, honestly is I'm a trial lawyer. I
see the jury selection process, right, which is a similar space. Right,
was this space where we're all pretending to be neutral,
and we have no pre existing beliefs, and we're coming
in here with a totally open mind, and yet everyone
walked through the door totally looked at my client was like,
I wonder what that person did. Right, So we also

(28:00):
see real restrictions on who's invited to be part of
that process. Like you got to look at how media
put out the call for people to sign up for
opportunities like this, the same way you got to look
at how you know in the jury system, people with
prior convictions are excluded, People who aren't on the voter
rolls are excluded. People who may not have a driver's
license can be excluded, people who don't have a mailing
address are excluded. So you get these juries that are

(28:22):
sort of made wealthier and wider and more conservative by
the ways in which people are even invited to attend.
And then that's sort of distilled into an even more
sort of pro prosecution extract through the process of questioning
people and then if a person's like, I don't know
if I can be fair, the judge is like, you
can keep an open mind, right, Same, it's the CNN question, right,

(28:43):
You've told us who you are and what you believe in,
but you can sett all that aside, can't you.

Speaker 1 (28:47):
Right, So I'm a cause I can keep an open mind.
Yeah I think so, I think so wrong, But that's
not a problem for me brother in law technically. But yeah,
so yeah, like.

Speaker 3 (29:00):
Who's who's the producer, who's setting up the process through
which these people appear, and who's the person not doing
like a basic social media.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
Search, right, because like in that instance of the guy
like in the undecided, Like I mean whatever, that guy
just there's like I get to be on TV or whatever,
Like I mean, that's clearly on the producers, like you're
saying of how they're selecting people and whether they they
are doing it intensely or just don't care because they're
like I don't know, they said they were, man, I'm
just trying to get five people in the room so
they could talk. And yeah, I guess maybe it was

(29:30):
a mistake for me to reach out to my friend
who like runs the local Republican Party to ask if
they knew five people who wanted to be on camera
for CNN.

Speaker 3 (29:38):
But yeah, it's also like what's the utility, Like, what
are we really gaining? It's not a scientific process. This
group of people doesn't necessarily represent or speak for the
average undecided voter. Now we know that they're maybe not
even undecided at all. Maybe they're just a political operative
who has a good, you know, makeup face. Right, I
don't understand what the average viewer is gaining fraze events.

Speaker 1 (30:01):
Yeah, right, it's always meant to. I think I don't know,
like half the time when I see those panels or
people undecided, like like I said that, they seem to know,
they don't seem like low information voters, you know, like
and so then I'm like, I that's where I'm like,
these people sound like they're basically Democrats or Republicans who
are being like I don't know, but probably this.

Speaker 3 (30:21):
Low information voters would be great. Like honestly, you put
people on there who first of all normalize being a
low information voter, make it okay to be like, hey,
I actually don't know about this or this issue is
confusing me, and I'd like a better explanation and then
present an opportunity for the mass media audience to also
receive that explanation, so that people it's the same way
as high school teacher might say, like, if you have
a question, somebody else probably has the same question. Please

(30:42):
ask your question. We could do that. I don't know
why we're doing this instead.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
Yeah, no stupid questions. The thing that every good professor
will tell you or teacher who's like, no, no ask,
ask because you got to know, or else, yeah, you
ask weird stuff or learn weird stuff because you don't ask.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
There's that sketch. And everybody's in la the John Malay
series where they're like doing a daily show style like
interview with a guy who's like saying really stupid shit
about like Trump and his support for Trump, and then
they like follow him home and he's like, yeah, no,
I'm stupid on TV for a living. That's like my thing.
I actually got interviewed by Borat a couple of years

(31:20):
ago that was a career highlight, and like he's just like,
I have this like room that I keep in my
house that looks like shit and has like a Confederate
flag up and then but like I keep that stuff separate,
Like I actually live with my family and the kids,
Like we have this nice house that Yeah, I feel like, yeah,
these are political operative essentially, like it's.

Speaker 1 (31:42):
The real, the real version of.

Speaker 2 (31:44):
That, except you know, obviously they are employed and like
working within these massive parties to convey what those parties
need to conveyed.

Speaker 1 (31:54):
But I think it's also yeah, it sort of shows
too how we talk about how like a lot of
media outlets just aren't able to reckon with real issues
because of the fact that they're so entrenched in a
lot of these systems themselves. They're like, yeah, I think
this is this is good enough. Can we actually speak
objectively about that? I don't know, but you know this
is like I think, yeah, this is where a lot
of the media is falling short at a time when

(32:15):
people really need to have like the truth, which we
don't get all the time.

Speaker 3 (32:21):
I also don't know what objective necessarily looks like, because
you're right, when you're deeply entrenched in the system, it's
very very hard to see it's equilibrium from the outside.
I'm a like devoted NPR listener. I go running in
the morning and I pop on Morning edition and I'm
very happy to hear it. But like, even on NPR,
there have been these few times where they're covering, you know,
a democratic event or Republican event, and they'll be like, well,

(32:41):
they talked about the economy, which is a bad issue
for Democrats, and I'm like.

Speaker 1 (32:44):
Is it.

Speaker 3 (32:45):
Yeah, it is actually like listen to Bill Clinton, a
person of whom I am not always a fan, but
with Bill Clinton, who like spelled out how great the
economy is built by Democrats over the last several decades
have been, and it's weird to hear that coming from NPR.
I think it's like their gesture towards equilibrium that doesn't
actually speak to truth.

Speaker 1 (33:03):
Right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
I think that's a problem with the mainstream media that
we'll also get to on you know, policing, and you know,
they they are these things that they just assume are
bad for progressives that everyone disagrees with, and they just
do a very surface level pass over those things, just
being like, yeah, well those things that everybody assumes about

(33:25):
progressive ideas around this are true, and like we just
have to take that into account as opposed to like
digging into some ways that they can be proven not true. Right, Yeah,
MPR drives me fucking crazy. All right, let's take a
quick break and we're going to come back and talk
about policing and Axon finally find out a little bit

(33:45):
more about this cool company named Axon, and we're we're back,
all right, So that you may have seen this story
that AI police reports are here to save the police

(34:07):
from doing police work. Basically, it's only a matter of time,
you know. It was only a matter of time until
the two of the shittier things on the planet, AI
and policing joined forces. In this case, the AI helps
them churn out recaps of incidents using bodycam footage, thus

(34:29):
sparing the officers from having to pen lengthy reports. And
the cops like in talking about it, the ones that
they're like interviewing for these puff pieces on the technology
are like, I can't write for shit, come basically an idiot,
and this thing made me like it. This is a
quote from one of the stories. It was a better

(34:50):
report than I could have ever written, and it was
one hundred percent accurate. It flowed better, better than I
could have ever written. That's first of all, it's supposed
to to be a rough draft, like it's not supposed
to replace the reports that you're writing the post. They
give you a rough draft that you then like work backwards.

Speaker 1 (35:09):
Nah n, I gotta cut corners and how like it's
called draft one, by the way, that's the name of
the technology is draft one.

Speaker 2 (35:16):
And he's like, this is the goddamn best thing, best
version of a report I've ever seen.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
And how important are these like police reports in terms of,
you know, like when people intersect with the justice system,
Like is it how vital are these and how much
like how much room is there for you know, dubious
ship to pop into these kinds of police reports.

Speaker 3 (35:39):
All right, to be clear, they're already largely made of
dubious shit, Like let's let's start from there.

Speaker 1 (35:43):
Okay, there we go, thank you.

Speaker 3 (35:44):
Things. These things vary really really wildly from place to place.
So when I started out as a public defender, I
was in Santa Clara County, California, in which the police
are trained to write reports. So when a thing happens
and the police are there, they'll like write down what
they saw, and then the second cop there will write
down what he saw, and then they talked to a
witness and they write down with the witness set and
all and all you get this packet, which is really

(36:07):
really helpful if we are going to believe that the
legal system is in any way about finding truth, right, Like,
you want to have detailed accounts from the people who
are there about what they what they heard, and what
they saw. I then went out to New York to
work at Bronx Defenders, and that's when I learned that
the NYPD is essentially like really really really good at

(36:27):
not writing stuff down. When you get an NYPD discovery packet,
it's like a whole bunch of pages, but all of
the pages have the same one line copy pasted on them.
It's like, at the time and place of occurrence the
incident did occur.

Speaker 6 (36:39):
Yes, anything, and that is when the suspected perpetrator did
occur onto the occurrence, and it would happen that at
that moment in her jo graphical location in question heretofore.

Speaker 2 (36:54):
It's just like it's ill.

Speaker 3 (36:56):
Yeah, we could have a whole conversation about like the
police attraction to big words. They don't quite use it.
You want to have a great time as a defense attorney,
ask a cop on the stand what furtive means. They
love saying every furtive movements, but like, what what is
what is furtive to you? Now, indeed, this whole situation

(37:18):
is furtive. So when you get to a place where
essentially nothing is written down you you create a systemic problem,
which is, in order for me to get any information
to protect an accused person and protect their US constitutional rights,
I'm going to need to create a legal process to
find out more about what this CoP's claims actually are,

(37:40):
which means I may have to demand hearings that I
don't actually need, Like I might have to file suppression
hearings that I don't actually need, just to get the
cop on the witness stand just so I can cross
examine them about what the heck they're saying they saw
and did. So it's really really really inefficient, and it's
bad for truth and it's bad for justice, Like it's
very very bad for any simple of accuracy in the system,

(38:01):
and it causes massive delays. So all of this is
to say, bad discovery is a huge driver of our
system being inept at creating any semblance of truth.

Speaker 1 (38:11):
Right.

Speaker 3 (38:11):
It's also like you have to remember that police writing reports.
There's kind of a double edged sword here because police
get a ton of overtime out of writing reports if
they make an arrest at the end of their shift
and they get to sit at their desk for the
next three hours, like carefully inscribing documents with at the
time and place of occurrence the event.

Speaker 1 (38:29):
Is right and over again, very cursive.

Speaker 3 (38:33):
Yeah, they make a ton of overtime doing that. So
I think, I mean when I say a ton, I
mean like millions and millions. Wherever you are in the country,
you should google who the highest paid public employee in
your jurisdiction was, and there's like a decent chance it
was a cop who made a lot of overtime. A
few years ago. It was like a port authority cop
in New York City.

Speaker 1 (38:51):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (38:51):
Yeah, just like over a million bucks in overtime. And
so when I think about what AI would do to
this process, I think of a couple of things. One,
it's less accurate because it's not giving you the police
officer's impressions of what happened. It's giving you the AI's
impressions of what happened. And this is even assuming the
AI doesn't hallucinate, which, as we know, like AIS make

(39:12):
stuff up all the time. So yeah, like if you're
going to totally hand over your faith to a robot
to tell you what happened in a video and abandon
the idea that human perception is necessary to interpret what
happened in a video, you're also leaving by the side
of the road things that I might need to know
about the cops ability to perceive about what the cop
was focused on what Like For example, in a police report,

(39:35):
let's say the whole report is written about I don't
know somebody's way of driving a car in a DUI case,
and none of it's about the fact that when the
person got totally furtively furtively across you know, when they
get out of the car, maybe everything they did at
that point was fine. Maybe they're talking, fine, walking fine,
don't have any sort of symptoms of intoxication. If the

(39:57):
entire report is about the driving, then I can to
cross examine the cop on like why why didn't you
talk about what happened after that? Like their omissions can
be really really important to a jury to decide who's lying,
who's telling the truth. You take the human perception out
of that, and you take away this fundamental thing. Our
system is designed to have twelve people tell you if

(40:19):
another person is lying, right, twelve people can't tell you
if an ai is lying or hallucinating. I mean, it's
just it takes us even farther from the system having utility.
And I get that in the system we are going
to consistently prioritize the efficiency of punishment over the semblance
of truth. But especially with the involvement of Axon, which

(40:39):
has a grotesque history, I'd be more than happy to
yeah about this is like five alarm fire.

Speaker 1 (40:46):
Wait, you're saying a company that used to be called Taser.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
I like that they went from Taser obviously, like trying
to cover up the fact that they're the company that
invented the taser that for some reason as a negative
connotation with it to Axon is like so fucking aggressive.

Speaker 3 (41:04):
Well, it's also you know, that's a nerve Axon is
what the electrical current runs down that stimulates the next
nerve cell. So it's still like we're gonna zapia. It's
just we're gonna zapA for people who took ap bio.

Speaker 1 (41:13):
That's right exactly. It's like the version of using furtive.
They're like, what if we just clashed it up? I
would just.

Speaker 2 (41:21):
Throw in the additional thing. And this might be like
not this might be a controversial statement, but I personally
don't want to get like it. So the CEO of Axon,
who is a company behind this AI technology, we'll talk
about other stuff there behind brag that the AI spares
cops from the tedious work of spending half their day

(41:43):
doing data entry. I don't want police to be like
out roaming the streets more with their guns, like ready
to get like suspicious about whatever comes across their plate
while they're sufficiently bored. Like I feel like this is
the job that we want to have a healthy amount

(42:04):
of like downtime where they're reflecting on what they've done
and like having to think about that and account for it.
And this technology seems to be designed to like what
if the police were like even more gas and less
breaks like built into it. What if it was just
more they don't really even have to think about it

(42:27):
because the machine's there to like just document what they
did to out you know, yeah, you know, exa more
frictionless policing aka just like out there fucking shit up
more of the time.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
I think the other thing that's really interesting too, is
like to your point Emily. You know, the overtime is
where a lot of budgets go and a lot of
people they make their they make that money. We're like,
how does that cop have that fucking car and like
a boat and all this other stuff. It's like, yeah, dude,
the overtime's wacky that they're never like this will actually
help cut down on costs. They're more just like, dudes,

(43:00):
it's gonna help the cops, dude, so they don't have
to be bored at work, you know, and like you
think the way to sell it to people who might
be more progressive, like guess what, man, this could actually
save a lot of money because now they don't have
the time to do you know, claim as much over time.
But again that's that's part of the appeal. So they'll
just be like, no, man, it just makes their job
easier so they can keep you the citizen safe, all right,

(43:22):
next question.

Speaker 3 (43:23):
You're right though, it's also sort of exposing this terrible choice. Right,
we have set up policing policy so that the vast
majority of police time is spent on things that most
people don't actually care about. So when you ask them people,
what are they like scared of it's like burglary, robbery,
sexual assault, murder. And when you look at how police
spend their time, the vast majority of it is on

(43:44):
like noise complaints and unfounded calls and like somebody was
peeing outside and trespassing, and sometimes on what I sort
of think of as like police manufactured crime, which is
like convincing someone with a substance use problem to score
some drugs and also score for the undercover who will
then arrest them for a felony. And the reason we
don't want them on the street more is because they

(44:05):
are out there on the street, armed, dangerous, and not
investigating the things that people really care about. If you
look at clearance rates, a lot of people don't know
what clearance rates are, but it's the rate at which
police are able to close cases. And in any jurisdiction,
you can search for your local clearance rates. You'd be like,
all right, how many rape cases are my local police
even closing?

Speaker 1 (44:25):
Got most places thirteen.

Speaker 3 (44:28):
To twenty percent. This is a whole other feminist sobec.

Speaker 2 (44:33):
Ninety is totally across the entire country. There's like at
least ninety that they've closed in the past decade.

Speaker 3 (44:40):
Seriously, and that's because it's a policy choice. It's a
choice from police leadership about what they're going to dedicate
resources to. And if, yeah, if the answer was, okay,
they're not going to spend their time writing trespassing reports,
but instead, we're going to dedicate real efforts to how
about wage theft or large scale pollution of poisoning entire towns.

(45:01):
We're going to set the cops on that. If they
were going to investigate crimes of the powerful against the
citizenry instead of writing reports, I might feel differently about it,
But I don't think that's the plant.

Speaker 2 (45:10):
Yeah, never has been. Yeah, But I do just want
to get a little bit more into the history of axons.
So they were taser. They made their initial money with
selling tasers, and then bodycams. When that became the solution
to police brutality corruption, they went with body cams and
they basically have a monopoly for which they've been sued.

(45:34):
They made four hundred and sixty one million dollars in
the first quarter of twenty twenty four alone. They're also
the same company that made headlines for endeavoring to solve
school shootings with taser equipped drones. That plan was paused
when the majority of Axon's ethics board resigned in protests.
But I think probably the most relevant and also, like

(45:58):
I mentioned, their CEO gets speeches via remote iPad, I
use an avatar man glued to the front of the
motorcycle helmet.

Speaker 3 (46:08):
They also created excited delirium in parts, so alls that
are due to that.

Speaker 2 (46:13):
Yes, So I wanted to talk about that because I
also think like that feels very relevant to this because
this is them getting involved in police narrative and how
police justify what they're doing, and they were involved. You
actually have a great video on this on your Twitter,
Emily where you talk about how about their role in

(46:36):
the creation of and the proliferation of the term excited delirium,
which is something we covered a while back, but I
think it's always worth kind of refreshing people's memory of
what is excited delirium.

Speaker 3 (46:50):
So excited delirium is a made up medical diagnosis that
was originally invented in a sort of predictably racist way
in Miami many decades ago, where a doctor claimed that
people were dying of excited delirium, the sort of state
of mania that caused them to behave really erradically and
aggressively and dangerously and then they perish, They just expire.
And it turned out that many of the women who

(47:12):
are originally alleged to have excited delirium had actually been
killed by a serial killer. But this idea that people
could become so worked up that they are dangerous and
then they die was seized upon by police because in
police encounters where there is a need to justify use
of force, it is very useful for them to claim

(47:32):
that the person they used force against was dangerously worked
up and had this medical thing where they became a
risk to everybody's safety and they had to be taste
and then oh, when they died from a heart attack,
it wasn't because they got a massive vault of electricity.
It was because they died of excited delirium. So excited delirium,
which is not accepted by the way, by doctors, like

(47:54):
medical associations are like, that's totally not a thing. Psychiatrical
associations the same deal, not a thing.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
But there was that one panel that is a way
I feel like we're good here. No need to look
into the panel or who funded that. I think we're good.

Speaker 3 (48:07):
Yeah, no need to look at how many doctors on
the panel were put there by Axon. No need to,
no need to connect this to no need to also
think about how much this reduces Axon's liability, right, because
if deaths are caused by excited delirium and not caused
by a taser, they're not going to have they're not
gonna be able to be successfully sued. But it's actually
become a serious epidemic in this country of police using
excited delirium to justify it not only taser use of force,

(48:30):
but the use of paramedics as a weapon, like we
saw in the Elijah McLain case where the police had
paramedics inject Elijah McLain with a lethal dose of sedatives
under this false diagnosis of excited delirium, so that that
seed that Axon planted in eight in legitimizing this diagnosis
has now caused many, many deaths and is continuing to

(48:52):
cause deaths around the country.

Speaker 1 (48:53):
Right because like they'll hit people like ketamine and stuff,
and then like they like I was reading a statistic
that a lot of those people end up having be
intubated because it's so severe, and they're like, I don't know, man, wait,
the guy was excited. I mean then they also said
the same thing about George Floyd too. Yeah, that was
like very early on, like it's excited. I don't know
what you want to say, man, let's let's just move on.
So then like so action in for them, it's just

(49:16):
more because they're sort of like, hey, we love what
you guys do. Let's help out because this also helps
justify the use of our products. Like is that sort
of like their main motivation and like sort of pushing
the excited delirium sort of craze along.

Speaker 3 (49:30):
I think it's also a legal shield. I mean, if
I'm going to let's say I lose a loved one
who was taste and I want a sue Taser for
marketing a product as non lethal that was in fact
lethal to my loved one. And they say, the medical
examiner certificate doesn't say that your loved one died of
an electric shock. The medical examiner certificate says excited delirium.
So you can't actually get money from us in a

(49:51):
civil suit or settlement. So it's it's covering them from
being financially responsible for deaths they cause. The same for police.
I mean, if the police are getting. The police could
be sued in the same case, right, the taser for
the device to the police for the action. But either way,
if the Emmys certificate says this person died of excited delirium,
it's a liability.

Speaker 1 (50:11):
Shield, right, Yeah, and disproportionately applied to black men. Yes,
a lot of the time.

Speaker 2 (50:17):
It's a way for the police to justify that why
they why they're scared.

Speaker 3 (50:21):
It's really reliant on racist tropes right on the adultification
of black children. First of all, this this child is
a risk to me because I'm perceiving this child as
older because of racial bias, but also the racist myth
of dangerousness of black men in an excited state. I mean,
this is totally playing on long term American racist tropes

(50:45):
and sanitizing them with a fake medical diagnosis.

Speaker 1 (50:48):
Right. Yeah. It sounds like something you'd get at like
Willy Wonka's chocolate factory excited delirium for you and you're.

Speaker 2 (50:57):
Like, oh, yeah, and that's why, and that's why we
had to drown him in the chocolate river.

Speaker 1 (51:02):
Yes, exactly.

Speaker 2 (51:03):
Just a couple more details about is it axin Axon.
I'm gonna call them Axon because that feels sufficiently violent
and sinister. Their CEO his like founding story. I just
like founding stories for companies and CEOs because they are
like the most full of shit things in America and

(51:24):
like most widely believed people, like it was founded in
the like everything was founded in a garage. No, it
wasn't founded in like their rich dad's second home that
was behind you his first mansion. But anyways, the CEO
repeatedly told the story that he started the company because
his two high school friends were shot and killed. He

(51:44):
played high school football with them. It's just like two
guys that he like knew about who were like four
or five years older than him. Yeah, they weren't even
he never went to high school with him. Yeah, but
like it's just you know, for him, he's like and
man like, that's the closest that I like, kids who
were at your high school before you is like such

(52:05):
a stretch to be like. That's also they The workplace
culture includes group tasings and tattooing sessions in which employees
are inked with corporate insignia and by the way, the
drone thing. While they were like all right fine when
their entire ethics board resigned. They did buy a drone

(52:25):
company recently, so there it seems like what will their
mouth says, all right, fine, god, their money is saying
that their full full steam ahead on the Taser drones front. Yeah,
so just all sorts of wild shit there, like truly

(52:45):
the most dystopian, like a bunch of tattoo branded like
corporate people, guy with motorcycle helmet, iPad face.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
Like ring, like knowing murder victims. Yeah, it's all I mean,
they're in a way, it all does feel very appropriate.
That then it's like and now that's what I like
to do, is help other people lie about stuff and
I just make money. And the institutional investment in this
company is wild too. Oh yeah, it's like because they
know they're like, wait, how much they're makeing Q one? Okay?
Yeah yeah, But just.

Speaker 2 (53:17):
Generally I just want to like kind of get your take, Emily.
There was recently this New York Times article about a
The headline is what a group opposed to police blow
the whistle on its founder, And it was like this
AI app that was like, We're gonna like create an
alternative to the police by taking people's you know, complaints

(53:41):
and routing them to like some of these other police alternatives,
it turned out to be like the founder just like
didn't have the ability to pull it off and was
spending some of the money on like clothing and vacations
that you know, like that I'm drifting. Sure, you can
find scams in any nonprofit like category, but the way

(54:05):
the New York Times writes about it and like frames
this article is that whole argument of like, oh, you
think the police are bad at their jobs, Let's see
what you say when you're being robbed, is like basically
the whole thesis of the argument, And what it comes
down to if you read the article is like one

(54:26):
person on the team is like, I didn't want to
turn him over to the police because I like he's
a black man and I fear what would happen to him.
And then another person is like, yeah, but I did
turn him over to the attorney general because I know
that like you don't usually call the police on white
collar crime because they won't do shit. So anyways, like

(54:47):
the attorney general is working on investigation. It might be civil,
it might be criminal, But the way they framed it
is so much like based on this bad faith reading
of any criticism of the police, and it just feels
generally like the tone of the mainstream media and the
Democratic Party recently is like, boy, those protests in twenty

(55:11):
twenty were you know, unpopular. Let's never fight again, babe
to the police, and it's like, I don't know, it's
just so fucking frustrating. Like and meanwhile, police killings haven't
have just like stayed the same or gone up, so like,
where where are we with this? Like what you know,

(55:33):
there were some programs that were funded that like worked
really well, Like Denver had a control trial of a
program that provides housing subsidies to people at risk of
homelessness and found a forty percent reduction and arrests. Like
there's all these cool examples they get like dashed off
really quickly in a New York Times article that like
has a counterpoint for everything that might suggest that like

(55:58):
there could be alternatives to our fucking terrible idea of
a system that if you've been to any other country
in the world, you're like, oh, wow, why do we
do it the way we do it? But yeah, I'm
just curious to hear your thoughts on like where we're
at in our conversation in the mainstream.

Speaker 3 (56:13):
So first of all, we're really lucky in this one way,
which is that we are overrun with cool solutions. Like
I'm writing a book right now, Like my book it's
coming out in twenty twenty six. It's going to be
a layperson's guide to the criminal legal system in all
of its horribleness, and also solutions, Like I'm going to

(56:33):
spend two thirds of the book on problems, and then
I'm going to present a whole bunch of solutions. I
had originally intended to write one chapter on solutions. I'm
now at like page eighty eight of one hundred of
all of these solutions, because there are just so many
fantastic things happening that have better data than the status quo,
Like we don't have data strongly suggesting that police are

(56:55):
a feasible preventative mechanism. Police can disappear problems. They can
take people and put them in spaces where they are
no longer visible to the general public and where they
may be then violently harmed in ways that make them
more likely to engage in crime in the future. So
police may be sort of like temporarily making a problem
disappear in a way that long term makes it worse.
We have that data, get a ton of data on

(57:17):
like the Star program in Denver, or cahoots in Oregon,
or you know, other alternatives to police popping up around
the country. Massive public support for this. Most voters would
love to have mental health first responders, and actually most cops,
if you ask them, are like, yes, I would like
to also no longer be treated like I'm a trained
social worker, because I'm not one, and I would like
that to not be part of my job. What's really

(57:39):
what bugs me about the perspective you just described right,
which is like, oh, these people who don't want to
use the police, what happens when they need the police? Well, okay,
when we on election day hear from voters that they
are scared to go to their local polling place because
there are proud boys outside the polling place intimidating buttential voters.

(58:01):
No one is saying, well, it's your problem if you
don't like the proud boys, don't you just have a
way to work out. No, we say, okay, this is
a problem because people have a legitimate fear. It is
a legitimate fear of an organized effort, which is intimidating
and threatening harm to the general public. And because the
general public is afraid, we the government should probably take
action to protect the general public. The blind spot with

(58:25):
regard to when that organized harmful force is a governmental
body is obscene. So by blaming people who are like, hey,
I actually I'm nervous about calling the police on my
black boss because black men get killed by police at
igordinate rates, and also not to mention that subject to
illegitimate prosecutions and overcharging and charge stacking and longer sentences

(58:46):
and the incredible damage even of a pretop process. And
by the way, I'm saying this with great care because
here's a person who's accused and has not been found
guilty of anything. So really weighing, hey, do I want
to subject this person to all of these risks or
is there a better way for me to seek accountability
and truth without those risks of lethality, injustice, ruinousness. That's

(59:13):
a fantastic thing for an ordinary citizen to be considering.
And any government that doesn't say, you know what, I'm
going to consider that with you, and I'm going to
acknowledge that your fears are real and the problems you
highlight are real and work on these problems to come
up with something better. Is abrogating its duty to the
public in favor of the optics of being pro cop.

Speaker 1 (59:33):
Right, Yeah, yeah, the pro cop turn that's happened in
like the Democratic Party. I mean it's not that they
were anti but like just I saw you retweet an
article or a thread about how the platform changed, because
I was like, I was definitely looking at a lot
of the I was really interested in the foreign policy
stuff that was in the platform and I was like, oh, wow,
like just a ton of one eighties here compared to

(59:55):
twenty twenty, and then reading sort of the excerpts on
what was happening with policing was also very like, Oh,
we're really embracing this thing about being like, let's not
talk about the death penalty anymore. Let's I know, we
were talking about choke holds. Let's like really tamp that down.
And it really is wild how much it's become because

(01:00:16):
I think, obviously this whole election is set up to
be we have a prosecutor and a felon, and so
because of that framing, we're gonna really lean into a
lot of this like the like the prosecutorial aspects of
this and also be make it feel like yeah, man,
like we're the cops again and that's okay. That was
just kind of like, I mean, I was very cynical

(01:00:38):
in twenty twenty when I saw this sort of like
upticking me, like, yeah, we really need to do something,
and that's the most that will happen. I will say
that we need to do something. But now to see
like really formally stripped out, you're like, oh, right, right, right,
this was never a real concern. But how do you
sort of perceive that sort of like shift now or
at least the now that you know, even in their
written platforms, it's just sort of like, yeah, yeah, those

(01:01:00):
are those are those are problems, but you know we
can address them at some point later.

Speaker 3 (01:01:04):
I mean, the death penalty thing, I really don't get
because Harris has been against the death penalty for a
lot of her career, was criticized as ag for upholding
the law instead of acting on a moral objection that
she has to death penalty, which is super expensive and
has resulted in the death of a lot of innocent people.
Because our system gets it wrong a lot, because of
things like junk science and bad Eyewinness, IDAs and insufficient

(01:01:27):
funding of public defense. So let's just like Cavin, this
is like, I don't I really don't get the Democratic
Party stepping away from opposing the death penalty. I think
polling on it has not changed dramatically, like Americans are
not like rapidly pro death penalty now, So I really
don't get it. But here's what I'll say about the
prosecutor versus pellon thing. It's being treated as a sort

(01:01:50):
of vicious backing a violent force against crime. But it
doesn't have to be. Prosecutors are unique among lawyers. Rarely
will you hear me say nice things about prosecutors. I'm
going to now say some nice things about prosecutors. They
have an ethical duty to do justice. That is a
unique ethical duty. No other kind of lawyer has that duty. Now.

(01:02:13):
I just got done teaching a course to some really
talented law students, and in one of my exercises, I
made half of them be defense lawyers and half of
them be prosecutors. And I told the prosecutors in a
bail argument, you had this unique ethical duty. You have
to do justice, and not just justice for the people
who were harmed in a crime. Or who you think
of as part of the community. You have to do
justice for everybody. That includes the accused person and their

(01:02:36):
family and their kids and their loved ones, that includes everybody.
When you talk for the people, you represent everybody. And
when I told them that their assignment would be graded
on how well they were able to consider everyone's needs
safety and justice, they got up there on the record
and did radically different things than I've ever seen a

(01:02:56):
prosecutor do in real life. And largely we're thinking of
restorative solutions and root causes and like how they could
heal a community instead of just punishing and disappearing a person.
If what prosecutor means is somebody who is enshrined with
governmental authority to do justice for everyone in the community,
including people who might be opposed to that very prosecutor,

(01:03:20):
I think it could actually be a very powerful encapsulation
of the best version of a leader, right, a person
who's going to take this seriously and care for all
of our well being and yes, stand up to abuses
of people with less power, which is really what we
would want prosecutors to stand up to the most. I
think certainly it's not being done that way. I think

(01:03:42):
the rhetoric sucks. I think half of Americans have had
a loved one locked up. I just think that the
rhetoric doesn't have to change if it was made smarter.
In order to be smarter, though, the policy would not
have to shift towards tough on crime. It would have
to shift towards evidence based, root cause thinking and solutions
that shift us towards something better than our shitty status quo.

Speaker 1 (01:04:04):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and now it just feels like, now
let's embrace the status quo and bring it closer and
closer and closer. But yeah, that's a yeah, such a
the whole time, I'm like, wow, it Like. The thing
that really makes you think a lot too, is like,
we have so many people who are prosecutors that ascend
in politics, and that's why, Like when Kantazi Brown Jackson
was like the first public defender who had sat on

(01:04:27):
the Supreme Court, I was liked, is that true?

Speaker 3 (01:04:30):
Oh my god, oh writ large the federal bench is
largely prosecuted. I actually read. I wrote a really mean
email today guys like my local representative, who I love
is like moving to run for the state a different
state office, and he endorsed it's a two candidate race.
I live in a place with major housing issues. There's
just not enough housing for people. Cost of housing are
too high. And one of the candidates is a housing organizer,

(01:04:52):
a local housing organizer, and the other candidate is a prosecutor.
Guess who got the addressment? And I wrote them a
note being like, like, come on, this housing is the
issue of our region. If you are going to make
prosecution once again a blind path to power, you at
least have to justify why you are overlooking someone whose

(01:05:14):
life work is in the zone we most need. And
the thing that bugs me about it the most is
that it tells young people. I mean, in my work,
I work at public defenders all over the country, and
I help them expand the practic their practice and expand
what they can offer their clients. And I place a
lot of new professionals, usually young people, into jobs in
public defense. And as they start out their careers, I'm
looking at how they think of their career trajectory. They're

(01:05:35):
doing great things, like I'm going to learn all about
how fucked up America's public systems are and I'm going
to carry that knowledge into my own change making career.
But to everybody else. The vast majority of young people,
future lawyers who are not like these dedicated, brilliant advocates.
They think, Okay, I'll be a prosecutor for like two
years and then I'll get my elected office. If I

(01:05:57):
just incarcerate young black men and separate families and crush
people's dreams and lives and maybe cause a few deaths,
then I could be a state senter.

Speaker 1 (01:06:07):
Right, I've been vetted right, and I've done the work right,
and it's we shouldn't.

Speaker 3 (01:06:11):
We shouldn't make change making power reliant on willingness to
harm others.

Speaker 2 (01:06:17):
Yeah, all right, sounds like we have a lot of
work to do. Emily Galvin Almansa, what a pleasure having
you on the daily Zeitgeist. Where can people find you,
follow you, support your work and all that good stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:06:29):
Well, if they want to support expanding and improving public
defense around the country, really transforming what we mean by
public defense, and getting more help for poor people with
housing and employment and benefits and transportation and all the
things that people actually need, they can go to www.
Dot Partners for Justice dot org where they can learn
all about our work to support public defenders nationally. They

(01:06:53):
can also catch us on Twitter at at PFJ Underscore
USA or Instagram at Partners for Justice, or they can
follow and I guess I should say, and they can
follow my much my spicy tweets at Galvin Almonza it's
just my last name. It do a weekly video on
things that are awful in our legal system. So if

(01:07:14):
people want to get like that, like spike of outrage
once a week, come on Twitter with me and I
will I will give you a spike.

Speaker 1 (01:07:19):
Yeah, but it's not just blind outrage.

Speaker 2 (01:07:21):
You also have solutions and ideas for things to do,
so I do I highly recommend. Is there a work
of media that you've been enjoying?

Speaker 3 (01:07:29):
Okay, I'm going to be really nerdy, guys. There was
a paper that came out a couple months ago from
Vita B. Johnson, who is a lawyer, and she wrote
a paper called Whom do Prosecutors Protect? And I know
that mostly people are not like you know, what I'm
waiting for is the next hot law paper to drop.
And I'm going to just dive into that bastard and
roll around. But it's really good and it's really accessible,

(01:07:51):
and it details every single way in which the kind
of problematic incentives. We've been talking about prosecution as a
pastive power and the inter reliance between prosecutors and pull
police are robbing ordinary Americans of their chance of justice.
And it's a really good paper.

Speaker 1 (01:08:05):
Damn that sounds good. Amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:08:08):
Miles. Where can people find you? And what is the
latest legal brief that you've been in?

Speaker 1 (01:08:13):
Yeah, let me give me a second about the legal brief.
I just found this one, the Pelican brief. Oh hell,
yeah too, dude. You can find me. You can find
me at is that? Oh yeah, that actually makes sense.
Huh huh. Thanks for that little factoid. I'm gonna take
that to the take that to the bar tonight. You

(01:08:35):
can find me at Miles of Great on Twitter and Instagram.
You can find Jack and I on the basketball podcast
Miles and Jack Got Mad Boosties. You could also find
me talking about ninety day fiance on four to twenty
Day Fiance, a tweet I like, oh man, so uh
the you know libs of TikTok person Chireachik tweeted out
a few days ago. It said, I'm looking for parents

(01:08:55):
anywhere in Ohio who have kids in public schools to
be eyes and ears on the your identity will remain
anonymous and protected. Please DM me if you fit this criteria.
Patton Oswalt quote tweeted this and said, Chaia, I am
so glad you're doing this. There's a boy in our neighborhood, Elliott,
a child of divorce, who we think is hiding an

(01:09:16):
alien in his closet with the help of his siblings
Gertie and Michael me hitting her with that et. But yeah,
that is one of my favorite tweets.

Speaker 2 (01:09:29):
Rees leave Ohio public schools alone, y'all.

Speaker 1 (01:09:32):
That's I I.

Speaker 2 (01:09:33):
Am a product of Ohio public schools. They do. They
do fine work every once in a while, all right,
tweet I've been enjoying. Katie at Skatie four twenty tweeted
they should call that guy Edgar allan poem because of
all those poems he did similarly smart, yeah yeah, yeah,

(01:09:54):
yeah great, and then Brandy Jensen tweeted, I love when
an it guy refers to my laptop as your machine.

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):
Kind of cool here so cool.

Speaker 2 (01:10:09):
You can find me on Twitter at Jack Underscore O Brian.
You can find us on Twitter at Daily Zeitgeist where
at the Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram. We have a Facebook fanpage.
On website dailyzeikeist dot com, we post our episodes and
our footnote no link off to the information that we
talked about in today's episode, as well as a song
that we think you might enjoy Miles a song do
you think people might enjoy?

Speaker 1 (01:10:30):
I stumbled stumbled across a producer by the name of
Harrison and just going through some of their tracks, and
there's this one track that's really popular of his that's
called Selfish High Heels and it's with him Young Bay
and mac Ross eighty two ninety nine. But the sound
of it is like eighties like Japanese city pop kind

(01:10:50):
of stuff from the eighties, but like a little bit
more like modern and futuristic. It's kind of trippy. So
I really enjoyed it. So this is Selfish High Heels
by Young Bay and Harrison, and.

Speaker 2 (01:11:01):
It also creates like the next Pixheart movie about the
promorphic shoes and you got the you know, funky sneakers,
the selfish high heels, silly slippers. I don't know, you
guys do the work. I gonna waste anymore of your time.
The kind of high high tops, like they smoke a
little weed you know.

Speaker 1 (01:11:21):
The Daily's Eye Guy is the production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (01:11:23):
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. That is going to do it for us
this week. We are back on Tuesday after Labor Day
to tell you what was trending over the long weekend
and we will talk to you all then Bye.