Title: Corruption Exposed: The Rise and the Fall of the Molly Maguires

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Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/j65pqEY904M

Description: Join us again, as we talk Friend of Ours, Joe Pascone of the Turning Tides History Podcast about the Molly Maguires. In this episode, we will wrap up the story of the Mollys and the transition of labor relations and unions in the Gilded Age into the Industrial Era.

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#OrganizedCrime #MollyMaguires #CivilWarHistory #CorruptionExposed"

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Begin Transcript:

[00:00:00] Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment, the best spot in town to hang out and talk about history and crime. With your hosts, Steve and Mustache Chris.

Now that we've gone through that whole story with the, the Molly Maguires, and we've gone through so much of it with the Civil War, what was, Joe, what was the aftermath of the Civil War? How did that play out for this group of labor organizers and people and, you know, culture and everything? So, the Civil War, far from it being like this time of like, you know, there's this idea that after the Civil War, the country, everyone got [00:01:00] together, all the bad blood was kind of shed already, and only John Wilkes Booth really had a problem with what was going on and his conspirators.

It's not really the case. In reality. There were huge, violent ramifications throughout the entire nation, not just with the start of Reconstruction. You saw the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the Knight Riders in places like the South. Uh, and in the Anthracite region, you see serious reaction and hostility.

These people, they argued for years that the Constitution should stay the same as it was, and the Union should stay the same as it was. That was no longer the case. Everything was turned on its head. And the entire economy basically contracted, uh, not just in America, across the entire planet. I cover Puerto Rico.

The economy there completely falls off a cliff because for a long time, Puerto Rico was supplementing the cotton that was not being grown and exported from the [00:02:00] United States, or the Southern United States. Uh, so you see this huge contraction and it affects these miners specifically because with the leaving of these federal troops, uh, with the nosedive of, of needs to market, uh, the entire economy sputters and a bunch of people are left out on the streets.

Uh, this, that means that a lot of people turn to highway robbery. They turn to things like, uh, bushwhackings of miners and stuff. And they turn to labor unrest, uh, some of the more moderate of them, I suppose, or the least violent. They turn to labor unrest, they try to start strikes. These strikes are usually not successful.

There's a very long one in 1865, where coal executives planned a 33 percent pay cut. Uh, and so to dispatch this, uh, or to end this labor unrest, the government [00:03:00] dispatches troops, like, right away, almost immediately following the Civil War, May 1865. Uh, so the troops are there. They do such a good job that co executives come up with a new excuse for another Pennsylvania militia unit to be stationed there.

The rest of the summer of 1865, um, in one of the more hilarious, uh, newspaper articles of all time, the Lebanon advertisers talking about the supposed uprising, and this is very tongue in cheek. They say several thousand have been killed. The Irish are murdering everybody. The country in general, and the streets of Pottsville in particular are crowded with blood thirsty miners who kill all but Irishmen.

So at this point. A lot of this, I think that goes to show that newspaper clipping right there. A lot of this, these arguments against labor uprisings have become kind of hashed out and people are experiencing a [00:04:00] general sort of weariness against labor agitation. And, but the, but the bosses. Don't seem to mind this.

This is how this guy, Franklin Gowan, comes into the picture. Gowan was, uh, I spoke about him in the first few parts here. He was born an Ulsterman, a Protestant Ulsterman. He was sent to a Catholic college because his father was incredibly, uh, he was for religious tolerance and liberation. And he's brought in as a lawyer for these coal executives because they need a legal excuse to bring in troops.

Uh, this starts his involvement in the coal region, and this starts his involvement with the railroads and, and with the whole. Um, the whole economy in the area in general, and he's ends up being 1 of the biggest players in the story to come. Uh, so almost right away. The, the fury [00:05:00] over these troops. pretty substantial.

A bunch of people get killed. There's a guy, Peter Monaghan. He's killed in a fight with, er, sorry, uh, Peter Monaghan gets into a fight with this guy, Tom Barrett. Barrett gets thrown in jail and he gets killed by guards, supposedly. Uh, thanks to the military occupation, the strike pretty much peters out. So, uh, the miners were saying, we'll accept 10 to 15 percent pay cut, not the 33.

Just just let us go back to work. We're all starving. You know, our families are going hungry. Co executives. They say, no, we're going to see this out to the end. Uh, the strike collapses people begrudgingly go back to work. Families are evicted. Uh. They're forced to move, they're forced to go all over the place.

In one of the most famous examples, a lot of these people who we consider Molly Maguires are part of the larger Irish community in Pennsylvania. They actually drift north to Canada and they take part in the Fenian raids. Uh, [00:06:00] Chris, I don't, I don't know if you want to talk about that. No, no, it's such a weird, crazy part of history.

These were Irish Americans who invaded Canada to protest, uh, the treatment of Ireland in, in, in the British empire is a hilarious scene. There's something like 400 different, um, you know, Irish militant nationalists who were full on invading Canada, and both countries had to get together to try and put down this, this strange movement.

It's one of the craziest parts of history. I read about it. I was like, what? Canada was still under the British Empire at that point. Now that you mention it, I, yeah, we didn't declare our independence until like, uh, much later. Um, yeah, now that you mention it, I do. Vaguely remember it. So this kind of reminds, I don't, you guys probably wouldn't know this, but this was like, 10 years ago.

It was a long time ago. I can't remember. And there were Tamils were [00:07:00] protesting what was going on in Sri Lanka, and they shut down a bunch of highways and then they People up here in Canada are like, what's going on here? Like, I don't understand. Like, do you know what, like, why would a Canadian need to know what's, you know, about the conflict that's going on in Sri Lanka, right?

And that's just one of those moments where you go like, I don't understand why they're shutting down the highways. Yeah, this, in this case, it's even. More egregious than that, these people are arming themselves and, and, you know, they kill something like 50 British soldiers in the whole war. It's a really, it's a really crazy thing that happened.

And by the end, there's only like 70. They were hardcore veterans, Civil War veterans, a lot of them. Like, it wasn't just a joke, a couple of mummers. Walk across the border and start, you know, shooting at people. That was a real thing. And wasn't it initially the U. S. government was kind of like, wink, wink.

And then, like, they realized they had to get on [00:08:00] it. I'm sure there must have been something like that. Because at the same time Because they allow it to happen. Yeah, you let 400 armed Irishmen walk across the border. I understand that border security probably wasn't on par is what it is today. But still, that's a pretty egregious thing.

I mean, they wouldn't let 400 people, they wouldn't let 400 armed Irishmen, you know, walk down the street in, in, in Philadelphia in the same time period. Well, what made it crazier is that they, uh, I think they staged off of an island in, um, the Niagara River, if I'm not mistaken. So they were allowed enough to, like you say, 400 Irishman stage and an island.

So they had to have had a lot of boats to get there and then a lot of boats to get to the other side. So there was a, there must've been somebody who was like, you know, let's take a little pot shot at the British, you know, now that the war's over. That's hilarious. Yeah, it's such a crazy part of history.

Uh, and Chris, you wanted to say something? [00:09:00] No, it's just like, I find like, just from reading a little bit of this story, it's a lot of like, oh, like how, like mistreated the Irish were, and there's a lot of that, right? But you see stuff like this and say you're like Anglo Protestant stock, your family's lived here a couple of generations and you see this and you're just like, we didn't have these problems.

And so, you know what I mean? Like, it's understandable, Regal. Like, is this, I don't know, is this something that we really want and, um, we're doing a series on, like, Italian immigration and stuff like that. And when people like Madison, like, Madison Grant was like a, was a super hardcore racist, right? Like, he had, like, racialist arguments for it, but I could understand a general perspective going, like.

Maybe we can just slow it down. Yeah. And I mean, you can make the same argument against like American revolutionaries in the 1770s. You're like, what? Cause you're paying, you're not, you're paying too many taxes. What are you talking about? You don't even pay that much compared to the rest of the British empire.

I mean, and the same [00:10:00] thing in Puerto Rico too. They were like, you can't tax us. How dare you? It was like, but. We're just taxing you the same amount that we're taxing everyone else in our country. So it's that strange dichotomy. I mean, it's, it's the upper versus the lower, and that's the, that's a constant struggle between the two.

And I think that really applies with the Molly Maguires because you think about it. After the civil war, there was a lot of, well, the, during the war, there was inflation and so they had to raise the end because of all the need for the more coal and more stuff like that. So the wages went up, but then when deflationary pressures come in.

Wages should naturally go down. So they had to fight to get the wages to go up during the inflationary times. And then, well, now our wages are like this, who wants to take a cut, even though the, you know, like the macroeconomic situation saying that price. This should go down. I mean, we're going through that same thing.

Now, wages aren't [00:11:00] keeping up with inflation and people want raises to keep up with inflation. But eventually inflation will settle down and who wants to have their, their wages go down once they're at a certain level to keep up with that. I mean, that's like classic Keynesian sticky wages, but it's more than just a theory when it's happening to you.

So you can really see how these. You know, these, uh, workers, you know, they're getting basically screwed on both ends of that. Yeah. Even today. Uh, I mean, I'll talk about this later, the coal mining situation in America. It's a pretty egregious the way the company or the country deals with with coal miners.

Uh, uh, I'm thinking of, I've just I'm researching right now about the, the Harlan county wars in the 1930s in this country. Basically, short story short, uh, miners in Kentucky were trying to unionize. It was [00:12:00] resisted violently by coal operators and local police forces. Uh, and by the end, we're talking like, 2011.

Um, the union succeeds, but Barack Obama passes a bunch of, uh, environmental legislation to counteract the effects of dirty coal, because coal is the dirtiest, uh, beyond anything that you can burn. It's the dirtiest. So there were. Logical steps taken to prevent, uh, coal mining to continue production. But this left the coal miners completely out in the snow.

I think, I mean, there's so much work being done toward marijuana legalization and the first people who get the first crack at a lot of these marijuana postings or jobs or whatever are people who were formerly incarcerated for marijuana charges. So I think it would be a good idea if. When any of this new green legislation comes forward, the first people who really benefit from it should be these coal miners who are completely [00:13:00] left in the dark.

It's not like, uh, their company just has to declare bankruptcy and they can go back, you know, they can go back to their moderately well off lives. The coal miners completely left in the dark. They're left with no money. And in some cases, they were actually forced, were forced to mine for no pay. And they, they stood on the tracks like these Sri Lankans did in Canada of the, of the railroad.

So the, the. Coal that they picked, which was basically using enslaved labor wouldn't be sent away. They wanted to be paid for the, the things that they did. And this is the same thing here. I mean, uh, as far as we've come, there's always farther we can go. And this just shows the level of egregiousness that it could be at first where it is now.

Not that there aren't problems. I just. I think I showed one right there. Coal miners who haven't done anything wrong. They're not trying to destroy the planet. They're not trying to raise sea levels. Not actively, they're just trying to bring home food for their kids and family. [00:14:00] But because of the situation they find themselves in, they're given the short end of the stick, like you were saying, Stephen.

But what do you guys think of that? Do you think that that's a pretty fair assessment with every environmental You know, in environment, green, new deal, whatever that gets passed. Uh, the 1st people who benefit, I think, should be these coal miners and the people who are getting the short end of the stick.

And in all these cases, it was like, when they did the industrialization and Canada and the United States, um, I mean, we can argue whether that was a good idea or not a good idea to switch over to more of a service economy. And, uh. I have my own opinions on that problem is like a lot of the so when they closed a lot of these factories down, I mean, you can pull up the articles.

It's a meme now, but literally a lot of these people thought, like, the people that were working in these factories, we're going to learn how to use computers, or they're going to be coders, or they were going to do this or that. And like, Yeah, if you're in a think tank and you're talking about [00:15:00] people like they're interchangeable, it sounds like a good idea, but the reality is, like, I am assuming a lot of these guys that are working in coal mines, yeah, maybe the managers and stuff like that, slightly different, but the guys that are actually, you know, mining the coal.

They're not going to be working on computers and stuff like that. And I mean, in a humane way, you have to find them something else to do. You just, you have to, right? Otherwise you have what happened in Pittsburgh. You have what happened in all these towns that, uh, became deindustrialized. They, they become hell on earth.

I mean, look at Detroit. It's going to be interesting to see what this trend, because I mean, yeah, it's been since like the, since the seventies and the deindustrialization has hurt really, uh, I mean, I guess you would say more unskilled labor, but now like we're getting into chat GPT and all these things that you can write code in chat GPT that would take 20 coders.

A week to [00:16:00] do, and these AI programs are doing it better and an hour or less. I mean, it's so now that it's creeping into the, like the next rung of skilled labor that has not, that has not been affected by these, these trends. I wonder what's going to happen with that. I mean, so many fields are going to be disrupted through.

AI and things like that in HR and in accounting where they're just not going to need people, you know, armies of people. And it's going to be interesting to see when it creeps into the, to zoomers getting affected by, by all of these trends, you know, what's going to happen to the, to that, to people who, I mean, arguably probably for one reason or another, I have a lot more voice in society.

You know, what's going to happen when they're, I mean, we're, we're starting to see the trends, like job numbers. Most of the, the [00:17:00] increase in jobs has been in the service economy on the lower end of the pay scale. But the, the number of people who are in the 100, 000 job range that are getting laid off, it's like 30%.

It's huge. Wow. Yeah. It's definitely a problem because I mean, I don't need to tell anyone. The historical, uh, parallels to the situation that we're in where people are making or being employed at at bad jobs, and they're forced to get more jobs to make ends meet and, uh, either they run to the far left or the far right.

There's there's really no in between, and they sort of the government sort of forcing the situation on on people. And that's really that's really not okay. I think that before anything, more democracy is what's needed. Uh, in the government and in the workplace and in everyday life. I don't think that there's really a point where democracy can really fail.

If anyone, if [00:18:00] everyone has an opinion, everyone should be allowed to express it. That's just me. Yeah, that definitely opens up a huge, a huge, uh, discussion. Steve here. We are a member of the Parthenon Podcast Network, featuring great shows like Richard Lim's This American President and other great shows.

Go to ParthenonPodcast. com to learn more, and here is a quick word from our sponsors. Yeah, you guys are, you guys are talking about AI and like, you know, like robotics and stuff like that slowly taking away a lot of these jobs. I mean, another repercussion, I think people, um aren't taking into account is physical labor.

I'm not talking about the stuff that the time period that we're talking about in terms of the minors, you know, like the black cloth and the horrible working conditions. And I mean, that was not right, obviously, right? It was extremely bad, but physical labor in terms of just, you know, physically working a [00:19:00] job.

Now, I'm not saying that, uh, people have to do this, uh, for their entire lives. This is. I don't know. It's kind of basically what I do for work, but I think once that's kind of not there, it's not going to be good, especially for men, to be quite honest with you. I think they should, every man should have to work a physical job at one point in their life, just to kind of understand, um, if you think you have it bad at your job, you know, it beats throwing coal in the crate and lugging it up a hill.

You know, like, it really does. I think it has like kind of a leveling effect. It's either you can do the job or you can't do the job. Right? Um, I just think that's something that's, I don't know, people aren't talking about and I don't know, people say it, I don't know, they see it as a liberation and go, I'm liberated from the, uh, you know, the toils of hard labor, but a hard, hard labor in and of itself, I think is a good quality.

And I was thinking too, like that, that connects back to the Molly Maguire's and like this, uh, [00:20:00] conflict between labor and management, like, think about it to the, you know, over the past, the, the de industrialization of the seventies, the eighties, the nineties, and even to the two thousands, like all the people who lost their jobs, are they going to really.

That now the, the managerial class and the coders and the, the accountants and the HR that they're losing their jobs now, like that class distinction has been set up now and they're not going to really care and there's not going to be a lot of room for, uh, forming alliances because they're going to be like, yeah, you made, uh, you know, six figures for all these times while I was, uh, you know, For a gen, two generations now, people have had no jobs, you know, so I think a lot of conflict is going to be coming up and a lot of that conflict really played out in the 1870s where there was such a massive change in the [00:21:00] way the economy worked.

Yeah, definitely. And speaking of the 1870s, uh. Uh, the thing like the Paris Commune just happened, 1870. The Communards rose in Paris, and something like 20, 000 to 100, 000 Parisians were butchered in the street by a reactionary French government. Uh, and this became The the synonymous calling card for all forms of agitation.

They blame the great fire in Chicago on on communards. They, they, they compared the, the Sioux nation, which was fighting their last rebellion in the, in the plains of Dakota and, and, and stuff to, to the reds. They were like, these were the first and that's, it works out that they were literally red men.

That's what the, the, at least journalists and everything called them. Uh, and they were like, this is red society in America, and we need to stop this out. So Americanism can start to flourish again. And that was how this whole, [00:22:00] uh, uh, scenario was sort of, uh, Uh, placed in and and throughout the late 1860s, uh, early 1870s, the Molly Maguires were very active.

So there's a guy, David Muir. He's killed. He shot through the heart and he stabbed repeatedly. There's this guy, William Pollack. He's on the road with his kid. Uh, he gets bushwhacked, uh, uh, he gets shot in the back, but somehow he's managed to, he manages to turn on his attacker and during their hand to hand struggle, his son is just like pummeling this dude over the face with a horse whip, uh, who's only 14 years old.

So, so good on that kid. He was, uh, seemingly raised pretty well that he was able to defend him and his father in that situation. Um, so following that, yeah. There was a period of calm. This is because there were no major peasant holidays in between. So the 2nd, December starts up. Boom. There's another killing.

Uh, a company store was ransacked. Uh, Philip Warren's [00:23:00] his house was ransacked to his wife was held at gunpoint terrorized. 1866, same exact thing. It's more of the same. The, uh, on April 2nd, two strangers, complete strangers arrive in Mahoy Township, and they shoot a mine owner's son in the face. This kid, uh, or I assume young adult.

I'm not sure how old he was. He manages to stay alive. And he, he fights off these two and one of them gets killed in the, in the melee. Uh, this shows pretty clearly that Mali's were working across county lines. They would travel north and south across county, uh, territory and commit hits based on, you know, what this guy said about this mine operator or what this member said about this company store.

Uh, and this is how things happen for a lot. So, to counteract this, the Pennsylvania state legislature goes to an unprecedented, uh, uh, uh, new level. They give [00:24:00] private military powers to the coal executives and they create the coal and iron police. This, um, as you might expect, uh, was not a very, uh, good institution.

They mostly targeted people for labor agitation of any kind. I mean, maybe some of the people they arrested were genuinely. Awful people, and that's definitely possible. Uh, but for the most part, a good portion of the people they went for were, you know, community men about town who had a voice who weren't going to be cowed by, you know, the coal executives and what they wanted.

Um, uh, this was compared at the time to feudal retainers. So who, who, I mean, today, who knows what it would have been compared to? I mean, it probably would have been compared to is the Wagner group, which is what we talked about a little bit before, and it goes a step further. The guy, uh, what Mark Bullock, he says, basically.[00:25:00]

That there was a colonized island in the midst of the Pennsylvania Commonwealth. So, uh, they've given up all forms of control. Um, so for months, as these strikes go on, the, the companies just keep the mines open. They're like, we're going to keep the mines open. We're going to get rid of the worst. And we're going to bring in new people.

We're going to bring in people from England and Wales. When they bring in these miners, they're also complaining about, you know, rigorous work schedule, lack of pay, you know, no pay for putting up beams of protection, et cetera, et cetera. Um, and they're like, what's the problem? So, eventually the coal operators just go broke.

They run out of money. And this sort of opens the door for this guy Gowan to come in, uh, before he's able to come in and take over everything, a union rises. This is one of the first, uh, major mining unions, especially in the state of Pennsylvania. This was the WBA or the Workmen's Benevolence [00:26:00] Association.

Um, it was headed by an Irish miner named John Siney. He only recently moved to America. He immigrated from England, uh, born in, in, in County Leash. He was, he immigrated to England and then he immigrated once more to America in 1863. And this was a clear sign that things were changing for the Irish community in Pennsylvania and the country at large.

It wasn't just some Irish thing anymore. The WBA was, uh, incredible in the fact that it allowed all nationalities to participate. Uh, any kind of person can join this, uh, Workmen's Society and, and receive, um, benefits through it or support. Um, with the rise of the WBA, you see immediately Molly Maguire killings fall off a cliff.

In four years, there were two. Uh, that's almost unheard of. Every other year we've talked about so far, there's been at least 10, uh, if not more, [00:27:00] uh, uh, uh, uh, MALDI related killings. So what does this say? I think this says, and uh, when we talked earlier in, in our first part, uh, Chris was asking, what's the point of all this?

I don't, I don't get it. I don't know. I don't know where to, what to make of this. I think what to make of it is that when, when this union came, violence fell off a cliff. And when unions spring up in anywhere across the planet, violence, especially labor related violence, falls off a cliff. That's not to say there aren't, uh, places where corruption can sneak in and organized crime can take over.

I mean, my grandfather was a teamster under Hoffa. So he, I know full well about the many abuses that could take place when unions are given too much power. But if you treat them as equal. Uh, equal institutions, equal associations. You see, uh, violence fall off a cliff. Uh, any country, you can name it. Uh, [00:28:00] violence has fallen off dramatically once union rights are preeminent in the, the state's thinking.

Talk about a place like Italy. In the 1890s, the, the Fasci movement was huge and they were these violent agitators, much like the Molly Maguire movement. Um. And what happens after they're crushed violently by this guy? Crispy, uh, new prime minister comes in. He allows the right to strike. He allows unions the right to organize.

He allows collective bargaining and instantaneously wages go up. The livelihoods of people go up and the economy flourishes, not just flourishes. I'm talking about Italy has the second highest growth rate prior to World War I than Japan. Every other country, it outpaces. It outpaces Great Britain, it outpaces France, even the United States.

Uh, there's not a more powerful, uh, economy besides Japan who's going through the Meiji Restoration at this time. So this to me is the [00:29:00] point. I think union rights, when they're introduced, They mitigate violence on a huge scale, but what do you guys think? Oh, I was going to say, like, you brought up, I mean, the problems with the unions.

I mean, one big part of our show, really, uh, Organized Crime and Punishment, is talking about organized crime and unions and the corruption that it can breed, right? Um But you, but at the same time, like, if you know you're dealing with, say, characters, say, from the mafia, I'm just going to use this as an example, you're less likely to screw around.

Are you not? I don't, that's, uh, because you don't know who's going to be knocking on your door, right? Um, but in terms of like, say, like the owners and say, union reps being able to communicate with one another, um, better if, uh, the unions have a bit, uh, more power. Yeah. I would generally agree with that. I mean, I'm not, I'm not the, I don't know, like, I didn't grow up with, like, the Teamsters Union and stuff like that.

[00:30:00] Right? So, like, I have, like, an interesting, I don't know. I don't know how exactly how to feel about unions because, like, I hear sometimes, like, You know, somebody joins the union and then I hear what they're getting paid in terms of what, uh, he's like somebody at work mentioned their, their husband's like a carpenter or something, or he's doing, I don't know, something.

He's in the union and they're paying, um, I think it's like 70 an hour. And I go, I don't think that's sustainable. You know what I mean? Like, I just, I don't think that's, you know what I mean? Like, long term, I don't think that wage is sustainable. I know up here in Oshawa, where I currently am right now, there's a big GM plant, and they basically shut the entire plant down for, I believe it was 2 years to basically get all the old workers out.

And then they brought it back up. Then they opened it up again, and I think they're making a truck and 1 other vehicle out of there and they brought all new workers. And I mean, 1 of the reasons that they got rid of all the old workers, you had guys that have been working there for, you know, 30 [00:31:00] years, right?

And literally their job is to, like, say, put the tires on the car when it's going through the assembly line. And some of these guys were making close to 50 an hour. And I go, I don't know. You can't. Run a profitable pro plant at those wages, only a few dollars, not more than three or four dollars a day. And they weren't even paid based on like rate age or wages or anything.

They were paid on tonnage. So it depended on how much coal you literally. Mind and of course, every single dynamite charge you use to displace call that was taken out of your paycheck. You broke a piece of equipment that was taken out of your paycheck. You, you, you know, your thing went off on your headlamp.

You had to replace that. That's coming out of your paycheck at the end of the week. And this is in the movie, this is one of the best scenes in the entire movie. Uh, he's getting his paycheck. And the guy in the nice suit is saying, You used three things of, uh, dynamite. You had to replace, [00:32:00] uh, a wick on your thing.

And you have, um, you had to replace a bunch of boards. Here's 23 cents for the whole week. And that was literally all the money he made and and Richard Harris is just there staring at him like stunned. Like, what are you talking about? And this was a whole lineup of people that have to just sit there and bear all these expenses that they shouldn't have even been charged.

I mean, realistically, this should have come out of the company's paycheck at least. I think that's at least a little bit fair. They're forced to come home with 23 cents or in some cases. Oh, I don't know. The place that they work at. Well, yeah, I mean, it's it's circumstances like that, where you look at it and go, like, organized labor in terms of fighting against some of these injustices.

It makes sense, right? Um, it more so my commentary is kind of like how modern unions are kind of running. And I just use the wages as an example. And people, I don't know, people will say, like, push [00:33:00] back and say, well, you're like a bootlicker or something like that. But I think they just think objectively, you know, like, you can't.

Yeah. It's not sustainable to be paying a guy, you know, 55 an hour just because he happened to work there for 30 years to put a tire on a car. It's just not, the company can't be profitable. And at the end of the day, like it, it has to be like a symbiotic relationship, right? They can't be just all about the workers and it can't be all just about the owners.

It really has to work together because if the owners are not making a profit. Right? How can they justify keeping the workers and vice versa, right? This is what happened in England with the, uh, the miners there and Margaret Thatcher, right? People can say whatever they want about Margaret Thatcher, but the, um, coal miners in England at the time, these were not profitable endeavors.

They just weren't. And regardless of whether you think what she did was right or not right, you know. Because I have a lot of respect for her because she decided on a course of action and she stuck to it, you know, and that's [00:34:00] an example of where it becomes way too much in one direction. Really at the end of the day, and people talked a lot about this throughout history, right?

You want to have like a symbiotic relationship kind of where like the owners are respecting the workers and the workers are respecting the company. Yeah, I really, it really boils down to it when there's an imbalance in the labor market, those people, the, the workers in those Pennsylvania coal towns, there's nowhere for them to go.

It's not like they could pick up and go to the next company. So the company really did have them over the barrel. But then when it, like Chris was saying, when things get out of balance in the other way. And labor has so much power over the companies, then the companies wind up folding because they can't pay those, those wages, do those imbalances just have to work them out and they suck at the time that it's either going to, it's going to be bad for.

Everybody at some [00:35:00] point when those labor, when labor versus management breaks down, but eventually it's going to work itself out. Like, I think almost we want, like, we want everything to run smoothly, but sometimes it just doesn't. And I mean, I keep bringing it back to how things now with the industrialization.

Yeah, it's 40 years and it's, it's really crushed, like in a lot of places, two generations, but in the grand scope of things is 40 years, a long time. As far as historical trends go, it's really, really bad for individuals on the micro scale, but in the macro scale, that's just how these things work out. Yeah, but, and that's obviously no consolation for someone who's just working and it's like, wow, I, I have to work three jobs just to get my kids into like a decent school or something, you know, uh, uh.

Like you were saying today, huge change in the market, huge change in the way America makes money. Now we're mostly a service, [00:36:00] uh, uh, service style economy where previously we were industrialized. Uh, I'm in the process of actually researching vociferously for, um, uh, uh, the ninth, my 1930s episode. It's going to cover the thirties, forties.

Um, and there is exactly like what you were talking about, Steve, where labor is given too much power, not out of, you know, like a shifty sort of double dealing kind of way, but genuinely, they were trying to give workers power. But what ended up happening, and FDR readily admitted to this, uh, America became a cartel economy.

These unions became cartels. And the companies that served them became sort of like, uh, the drug fiends. So the, the drug fiends would do anything possible to keep the cartels happy. Which left the government happy, but this led to the massive recession of 1937, which was, which was a huge deal. I mean, [00:37:00] there were questions if FDR was even going to get reelected for his third term.

Uh, we don't think about it now, but it's a, it's a huge part of American history. And there was actually a very, uh, uh, well known, uh, uh, Sort of report a statistical analysis done. Uh, I'm just trying to remember who did it. I think it's UCLA, but he basically, this guy basically puts forward the argument that FDR prolonged the Great Depression through his interventionists economic policies.

That might be the case. I'm not arguing that that's either here or there. I'd suggest reading. The, the, the study, because it goes into way more detail than just that. Obviously, there's more than that. He makes a point to point out that toward the end of his presidency, FDR changed his mind on a lot of these things.

And a lot of these same, uh, ideas were shifted and, and, and changed to a more even middle keel sort of place. Um, but basically what ended up happening is, is like what I was saying, it [00:38:00] became a, a, a cartel and that's obviously not good. But it's obviously not good when, you know, private industry is given complete control over their employer.

Uh, and I think it helps to explain how organized labor and organized crime weren't actually the strange bedfellows. They actually, it actually made perfect sense. Just like how organized crime and law enforcement aren't strange bedfellows. It makes perfect sense. They work with each other. Constantly. I mean, it's a, it's a basic relationship.

It can be symbiotic. It can be incredibly detrimental. Steve here. We are a member of the Parthenon Podcast Network, featuring great shows like James Early's Key Battles of American History Podcast and many other great shows. Go over to ParthenonPodcast. com to learn more. And here is a quick word from our sponsors.[00:39:00]

You really do lay out, Joe, those two dichotomies of where, in the 1870s and in the earlier, earlier than that, where these corporations had so much control, and then it swings in the other direction. And I think that you really have to think about, like, hopefully people are looking at these things and trying to figure out, you know, what can we do?

To stop it from swinging so much because then when things do swing to such a degree, that's where, how you were saying earlier is that people either go to the extreme left or the extreme right or some sort of extreme that doesn't end well for everybody. Yeah, exactly. It's all about balance. It's all about middle ground.

I mean. Even the argument like, oh, I want a complete socialist economy. I want a complete capitalist economy. Those are completely unfeasible, uh, uh, uh, structures. You can't, I mean, even when Adam Smith was writing Wealth of Nations, he was writing it at, right at the start of, of the [00:40:00] Industrial Revolution in England.

So he needed, he was writing about something that was already passing him by. Same thing with Marx. He was writing about socialism from an early industrialized perspective. He wasn't writing about it in the future where, oh, the AI is going to take over people's jobs. He wasn't thinking about this. He was thinking about, like, sewing machines taking over people's jobs.

I mean, it, it's literally, that's literally the, this. Yeah, no, it's the truth. All right, people. I mean, it's good to read the original thinkers, obviously, right? Like, especially there's like a lot of people will claim like, oh, I'm a socialist or, you know, like, I'm a fascist or something. You're using, like, the, the 2 extreme rights and then you talk to these people and like, have you, did you.

Have you actually read Benito Mussolini's book? Like, did you actually read Karl Marx? I know for sure a lot of the times they're lying, because if you actually tried to sit and read Das Kapital, God bless you, I've tried. I got through some of [00:41:00] it. But it's, it's not a fun read at all. Look, Joe, now that we're moving into the 1870s, tell us a little bit more what was going on at that, uh, at that time.

So, through the whole early 1870s, you have this guy, Franklin Gowen. He's buying up everything. He's buying up the canal, which was the main, uh, exporter of coal previous to this. He's already been placed in charge of the, the Reading Pennsylvania Railroad. Um, and he's starting the process of buying out the legislature.

Super easy to do, you know, no problem. That this isn't the issue he's having. The issues he's having is with the union, the WBA, uh, which is now basically a statewide institution, has a lot of power, has a lot of, uh, I guess, progressive congressmen who are on their side, pro labor congressmen, whatever you want to call them.

Um, and he's buying up all this stuff. He's also trying to buy up all these [00:42:00] individually owned small, um, uh, businesses, but right before the 1870s, I should just mention this. There's this massive disaster, uh, massive mining disaster for the time. It was the deadliest in United States history. It's in 1869 at a place called Avondale in, uh, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, uh, 110.

Uh, miners were trapped when a single shaft mine collapsed on them. Uh, they basically suffocated in the, in the collapse, like whole townships came to try and save the people still inside, but there was no hope. Um, uh, in, in response. Or, well, right before that, there was actually a safety bill in Pennsylvania state legislature that would have, uh, demanded a 2nd exit to your mind.

It would have demanded a safety instructor for your mind. It would have, uh, another 1 would have demanded, [00:43:00] uh. Fencing around an empty hole, for example, all of these were rejected by the state legislature. The guy who rejected it is this guy, Samuel G. Turner, who said, I can't only remember, but 1 instance where fire damp explosion has hurt a single minor.

So, because he can only remember the 1 time when it happened, he decided to, uh, Vote against this bill. Uh, basically his words are recounted. His life is in danger. Um, and he ends up passing a safety bill through the house. He loses right away. So at least democracy works a little bit, I guess. Um, at this time, the Mali's are basically underground.

I mean, they're letting the union do their thing. Their main face is the ancient order of hibernians. So that's what they're mainly doing. They're helping out Irish people in town. They're helping out, you know, Irish people in local politics because the Irish, they latch on to local politics, uh, very easily.

I mean, [00:44:00] they become sheriffs, they become mayors, they become. You know, state senators, et cetera, et cetera. And they have a huge avid base because Irishmen will always vote for fellow Irishmen, um, almost exclusively. Even this guy, Gowen, he's voted for exclusively by Irishmen during the Civil War. So, uh, 1870, Gowen, he's forced to sign a contract with the Union because rail unions are, uh, striking or, or threatening to strike in solidarity with the WBA.

He signs another one. And, but in the north anthracite fields, they're, um, they're still, uh, they're still under control of separate mining institutions. And these mining institutions are saying we're going to need to cut wages. So they strike against John Siney's wishes. Um, it was very effective, but this is when Gowan puts the hammer down.

He, he raises freight rates [00:45:00] 100%. He closes down the canal he just bought, and he starts buying up even more territory with these dummy companies. Um, by the end of 1874, he has 100, 000 acres of, of prime coal mining real estate. Uh, and, and this was basically in a single movement, he became like the kingpin.

Uh, and this basically crushes the strike. They agree to arbitration and they all begrudgingly, everyone begrudgingly returns to work. So, by 1873. Gowen is meeting with, he meets with Alan Pinkerton. Uh, I assume everyone knows the Pinkertons famous private detective agency. Uh, he he's famously also this guy, Alan Pinkerton, he delivered, um, information to the union on like military movements.

He claimed that like the Confederate army was like 200, 000 strong outside of Richmond and, and. This is what made George McClellan pee his pants [00:46:00] and, and run as fast as he could away from there. Uh, but he be, he's like this incredibly conservative, like, tough on crime. Like, he would get visibly, like, he would visibly shake when he heard about certain crimes.

Like, if he heard about, like, a, a really bad break in or something, he would become visibly angry and, like, red in the face. He was a real, like, crusader. Here's about this from Gowan almost right away. He's like, yes, let's stop this movement. We need to we need to end it where it's that where it where it is right now before it gets even worse.

He fingers, uh, uh, 1 of his detectives guy named, uh, James McParland. He, um, this guy is an Irish Catholic from Ulster, so he fits the part perfectly. Uh, and his job is to go undercover into school, kill county infiltrate the Molly McGuire movement. Uh, report on any crimes or anything committed and and through this investigation, uh, he will end up bringing [00:47:00] down the Molly Maguires.

So he arrives in October 27th, 1873. He showed up. He said he was an itinerant Irish worker. He was just on the lamb and he was accused of murder. Supposedly got into a fight with this guy and that was his cover story. He's almost discovered like right away. The second he shows up in, in, in school, kill.

He's almost discovered by, uh, uh, uh, a barman who I assume knew him, uh, from, uh, you know, time previous, he gets off Scott free there. He meets up with the body master of, uh, I forget what County it is. But he, he meets up with this guy Lawler, who makes him a part of the HOA, and then the Molly Maguire movement.

Uh, he is then made the note taker, because he can read and write. No one seemed to question this. They just were like, okay, you can read and write. Sure. Uh, take all the notes. This made it incredibly easy for him to, you know, dig up dirt and, and keep [00:48:00] track of everything that was going on. And it made him an integral part of every meeting.

I mean, he was there when they decided when to give out blood money for, for, for a hit and when to, to do this and to do that. And he kept notes on all this stuff. Now, he wrote a book following this, actually, about the whole situation. Now, a lot of people claim he was actually, like, an agent provocateur.

Like, he was working to sully the good name of the HOA and the Molly Maguire movement. Which, previous to this, genuinely wasn't very violent anymore. I mean, this was, they put on their public face. And the Molly Maguires was, you know, something they brought out if they really needed to threaten someone. Um.

But through this whole time, they weren't really necessary, the Molly Maguires. I don't know, what's your opinion? Was he there to be an agent provocateur, or was he just legitimately investigating what was going on? I think it's a little bit of both. I think that it was this and that. I don't think [00:49:00] that there was one clear answer there.

Because, I mean, if you look at a picture of this guy, he's like, he's steely, determined stare. He seems like the kind of guy. I mean, I don't know him personally, uh, but he seems like the kind of guy to, to go to any length to advance his station. And, and this is sort of how he's portrayed by Richard Harris in the movie.

He's this guy will go to any length to just get a little bit ahead because he's been, he's been stepped on his whole life. And that's sort of what he, he, um, he looks like genuinely and, and, and just following him. The, the Molly Maguire's, uh, he would use the same archetype to bring down other movements.

Like, he's made, uh, in the early 1900s, he's made the head investigator for this bombing in Nebraska, I think. And he uses this bombing of this disgruntled employee against his boss. Um, to to pin it on the entire international workers of the world movement, the IWW [00:50:00] and he accuses the head of the IWW as a part of this conspiracy.

He accuses, you know, it's the same. It's the same, you know, strategy. Basically, he's there's this labor movement. That's radical. It's sometimes violent. Uh, so he went in, he accused them of this and that. In that case, it didn't work. All the people accused got off. But in this case, it works to the nines. And that's because of how violent things become, uh, following the long strike of the 18, of the 1870s.

So this strike lasts like 5 months. It's a 5 month long strike. Um, throughout it. I mean, people get more and more disheartened as time goes on, uh, and, and the strike is basically brought on by Gowen. He's been hoarding coal this whole time, even though he owes tens of millions of dollars to, you know, loaners and banks and stuff for all the, all the [00:51:00] land he's purchased.

Um, He's been hoarding coal this whole time. And this is the, this is the final nail on the coffin for the WBA. The WBA, it falls into lesser hands. It falls into the second in command of the, the movement because John Siney is elected the head of the, uh, the, the 1st president of a national. Miners union, which represents, which represented all minors, uh, at the time, or at least attempted to, but I, so I'm not sure.

Yeah, I mean, there, there was other, um, corners on the market that had happened at roughly that time. It was a golden fist with gold at, um, more or less that time. Like that was a going. Yes. Yes. That's around that same time. Yeah. You know, and it was almost like a game of chicken with themselves to if they can.

Do it like if they can hold off everybody long enough to make it work at the end before everything like can just colossally blew up in their face. [00:52:00] Yeah, it was basically a very long game. What did you say a game of chicken? That's that's perfect. It was like, who's gonna who's gonna flinch 1st? Who's gonna who's gonna let slip the their hand?

Who's going to give it all up? You know, I think that was that's a very good analogy. I think it's interesting, too, with that guy who's basically going undercover, it's different when it's being done, I think, by the companies and through this private company of the Pinkertons, they have a different goal at the end of the day than say, the police or the FBI, the FBI has to do things in a certain way with like Joe Pistone, that you need to get convictions at the end and the way Gather evidence throughout that process is going to, we're really at the goal of the companies is just to end the strikes so they can operate in a different way.

So, like the, is it, is he an agent provocateur or is he not? It's kind of the same different sides of the [00:53:00] same coin, I would think. What do you think of that? Yeah. Which side are you on? I mean, that's really what it comes down to. If you're on the side of the company, it makes perfect sense for, for this guy to be going through and he's doing, he's doing the Lord's work.

I mean, these people agreed to, to work for this amount of money for this amount of tonnage rate. And now they're trying to go against an agreement that was made between a company and, uh, uh, an individual. Uh, I guess from their perspective, they would say. Well, this agreement was made under duress, if anything, I mean, we have just as much a right to associate with ourselves as you have a right to decide coal prices for the whole market or gas prices or, or whatever.

Yeah, and you make an agreement. Does that agreement last forever that we have to basically take it? You know, I think that's the next, the next step to it. Probably the most bizarre thing for Anyone listening to this podcast or researching this is just all these private entities doing all this stuff.

Like, it's a private, [00:54:00] uh, detective company that's doing this and the company has its own private police force. It's, you know what I mean? Like, the company's like, it's. I mean, we just don't, I mean, we're starting to see that a little bit offline. We talked to me, I think I mentioned Blackwater and we mentioned like the Wagner group, which was like, I don't know, like these semi private armies.

I mean, I think it's something that we're going to start seeing a little more often, probably not within our lifetimes, like Amazon having like an army or something like that. But we're seeing kind of shadows of that with private security. And I can't think of the name of it. And I probably don't want to say it to get on the wrong side of them, but the government is even using them as security instead of police, because police have do things a certain way, you know, they can't violate your rights completely openly where these companies, even though they're.

Working for the government. It's kind of like a layer because, because these [00:55:00] companies are working for the government, they're supposed to follow the rules in a certain way of like, you know, not, uh, uh, trampling on people's constitutional rights, but because they're a private company, you have to sue the company.

And then if you. You have to like go through the company before you can sue the government. A lot of companies are starting to use these companies because it incites them from a lot of liability and the company is, is insulated. It's, you know, it's not full blown where the, the private security is basically.

The police for a county like Carbon County or Lucerne County, but you can definitely see that there's some, some similarities. History isn't repeating itself, but it's singing a similar tune. So what happens as we get to the pretty much the end of the Molly Maguires? So the long strike's over. It is 1875.

Uh, it's been it's been [00:56:00] defeated. Everyone goes back to work. They have to accept whatever Gowan agrees to pay them. People are blacklisted. You have 2 choices. Now you leave change your name or you starve. I mean, those are really the 2 options in front of people, uh, in the 2 months after the long strike.

There are 6 Molly McGuire assassinations. So, I mean, if this isn't a clear example of we've lost, you know, the, the little bit we were given, or we were allowed, we had to take, uh, now we have to, we have to go back to the old ways. We have to go back to the hard men who, who wait in the night. And, and this is one of the, I think this illustrates the point perfectly.

This was a notice left on a, I think a mineshaft or something, and it's written in Irish Brogue, so it says, I am against shooting as much as ye are, but the Union is broke up, and we have got nothing to defend ourselves with but our revolvers, and if we don't [00:57:00] use them, we shall have to work for fifty cents a day.

So this was a very stark choice for the people, um, who, who, who were living there. I mean, they're, they're living in this supposedly new world where, um, you know, things were supposed to be different where, you know, we, we fought to make men holy. Now we're fighting to make men free. That's supposed to have happened already.

Uh, and now they're subjecting people to basically Amount of money you would pay to refurbish tools or something. I mean, 50 cents is nothing. Uh, on top of this, there was anti Irish mob violence as well. So you see vigilantism and start to creep back into the Irish community where. Uh, Protestant Irish people or, uh, different ethnicities altogether are actively violently attacking Irish people.

In the worst case, Jack Kehoe, who is the [00:58:00] new head of the Molly Maguires, is, um, his, uh, brother in law is murdered. He's shot 15 times, dragged out of his house, shot 15 times. His, uh, sister in law, or his sister. Is murdered as she's pregnant. She has a, uh, a baby. She's shot in the chest and, uh, his, his wife.

Um, his mother in law is pistol whipped. Uh, so she, I guess, got off relatively scot free, but this was a really horrifying event in the movie. It's it's basically tame, uh, what happens? I mean, they're both asleep and they both get shot while they're sleeping and the baby already exists in this. The, the, the, the baby is still Inside the, the sister.

Uh, so the Mali's and the AOH, they begin to fall apart after this. This was the last act of violence that we can point toward or against the Mali's before the situation just becomes, uh, [00:59:00] impossible. And this has to do with McParland. He returns from exile, from being undercover for 3 plus years, collecting all this evidence.

Uh. And charges are brought plenty of people. I mean, 20 plus people are charged with connection to the Malini movement or conspiracy to commit murder. Uh, Gowan actually serves as the lead prosecutor. So this was at a time when you could still, uh, uh, serve as a prosecuting attorney, even if you were a private citizen.

And he says during this, um, during this trial, this trial. really sham of a trial. I mean, it was packed with, uh, conservative Dutchmen and, and Quakers from, from the, from different parts of Pennsylvania. Uh, he says, this very organization that we are now for the first time exposing to the light of day. Has hung like a pall over the people of this country.

Behind it stalked darkness and despair. Brooding like grim [01:00:00] shadows over the desolated hearth and the ruined home. And throughout the length and breadth of this fair land was heard the voice of wailing and lamentation. Nor is it alone those whose names that I have mentioned. But it is hundreds of unknown victims whose bones lie moldering over the face of this country.

So this was a very, like, powerful statement. I mean, his whole, like, diatribe was actually turned into a very popular pamphlet following this, Ga Gowen's diatribe, because it is very much fire and brimstone, you know, like Chris was saying, I can't, you can't help but think that he's kind of cool, right? I mean, I, I'm doing one about, I just did a, uh, an episode on, on Blair Mountain.

And there's this guy in the, during the Battle of Blair Mountain, this is the largest labor uprising in American history, uh, this guy, Don Chaffin, he's the sheriff slash, you know, uh, medieval baron of this [01:01:00] county in West Virginia. And he is the single worst human being I think I've ever read about. I mean, racist, violent, a drunk, everything that you can think of this guy is, but you can't help but be like, God damn it.

You're kind of cool. I, I, I don't like that. I don't like that that's the case. But just for example, this guy, a minor walks into his office, pulls a gun on him. He says, Don Chafin, I'm going to shoot you dead. And Don Chafin, he pulls out his own pistol, cool as anything, and he says, Go ahead, we'll hop into hell together.

Like, this is the kind of guy, That's cool, I can't, I can't help it, I'm sorry. I, I, But this is the kind of guy that Gowen is too, They share a lot of similarities. Um, so the first, They're all found guilty, obviously. There's no question. It takes like 20 minutes for the jury to deliberate. Um, the first round of hangings is set for, uh, uh, the Day of the Rope.

This is Black Thursday, June 21st, [01:02:00] 1877. Ten Molly Maguires, supposed Molly Maguires, a lot of these were just AOH members and union guys and stuff. They all hang together. Uh, among their number Uh, is not Kehoe Kehoe hangs, uh, individually. He is charged with an age old murder that happened during the Civil War or something.

Uh, that was like a bar fight that ended in in someone getting, like, stabbed to death or something, but he was charged with this in connection with being the head of the Molly McGuire movement. Um, he tries to argue for years, uh, against his, uh, against his. Hanging. It doesn't work. He gets killed in 1878 and there are about 10 more following that 2 of the worst.

Uh, it were these 2 guys, they were both accused Molly's, uh, they had their sentences reprieved for, I don't know, like, a day or a few months or whatever by the governor at, like, 1037 at [01:03:00] 1035, they were led to the gallows. So there's this. Time in between where this messenger is furiously banging on the door to try and be let in before this execution can happen and and basically they hear this guy banging.

They assume it's a distraught relative who missed the who missed the time, you know, and they don't answer it until they already are dropped. And so these 2 people are hanging switching because both of their necks don't break. So they're both twitching on the end of a line like fish, and as they finally let this messenger in, and the sheriff reads it, and instead of cutting him down, he takes his time, he's reading the whole thing out, he's like, I just received this, and then the guy stopped twitching, he turned over, he's like, I'm as sorry as anyone, and then he blames the priest.

He blamed the priest for, um, speeding up the execution process. So that was a pretty horrifying end to the Molly Maguire movement. So as this is happening, all these Mollies are [01:04:00] being executed together. The entire country is in a state of upheaval, the likes of which has never been seen before. I mean, this is the great railroad strike of 1877.

Something like 100 plus workers are killed, and they're in a lot of these industrialized places where we talked about today. Pittsburgh is a huge spot for revolutionary violence during 1877 to the point where like a National Guard unit is like literally barricaded inside a big, like, uh, I think it's like a train station or something like a big brick train station building and protesters actually like wheel a burning, uh, a wagon.

Full of stuff. So it catches this whole building on fire and the National Guard need to run for their lives as they're getting shot at by the citizenry of Pittsburgh. In Chicago, there's a burgeoning socialist movement, an American socialist movement that's led almost exclusively by immigrants, [01:05:00] German immigrants, but it's also led by one of the most interesting couples in history.

This is the couple of Albert and Lucy Parsons. Albert Parsons was a civil war, a veteran. He fought for the Confederacy. So following the Confederacy, he disowned the whole idea. He disowned, um, um, racism. He became a radical Republican and then he became an anarchist socialist. His wife was a formerly enslaved woman named Lucy Parsons, who was maybe more radical than he was.

And these two basically foment a gigantic uprising in Chicago that kills maybe like 40 people. There's this massive battle called the Battle of the Viaduct between state and civilian forces with sticks and stones and all kinds of weaponry. Uh And in St. Louis, the 1st ever commune in American history is declared, uh, maybe the only 1.

This was started [01:06:00] during the 1st general strike in the United States. Uh, and it was held up and mostly kept alive through German immigration. And German immigration was a huge part of keeping a place like Missouri, a part of the Union during the Civil War. You don't think about it, but, uh, Germans for whatever reason, they said, we need a place that looks exactly like home and it's exactly in the middle.

So they all moved to Missouri and they're like, this is the same. This is. And that's why the Midwest has so many breweries and stuff because of this German influence. Uh, but yeah, the Molly Maguires, 20 of them would be dead in total. Uh, in a final, like, quotation, this is sort of what you were talking about before, Chris, with the private influence.

It just reminded me of this quote. I needed to find it. So, the Molly Maguire trials. We're a surrender of state sovereignty, a private corporation initiated the investigation through a private detective agency, a [01:07:00] private police force arrested the alleged offenders and private attorneys for the coal companies prosecuted them.

The state provided only the courtroom and the gallows. Any objective study of the tenure of the times and the entire record must conclude that the Mollies did not have a fair and impartial jury. They were therefore denied one of the most fundamental rights that William Penn guaranteed to all Pennsylvania's citizens.

And as if to emphasize this point, uh, even clearer, one of the most famous final events Or final acts, I suppose, of of anyone, uh, occurs before he's hung Alexander Campbell or maybe a guy named Tom Fisher. I'm not sure exactly who did it. There's a bunch of controversy over who was actually the one who did this, but he dug his hand.

Above, high above his cell wall, and he said, There is proof of [01:08:00] my words. That mark of mine will never be wiped out. There it will remain forever. To shame the country that is hanging an innocent man. And, as far as we know, that handprint is still there. Uh, a sheriff eventually, or a warden or something, uh, eventually plastered over the handprint.

Uh, but it was very visible well until the 1820 or 1920s, 1930s, when it was finally plastered, I can attest I've seen the hand, the hand. I don't know what this is. I've gone to that jail. It's a museum now, private museum, and he's the curator and he's the curator. I talked to him for like an hour because nobody, I think everybody else was kind of on the ghost tour.

And he was like, anybody who wanted to hear the history, you better take a seat because he was going to tell it to you. The hand cut came back. And so you can take that for what it's worth, but [01:09:00] they plastered over it. Like Plaster, not just painted over it. They plastered over it and anything that they did the hand.

And I guess the Catholic church, either they investigated it or they're still investigating it, that it's like a bonafide miracle, like relic type thing. Wow. So this guy might be Patrick Campbell is he might be on the way to canonization. Yeah, you can go to, uh, Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, and see the hand to this day.

Yeah, this is definitely the thing that got me most interested in the story, because I had no idea that this even existed. I, I, there was a, it's a really terrible reality show, I guess. It's like a ghost hunter show. It's called Ghost Adventures, and there's this This guy, Zach Bagan, who's just this complete meathead.

I mean, he's like, Bro, are there ghosts in here, bro? Are there ghosts? Like, this is, this is how he, like, confronts these ghosts. I'm like, yeah, no wonder nothing has ever happened on one of [01:10:00] your shows. I, yeah, it's, uh, but that's how I first heard about it. I didn't understand the labor context behind it, but then once I started researching it, I was like, oh my god, that's, that's this.

And, and, and, oh my, but yeah, it's an incredible story. I definitely suggest people go to visit that museum because the, the curator, and I wish I could remember his name. He, um, I mean, he will take the time to discuss it with you. And he was great with kids, like very personal one on one in the town of Jim Thorpe is amazing.

It's really like a little jewel inside of Pennsylvania. You can learn so much about. All of this, if you go. Yeah, I guess one last thing I would like to ask is, so the Molly Maguire's, this is kind of the impression that I get is, I'm pretty sure like the ancient order of Hibernia and the labor union, they knew that this was like, kind of like a group that they could use.[01:11:00]

if they needed to. So it's kind of like this, this, the logic of like, you, you guys have brought it up, like the extreme left and the extreme right, where on both sides of the spectrum, they all have this talking point is that you don't punch left or you don't punch right. Do you understand? Do you understand where I'm going here with this?

Where these guys were useful. When you need them, the problem is they weren't a lot of the times they would cause more problems than they, uh, than they were worth sometimes. So you have to find ways to be able to clamp down on them, but you didn't want to get rid of them completely because. They're willing to do things that say other people aren't willing to do.

Would that be, am I far off in thinking that? That's the impression I get.

Steve here again with a quick word from our sponsors.

I don't think so. I don't think so at all. Yeah, you're, you're a hundred percent spot on and I think it goes even further than that. I [01:12:00] think the union and the AOH and the Molly Maguires, they were all the same people. Uh, maybe not in the same level or the same numbers, uh, but the Molly Maguires were A A O H and the A O H definitely had union members as a part of it too.

So, it's like a big giant circle and it, it was a, it was a, an alliance of necessity, uh, I, I doubt that this progressive labor union really wanted to work with, uh, you know, this, this weird racist localist thing that the Molly Maguires were. Uh. But they did it nonetheless, just like labor unions have done throughout history with organized crime or syndicates or, or just street gangs in general.

I mean, throughout this whole period in place like New York City, you saw, like, street gangs vying for, like, the highest bidder and they would show up on the strike day. Uh, either supporting or being against the union, depending on who had the most money, if it was the companies or [01:13:00] if it was the union heads, or if you had a rival gang, they would join the other side at a little less of a rate so that they could get in on, on the, on the fight that was about to happen.

So this isn't some, I mean, it wasn't like a conspiracy. I, I, I, or like, uh, some sort of. Nefarious thing that was unintentional, you know, if they don't listen to us, we're going to send this guy in blackface to his house and he's going to blow his head off. I don't think it was like that. I think it was, um, they were all the same.

It was all 1 in the same. And I think. Irish people realized toward the second and sort of the second half of the 1860s and the early 1870s that they got farther with unions with unionizing and with local politics than they did with shooting people in the face. And that seems to, I mean, no matter how right or wrong you thought they were, uh, uh, it just, it wasn't going to work for them doing that policy.

And that's just for anything. I mean, no matter how right [01:14:00] your opinion is, or wrong your opinion is, if you you're Use violence to justify it, no matter how much violence is used against you or your people. It's not going to get anywhere, especially not in a society like we have where the rule of law, you know, regardless on how much it changes or.

How much it varies from person to person. It still is applicable and people still believe in it. And until that happens and outward violence like this is not going to get you anywhere, especially in a place toward more rights. Yeah, you know, like, I mean, you can use examples where. The violence works, but in this particular circumstance, like exactly what you pointed out, like people have a sense of the rule of law.

It's just not going to work. I mean, you can use, say, Russia as an example, like on the, uh, the socialist revolution, the communist revolution. I mean, the violence obviously worked in that circumstance, right? But that was a failed state for the most part, or I mean, they didn't even really have a [01:15:00] tradition of rule of law.

I think, though, that, like, the rule of law, like this idea that the U. S. has been such a paragon of the rule of law, the rule of law entirely failed in this situation because those minor, the minors and the corporations and the private itch. Police services would have never have been able to do half of what they had done if the, the sheriffs of those towns and the counties that they had just, they allowed it all to happen.

And I mean, it also makes. Oh, sorry. I just, people wonder why like Teddy Roosevelt went so hard against like, say, the robber barons or whatever words you want to use for them, right? I mean, I mean, he saw this stuff, right? Like, you know, you know what I mean? Like, uh, you, you see, like, there's a literally a private company that's prosecuting, uh, minors.

Uh, you know, did murders happen? Yeah. Were they? Yeah, at least that guy. That the, uh, the state, well, [01:16:00] it's not even the state, the private company claim that they did. I don't know. It's a little bit up in the air, whether they did or not. I mean, the handprint seems to. Seems to seems to show that they didn't, um.

But it does make sense, like, later on when they, you know, they start implementing antitrust laws and are worried about these giant, uh, corporate monopolies, um, effectively taking over the legal, like, taking over the country, really, um, the opposite. The opposite end of the spectrum is you mentioned the Teamsters Union early in the podcast.

I mean, that was really the government's biggest concern with the Teamsters Union is it was so powerful and it has so much, uh, influence, uh, in terms of transportation in the country. Then, I mean, they really could have shut down the country if they wanted to easily. And that's not good. It's just not, you just can't have it.

Um, because it takes like a couple of nefarious characters, uh, you [01:17:00] know, maybe with a communistic type bent to get into leadership roles in a union like that. And all of a sudden you're having a full, full blown revolution happening, which was a concern still at the time, right? And even with, like, something like the Teamsters, I would not even worry about, like, a communist taking over.

It'd be more dangerous if one of these super corrupt, you know, uh, I guess conservative union bosses took over. I mean, this is what happened to the IBT, uh, literally. There were Numerous like back to back leaders who are just completely corrupt and stealing from the workers that they were supposed to be the leaders of.

I mean, it really disgusting, uh, uh, horrible stuff that these union heads were involved in, especially part of the Teamsters union. But I guess on the other hand, if you were a Teamster, you would say, Hey, this guy is about as crooked as Nixon. I mean, what's the difference? Uh, that, that, that's probably what a Teamster would say.

I think [01:18:00] there's something naturally baked into unions as well, is that because they're representing the interests, the divergent interest, I mean, basically, if you have a union, every single worker, they don't really have a united, they have a, a theoretical united interest, but really each worker has their own individual wants and needs and the union bosses have to, uh, yeah.

Put all those individual needs together to get a corporate need out of all of those corporate in the, in the sense of a need, uh, a vision that encapsulates all of those needs. But in that individuals are going to get. What they want in some ways, and they're not going to get what they want. I mean, I worked for unions for 15 years and in those negotiations, sometimes it's like, what is this union even doing for me?

Because I'm getting shafted [01:19:00] on this personally, because my own, uh, section. They had to, we were small and the union had to give in for given something to make the bigger deal go through and so they had to give in on some of our individual interests to get the bigger plan through. Yeah. And that that's, it's like a, it's a deal with the devil either way.

I mean, however you want to do it. Uh, but for me, at least, I think union rights are preferable to, to any other sort of, um, even like a, a company union, uh, that those haven't particularly worked very well for the people who've been a part of them, especially when it comes to when the rubber meets the road and it's time to argue.

It's time to really stand up for the people you represent. Uh, that sometimes just doesn't happen, and it sounds like that's what happened, uh, with you there, Steve. I think with the unions, it really depends on, um, [01:20:00] on the circumstance. Like if you are in an, in a job and in a geography where there's a really fluid, uh, labor market where if it sucks, you can jump over to the next company, then the union is really not your friend.

But if you're in a situation where your job isn't fluid and the, the geography doesn't lend itself to being able to move freely from one job, either it's because of the, the nature of your work or the industry or whatever, then unions are helpful for you. It's such an American way of looking at work, too, though.

Like, we're, just the way you're describing, it's like, oh, I'll just move to another state or I'll just get to move to another job, right? But I mean, like, you say you live in a place like Romania or Hungary. That's just not, you just can't do it. Like, there's not, where are you going to move? I mean, I guess you could move to another country, but then there's like a whole process, and it's a different [01:21:00] language.

And, um, I just thought of that, right? Like, uh, I don't know, it's just something, it's the same up here in Canada too, right? People are like, oh, I'm just gonna, up here, it's always like, I'm gonna move further up north to get away from the city. Progressively, just like further up north. It's like the equivalent of you guys, like, I don't know, Gaia, yeah, or something, right?

It's the equivalent, right? Like, I'm just gonna. Keep on going up north and I mean and by just you know, but we're massive countries, right? So that's it's very easy to just move around right and you're in a totally different circumstance or say something like smaller country like Hungary or Romania. It's it's it's not as Quite as easy.

Well, I think too, that in the U S and in probably maybe in the West in general, there was never this idea that in a lot of companies, like in Japan and Korea, where the company had a loyalty to the workers and the workers therefore had, you know, there was a [01:22:00] loyalty between the two. If we hired you, you're going to.

Be treated fairly. And that made the workers feel loyal to the company where you have a company men who worked for the company for 40 years. And that is not a Western ideal. I don't think, I think that the much more corporate mindset, again, using corporate in the group sense that I owe fealty to you and you show fealty to me, maybe more of a.

Feudal thing that really died in the Enlightenment with individual, individuality that just does not exist in modern Western societies. I mean, that's a perfect example. I'm going to bring up the chain of being, I mean, me and you offline, I've talked about this many times in terms of the employee worker type of relationship.

You know, obviously, there's problems with it, but if there's an understanding that the bosses have certain obligations and duties to the [01:23:00] workers, and the workers have an understanding that there are certain obligations and duties to their boss, and it's like a chain, right? That keeps them goes further and further and further down.

And I know it's not popular to look at, say, pre enlightenment thinking, but I think there's. In terms of running like a healthy community or healthy society, it's really not a bad way of looking at it. Um, but it's, it's almost next to impossible for even people to kind of think that way because we grew our country was literally found.

Both of our countries were literally founded on enlightenment ideas. And it's very difficult to think outside of that context. It's very difficult to think outside of the enlightenment and people think like, well, like, you're talking about, like, medieval thought in terms of, like, having better labor relations.

And it's like, yeah, I am legitimately saying that. And I don't know, people think it's crazy, but it's, it's really not. There's a lot of, uh, thinkers, especially, uh, I guess you call them like neo reactionary [01:24:00] type thinkers. But if you look at, uh, stuff like, uh, I believe it's called the NRX, Nick Land, and some of these guys, uh.

They talk about this, uh, this, the chain of being and, uh, and implying some medieval type thought, uh, to the modern world. Uh, I don't know if your audience is actually interested. They're interesting. They're controversial type thinkers, obviously, right? They're going to ruffle some feathers, but They're definitely worth reading, I think, um, and I had another thing to just throw in the mix.

There is, um, how, and especially Joe, since you've dug so much into this, how do you think this applies to today? Can we make, use the Molly Maguire's as a learning tool for what's going on today? Or is it really so different that there really is no way to apply it? I think that the only way you look at history is with a modern lens.

So I think, yes, that this is definitely [01:25:00] a relevant story to today. This shows the absolute extent of how bad it can be, uh, when people Uh, either don't care or are forced into doing something against their will and against their benefit, uh, for the benefit exclusively of a, of a nameless 1, 000, 000 dollar institution.

Uh, I think when you look at things like today, there's a massive push against things. We've talked about AI today against AI and especially you look at the actors, uh, actors equity strike. Uh, or that's happening right now, the, the writers guilt strike that's happening right now. They're arguing for the same stuff.

They want better pay. They want better conditions. And they, they want to know that their jobs are going to be protected against a I, which can easily be turned into what any, whatever number of thing you wanted to, um, uh, back then they wouldn't use a I, they would use, uh, imported [01:26:00] workers or. Uh, they would, they would, um, you know, they would spring 1 group against the other using religion or ethnicity, anything like this.

Um, this is what could happen if if things, uh, are are regressed to this point, not just to this point, but, um, you know, it could it could devolve to this. In a very easy, easy way, I think, uh, violence is very much a part of not just Irish history, but American history. And I think this helps explain at least a part of the violence that both have experienced because whether they were in America or they were in Great Britain, Irish people were treated generally the same for a very long time.

I mean, um, um, Even the idea of Irish people being white is a is a relatively new concept. Even the idea of whiteness is a new concept or blackness. [01:27:00] These are all new terms that are just another, uh, further division point, uh, that we have to get over before you would be a Polack or you would be a Boheme or, uh, you know, or whatever, uh, a Johnny or, uh.

Align me or something. These are the words that they were used or I would have been like, uh, I would have been a day ago. Meet me and Steve. We would have been day goes. Um, so I think this, this goes to show how not only close this is to us, but how the government and corporations at large. It seemed to, uh, uh, when you have a job that is very important to the way the country functions, like, for example, a coal miner, uh, who literally generates.

Energy every single day. I mean, how many people can literally say they generate energy? Maybe if you have like, uh, solar power or something, then you could say you generate a little bit of energy, [01:28:00] but coal miners would generate tons of of coal energy every single day. Uh, and they were treated like some of the worst workers, even in things like media.

They're not represented. I mean, how many, how many coal mining movies can you seriously name right now? I've, I've just watched the Molly Maguire's, but that's maybe the only 1 and that that seriously goes in depth on how coal mining operates. Besides that, I can't really think. I mean, most of the time, think of, like, something like the old West.

We guys thought we talked about that a little bit. Uh. Yeah. Uh, you know, there's cowboy movies, there's farmer movies, there's, there's movies about Desperados and, and Pistoleros and everything. There's no real, uh, portrayals in today's media, uh, this totally important job, this all encompassing, uh, job that literally created the United States as we know it today.

Uh, and I, I've always, personally, just Felt at [01:29:00] home with Ireland. I've always really loved Ireland. I am myself Sicilian and Puerto Rican. So my being is of 2 islands that are still under the thumb of of some superior force. Uh, but Ireland. At least for the most part is, has been rid of British yoke for 100 plus years now.

And that I think is impressive. It goes to show the perseverance of the Irish people, the way they've managed to, you know, uh, flex their culture into such ways to make life even bearable, uh, uh, is pretty impressive. And it's something that it shouldn't be, um, discounted or overlooked or, yeah, Or, you know, Irish people shouldn't just be considered when they first immigrated here is just like, you know, subhuman, uh, you know, uh, because because even after, um, even after this period in Ireland for a long time, the Irish were.

Considered, uh, [01:30:00] basically subhuman. People couldn't understand how the literacy rates were so low in Ireland as compared to the rest of Western Europe. Uh, but what happened? They were given freedom. They were given the right to choose their own destiny and the right to, uh, argue for themselves and. Image quickly rebounded.

They became the Celtic Tiger when they were given their independence because their economy was so fluid and so powerful. Uh, and they dispelled almost immediately all these insinuations about their, you know, uh. Proneness to violence and their, uh, intellectual level and, and literacy rates and stuff.

These all went away basically overnight when they were truly given, uh, you know, self determination and, and that word can mean a lot to a lot of different people. Uh, and, uh, it just goes to show how. how much we have to juggle. We have to juggle these things. We have to juggle all this together. [01:31:00] Uh, it's not just one thing, and it's not just the other, it's about everything.

And it's not just about everything, it's about nothing, which is sort of what the Molly Maguires are, are about. I, I related to you the Hindu proverb at the beginning of the, our talk here, and I think it's just perfect. Uh, it's, it's all the things and none of the things at the same time, but it's not, not the things.

Well, I want to, uh, speaking of labor management relations, I got called into work today. So I think we're going to wrap it up this whole series. I want to thank Joe. He's a friend of mine. He's a friend of ours. And now thank you so much for coming on the show. Uh, you know, just to reiterate, how can people find your podcast?

So my podcast is available wherever good podcasts are downloaded. Um, if you download it on Spotify, uh, each episode has its own individual, uh, series art, [01:32:00] which my partner Melissa, uh, meticulously does. It makes it look very nice. It's very clean. Uh, but yeah, it's Spotify, iTunes, uh, Google podcasts. So look for Turning Tides History Podcast everywhere where you can find podcasts.

Thanks again, uh, Mustache Chris, who joined us in this series. We will definitely be hearing if he's willing to come back on. Uh, I hope that Joe will come back on again because this is a great series right here and I know there'll be more. I'm glad you guys appreciated it. Yeah, it's a fun, it's a fun little part of history that not a lot of people know about, but I think it's pretty important to explain the sort of world we live in.

If you enjoyed what you hear and you, uh, want to spread the message, tell your friends about us so that your friends can become friends of ours. Oh, forget about it, guys. Forget about it.

[01:33:00] You've been listening to Organized Crime and Punishment, a history and crime podcast. To learn more about what you heard today. Find links to social media and how to support the show, go to our website, a to z history page. com. Become a friend of ours by sending us an email to crime at a to z history page.

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Title: Unveiling the Molly Maguires: Crime, Corruption, and Conflict

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Begin Transcript:

[00:00:00] Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment, the best spot in town to hang out and talk about history and crime. With your hosts, Steve and Mustache Chris.

Welcome back everybody. Today, I am joined as usual by Mustache Chris. We're blessed to have our, another member of our crew, Joe Pascone. You'll recognize his voice from other episodes, but you'll also recognize his voice as he is the voice of the. Organized crime and punishment commercial. So thank you so much for joining us today, Joe.

[00:01:00] Uh, I guess to come up with a term, forget about it. No problem. Forget about it. Hey. Joe is going to join us today to talk about a really interesting aspect that brings together different shades of law enforcement, different shades of crime and organized crime, and all of this kind of blurs the line between organized crime and crime.

Crime and the legal system, everything sort of gets blurred together. And that is in the story of the Molly Maguires. It might be a topic that people have heard of or heard a little bit of, but maybe don't know a lot about it, but it's a really critical aspect, but it's kind of nestled inside of many aspects of American history.

And let's, I think the best way to get into this is, let's just get right into it. Uh, Joe, what got you interested in thinking about these Molly Maguires? So the Molly Maguires [00:02:00] first came to my attention. I'm doing a massive series currently on the American labor movement, rise of trade unions, labor unions, and they were sort of the first, they're considered the first labor martyrs in American history.

Um, whether they deserve that distinction, we can get into it for sure. They were, their trial, they were railroaded, it was railroaded through, at the end of it, 20 people hung, uh, in, in, in America. Simply because they were a part of this thing called the Ancient Order of Hibernians. Uh, but, so how do you get into this?

How do you talk about something so complicated with so many levels? Uh, especially about an Irish American secret society with labor union and political organizations a part of it and all the rest. The best way to do that, I think, is with a Hindu proverb from, from India, uh, obviously. So, of course, so I got this proverb from the Mark Bullock book, The Sons of [00:03:00] Molly Maguire, The Irish Roots of America's First Labor War.

In it, the Indian king is Faced with calamity, the prime minister comes to him, says, we need to make a decision on, you know, disease, ravaging the land, catastrophe, whatever war doesn't matter. Uh, he says, okay, sure. Fine. But first I need three blind men and an elephant. Uh, so the prime minister is like, okay, I don't really see the point of this, but let's go through with this.

The three blind men and the elephant are brought before the King and the King asked the three blind men. To describe the elephant for him. So one is trying to put one of the blind men is trying to put his arms around the waist of the elephant. And he says, the, the, the elephant's like a barrel. Another one is trying to measure how high, how tall the elephant is.

He says, no, the elephant's like a tree. The last one is feeling the elephant's tusks. And he says, no, you're both wrong. The elephant is like a spear. So just like the Molly Maguire's and the elephant. [00:04:00] They are all of these things and none of them at the same time, uh, bear with me, . So they were in a sense, a barrel because they insulated and protected the Irish community that they were a part of.

They were a tree because they had branches that extended to neighboring communities and, and neighboring Irish, uh, Irish people around them in coal country and in Ireland originally. Uh, and they were like a spear, because they acted, at least in their eyes, on the community's behest. They committed crimes, they robbed people, they murdered, with the quote unquote blessing of the community.

So that's where we should start here. We could start with the Irish roots, and this is one of the main of three characters I like to describe in this story. The first character is Ireland. The next is America, specifically Schuylkill County and the anthracite region. Uh, and the final character is coal itself and the coal [00:05:00] mining trade practice.

Yeah, so it's really interesting when you dig into each of those, it really is the three characters, and it's kind of hard to believe that Cole is a character, but it really is. Cole is such a huge, huge part of the founding of American industry, and the founding of the America as we know it today, the industrial giant that the North became during the Civil War.

is directly related to coal. Uh, in my previous episode, I cover the coal wars in Colorado, which led to the Ludlow massacre, the battle of Ludlow, however you want to look at it. Uh, but in there, uh, Thomas G. Andrews, I believe is the writer's name. He makes a, uh, incredible point. The cowboy might've quote unquote, tamed the West, but the coal miner won the West more than any other profession.

They provided the cowboy with the gun, the bullets, the The knife, the hammer, uh, you know, the tools of his trade without that, uh, America would still be pretty much a desolate place [00:06:00] where a few thousand people are able to survive. But thanks to coal and the advent of steam and things like this, America exploded, not only in population and in migrant labor, but also in, um, you know, power.

But, yeah, to start this story, first place you have to start, I think, is Ireland, because this is where the the Mollie Maguires first pop their head up. And they don't do it in the traditional coal regions. They do it in the borderlands of Ulster. Uh, those who don't know, Ulster is today, or at least most of Ulster is today, Northern Ireland.

Huge tension, division still between, uh, the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Uh, one of the main defining features of Ulster is a thing called the Black Pig's Dyke. This is in myth mythology, or in local legend, the Irish believe that a massive black pig created the dyke with its tusks, ramming it through the the earth.

Uh, scientists now think that these, that this dyke is actually a [00:07:00] long gone series of fortifications. It belonged to the Red Branch Warrior Brotherhood, which is a super cool name. Uh, at a, yeah, at a place called the Balinamuk, or it's, it's spelled Ball in a Muk, but I believe it's pronounced Ball in a Muk.

Local legend says that this same pig, he was stopped as he was doing his thing. By, uh, a man, who I guess was angry that he was tearing up his field, threw a rock at him, and it stopped the pig in its tracks. And that's why there's this big defile at around this same area. Ulster was originally founded during a mythological legendary race between the O'Neill clan and a rival clan.

The idea was whoever touched Ulster land first won the entire territory. So O'Neill is racing this guy on a boat. They take off from Northern England or Scotland. He realizes pretty quickly he's going to lose. This guy is making way more ground than he is on his, on his ship. [00:08:00] So does O'Neill do the sensible thing and turn around, say, you know, I'll try and get it again.

Uh, no, he chops off his own hand and he chucks it at the beach of Ulster. It touches land first, he's awarded Ulster, and that's how the flag of Ulster became the Red Hand. That's where that's from. So as the O'Neills first arrive and followed, they are followed by a huge minority population of Scott Irish and Anglo Irish.

The closest thing you can compare it to is colonization. They dominated Ulster specifically on a completely economic level. Uh, this domination didn't mean that people in Southern Ireland or Catholics in Ireland didn't hold to their culture. Unless you're like really familiar with history. I mean, Ireland was really Britain's first colony, right?

And unlike like some of the other colonies, or I say, like use India as an example, like they never really tried to replace. [00:09:00] In like Indians or Indian culture where in Ireland, they, there was an honest to God attempt to just replace the Irish. It didn't work, but it's, um, I just think that's interesting.

It's incredible. And no one talks about it, especially people who are proponents of this idea that British colonization was an overall good for the people it happened to. I don't necessarily buy that. Obviously, they did something for the people there. I'm not saying that's not the case, but the fact that something like Irish river dancing has to exist.

For those who don't know, Irish river dancing is done completely with your hands at your side. Because if you were to dance in the traditional Irish style in British Ireland at this time, you would be considered disturbing this, the peace and you'd be thrown in jail. So this was the kind of authoritarian rule that was going on throughout Ireland.

That's why the same customs had to exist. Uh, Ireland also is just completely fundamentally different from England. The way that people work, the way that [00:10:00] people believe, the way that people, um, exist, I'll give you an example in Fermanagh. Uh, the phrase to join work means to start work because you can never, they believe in Fermanagh that you can never truly start work.

You always have to join it eventually. Uh, the people were controlled in Ireland through a thing called the Conacre system. And there's plenty talked about, about absentee landlord ism in Great Britain at this time. And you can definitely find more information about that in countless other sources. One of the first main times that the Irish people try to stand up for themselves is, well, there's countless uprisings throughout history.

I shouldn't say this is one of the main ones, but this is one of the big rebellions led by a guy named Wolf Cone in 1798, also a really cool name. Uh, Basically, what happened, this was a part of the French Revolutionary War. The French sent a few thousand men to Southern Ireland to help with this rebellion.

Now, the, at the [00:11:00] Battle of Bali and Balinamuk, uh, the French are trounced and they're able to surrender. They're given full military honors, but the Irish are completely devastated. They're just wiped off the field. And this is a quote from the, uh, writing after the fact. Terrorists thousands died shaking side that cannon.

They buried us without shroud or coffin. And in August, the barley grew up out of the grave because the peasants, they would have pieces of barley. In their pocket. I don't know, for food to, to plant later, maybe in total 30 to 50,000 people died. Uh, comparatively. The Doti Mayo, um, the uprising in Madrid that's famously talked about, which was brutally put down by Napoleon, that cost the death of few hundred.

You know, the 300 people were executed. That's horrifying. But 50, 000 is, is, is, is a truly staggering [00:12:00] number. So it makes perfect sense that the original Molly Maguire's, the Irish version of this gang, secret society, whatever you want to call them, uh, were founded around the same area in Kavan and Leitrim.

They were, or they at least believe, in essence, they were these reincarnated spirits of the dead at Balinamuk. Around this same area, if you guys are familiar with the show Game of Thrones, um, this is probably where the character Craster is based on, Craster's Keep. How he had all the daughters as his wives, and he would, uh, give the firstborn males to the White Walkers.

This is based on a place called Magslecht. I don't know if that's the right pronunciation. It's called the Plain of Adoration. Apparently, this legendary Irish king, Tígur na mhás, he would ensure that his fields were, were fertile by sacrificing goats, pigs, and in some cases, the firstborn of all the family.

All the families that lived under his [00:13:00] domain. So this is where that scene in or where that setting in Game of Thrones, I believe, is based on. Um, this, this violence is just more to show that Ireland has had anything but a peaceful history. It's been a very violent place since its founding. And even before the English arrived, there were like Danish Vikings and all kinds of people, hundreds of different.

Kings and kingdoms and petty kings that were all vying for control of this island. Um, one of the big things that the Irish were super against was military conscription. They could not stand military conscription, much like the Sicilians down in Italy. That was the big deal breaker. You were not going to conscript Irish people to go fight.

Other Catholics, usually that was usually a big part of it. Um, in 1798, the same rebellion I've talked about, it was led in part by the defenders, which I'm going to talk about later as a secret, another secret society and the ribbon men, [00:14:00] uh, which grew out of the defenders and in turn, they grew into the or the ancient order of hibernians who were also Molly Maguire's.

Uh, if this is confusing, okay. Don't worry, uh, it's Ireland. In Ireland, Karl Marx famously said that, uh, secret societies grow there like mushrooms in a forest. Steve here. We are a member of the Parthenon Podcast Network, featuring great shows like Richard Lim's This American President and other great shows.

Go to ParthenonPodcast. com to learn more, and here is a quick word from our sponsors. It's interesting, uh, the similarities between Southern, uh, Italy and Ireland in some ways, where, you know, Ireland was an occupied country, give or take, for a good chunk of its his like, modern history. Southern Italy, the same thing, and they both have these [00:15:00] Secret societies basically come out of it as, uh, a reaction to the ruling authorities, right?

You have the ancient order, the, uh, Hibernians. And then in Italy, you have, uh, you know, the various different types of mafias, but probably most famously, famously, uh, La Cosa Nostra, right? Which was a secret society. And with the Hibernians, you have, like, the Mollenreguiers, which are, you And depending on how you read it, it sounds like it was like a secret society within a secret society, or the, uh, the Androngita, right?

The Androngita right now in Calabria is, the Androngita itself is a secret society, but within the Androngita So at least from the information that we have, there's a, like a secret society within that secret society. The Adrogata is usually typically known as like probably the most secretive out of all the, uh, out of all the three big mafias in Southern Italy.

Yeah, I completely agree with you. There are definitely a lot of similarities and I think it goes to show how [00:16:00] universal the strain and the oppression of colonization is to the people that it occurs to. And this is, uh, across the Across the globe. I mean, I know you spoke about India, but there were Indian secret societies that were all about getting rid of the British.

That's how the Indian National Army rose to prominence and gained thousands of members in the 1940s because so many people were fed up with British, uh, civilization and their, uh, oppression and the murder of hundreds and hundreds of of Indian people. Yeah, so it's really interesting. You're, um, you're really painting, uh, uh, painting a canvas of what's going on in Ireland.

Uh, let's start to wrap up what's happening into Ireland and then get into the really fascinating story of how that transitions into America. Sure. So, so the first reports of Molly Maguire ism. Is around the 1840s, the end of 1844, uh, also not coincidentally, I [00:17:00] believe right in tandem to start the potato blight, which killed millions and displaced another million or two.

Uh, and the first murder that they actually committed was on January 29th. 1845, they killed a guy named McLeod, and this was such a well known killing that the Molly Maguires came up with their own song for it, which goes, There was McLeod, so big and proud, I think it fit to mention, to put men in jail and take no bail, it was his whole intention.

So there's the motive for the killing right there. To liberty, as you may see, some persons did inspire, to lay him down, the dirty hound, they say, it was Molly Maguire. Uh, then in later in May, another person walking home, they get murdered. Boom. What did the locals do? They blame it on the local IRS agent, as you do.

Um, then again, June 22nd, another guy gets murdered in Kavon. A [00:18:00] magistrate was killed in Halloween in 1845. July 1845 was the real, the first real public outing of the Molly Maguire movement. This guy was arrested supposedly as a Molly Maguire hitman and he, he defamed the, the movement to the detectives.

Another guy named Philip O'Reilly claims to be a part of this movement and he actually wrote a whole manifesto where it explained the, the group's intentions and, and what their, their, their reasoning was. Behind what they were doing and why they were seeking violence against people who were, in, in their opinion, oppressing them.

So, at the same time, as all this is going on, the potato blight is, is terrible for everyone. I mean, Molly Maguire's are getting affected as much as, uh, as much as anyone else. So they're just as hard up. One of the main, the biggest murder that the MO'S committed in Ireland was against Dennis Mahan. He was a landlord for Bally Kill Klein.

[00:19:00] He forcibly deported 400 Catholic Irish people who were in his town, simply because he wanted to replace them with, with new, with new people, with new men, you know, uh, good Protestant stock, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, when these 400 people were on the way to Liverpool, their boat capsized killing hundreds. So he was deemed responsible for this whole thing.

He was killed on the road. Also, uh, to sort of wrap up this whole thing, Thomas Pakenham, who's actually a distant relative of this guy. Mahan, he says, quote, and he's writing about the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya. He says, quote, the British discriminated against them at every level, making them outsiders in their own country.

But the grievance that touched them most widely was the land. So Irish. Irish Molly Maguire ism was all about the land question. It was all about tenant rights, it was all about farmers. It was about, you know, resisting unlawful convictions [00:20:00] or, unlawful convictions or evictions. Uh, so they have to escape.

They need to go somewhere. It's 23 to boat ride from Ireland to America in this day. So millions jump on the boat, on the boat, and they head not only for America, but they go to English cities like Liverpool, Manchester, et cetera, and to new Spanish territory. I do a series on Puerto Rico, and Puerto Rico is just filled with Irish, um, Irish people.

Policymakers and lawmakers, but that's really the end of the I, uh, the Irish Molly Maguires. They stay around for a few more years after that, but they never gain the same prominence that they did at the height of the potato famine. They find new life in America, which we'll get into. Yeah, you really see that, uh, you don't get groups like the Molly Maguires if everything's going awesome, but you really, uh, we're, we're [00:21:00] kind of keep setting the stage that the Molly Maguires are really a reaction to what's going on and these secret societies.

Reaction is definitely a great term for it because these people, they weren't like, you know, they weren't like bleeding heart liberals or socialists or something. They were, they were socially very conservative, but they were fighting for the same rights that they felt that they had a right to enjoy.

Same thing in southern Italy, the peasants who were fighting against the national Italian army in southern Italy weren't particularly progressive or anything, but they had state rights that were taken away from them, uh, by an invading force to either their, their detriment or. To their, to their benefit.

Um, but yeah, it's the same, it's the same difference. Personally for modern, like, audiences, I think they kind of really forget that, I mean, regardless of what your politics are, like, nowadays or what have you, like, the labor [00:22:00] movement is It is what it is, right? It's particularly liberal, especially when it comes to, like, social issues and things of that nature.

But if you kind of look at these early labor movements, and I don't know if you would really consider the Molly Maguire's a labor movement. They just saw kind of injustice and decided that they were going to do something about it, uh, for their fellow Irishman. A lot of these people weren't like, they weren't like social liberals.

Like, a lot of these people were like, you know, um, Traditionalist, like, conservatives, like, you know, you get married young, you have a big family, you know, you go to church, you, it's just, I think it's something that a lot of, I don't know, it gets like misconstrued, a lot of these, like, early, uh, labor organizers, you can call them, or, I don't know, labor fighters, there's, I don't know, there's a bunch of different words you could use for them, right?

But a lot of these guys were socially conservative, and I think a lot of, uh, modern, Both conservative and left failed to, [00:23:00] uh, I don't know, to fail to realize that. I think, yeah. They failed to realize it, and they, they failed to appreciate the, the really, you know, the, the roots of, of the whole struggle. The, the, uh, I mean the labor movement back then was strictly Democrat.

It is that now, but. I know a lot of people argue that the parties have changed. I think it's hard to look at a map from 1900, an electoral map from 1900 and today, and say that there hasn't been any change, uh, but I think it's even fairer to say that almost every single decade in American history, the parties have been completely different, or there have been new parties, or they've flip flopped on some issue, or they've jumped on a bandwagon.

This has been the history of America, and especially This early American time when no one knows what the, what's going on. Oh, yeah, we'll get into it a little bit, like, especially like leading up to the Civil War and even during the Civil War, there's all these parties I bet you people have never even heard of, you know, like the, the Know Nothing Party, the Southern Blades.[00:24:00]

Yeah, which is, and the Wagga Wumps. Yeah. Yeah. And if you take a look at like the revolutions of 1848, those were in a way a very, in many ways a left wing, uh, revolutions, but the U S which was. Very conservative in many ways supported a lot of those revolutions because they felt that there was the revolutionary spirit there.

Yeah, and it goes to show that America doesn't really know which way is up. I mean, they'll change positions depending on what's going on throughout history. I mean, at one point, they're saying no new colonizers, and then another time they're invading Haiti 15 different times. Getting into where you've used this term Molly Maguire, was there an actual historical Molly Maguire?

Who is Molly Maguire? Was this a real person? Is this all make them ups? [00:25:00] Uh, so Molly Maguire was a character in Mummery. And we'll get into memory, uh, like right after this, because it's a huge part of the Molly Maguire movement. It's, it's like their modus operandi for, for their killings, at least in the early period.

So, Molly Maguire. was one of these characters. She would call the dead back to life after receiving a donation. In a mummer's play, two people fight, one person dies, you give donations, the person rises from the grave. Um, this goes a little deeper once you understand that an Irish translation to jester is magair.

And Maguire was one of the names of the famous Fermanagh chiefs. So there was a famous set of chieftains who were called Maguire. Uh, it gets even more convoluted once you start to understand that Molly Maguire wasn't always or strictly called Molly. She was originally Mary Ann Maguire. Uh, and they used this name actually until like [00:26:00] the 18, early 1850s when it finally fell out of vogue.

Makes sense. Molly Maguire makes, is a lot better of a name than Molly Ann Maguire in my opinion. Um. Another character in Mummer Plays was called Molly Maskett, so here's another layer to the, to the Mummery thing. And this helps explain, basically, a transcontinental game of telephone that took place. You know the game telephone, you played as a kid, one person said something to another, and then by the end it sounded completely different than what it was originally intended.

That's probably where the term Molly Maguire comes from. But the legendary Molly Maguire was either the mother of two dead Irish patriots who was evicted by, uh, you know, an evil English landlord, uh, or she was a completely deranged, uh, lunatic woman who, who raved that she was the leader of a new Ireland, that she's going to lead these armies and free, free Ireland from British dominion.

Uh, once you [00:27:00] understand something like Celtic myths, Uh, this starts to make more sense that people would can associate themselves with this, uh, insane version of Molly Maguire because in Celtic myth, quote, the country is a woman, the spouse of the king before her marriage. She is a quote, unquote, hag. Or a woman whose mind is deranged.

So these people who are calling themselves Molly Maguires believe that they were literally the sons of Mother Ireland. I mean, in just as many terms. But what's a mummery? I say that word a bunch. I've just mentioned it a few times. So think of Halloween trick or treating. Instead of Halloween trick or treaters, there's grown men who come to your door and they perform a combat play in your living room or in your kitchen.

Uh, this always ended in the death of one of the combatants. And, like I was saying, someone would step forward, ask for a donation of money, food, drink, whatever, and, uh, [00:28:00] from those donations, they would throw an end of the year party. Uh, in these plays, men would dress Uh, in traditionally women's clothing, they would dress in black or white face.

They would wear straw throughout their body, uh, and this is understandable once you understand that mummery comes from the French word, which means to mask oneself, uh, And these mummers usually worked exclusively with the Molly Maguires. Sometimes they were mummers, and the other half of the time they were Molly Maguires.

So there must have been a, uh, a heck of a lot of confusion if you were one of these just like poor farmers and a bunch of people show up at your house. Are they gonna kill me? Or are they gonna, are they gonna, you know, have a, uh, a good old time and I'm gonna give them some money so we can throw a party at the end of the day.

So this became a huge point of contention for the, the Irish, uh, and Irish secret societies. It was [00:29:00] definitely a love hate relationship between the peasants. I, um, I've spent a lot of time in, uh, Northeastern Pennsylvania, where a lot of this stuff will eventually happen and in Philadelphia, and they still do mummers parades in Philadelphia.

We went to the mummers parade in the early 2000s, so not that long ago, and they still did blackface at that time. I think they got rid of it with within a few years of there, but within. Memory, they were still doing that sort of thing. And they had, it wasn't I strictly Irish anymore. There were people of all different backgrounds, but they still did a lot of that stuff.

But memory was a lot more common amongst Irish. I think when they first came over, but it's, and it's condensed a lot now, but it still is going on to this very day. Yeah, just off camera, like, me and you, Steve, like, arguing about, like, how much [00:30:00] paganism is still part of, like, European culture, and, like, I've argued it's like this, it's obviously not a huge part of it now, but it's still there, right?

And I, I've argued that, like, European culture in a lot of ways is this, is this battle between, um, paganism and paganism. The Christianity that came in later, and I mean, and you can see it with this type of ritual, right? Like, there's no, this isn't in Christianity. This is straight out of paganism. And this, these traditions that probably got passed down, you know, and changed over time, but for, you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.

Definitely. And, and mummery was actually one of the few things that translated from England to Ireland. So that, I think, just adds weight to your argument there, Chris. Uh, I agree 100 percent that paganism is still a huge part of Judeo Christian values. I mean, look at how many saints there are. Why are there so many saints if, if there isn't some sort of polytheism?

That's just something I think about a lot. [00:31:00] Uh, but yeah, like you were saying, it was a huge part, uh, like Steve was saying, I mean, It was a huge part of the community, still is, even though a lot of the population, uh, the Irish population was supplanted within like a generation. But it just shows how lasting the old country and the old country scars.

Remain and that how they actually transfer to the new world, mostly because some of the same practices were still going on talk a little bit about the secret societies in Ireland, which will set us up to the how they translate over to the U. S. Okay, everyone strap him. So there were the straw boys. These were, uh, uh, these were usually unmarried men.

They'd show up at your house in the middle of the night, snatch your daughter. Yeah. force her into marriage. Uh, almost always the father was of a higher social strata. So if you were a tenant farmer, this might be your landowner. You snatch your daughter and [00:32:00] now you've got your foot in the door, so to speak.

They were Ren boys. These were, um, these were also unmarried people. Whenever I say boys, by the way, boys in Ireland means unmarried men, just so we're clear. Uh, I'm not talking about a bunch of little children. They'd show to your house. They show up at your house after Christmas, like boxing day. They'd go door to door with dead birds asking for donations.

If you didn't donate, uh, they would bury this dead bird in your front yard, which is very bad luck. I mean, it would ruin your whole family's luck for the whole year. At least that's what people in Ireland believed. Um, one of the first rekindlings of secret societies after the 1798 rebellion was in around 1816, right after the Napoleonic wars.

These guys called Ribbon Men set fire to the Wild Goose Lodge and they roasted alive eight people. Uh, famously some woman was inside and she said, Please let me out, I have nothing to do with this. And the answer from outside was, You didn't heed the [00:33:00] warning in time. And they just watched it burn. Really savage stuff.

These Ribbon Men were mostly nationalistic, very interested in politics, interested in sectarianism. interested in, in, in nationalism, uh, they were most defined by the tassels they wore, the ribbons on their lapels. Uh, they were white boys. They were called the white boys because of the starch white shirts they would wear.

They were more interested in the Uh, land question. They operated mostly in Southern Ireland. They believed in a form of localism. It wasn't exactly socialism. It wasn't exactly right wing populism. It was some sort of mix of the two. It's described in, uh, the book Molly, The Sons of Molly Maguire as a localism.

Everything was about your locality. Your local community was everything. Uh, and one way they would promote local communities is through subtle threats. So a white boy gang would show up at your house. It'd be like [00:34:00] they, they pull you aside, they'd be like, it would be a real shame if, um, you know, you took this grain to market without first selling it to your neighbor at a fair price.

And that would be the, and then they just leave. And that would be the, and you'd have to like, just mull it over if you really want to, you know, risk making a little bit more money, sending your, your grain to international markets or, uh, uh, risk the ire of your entire community. So that's the white boys.

Um, so it explains, again, the transition from white boy to ribbon men to Molly Maguire slash, uh, ancient order of hibernians it throughout this entire period to massive riots and unrest against technology itself. I mean, people are destroying sewing machines in England and stuff. This is where the term Luddite comes from this guy called.

Yeah. legendary guy called Commander Ludd went about the English countryside and destroyed, uh, destroyed milling equipment and, and machinery. [00:35:00] These all usually ended up being against, or at least in Ireland, it ended up being a sort of a undeclared war between Protestant secret societies and Catholic secret societies.

I'm not even going to get into the Protestant secret societies, because it's a whole other A group of names and, and, and, uh, objectives, uh, uh, and it's just, it would just be here forever. But that's how, um, the secret societies sort of molded in Ireland. And they did so at a, as a direct response to the problems going on in their countryside.

I mean, beyond just the potato blight. Elections were, were incredibly violent. Every single election in Ireland was just devolved into rioting. And, you know, countless died just trying to go vote. It was a really intense situation. So it made all the more sense to leave that place and to leave. So in, in such vast numbers that.

Is Ireland still recovered, [00:36:00] ever recovered from the potato blight yet? Have they reached the pre blight population? I don't think so. No, I don't even think it's close. Yeah, it's like millions away still. So, I mean, that just goes to show how absolutely devastating. The potato blight was for this, for this, uh, island.

No, I think there's like only a couple of examples or I think there's more Irish, like more Irish live outside of Ireland than actually in Ireland. I think Jamaica, Jamaicans is another one. Those are two off the top of my head, but I can't really think of too many other ethnicities where that's the case.

Yeah, it was, it was a serious, I mean, Uh, some people have used the word genocide. I, I think that that's, if that's not fair, then it's, it's, it's right up against the line. I mean, it was, uh, and it's not like they were intentionally trying to starve people. It was, you know, uncaring, unfeeling government led to this massive atrocity, but one of the few things that actually ended up, uh, you know, one [00:37:00] thing that stayed the same was the, the coal mines.

Yeah. Coal is, is plentifully found in both Ireland and Pennsylvania. So it made a perfect sort of transition to people who are coal miners or people who experienced mining culture, uh, when they moved to the anthracite region of Pennsylvania. Yeah, isn't it? Um, I'll steal, we're going to talk about coal and I'll steal a little bit of your thunder, Joe, uh, Pennsylvania, that region of Northeastern Pennsylvania.

I don't think it's too far to go to say it has beautiful coal. It's almost, it's a, it's pure. It's one of the, I think, yeah. Best call in the entire world. And as a matter of fact, we're, uh, we'll get into this, but, uh, there's a chunk of call. I have a picture of my kids in front of it and their friends.

There's a piece of 1 piece of call in 1 of these towns. That's the size of our F 1 50 [00:38:00] pickup truck. And it's just yeah. It's pure, perfect coal, and that's what they were, that's what they were there for. Yeah, I've seen it where, um, some of the colleges, they make, like, complete, uh, like, football trophies out of coal.

Uh, a lot of these, uh, state colleges in, in this part of Pennsylvania, I've seen a few pictures like that, and they're just gorgeous. And coal is a really incredible material and rock. They're still mining it to this day. Are they not? Um, I'm not sure if they're mining it in the anthracite region anymore.

They might still be, uh, here and there. Definitely not at the same scale. Most of the mining in America is done in, in West Virginia now, I believe. But so what is coal? I mean, uh, we use, uh, people have used coal for thousands of years, the earliest. mention of coal is the ancient Chinese in like 3000 BC or something.

So this has not been some like new revelation only with the [00:39:00] advent of steam did it really gain traction and popularity. But coal is a decomposed plant matter. It's that has been denied any form of sunlight. Therefore, it can't break down properly. Um, this is usually found in places that used to be. Huge giant marshes, for example, along the Allegheny's.

In modern day, Pennsylvania, in Colorado, the huge seams of anthracite coal, uh, that used to be an entire gigantic swamp land. Um, so what kind of coal is there? There's. Several different kinds. There's lignite and jet, which is a derivative of lignite. Lignite is the poorest quality coal you can find. It's called the brown coal.

Jet is a gemstone that's derivative of this, uh, of this coal. Mesoamericans, they made absolutely exquisite artwork with this stuff. I mean, ancient Aztecs, they would make beautiful, um, like, uh, eagle head [00:40:00] with, uh, jet. If you know the term jet black, that's where this, that's where this comes from. Yeah. Yeah.

You never think about that. I've never thought one second where the term jet black comes from. I just always assumed what it just meant that, but it comes from jet. Next is bituminous, subbituminous coal. This is like the middling quality coal. It's called soft coal sometimes. They use this in coke fuel.

That's the big thing that this stuff is used in. This is done, any sort of smithing work, uh, ever has used coke fuel. That is probably derivative. From, uh, the, the bituminous and sub bituminous coal anthracite mentioned the word a lot. This is the, this is the grand poobah of all the coal. It's called hard coal.

It's sometimes called kill Kenny coal because of where it's found in Ireland. It burns the longest and the hottest and it's definitely the most valuable. Uh, anthracites usually found it's found all over the place. [00:41:00] Today. Yeah. China, it like outpaces every other country combined, basically. If you look at a map of Chinese coal mining, it's absolutely ludicrous to see it because it's like looking at like U.

1. defense spending or something. It's like, well, what? Like, um, so how do these mines work? There are a bunch of different ways you can mine. Um, The most famous way, at least during this period, the most traditional ways called the room and pillar mining, uh, room and pillar, as it, uh, says is all about having a single room.

1 or 2 miners would work in it. There'd be broad avenues and streets connecting each of these rooms. It's like a city, uh. And they'd work in these mines to for hours at a time. Uh, usually they'd make their own hours. They'd have equipment. This was very individualistic kind of work. Um, another form is long wall mining.

Long wall mining, as it [00:42:00] implies, is done against a single long wall with multiple people working on it. at once. It sort of behooved you to be on shift every single day. If you missed a single day in longwall mining, you would screw not yourself, but also all the people who work beside you, because they'll be getting a lesser amount of coal.

So in spite of the individualism that was festered through longwall mining, uh, miners found camaraderie right away. Considering they're the only other living things under the earth, besides the few animals they work with, uh, camaraderie was essential. I mean, a single mistake, single careless mistake or issue could completely kill everybody in the mine, uh, and it could do so very easily.

Uh, mutual aid was like Absolute necessity in all kinds of minds and the experienced miners, the, the, the most, uh, uh, longest working miners, they would always [00:43:00] be the 1st, the line of, uh, the responders, they would be the 1st ones there. If there was ever a mind disaster. And they would work ferociously to try and save anybody that they could.

So skin color, ethnicity, religious views, political views, they did not matter one bit in the mines. Once you got out of the mine and you went to the saloon, all bets were off. Then, okay, that might matter. When you worked underground, it was a complete brotherhood of men who worked side by side for the betterment of each other and for the safety of each other.

Uh, there's plenty of issues. They had to deal with plenty of, plenty of problems. Obviously it's, uh, one of the main ones were any number of gases that could be released. So there's stink damp. This smells like rotten eggs. It's hydrogen sulfide. This could be overpowering. You could imagine that it could if you were alone in a room and you were just bombarded with the smell of rotten eggs and you had no ventilation.[00:44:00]

You would probably become sick pretty quickly. Then there was black damp. This was named because the, the, the flames that they would have to light their way would flicker black. So they would call it black damp. This was a buildup of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide chokes the oxygen. Out of any room it's in, so this could cause, uh, asphyxiation and you could die.

The worst one out of all of these, all the ones I'm going to talk about is after death. So this is carbon monoxide and coal dust. Absolutely, like, uh, uh, blown together. The carbon monoxide killed most people during any sort of explosion. This explosion was caused by fire damp, which is the buildup of methane in between the literal coal seams.

Uh, and this, once a single spark hit this stuff, it would just blow everything sky high. The worst, uh, mining disaster in American history was in West Virginia, around [00:45:00] 360 people died. Most of them were asphyxiated, but the worst one in world history happened at the height of World War II in Chinese occupied, or in Japanese occupied China, something like 1500 miners suffocated to death after Japanese, uh, soldiers who were running the mine and using these Chinese people as basically slaves, uh, they, they shut off the, they shut off all the exits to the mine, which probably asphyxiated most of them.

I mean, the explosion probably caused, way fewer casualties than the actual asphyxiation following the, the blockading of the mine, which is pretty horrifying. Um, but yeah, I, I, just for a personal story, my own great uncle, he worked for years in the sulfur mines of Sicily. For those who don't know, Sicily sulfur mines produced maybe half of the world's sulfur for a good part of the, you know, [00:46:00] early centuries.

Uh, he was crushed to death, uh, by a rock. And the person, uh, Mark Bullock, the guy who wrote the book, The Sons of Molly Maguire, his great grandpa, who he never met, was impaled by a stalactite when he was 13. So this was not work for the faint of heart. I mean, I couldn't imagine a worse place to work in my life.

I, maybe that's just like familial trauma. Yeah, and I mean, even nowadays that there's a lot more health and safety standards and it still, for a lack of a better word, sucks to work in a mine. Like, I can even speak for myself, like, my personal, like, I do a lot of For my for work, I do, uh, it's like physical labor, right?

And even with all safety mechanisms in place and stuff like that, you know, I just look around sometimes and be like, Oh, there's probably 100 things here that could kill me. If something goes wrong, it probably wouldn't happen. But it's, you know, it's only magnified when you're on top of it were. In these minds, I think it's very [00:47:00] difficult for modern people to really understand just how like ridiculously dangerous these places were.

And you mentioned you mentioned your great grandfather was sulfur. He worked on a sulfur mine, right? Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say to the audience, uh, just, um. Look at pictures of sulfur mines, uh, on, just typing it on Google, you'd be, uh, shocked just how, uh, beautiful they look. They smell terrible, but, you know, from a distance, they look beautiful.

Yeah, I, I mean, it was a, and like Steve was saying, coal is, is beautiful. I, if you look at, uh, a chunk of coal, it's an absolutely gorgeous rock. Same thing with sulfur, but sulfur was even deadlier because sulfur could burn. So I imagine there were very few flames alive down in those mines in Sicily. You were working in the virtual dark.

That must have been truly horrifying. Especially if you were one of these little kids, like you were a breaker boy or something who [00:48:00] went through the coal and the shale and you had to keep, they showed this in the Molly Maguire movement, the movie, the kids had to keep moving their feet or else it would get sucked under by the conveyor belt and they would lose their legs.

This was a, just a regular thing that they just had to adjust to. You don't think about having to do something like that, but this is something that children had to do. And, and, once you graduated from there, you became a driver. So you drove mules. And mules, for their reputation, are incredibly stubborn animals.

They could bite you, and kick you, and, and easily kill a human being. Especially a human being who's only 15 years old.

Steve here again with a quick word from our sponsors. As we move forward, we're, uh, we have to kind of step out of the, uh, Irish for a minute and start to set up the civil war because that's, that's, [00:49:00] uh, coming and that's going to really, uh, impact this whole story of the Molly Maguires, because you can see where all these things are starting to come, coal is the, uh, essentially the lifeblood, uh, Of, uh, industry at that time.

And Cole's got to come out of the ground in some way. And you're, you have the Irish who are the ones who are pulling it out of the ground, and then you have the civil war who, in a lot of ways, the Irish are going to be, uh, one of the, almost the backbone of these armies. So in a fight, that's almost not their own.

How does that all start to come together? So it comes together. Before America is even a country, before America is even a country, hundreds of thousands of Protestant Ulster men, uh, depart for Pennsylvania. Now, in Pennsylvania, they were a part of the militant backbone for Pontiac's War, Pontiac's Rebellion, which is a pre [00:50:00] revolutionary war, rebellion of native peoples.

Uh, and they, they came because They needed, they were so talented at putting down native rebellions, but in this case, they put down Irish native rebellions. They didn't put down native of American rebellions. Uh, they came at the behest of this guy named Benjamin Bannon. He was sort of this, like, overlord of the whole area.

He ran a newspaper. Uh, so we had massive influence there. Um, he was also made 1 of the draft, um. The draft commissioners for the entire area, and he would bring tens of thousands of Irish Catholics into Pennsylvania only to hate them once they arrived need for the Irish Catholics. They must have felt like, oh, my God, this is more of the same.

We showed up in this new country. And we're still being lorded over by Protestants from Ulster. This is really, this is really something else. Uh, one of the, [00:51:00] and alongside him, there's a guy named Franklin Gowen. He comes into the story in the 1870s. He was raised a hardcore Democrat. And, uh, basically he was, um, he was to go to the, he was, he was supposed to be drafted, but he paid 300 for his replacement.

Uh, his father was an incredibly religiously, uh, liberal man, so much so that he had his son taught in a Catholic school in Maryland. So, uh, this put a, a check in his box toward the Irish community, the, and in, in time he would end up being elected. Uh, and, and seen as like a community sort of organizer, he would do it in such a way that would end up in his monopolization of the entire, uh, railroad and coal industry of the area.

Uh, the 1st mention of the Molly Maguires happens in around the 1850s and they come in [00:52:00] tandem with these things called the fantasticals. The Fantasticals were this uber racist group of Irish, uh, ne'er do wells. I mean, they would get rip roaring drunk and have, like, faux parades in the middle of town.

They called themselves, one group called themselves the Santa Ana Lifeguard, and their slogan was, oh, get out. They were named after the, the, the victor of, of the Alamo, uh, of General Santa Ana, the dictator and general in Mexico. Uh, another crew called themselves the Crowboys after Jim Crow, so this adds a whole new level.

Now there's the race element. People in Ireland probably didn't have to confront back home, and they were responsible for many a race riot in, throughout Pennsylvania, but in Philadelphia especially. The first reports of the Mollies came in the late 1850s. These might have been sensationalized, uh, [00:53:00] but their public face was, like I said, the ancient order of Hibernians.

This is a benevolent society. They would provide foodstuffs, money, etc. for injured or hurt Irishmen on the job. Not exactly a union, not exactly a secret society, completely legal, uh, for the most part, save for the subsect of super militant Molly Maguire's and their movement. By 1860, uh, about 70 percent of the workers in the mines were Irish.

So you have a complete, almost a homogeneous, uh, uh, movement that's being insulated underground, that's being fed. Uh, it's being fed, uh, you know, terrible, terrible suffering through like the company shop system, the company housing system, uh, all these things that led to an intense amount of distrust between miners and their operators.

And I think for obvious reasons, once you start to understand how terrifying the. [00:54:00] The company store system was, well, I was going to say, I kind of use like a modern example is, uh, you hear these stories about Amazon building these giant factories that are going to be having like apartments above the factories, uh, and, uh, and no, but in the States for a long.

For a good chunk of it's, well, I wouldn't say like a big chunk, but there's a period there, especially like around the robber baron time, which is kind of, it's not exactly at this time period, but it's leading up to it where a lot of these workers like lived in towns that the companies themselves would build.

And, you know, it had grocery stores and everything, but people go, Oh, that's convenient. But it. It's a scary situation to be in where you're completely dependent upon a company that's not elected, obviously, right? And it's ran by, for the most part, one individual and simply, like, if you, I don't know, make a fuss about, say, a cut back in pay or [00:55:00] anything of that nature, you know, you're cut off and then where do you go?

This is how much of a lot of these early industries ran in the States. I don't think, you know, unless you're a little bit familiar with the subject. I don't I don't think most people really understand that. Yeah. And just to just to give an example of how horrifying this system was. This is from the 1840s, so in case anyone was thinking this was just the product of the Civil War, it wasn't.

This was happening in the area for years and years beforehand. So, quote, A wife or child may be very sick, and the storekeeper has no medicine. A physician may be required, who cannot be paid in store goods, and cannot be expected to attend without being paid. The storekeeper may have no flour, no meat, no butter, and if he has, he may refuse to let the workman have either of them on the order, for these are cash articles.

The poor man must take what there is, at such prices [00:56:00] as the merchant shall dictate. The result of all this is that the poor man has found himself in debt to his employer. to a large amount. Unquote. Another one, this is uh, this was like a poem written during the time. All I drew for the year was a dollar or three.

Those company store thieves made a pauper of me. And this was the daily life of, of people now. And like you were saying, if you, if you raise a fuss, if you try to start a union, which was called a combination back then, or a conspiracy back then, you would be, you would be not only fired, you'd be blacklisted from the entire trade.

You'd be evicted from your home. You'd be left literally penniless. You'd have the clothes on your back. If that, I mean, uh, for an example of another, uh, really crazy example is the Pullman town, uh, in like a generation after this George Pullman would charge for like the blinds, he would charge you for an extra window.[00:57:00]

He charged you for the good door knocker. He charged you for. You know, uh, it was a furniture. He charged you if you were on like a higher floor than someone else, and this would all come out in your pay at the end of the month, and this guy's making hand over foot millions and millions of dollars adjusted for inflation.

It's it's hundreds of millions of dollars. And this was just the norm, and this was taken from Britain. Uh, Americans like to think that we don't take a lot of things except maybe our language from Great Britain, but our whole attitude toward labor unions and things like that were, were completely based on British law.

And some of the first, uh, pro labor movements were saying, we aren't, we aren't oppressed by the British anymore, we're Americans. This is not how things work here. And this is where it was couched. And this is how something like the Molly Maguires can rear their, their head and, and do so very effectively.

Uh, all they needed was the spark. And you [00:58:00] can see how insipid that becomes where it maybe starts off, maybe or maybe not, but the company town starts off with the best of intentions that it really is to provide housing because the mine is way out away from a place that might not have a town and you start building it from there, but then it just.

It slowly like an, uh, like an octopus grows into every single aspect of a person's life. And I think today, like Chris mentioned, where Amazon's building housing and like almost recreating the, the company towns, a system, uh, the, it's not even just the private sector is doing it here in Austin, the city school district.

Is building housing because for the teachers, because the housing prices are so, uh, out of control, but you can see how like that could, how you don't even have to [00:59:00] imagine how that can turn out. Oh, well, you know, you're living in our, uh, apartment now, or you're living in our house. So you're going to work a couple extra hours a week to pay for that.

I mean, we're giving you a house and a, you know, for almost nothing compared to what market prices are. It totally skews the whole employee employer relationship. Yeah, and exactly like you were saying, this relationship is supposed to be time honored. I mean, the whole idea and the whole argument against labor unions is that they breach liberty of contract, not understanding that liberty of contract should apply to individuals making a contract together.

I mean, obviously you work at a small business. That there's no need for a labor union because the liberty of contract still exists. There's one person agreeing with another person on X amount of dollars, and that's that. But when it becomes giant conglomerates who, who, you know, the, the, the [01:00:00] health of the, the national economy is on the line, it becomes completely skewed.

And, and the authority and the power dynamics are completely off. You cannot expect some sort of equal treatment across the board for For, you know, the same thing. And, and there were, you know, there were people who owned mines who were, uh, genuinely, they genuinely cared about their workers. I'm not saying that's not the case.

But they lived in a system where exploitation was the norm. And when exploitation is the norm, that's all you really are accustomed to. You don't want to rock the boat. You don't want to, you don't want to give way to something that you consider revolutionary, like a trade union. Uh, which, uh, must've been really wild and it was, uh, incredibly brutal, the reaction to trade unionism throughout this whole era.

Yeah, because it's, it's that push and that pull of the, the corporations, which in a large part have the government behind them, [01:01:00] have pulled things in such a one way and to try and pull it back the other way with the trade unions, of course, there's going to be a huge amount of conflict. You almost, you, you couldn't, it would be outrageous to think that there wouldn't be conflict.

Mm hmm. Yeah, and, and, and most operators felt that way. They were completely divorced from reality and, and the reality that their workers were, were living through. They thought that they were being paid plenty. I mean, yeah, you have to get your rent taken out in the, in the, at, at, from your check at the end of the month.

You're getting paid a very reasonable price for the work you're doing. That's the argument at least. And in reality, I mean, people ended up owing their employers. Like I was saying, uh, people ended up going hungry. People ended up starving. People ended up being evicted if they didn't agree with whatever policy the, the, the, their boss put in place.

Uh. This all really sparked with the civil war, the civil [01:02:00] war created a labor shortage and with the massive influx of Irish migrants willing to work for a little bit less, uh, companies exploited it to the nines. They would. employ Irish people specifically because of their ability to work for less or their, their, their, um, you know, they didn't have a problem with it.

Uh, with the boom of Northern industry, this fed the workers movements. The workers movements in fed, in turn, fed labor unrest. So, almost at the start of the, the, the Civil War, 1862, there's a big strike in the coal mines. Um, almost a, a gunfight erupts between the two sides, but, you know, cooler heads prevail, et cetera, et cetera.

Bannon, uh, our old friend Bannon, he writes in the newspapers, this was because of confederates and traitors. Contrary to what Bannon was saying, the, the people of Schuylkill County volunteered en masse for the Civil War. There was [01:03:00] not a, I mean, it's very hard to convince anyone that they were literally traders when you look at the numbers.

I mean, way more than in, in other counties across the country where it's supposed to be like a Republican majority, you know, keep the union the way it is, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, so they had a massive, massive, um, uh, recruitment in this area, but that wasn't enough for The people who are running the country, they saw this as a largely democratic, uh, traitorous area.

So they pass the militia act a year later, they pass the enlistment act. This suspends habeas corpus thousands of Democrats who are deemed disloyal were thrown in jail, no charges, nothing, no, no right to legal counsel, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, Bannon is made the draft commissioner. He's going to use the draft to target Democrats specifically.

Uh, because at this time, soldiers were not actually given the vote. If you were, uh, if you returned from duty, I believe you were able to vote. And I know [01:04:00] Lincoln and the Democrat, or Lincoln and the Republicans exploited this during election time, they would send whole units back to back home. So they would vote Republican.

Uh, and I think it actually flipped Kentucky for, for Lincoln during the 1864 election. So he's, he's sweeping through the coal mines, he's, he's got this guy called Charlemagne Towers, awesome name, terrible person, uh, to lead the whole roundup, and he basically, this guy Towers, he hands in whole employment lists, and he says draft all these guys.

Not wondering are these people still working here? Are they dead? You know, uh, do they live in a different county or a different state? Are they a foreign citizen? Because this was the case too. A lot of these people were Irish nationals. So each of these Irish people that tries to get drafted, they go to the British constabulary.

Or they go to the British embassy and many, uh, diplomatic incidents break out every single [01:05:00] time this happens, but it doesn't matter. Uh, he just sort of, uh, deals with it in stride. Uh, the first killing of the Molly Maguires comes on January 2nd, 1863. There were rumors and, and, and shouts of Molly Maguire in the streets the year previous, but no serious violence.

It only really started the day. After New Year's here, the victim was James Berg. This guy was, uh, a union veteran. So far from Molly's targeting, you know, mine operators or the bosses or, you know, middlemen, they're targeting people who they consider. To be not Irish anymore. These people are traitors to the Irish cause because they fought for Lincoln's army, who's a tyrant in their eyes.

So he shot, uh, then 40 men attacked this guy, James McDonald's home. He hid in the, he hid in a mine shaft, but his wife was terrorized for hours and threatened to be shot and said that his, his husband, her husband was marked for death. And then two [01:06:00] days later. On the road, uh, two other union men were, were attacked.

When I say union men, I mean for the union, they were pro union sympathizers. One was a militia man. The other was an ardent Republican. So these people are being attacked because of what they believe. It's a very. interesting and, and, and not talked about part, I think of the Molly Maguire movement, because it's very hard to, uh, to turn these guys into, to, to good people when they're, you know, attacking, uh, army veterans in the night and, and murdering them.

So this part is definitely super, super questionable. I mean, I don't understand. Where this would even begin, I stand obvious had serious problems with, you know, the union and the way they were being repressed. And this comes to fruition when once troops start showing up and start seriously, um, infringing on the, on the rights of these people.

So, [01:07:00] in June, or sorry, in the middle of July, 1863 is the New York City draft riots. These are depicted in the gangs in New York movie by Martin Scorsese. Uh, they were distinctly racial and they were distinctly anti-Republican. This, the, these were, these people would've been considered mollies if they did this in Pennsylvania.

Uh, probably so in the anthracite, supposedly there's 15,000 armed mollies and minors waiting for like Lee's army to invade a game so they can join up. Uh, this guy gets robbed, the sergeant, uh, he gets robbed, this guy, General Whipple comes in, he holds seven men as hostages. You'd hold hostages. The fact that he held the hostages in a northern state that was fighting for the Union was pretty, uh, provocative.

Uh, and in the end, they just ended up overhauling the population throughout 1863 and the drafts went off pretty much without a hitch. Whenever you talk about this whole episode and this whole [01:08:00] aspect of the Civil War, I think it blows people's minds. I know it blew my mind. Like, Abraham Lincoln is not the sainted figure that he's turned into.

He Was a political animal and he understood politics and he did some pretty bruising politics. I think you almost sell him short by just turning him into the sainted Abe Lincoln. And you ignore that the things that he did for better or for worse to keep the union together. Oh yeah, a hundred percent. He was a decisive.

Cold and calculating man, but you can be that and also be a caring, loving, you know, father and and all around honest person and genuinely decent president. I mean, you can be all these things at once because he was just a human being. I think a lot of thing that a part that gets lost to in [01:09:00] that whole conflict that you just described is a lot of these like really hardcore Republicans slash like emancipationists at the time and you can even just reading about how kind of bizarre some of these people were like even at the time they must have been like really bizarre like these people were like by every definition of the word like Radicals, um, and, you know, as we know, with most politics, most people kind of fall in the middle or somewhat moderate.

Right? So people get this impression that, like, um, the, like, the northern states were, like, gung ho, like, Republican, and it's just not really the case. There were still a lot of Democrats, and there were still a lot of Democrats that Opposed the war throughout the entirety of it. They called them copperheads.

Uh, Republican sympathizers did, but it's not necessarily like these people were like bad people were traitors. They just, they didn't see that this war was entirely necessary. [01:10:00] Yeah, I, I think that was definitely a huge part of it. I mean, even in, with these, with these guys, the Molly McGuires, they wanted the union as it was in the constitution as it was, they wanted no radical change.

Like you were saying, the Republicans for their time and, and for the place and the ideas they held, they were the radicals. I'm not sure if either of you have heard of Harry Turtledove. He's a famous, uh, alt history writer. Oh yeah, I've read his stuff, yeah. Yeah, but he basically, in his books, uh, Lincoln becomes the head of the Socialist Party of America, the first socialist party.

And he ends up challenging, like, Teddy Roosevelt, who's this hard right, uh, you know, friends with the, the central, uh, central allies in World War I character now. I think in a lot of ways, uh, that, that view is, is not unjustifiable. If you look at some of the things Lincoln said, they would be radical today.

I mean, the things he talked about [01:11:00] with labor, things he talked about with unions, he said some pretty wild stuff. He was one of the, I mean, he's probably, The first and maybe the last president to acknowledge that the, the main source of capital is actually labor. Labor creates the capital. He was, he was one of the first people to, to say that.

And Karl Marx loved him. He loved, he loved him to Maeve Lincoln. Well, yeah, to me, that's what makes Lincoln really interesting. Everyone kind of focuses on The wrong, I don't, I want to say the wrong things, but if you look at what the Republican party was trying to do in terms of modernizing America and like their general outlook on how the economy should work, it's, it, I don't think people really get, um, in a lot of ways, like they were trying to create an autocrity, um, believe I pronounced that name correctly, where like America would be self sufficient.

To not having to be dependent on European nations or other nations for, um, its economy. And they [01:12:00] generally, they did accomplish that, you know, they were, you know, big on tariffs. They weren't like free trade people are, which is almost the exact opposite of what goes on. Well, I mean, maybe it's a little bit different now, but for the longest time, the Republican party.

You know, in our lifetime, and especially for young people, it's been like the Free Trade Party. But if you look at Lincoln's, uh, Republican Party, they had a very, uh, different view of how the economy should run in the country, for better or worse. But I tend to agree with what Lincoln said a lot in terms of how the economy should run.

Yeah, I agree with the two. I think, I mean, this is a whole other conversation, but I agree with protectionism. That's probably, that's one of like the two things that Trump did while he was in office that I actually, I actually supported. I was like, oh, okay. Um. So, yeah, to take it back to the 1860s here, uh, the middle, it's the middle of the Civil War for a really long time.

The Molly Maguire's [01:13:00] kind of go quiet throughout the summer, early fall. They kind of do anything. I think this has a lot to do with the. The, the practice of memory because they would strike it around the same time and mummers usually participated in their plays around the Christmas season. So, around this time, everyone has a little bit more free time.

They're not growing, you know, their or their barley or anything. Uh, they have a minute, uh, you know, go shoot a few mind bosses. So, uh, in late October, uh, or sorry, October 10th. This guy, Patrick Shannon, he's beaten within an inch of his life at home. He can barely use his legs ever again. Uh, same night, three other people are attacked.

So right out of the way, bang, there's, there's a whole bunch of attacks right away. A few days before Halloween, officially, the, the troops called the Invalid Corps, these were, uh, uh, this was a group of, um, soldiers who were injured and they couldn't serve on the front lines anymore, but they were used, [01:14:00] uh, in this case for labor suppression.

So they arrived to demand conscripts. So when they showed up, they were expecting 183 people to be ready outside the courthouse, you know, to receive their uniforms, et cetera, et cetera. A grand total of three people show up. So the next day, the, the cavalry clears the street of Jeansville and they, they saber, uh, a buckshot and the buckshots were another name for the Molly Maguire's, um, This guy E.

Greenlau Scott, he was a lawyer. He, he penned an, uh, a really angry letter to Abraham Lincoln. And in it, he, he includes the following exchange. He's talking to a lieutenant. The lieutenant says, we slashed four or five this morning. And he goes, slashed? What's that? The lieutenant responds, why we cut them with sabers.

Uh, Greenlau says, did they resist? Lieutenant finishes, no, but they might've been. You can't trust these fellows. And [01:15:00] from there, uh, they actually almost run down and, and murder like a 16 year old boy. He goes on to describe that. And then early in November, uh, Yorktown was served its draft notices. Um, after they were served their notices, this town, uh, the unit went to George K.

Smith's company store. And then they left. They left them high and dry. Like, you're gonna be fine. Uh, little did they know, a few nights before, They knew that this guy Smith was working with the army, so they pass a secret resolution to kill him, the Molly Maguires do, in the swamps. So this must have been a very intense meeting in the, in the swamps at the dead of night, deciding to kill a man.

And so, on November 5th, uh, George K. Smith has his house broken into by 20 odd people. They're all in blackface or they're wearing whiskers, and he gets, he gets shot one time in the head. And everyone runs as fast as they can out of the place, yelling and hollering. So this was actually [01:16:00] the first mine official, but this was, this was going to be the start of a long line of mine officials who were killed.

So, um, as a way of, of retribution toward this, uh, killing. The army shows up again. They arrest 70 people. Uh, all of them were community leaders. They were union leaders, uh, well known workers of the area. Uh, most of the charges were in fact dropped, but almost, but 13 of them were indicted for any number of things, disloyalty, treason, et cetera, et cetera.

And they were held incommunicado. Uh, alongside thousands of of confederate prisons of prisoners of war in, um, in northern Pennsylvania. So, among them was Peter Dylan. He was, like, the most well known labor organizer of this whole era and in this, uh, uh, specific place. He was well known for like, beating the heck out of people come election time, he would use his fists a lot.

In 1864, the draft was [01:17:00] initiated once more, there were some bushwhackings, but really everything went straight forward. The military was now in complete control of the coal fields there. Uh, the 13 in Philly. They served alongside, like I was saying, the POWs, but they were eventually released after the war.

And one of the great stories that I've ever read, and I hope to God that it's true, uh, John Donlan's wife, he walked the entire, she walked the entire distance from Pennsylvania coal country. Washington D. C. camped outside the White House and spoke directly with President Lincoln to get her husband released.

Uh, supposedly, Lincoln was very nice. He invited her in. They had breakfast. He paid for her. Her train ride home. Uh, from that day forth, Margaret Donlan always kept a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, uh, at like the mantelpiece in her living room and to anyone who would ask, this one was a lifelong Democrat, by the [01:18:00] way, she would say he was the greatest man who ever lived.

And the kindest, I mean, that's just that's just so powerful right there. There's no obvious proof that this happened, but with the way the White House, um, you know, visitation laws were back then, it's very possible that it could have, uh, once you, uh, and. Once you know that, uh, this guy Donlan was actually released by special order of the president, it becomes even, uh, more possible that I think this is true.

Uh, with 1864's end, the Molly Maguires kind of go to sleep for a little bit. They kind of wait until after the war. Uh, because this guy, Charlemagne Towers, resigns, uh, once he leaves and the troops leave, the miners, the mining operators left with, uh, a lot of the troops because they were like, there's going to be violence again.

I'm not, I'm not dealing with this, but that's the end of the civil war era. And that leads [01:19:00] us right into. The late 1860s, the 1870s, and the eventual end of the Molly Maguires as a, at a official capacity. We're going to leave it at that for today. I just want to mention, though, the best thing you can do to help us in this podcast is if you enjoy what you're hearing.

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Title: Behind the Badge: A Cop's Take on Must-Watch Cop Movies

Original Publication Date: 12/20/2023

Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/LDqmp2b3zG7

Description: Former Spokane Police Captain Frank Scalise takes us on a cinematic journey in our latest episode, sharing his top picks for cop movies. Tune in as he delves into these thrilling tales and discusses the impact these films have had on law enforcement. From classics to modern gems, get ready for an inside look at the silver screen's portrayal of policing. #CopMovies #PodcastEpisode #LawEnforcementCinema

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Begin Transcript:

I'd like to welcome back Frank, now officially a made member of the Organized Crime and Punishment crew. I'd also like to spend out special thanks in this episode to another member of our crew, Joe Pascone of the Turning Tides. History podcast for providing the voiceover for the new Organized Crime and Punish promotional audio.

You'll be hearing more from Joe in the future. To find out more about Joe, Frank, and our crew, look for links in the show notes. Uh, Frank, maybe, I don't know if we've gotten into this too much, but maybe you could, uh, this might be a good time to drop if there's any plugs you want to do, uh, now that you're a made man on to some of your other projects.

The action I got going on on the side there, is that you mean I don't know if I want to tell you that I'll have to kick up a little more. Um, well, I mean, I, I think the reason that, that, that you invited me to come on the show [00:01:00] occasionally is my law enforcement background, which we talked about before, uh, 20 years of, of, of being a police officer, about half of it on the street and about half of it in leadership roles.

And then, uh, about 4 years teaching leadership in the U. S., all over the U. S. and Canada after that. And, and so that gave me a pretty wide perspective that, that I think at times can be valuable. Other times I don't know anything. But, um, in addition to that, I also write crime fiction. I write greedy crime fiction from both sides of the badge, as Frank Zaffiro.

And so, uh, I've written about 40 books, some are police procedurals, some are hard boiled, some are private detective novels. Uh, pretty much unless it's a cozy, if you like mystery, I've got it for you. Um, and people can check out frank safiro. com and learn more if they're interested. Awesome. Frank mustache.

Chris and I are today are going to tap into and lean into Frank's cop background with a show today of our [00:02:00] favorite police movies, cop movies. And these movies we really get, we get crime, we get punishment, we get drama and really everything else you want from entertainment out of these great movies. And I think we will eventually discuss the corollary of the Cop movie, the corollary to the cop movie genre, the cop television procedural, that's a different episode for a different day.

Before we dive into it, I'll share a little, uh, anecdote I had about police movies. I was sitting in a, I was at a party with a friend of mine, and he had all of his cop buddies there. And I just asked, I was like, what do you think about cop movies? And they all kind of, like, groaned, because. They didn't, they did cop stuff all day.

They didn't really want to go and watch it as entertainment. And I wonder, what did you, what do you feel about that? When you watch them, are you able to watch them and kind of separate the professional side of you and just enjoy them? Yeah, I always was. I [00:03:00] mean, I used to joke that. You know, when you're trying to get on the job and then your 1st year on the job, you would watch the TV show cops all the time when you were off duty.

And then by the time you've been on the job for about a year, you never watch it again in your life. Unless it's a training video at the academy or something that they use because it's a busman's holiday. But it's not, the same is not true with, uh, with good television shows and definitely not with good movies.

I always enjoyed a good police related movie. I mean, I got to be particular about mistakes at times, although, you know, you can overlook that if the story's good and all that. Um, but just like any profession, you pick out the things that aren't, aren't real. Uh, but I, yeah, it wasn't ruined for me at all. I, I still enjoyed good police movies.

I think I hated bad movies. That were police related more after I came on the job than I did before, but I still loved good cop movies. So we're going to start right with [00:04:00] you, Frank. What are your top cop movies? Well, I only picked two for the purposes of this discussion, just to, to keep things. From going on for six hours, uh, because we all love this topic so much.

And, and so just picking two is, I mean, picking 20 would be easier. Um, but I decided to go with, uh, the two coasts of corruption. I went with Copland, which is set in, uh, New York and New Jersey. And I went with training day, which is set in Los Angeles. So completely over on the other side of the country. So why don't you start off with which I could talk about Copland all day and eventually we'll have an even an episode that Chris and I did on Copland.

Let it rip with which one you want to go with. Well, I mean, before I get into either one, I think pointing out that both of them have some similar themes. Um. Is, is interesting to me. I mean, both of them feature corruption, both at [00:05:00] the individual and the systemic level, you know, level, um, you know, all of these cops are, are working within a broken system.

Um, and then at the same time, they also have cops within the system who are trying to play within the rules and, or bring down the bad guys. I mean, in, in Copland, you've got. Obviously, Freddy, the character played by Stallone, he's trying to do the right thing, and he idolizes all those other cops, you know, and he's trying to, to be a good cop.

And then, uh, in Training Day, you've got, uh, uh, Officer Hoyt, played by Ethan Hawke, who is trying like hell to impress. This, you know, narcotics sergeant, so he can make the team and, and take the next step in his career. Uh, but when he figures out what's actually going on, he, he rejects it and he tries to do the right thing.

So even though they explore corruption and, and as a police officer, uh, and, and having been around cops, like I said, I mean, all over the U S and Canada, it was always the same [00:06:00] thing. They hated to hear about, you know, corruption and they didn't like to see it in movies and stuff. Um, but you know, When you have some balance in it, you know, I think it makes for a much better film.

I mean we did a podcast on copland right and uh to be honest when we did record that podcast I hadn't watched in a really long time and so long to be honest with you was uh I just knew it's like oh this was like the stallone doing the serious movie type thing or doing like the role that he typically doesn't do and then When we watched it for the podcast, I watched it several times and um Yeah.

Like I was blown away by just how well done it was. And in particular his acting and then training day I find is it's weird because at the beginning of the movie, you kind of, kind of liked Denzel Washington's character to a degree. Kind of, come on. You fell in love with him. You wanted to have his children at the beginning of the movie.

And then you see [00:07:00] though, like you kind of see. Slowly, like, it's like a peeling of an onion, right? Like, which is kind of how corruption itself actually works, right? Like, it's like the surface level of it, and it's, oh, you don't, you don't think much of it. It's like, oh, it's something you can just kind of overlook, right?

Like, oh, you know, like, um, my girlfriend doesn't like folding the laundry or something like that. You know, it's not, it's not a big deal, right? But then you peel another piece and it's like, oh, okay, this is making me question a little bit, right? And then you peel another piece. And then by the time you get to it, you see, okay, Or at the end of it, just how disgustingly corrupt Denzel Washington is.

And even within like a community that pretty much functions on criminality, they're like, we just, we can't even deal with this guy anymore. That's how corrupt he was. And in a lot of ways it shows, shows like how corruption affects A, the individual, but it also affects the entire community, um, um, that it's being perpetrated on.

And then [00:08:00] Copland, I mean with Copland, I think that the, one of the themes that keeps Coming through with me is, Freddy always felt like he won the, the, not even the second place prize, he thought he won the third place prize, that he was in the minor leagues, that he could only define himself as if he was a New York City cop, because a All those other people in the, in all the other New York City cops, I mean, he was like, he didn't even exist because he wasn't on on the force.

And that, that whole thing that he could be who he was in his role. I mean, it's almost a, uh, For a police procedural movie. I don't know. It's on. You can almost can't leave that movie without a tear in your eye. Oh, for sure. For sure. For, for several characters. And the interesting thing about the character of Freddie that Stallone plays, I think you hit it right on the head.

He sees the major league as being a New York. An NYPD officer, [00:09:00] and because he did the right thing, he saved a woman's life, you know, at jumping into the water and rescuing her and had his, his eardrum busted permanently as a result. And now he can't be an NYPD police officer. Uh, you know, he sees that. You know, as the pinnacle and he's been, yeah, he's in the minors.

He's a double a player at best in his mind. And they prey on that. These, these, these few officers who are corrupt. I mean, I'm not going to tell you, oh, it's just NYPD. Hell no. Of course it's not. But these officers are corrupt in this movie. And, and, you know, uh, Harvey Keitel and, you know, and all of them, he's kind of the ring later.

They prey on his, Psychosis, they prey on the psychology that he's going through and give him what he wants, even though it's, you know, only a shadow of what he wants. And I think that that kind of, uh, manipulative behavior. I mean, that's very mob like, isn't it guys? I mean, isn't that what you see [00:10:00] in that?

Setting as well, I think that things exactly what they were going for that movie. It was pretty it was a mob like a mafia of cops, right within their own version of America where nobody talked. And if you were going to talk to, you know, they were going to kill you, which is what happened to Ray Liotta's.

Partner, it's not made, I don't, I can't remember if it was made explicit in the movie, but it was hinted at that that's what Harvey Keitel's character did is, you know, took care of him before he talked, right? The interesting thing about Copland 2, and you mentioned Freddy's character, is, yeah, he's a small town cop, like, in a sheriff, in a small town, but In terms of fighting corruption, it really does start at that level.

It starts with just your regular everyday Joe saying, like, we're not doing this anymore. And people say, like, oh, like, you know, what's that going to do? It's just like one person, but like, one person kind of setting an example inspires other. People who do things too. And then before you know it, it, it's not just a couple of people doing [00:11:00] it.

It's a bunch of people doing it. And once it's a bunch of people talking about it, then something has to be done about it. You know, are you going to solve police corruption by doing that? No, you're not going to solve it, but you can stop. You can stop it with it. Maybe in that circumstance and. It's a never ending battle.

It sounds cliche, but you know, you know, liberty is not free. Like, it's constantly, you have to constantly fight for it. And in terms of, uh, fighting corruption in the police force or in our government agencies, you can't just, you have to constantly fight against it because otherwise you have what happens in, um, Cop land where you have this little cadre of mafia cops is basically what I would call them.

Um, running the show and doing just horrible things to like fellow cops and the community around them. Ironically, that sort of participation and vigilance and shining some light on on behavior. Uh, it's the exact same formula formula for trying to stop crime, uh, you [00:12:00] know, community involvement and people willing to testify and shining a light on it and so forth.

And it's also a never ending battle. I mean, you're never going to as a police officer. You're never going to show up at work and see the chief lock in the front door and say, what's going on? Uh, we're done. Crime's done. We're finished. Go find a new job. You know, I mean, that's never going to happen. Right?

So it's interesting that. Right. To hear you describe that and that that's what's going through my mind is yeah, that's exactly the same formula for for fighting crime. It's a persistence and and an ethical awareness and people being willing to to make a difference. Quickly, though, let's not dump and I know we neither of you were intending to, but let's not dump on small town cops at all.

I mean, the reality is, is the majority of police are on a medium to small size police department, um, in the U. S. Anyway, the majority of cops serve on a department that's medium sized or less. I don't remember what number defines that, but we're not talking about hundreds of people. [00:13:00] In that size of an agency, and there is a different form of policing that takes place.

That might be a different discussion for a different day. But when you're a county detective with backup 30 minutes out, it's a little bit different style of policing than what we saw in Copland, where when the guy's fighting on the roof, there's 12 guys coming in squad cars. You know, a minute and a half away, so just something to think about out there and the folks, it's a different sort of world, depending on where and how you end up policing to bounce off of that.

I think that that's what Copland set the dichotomy so well of that. The city is always in the background. And as far as I know, there's no place in New Jersey. That's a small Right. Right. Village essentially right across the street or right across the river from the city, but they got that so well that the small town versus the big city, even if it doesn't actually [00:14:00] exist in reality to, to draw that really stark dichotomy.

It, you know, it wouldn't have been the same if they lived three hours away in Pennsylvania, where it would really have been that way to show. This is their town. That's all that's right on the river. And you can see the city in the backdrop. I think that was one of the most clever things of the movie is it always kept it in your mind.

Yeah, it did. And he always knew that dichotomy was very starkly drawn and, and constantly reinforced. And I thought they did a pretty tremendous job of that. Um, it, it does, uh, well, I'll talk about this more when we get to, to, to training day, but it does bring up the issue of, um, how like those cops from, from New York, in addition to how Freddie saw them, they kind of saw themselves.

As elite and for being part of NYPD and a certain amount of, of entitlement came with that. And, [00:15:00] and, uh, I think some of that was bred from the corruption that they were enjoying, uh, and also, of course, like I said, for being part of the a team, essentially, um, and, and of course that's, you know, that's not a good trait, right?

That's not something that we admire. But these same guys are dealing with stuff in the city every day, uh, you know, that is horrible, right? They're in the, in the trenches up to their knees, battling through the muck and the mire of, of that job. And it's not like that every day. It's not like that all day long every day, but it's like that most days, some of the day, if that makes sense.

And, and when you experience that day after day, after day, after day. Even if you work in a decent city, it's still you're dealing with the under world of that city. Essentially, the under parts of it, people at their worst or the worst people depending. So, what do you end up wanting as as an [00:16:00] individual?

You want your family to not experience that. And 1 way that you don't experience that. Is if you don't live in the same place, and so a lot of cops live out in the suburbs, they live somewhere else. Like these cops, they lived in Garrison, New Jersey, which I assume is a made up town, or at least the was depicted fictionally, um, you know, a nice town where people can, you know, not lock their doors and all that.

And, you know, and all that kind of stuff. Um, and that's great. Everybody wants something better. Their family for their families, and I'm all for it, but it has an interesting side effect. And. Yeah. And I don't know if this really came out so much in Copland, but, but the, the danger of it was, was right there.

And that is when you don't live where you police and where you live is dramatically different than where you police, then there is a loss of. Connectivity with your community that you're policing. There's a lot loss of of understanding. There's a [00:17:00] detachment that takes place and and and that can lead to more distance.

And anytime there's distance between the police and the community that they serve. Um, it's never good. It's not necessarily, it doesn't cause corruption necessarily, but it, it does make policing more difficult. Uh, if you disconnect from the community, the community disconnects from you. And suddenly people aren't calling when things happen.

They're not testifying. They're not getting, you know, willing to, to go as far in terms of being a witness. Um, You know, programs that you might try to start to make things better, get lukewarm reception and maybe not the greatest level of involvement. Um, you know, I mean, everybody's been in a relationship where the other person checked out and you can figure out that we're not going to be friends anymore.

We're not going to date anymore pretty soon because they're already gone. Right? I mean, there's even an eagle song about it. So I would, I would hum it here, but you'd get struck on a copyright violation. So I [00:18:00] won't do it, but. Okay. You know, the community can sense that from an agency too. And so when you see these guys set up over in garrison and you see what kind of, you know, junk they have to deal with in the city, you can kind of understand their desire to do that, to have a better life.

And I get that. I totally get that. And I'm not saying they shouldn't have done that. Um, but I think it does bring a whole new set of problems with it that can be bad. It can be bad for our community. So, um, that's just one of the things I noticed that I didn't really think about. When I watched it the first 12 or 13 times when I watched it recently, uh, uh, I did it occurred to me, uh, because I was in a different place experientially.

And so those are some of the thoughts that go through my head. Um, so I don't know, does this, does this concept make sense or Sparking up a death tree, Steve. Here we are, a member of the Parthenon Podcast Network, featuring great shows like James [00:19:00] Earley's, key Battles of American History Podcast, and many other great shows.

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Uh, to me, you basically described about like, uh, communities not feeling like in a connection to the police force or the state authorities. You basically set up the scenario in which the mafia can thrive. That's exactly how it happened in New York, in places like Brownsville, where, I mean, a lot of the times we just finished, uh, we're finishing, well, releasing, finishing our series on Murder, Inc.

And a lot of the time was They didn't trust the cops, you know, they grew up in poverty. They didn't trust the government either, right? Because they lived in some of the worst conditions and, you know, the modern world at the time. In the world, you could argue too, uh, because of how cramped the spaces were and.

The lack of sanitation, they just looked at all authorities and be like, we're doing, we don't trust [00:20:00] any of them. So like, even if a cop wanted to go in there and like, try to make a difference, good luck. This is not going to happen. And then who comes in and replaces that, uh, the authority that the state and the.

the police force is supposed to have it becomes the gangs really it's like oh you don't want your shop burned down well you got to pay this tax for us right otherwise this is going to happen to your shop or this is what's going to happen to your brother oh you need a loan to get something oh come to me you know Here's the problem though.

It's like, we're going to charge you a 40%, you know, interest. And if you don't pay, if you don't even cover the, the VIG payments, uh, yeah, we're going to break your fingers and, uh, beat your wife up. But doesn't that, doesn't that come later though, Chris? I mean, doesn't it start with, Oh, that guy, Steve is messing with you.

I'll take care of it. Like that's what it starts with. And then it's like, then it, then it gets to the, probably you should just give me some money to take care of it on an ongoing basis for you. And then, you know, but it [00:21:00] almost like we, we, we talked about noble cause corruption on a different episode about how cops start doing the wrong thing for the right reason.

Basically to put bad guys in jail, the guys they know are very bad in jails. Yeah. So they don't get off on a technicality that might be the first transgression that happens, but then it progresses because it can be a slippery slope. I think the same thing's true in the mob, isn't it? I mean, I mean, even if you go back to Italy, it basically they brought order and they brought resolution to problems.

They brought safety to people initially. Um, and then, of course, yeah. It became corrupt and it became, you know, extortion and it became, you know, all the other bad things that that the mob does. So, uh, it's interesting. Basically, human nature is human nature. I think is what it comes down to. I think so much of what you said to about the sense of community.

Where if you are living in the community, like I've seen it in a slightly different way of teaching in the [00:22:00] neighborhood school where my kids went to that school, their friends went to school, and it could, even in that situation, there was some really awesome things about it. And really did it, it broke down some of those barriers of the authority and this.

And, you know, you became friends with the parents, they were your neighbors, they were your shopkeepers, your, you know, the person who did your breaks, all that, you know, everybody was leveled out the playing field in a lot of ways. But then there, it did also cause some awkwardness where you could see where some of that noble, uh, corruption could sneak in.

Oh, I can, can I really give, uh, so and so's kid a bad grade when they're, you know, my, uh, a good friend or, I mean, uh, getting Uh, cornered. Oh, can you talk about this or that? And I think with police, it would get amped up even more because it do you really want to live in a neighborhood where you could be potentially, you know, especially in maybe a higher crime neighborhood where you might have [00:23:00] to be locking up a lot of people.

I think there could be a lot of really good benefits to that. And there could be a lot of really, uh, negative outcomes. And I could see where some people want to keep a separation there. But the thing is that, you know, it's easy to think of a person as a stereotype. Oh, he's an Italian. Um, oh, he's, uh, uh, whatever an Irishman though.

She's, she's French or whatever. He's a teacher. She's a cop. Uh, you know, he, he works at a recycling plant, you know, I mean, you can, you can just decide that's a, that's the stereotype and you can, you know, really easily decide how you want to feel about that person. And, and, you know, but. When you know the person is an individual, it's a lot harder to sell yourself on anything that isn't true.

That's not, you know, that's not accurate. And so one of the things that's great about community policing or whatever iteration that they're calling it at this stage now, I've been out of the game for [00:24:00] a decade, you know, neighborhood policing, you know, whatever you want to call it, is that now people know Steve, not officer Guerra, right?

They know. Chris, not Officer Daniels, they know Frank, not Sergeant Scalise. I put myself in charge 'cause I have more experience, . Um, so it's, it, problem solving is different when, when you know somebody, even, even a little bit, even if you have the tiniest bit of commonality and, and so that's the benefit of being within the community.

So when you don't have that, you have to, as a police officer, you have to try ho hopefully you do anyway. You have to try to. Discover that commonality, uh, you know, I mean, if they've got a picture, if they've got, you know, Native American picture up on the wall, you know, and you are also, you know, maybe that's your history area, then you can, you know, broach that topic.

I mean, I'm not talking about the middle of a drag out fight, but you're there on a [00:25:00] call, right? Anything to create commonality, because then. The problem solving becomes easier. And I think, and I think in Freddie's case, that would have been all of the policing that he did. He knew everybody in that town.

Everybody knew him, but in New York, I mean, these guys live in care. So they, they're only there when they're working. They're in cars. They're not walking a beat. I don't know that. That it necessarily is quite as effective. It may. You know, I may be a little pie in the sky. We're never going to go back to officer Joe on the beat.

But boy, if we could find a way to bridge the gap between where we are and that, I think we'd be in a better place when it comes to policing and everything that surrounds it, the effectiveness of the police, police corruption or scandals when they do happen people's. Quality of life. I mean, it would just, it would be more like Garrison, New Jersey, where these guys want to live than it would be in some of the rougher places in New York.

Let's, uh, shift gears to training day. And, uh, how does [00:26:00] that fit in? It's a lot the same, I think. And that's kind of why I picked it. The biggest difference though, is so the corruption that's taking place in Copland is a reaction to the policing life and a desire for a better life. And then it, of course, it becomes about self aggrandizement and, you know, self enrichment as well, but that's where it starts.

And that's mostly what it's about, um, in training day. You know, Alonzo Harris does what he does to put bad guys in jail. That's his creed, right? That's what he does. And when Ethan Hawke calls him on it, he gets offended and he lists out judges of, you know, put, you know, have, have given out. This ungodly number of years of prison sentences on cases that he's worked and, and everything he's doing is about either putting bad guys into jail or bettering the life of the community that he's policing.

Um, even if sometimes that community is, as Chris [00:27:00] very rightfully pointed out, just beset with criminality. I mean, he's, he's crooked, but I don't know that he's a completely bad guy. I mean, 1 thing that people. Need to remember when they watch that movie is the actions. He takes during that day is actually a response to the fact that he went to Vegas and popped off his mouth and lost some money and made the Russians mad and they put out a hit on him and he was trying to buy off the hit.

And so he does a lot of corrupt things, a lot of very corrupt things. But essentially it's to save his own life is how he sees it. I'd be curious to see a different training day where maybe before he went to Las Vegas, how similar it would be. It would be very similar up to a point because his habits and his behaviors were, were, were what he did all the time.

It was clear, but his attitude was. You got to be a wolf to catch a wolf, you know, and, and that's not an uncommon attitude among a lot of [00:28:00] police. And I don't know that it's a wrong attitude entirely. One of my favorite television seasons, probably the best season of television of all time is a true detective season one, my humble.

And there's a line in there where, or one character is feeling bad about some decisions that he's made. And he, he asks the other character, the. He asks, uh, Matthew McConaughey, a character arrest goal. Do you ever think you're a bad man? And Russ tells him the people need bad men. Marty, we keep the other bad men from the door.

I mean, that's almost word for word, beat for beat. You gotta be a wolf to catch a wolf from training day. And so this corruption is. Is more based on what they're trying to accomplish. And I want to touch on that a little more deeply, but I don't want to go too far, too fast. How many times have me and you argued about the receiver?

There's a part of me that's just like, you know what? Like you go into places like Baltimore and Detroit, and it's just [00:29:00] like, you know what, you're not going to fix this problem. Like, can you, you need a sledgehammer to actually fix this problem. And it, at the end of the day, like sometimes people, it gets almost.

Well, some people willingly take the burden, but in a lot of ways it can be a burden. It's like, I have to be the sledgehammer, because who else is, who else is going to be the sledgehammer in the face of this, this There's absolutely debauchery and criminality that's going on in this community. Like I have to at least if I could stop it here, or at least it's not at least I can keep it from spreading in other places.

And Steve, you're you're you have more so like a libertarian Ben. So you're. Always terrified of, you know, the state having too much power, uh, organizations having too much power. And I mean, I get it like to a degree where I'm like, I, I see, I see the problems with that, right? I've, my opinion's always been like, well, if they start having a problem, then the people can just get rid of the people that are causing the problem.

But you, it was, I don't know, I go [00:30:00] back and forth with it all the time, where it's just like, there's a, in some ways I understand Denzel's character. It's just like, yeah, like if you're gonna fight a bunch of wolves, like you have to be the biggest, baddest wolf to be able to tame all these wolves, right?

And I think some people, I think they don't get it fully. Like I, I, you know, like, like I grew up in Toronto, so I didn't grow up in a place like Detroit or anything like that, right? But I grew up like. You know, like a lot of my friends end up becoming criminals and stuff like that, and then you're dealing with, you're around these people and you're dealing with this, and I, there's a lot of eye in the pie type solutions to these problems I find where people are like, well, if you just do this and you do this, and if the cops did this, and I'm like, like, sometimes it just, it literally takes a billy bat across the face and like arresting people, you know, like just literally removing the problem.

For the community to even have a chance, but I mean, that's probably a really controversial opinion, but that's how I feel sometimes, but I understand the, the concern of, [00:31:00] you know, police using excessive force or the state using excessive force, because in a lot of ways they, you know, it's cliche, but it's the truth, right?

In a lot of ways, they're the most powerful mafia, you know, they can print their own money. You know, they have their own army, but people, it's funny because if, if, like, if, if somebody goes zoom in down your block and then a police car goes zoom in after him and stops and writes him a ticket, you're cheering, right?

Write that mother a ticket, you know, write that Humpty Humper a ticket, right? You're all, you know, um, and that extends to some guys being a total jack wagon and a. Or something and takes a poke at somebody and shows up and mounts off to the cops and takes a swing at the cops and gets pig piled, you know, as we used to call it and, you know, ends up on the ground with, you know, about 6 knees holding him down and gets cuffed up and thrown in a car and taken to jail.

People probably cheer the. Cars, it drives away. I mean, people's sense of justice is pretty, is pretty well. I mean, unless you start [00:32:00] having philosophical discussions with them, but the, in the moment sense of justice is pretty well developed. It's pretty keen. And, and so the question that comes to me with this, with this movie training day is, is.

You know, he's engaged in corrupt behavior. That's one side of the coin. But the other side of the coin is how much of society is willing to accept that behavior in order to get the result. Like when we talked about noble cause corruption, a lot of times it goes when it, when it goes off the rails and goes really far, you've got absently T absentee leadership.

That's really not paying attention to anything except the results, you know, drugs and money on the table stats, you know. Uh, arrests community and happy about whatever. Um, the community is kind of the same way. I think about some things that the cops are getting it done. They almost don't care, you know, what, you know, it's just a bunch of criminals.

I mean, if somebody happened to get smacked upside the head. You know, when they didn't [00:33:00] deserve it, I can live with that sort of attitude. I think, I mean, and so in this movie, it just makes me think about the question. What does society want? They want justice at what cost, you know, what, and everybody's answer is different, of course, right?

Everybody's, if we pulled the three of us, we'd have three different answers. If there were 300 people on this broadcast there. Be 300 different answers where that line is at and training day does a really good job of, I think, drawing you in, you, you talked about liking Alonzo and I teach you about loving him.

I loved him. Like he's the coolest dude ever for like, it's a two hour movie and for like, um, 90 minutes. He's a God. You know, he's funny. He's charming. I mean, Denzel's a handsome man. Obviously, he's good looking guy. So very charismatic, very cinematic. Uh, and what he's doing makes sense to your basic sense of justice, doesn't it?

I mean, did he do anything that you thought was over the top? Until when, when did he do [00:34:00] something that you felt was too far? You know, probably when he faked the search warrant to steal the money from that, that woman who had the kid did the fake raid. Do you remember that part there? That was probably where most people go.

Oh, I think I'm out. I think he's a bad guy now. But prior to that. Most people were probably like, yeah, well, you know, that guy, he tried to rape that girl in the alley. So he got whacked in the grind by, you know, by, by the butt of a gun. He's lucky that he didn't go to jail or get 1 of those, you know, get, get it shot off or something.

Right? Um, and so where, where's that line and they do a really good job. I think of. Taking you down the road and seeing how far down that road. You'll go with them before you look for an exit. Yeah, you, you mentioned about like, how far would we be willing to go? Like, if somebody told me, and this is just all theoretical, right?

It's like, Hey, and your neighborhood, we can get rid of all the fentanyl. We can get rid of all the crack, get rid of all the math, right? We [00:35:00] just going to have to be allowed to do this, this and this and this. If they provided the results, I'd be like, It's not a bad deal. It's a part of me that goes like, that's not a bad deal, but what's this, this, and this, like, what, what would you have that kind of that's there's there and lies to me.

It's like, if you got the results, like, there's no fentanyl on the streets anymore. There's no. Okay. So I'm going to, uh. I'm gonna assassinate every drug dealer until all of them leave the neighborhood. Are you okay with that? That's a long, that's a long pause, Chris. I just dunno what I should say because I know, I know what my answer is, but I, I mean,

Steve here again with a quick word from our sponsors. I started at the wrong end of the spectrum, Steve. It should. I should have started with, I'm gonna go and t verbally her, all the drug dealers to me. I'd be like, yeah, it's perfectly fine. Shoot the drug dealers. But what if you dial it back a notch [00:36:00] and you just, the team is around the table and they say that it's, the people who are doing this are predominantly teenagers from the age of 17 to 23 and they're of a certain race, is it okay to roust every single person of that, that fits that profile?

Is that, you know, would that be acceptable? And shake them down no matter what, you know, like basically essentially profiling. I mean, in our democratic country with civil rights and I mean, we have the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. No, but in a place like Singapore, they don't care and they don't have drugs on the streets like we do, you know, it's just employees think they profile behavior more than anything.

So, you know, if, if those individuals with whatever age group or whatever, uh, demographic racially or, or whatever, if they're on a known drug [00:37:00] corner, making frequent contacts with, Okay. People coming and going, that's the focus, right? Not necessarily the other factors. But, but I think your point, Steve is, is.

A wonderful one, because it really clearly defines what we're talking about here. You're giving up some freedoms and not your own, by the way, somebody else's in order for everybody to have safety. And how much of that are you willing to do? And in the movie, yeah, I think that that's kind of what we have to ask ourselves.

They're trying to get drugs off the street. Well, what are you willing to do to do that? Are you, are you willing to allow a guy like Scott Glenn's character to basically operate unimpeded for years because he gives you information and he doesn't sell to kids? And he, you know, he has this code that you're okay with.

Is that acceptable? Cause you're never going to get drugs off the street, right? So why not try to control it a little bit? Yeah. Um, now I'm being rhetorical here. I'm not actually saying that's what we should do, but some people would be like, yeah, that's a necessary evil. [00:38:00] That was a smart play on their part.

Um, is that okay? I mean, there's a lot of questions that it brings up. And I just, I think it's a fantastic movie from that perspective too. And it's a never ending discussion, honestly, like I go back and forth with it all the time, like, uh, but. I, I'm not going to lie, like I kind of lean towards stuff, especially with like drug related and, um, stuff like murder and obviously murder and stuff like that.

Like really serious crimes. I mean, do what's necessary to get the stuff off the streets. You know, people, I don't know, people talk about like, uh, terms of drug use. And like a lot of times, like people, I think there's certain people that just kind of gravitate towards it, but there's also people that are just like, they're at a party and they try something and.

Yeah. They're hanging out with a couple people and they try it a couple more times and then all of a sudden they're hooked, you know, and that's if that just wasn't, and if that was difficult to get, which is unlike what goes on society now. [00:39:00] If that was actually somewhat difficult to get for the average person, a lot of those scenarios just wouldn't happen.

I think what you describe is that, for the most part, drug use, more than the physical effects of addiction, Is it's habitual and a lot of the research shows that is when people get into drugs, it's, it, it's a habit and it's their lifestyle. And it's a lot of the, the best programs that get people off of drugs.

I interviewed another author, Sam Quinones, who, uh, was really a big fan of a program in, I want to say was somewhere in Appalachia or Appalachia, uh, where he said that. They put people in prison and they had guards and psychologists who just trained people on how to operate in a society where they're not on drugs.

Well, I don't want to, uh, [00:40:00] to, uh, spend all the time on just these two movies. So, uh, before we move on, I do want to ask everybody, uh, favorite quotes from each movie, favorite lines, um, Copland, Steve. Without a doubt, it would have to be, well, uh, there's so many of them that I use, uh, in for a penny and for a pound Ray, but, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the diagonal rule following, you can follow somebody from, uh, ahead of them as much as you can from tailing them.

And then, um, and I, I'm probably, I might be stealing somebody else's is being right. Isn't a bulletproof vest. Oh, my goodness. I tell you Yoda. Does he not own that line? Oh my, you know, that's, I don't think that's the best line in Copland. That's the, that is the best line. That's a, a motto you should live by lip being right is not a bulletproof vest.

And he delivers it with such like. So emphatically and with [00:41:00] frustration too, it's like, he's trying to get somebody to understand, you know, being, you know, being right. Isn't a bulletproof vest, Freddie, you know, and he comes at him hard with it, you know, and, and that is, that is my favorite line. Um, but. I will take another one then.

Um, because Robert De Niro has a very understated but extremely important role in this movie. And, you know, I went, go to lunch, you know, and he freaks out at everything . And, and when, when Stallone comes back and tries to, uh, give him the information now, and he, he's got the sandwich and he's like, not.

Worried about it anymore. And he goes, you know, we came to you and he goes, you know, you had a chance to do something and you blew it. And just the way that De Niro delivers that line and he's waving the sandwich. It's like, it's just, it's a great, it's great. I, I really enjoyed that line. You have a favorite line for the movie, Chris.

Not so much a line, I'd say more so a scene. I think it's when, uh, Ray Liotta's character comes over to Frank's place and he's [00:42:00] laying low for a bit, and Frank realizes like, like, Ray Liotta's character's doing blow in the bathroom, like his own bathroom, and it's just kind of like a realization where Frank has such a good, like, Freddy.

It's Freddy. Sorry, yeah, sorry, yeah, sorry. Freddy has such a good moral, uh, Compass in the sense like this is wrong, but he I think it's like a revelation to him to do a degree where it's like sometimes you know what I have to work with people that might not might not necessarily be as good as me or have the same moral compass as me to achieve.

Uh, a better good, and just because somebody might be bad in this scenario, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're entirely bad, which is, you know, kind of what we find out during the movie, right? And that's pretty much real life, too, in a lot of ways. I get, I have a very strong sense of right and wrong, a moral compass.

Now, I might not be right about that all the time, but I And to me, it's, it's pretty strong. Like, I don't, uh, it doesn't fluctuate all that much, but [00:43:00] sometimes I have to catch myself where I'm judging somebody because they're doing something wrong and think to myself, I'm like, well, I gotta be able to be a little bit flexible here sometimes, you know?

And, um, I just think that seems like a perfect place. Well, Freddy has to be too, doesn't he? He, he washes it off the, the mirror. He doesn't confront him. He doesn't. Arrest him. Um, he shows that he's able to, I mean, that's corrupt. That's a little corrupt. I mean, he shows that he's not a perfect individual.

And, and I love that about. The movie, because it shows that it's not a light switch. You know, there are degrees of somebody being corrupt and in whatever profession that they're in. And Freddy is at the very light end of the spectrum, but that's still a corrupting. He also knew figs. He. Blew up his own house.

I mean, he might not have been able to prove it, but he knew it and he didn't say anything. So, you know, he, he had a little bit of corruption too, just not enough to allow somebody to get killed. You know, he wasn't going to let a murder [00:44:00] Superboy. Right. So, uh, I think that's a great scene. That's a good. I think just a part of it too is where unlike say like the other characters or they they see the corruption and it doesn't like they know that they're being corrupt and it's not affecting them where you can see that it's literally eating freddie away inside that he is participating in this yeah yeah he's conflicted with and I have no choice right and.

Um, I think that's like, that was the biggest difference to me, like, and that that scene kind of perfectly represents it. And to me, that's what separated him the most from all the other characters were like, a lot of the corruption. It wasn't eating away at it. At the other guys were Friday was, you can literally see it on his body.

I think that's why I still don't gain weight for the role. And, you know, he didn't look as jacked as he usually did because it was, I think he was physically showing. That this, that, that the corruption was literally eating away at him. And if he didn't do something about it, I mean, eventually he probably, maybe he would have killed himself.

I don't know. Well, that is a very [00:45:00] insightful view of that character in that scene. I think, I don't think a lot of people would have picked that scene as being as pivotal as, as you've pointed it out to be, but I think you're right. I think you're absolutely right. I do. Before we move on to training day quotes, I did want to point out Ray Liotta's character Figgs.

He has a little bit of a redemption arc too. So you've got the cops who are outright corrupt. And you've got Freddie, who's outright not just a maybe slightly tiny bit flawed and then you got fixed. It was 1 of them, but now he's trying to get out and he's got to decide if he's going to do what's best for him, or if he's going to do the right thing.

And ultimately he backs Freddie up and he does the right thing. Um, and so that's to me, that's a redemption arc. And I think that's a, I think that sends a pretty powerful message too, but. Training day favorite favorite quote from training day. Chris, do you want to start since you had to go through it last time?

Uh, the King Kong quote. I mean, that's, that's like, that's the best line in the entire movie, right? [00:46:00] Like it's, uh, I mean, it's just so, I don't know. It's just so bad ass, you know, but it's, it's not that as the same time. Cause it's, I don't know. It's this guy's like making one last stand. And in some ways it's pretty pathetic too.

Right. Where he's just like, I run this neighborhood, I'm King Kong. And it's just like, yeah. No, you're not, you know, like your guy, you pointed out your guy, you know, made some bad bets and ran his mouth off and you've been trying to save your life this entire time. You know, you're not really, you're not King Kong, you know, King Kong doesn't have to worry about this type of stuff, you know, like this really kind of encapsulates just how delusional, uh, Denzel Washington is about The character, like, it's just about himself, really.

But it, the way he delivers it is perfect. I mean, it's like one of the best scenes in, I don't know, cop, I don't know, cops behaving badly type movie. That's my opinion. I was glad you asked me because that was, I know one of you guys were probably going to pick that scene too. So I, I snagged that [00:47:00] one. Frank, what do you think?

Um, I, I, I like the, to, you know, to protect the sheep. You got to catch the wolf and it takes a wolf to catch a wolf. I think that that's a good one. I love it when he tells the, the stupid suburban kid, you know, I will slap the taste out of your mouth. You know what I mean? I think that's really cool. But I think that, uh, my favorite is when he says.

Um, well, I love the King Kong quote too, by the way, Chris, but I didn't want to steal yours. I think when he says it's not what, you know, it's what you can prove. And that's the creed that he, you know, he says several times and it's an interesting piece of this character because it. It works on the positive side, you know, you might know a guy is guilty.

It doesn't matter. You have to be able to prove it on the flip side. They might know you're corrupt, but they have to be able to prove it. So we've got some room to tell a different story here. So the quote. Uh, you know, is ambidextrous, right? It doesn't, it applies to both, you know, the [00:48:00] law and the corruption.

So, but there's so many of them. He's got so many good lines in there. I mean, the scene at the diner is fantastic. The scene where he makes him smoke dope. And it's just, it's, it's, it's well done. The craziest thing about Training Day, I find, too, sorry, is just like, it's literally a one man show in a lot of ways.

Like, Ethan, uh, like, uh, Ethan Hawke's character is there, but it's like literally Denzel Washington is just, his character runs that entire movie. It's, I mean, the only comparison I can kind of think of is like Al Pacino and Scarface. We're like, like everybody else is just there, you know, you're just watching, you're watching out for Chico doing Tony Montana.

Right? Yeah. Yeah. There's a noticeable difference in the tone of the movie. Once the focus shifts. Strictly on to Jake, I mean, it's like 60, 40, 65, 35 on Alonzo and then Jake, you know, cause you're seeing Alonzo through Jake's eyes, but then it shifts after that. We, after he tries to have [00:49:00] him whacked by the, by the Mexican and, uh, or Hispanic gang.

And so, yeah. Yeah. So Steve, yours. I mean, I think you guys really encapsulated the best ones out of the whole movie. We kind of bogarted them, didn't we? So, transitioning to mine, I had probably, like Frank, I had about 20, and I'm sure Chris too, about 20 movies I wanted to pick. But I, as I was sifting through them, I found that there was three movies that, um, one almost made the cut, but at the last second I cut it.

But I wanted to focus in on crime in L. A. because I think that some of the best crime movies come out of L. A. like, uh, Training Day did. But so the one, uh, the three that I picked was the New Centurions, and that was from 1972, Colors from 1988, and then Ramparts, which was from 2011, and one thing that I really liked about them is that they, uh, one from the [00:50:00] 70s that was set in the 70s and made in the 70s, one in the late 80s that was set in the late 80s and then filmed in the late 80s, and then one that was in, uh, it was set in 2000, Or it was actually set in 20, around 1999, but it was filmed a little bit later than that.

But I think each one of those movies got the zeitgeist of what was going on. And the other cool thing about each of those three movies is they all took place in more or less the same neighborhood of LA. And you could see the translate, the transition of how the neighborhood was and how crime. It rose, it fell, it rose, it fell, and I, I think that that arc of those three movies is what really attracted me to put those three together.

You know, they almost form like a, uh, you know, a three movie series. Oh, no, I just say you continue to do because like I some of these ones I haven't watched in a long time. I don't know why. So I'm probably [00:51:00] not saying as much as this time. And then 1 other thing that I think that tied them all together is the, especially the new centurions and colors.

Well, each and then a couple of them had some different connections, but the new centurion colors had the, the, Uh, The rookie element and the veteran and the veteran who could who took things very lightly, they took their job seriously, but they also took it lightly. And then another development that we're almost seeing the playing out of it now is, uh, gang units in LA.

So kind of the thing that Chris is talking about, they, they put the, an experiment into place where they put these gang units that were very much targeting the people who sold the drugs and, and in some cases went into assassinations, but that's a, that's not really talked about in these movies, but the, these crash units that the LAPD had.

And it really, I think that they, it shows how [00:52:00] those things developed. Well, the Rampart scandal was, uh, involving crash officers, uh, when it happened. So, uh, it's interesting that two of the movies are related in that way as well. You know, I have not seen the new centurions, uh, film. I read the book way back about the time I was at the five year mark.

And so. I remember thinking how, how incredibly well Joseph Wambaugh captured those first five years. It was a little different in LA. Obviously every, every jurisdiction has its own little, you know, differences and, and, and it's not exactly the same, but the human behavior is the same and the, and the resulting emotions are the same.

So I'd be curious to hear from, uh, essentially a civilian, although I would argue your teaching experience actually gives you. A pretty strong insight on these phenomena, Steve, but, uh, what is it that drew you to that [00:53:00] movie? You know, I loved the, I, I mean, I'm a, I'm kind of a sucker for that old timey. It's this, you know, like the seventies and the, but I loved the, um, the Kilvinsky character, his arc in there.

I mean, it's, this is one of those movies that they made in the early seventies that it has. On the veneer, it's cheesy, but it's, it's so much better than it even has a right to be. That the, the Kilvinsky character, he, he's a great cop. He has some of that corruption. He looks another way, but I, I think he's always doing it for the right reason.

But the thing that I loved the most is that it explored. The person Kilvinsky for his 20 or 25 years that he was on the job, he was a hundred percent cop. And then when he retired, he had nothing like it, it, it evaporated his whole purpose. And I don't think he even realized that would happen. And I wonder [00:54:00] from your perspective, I mean, it's, it's pretty clear you filled your retirement up, but you must have seen, uh, Officers who Once they retired it, they were rudderless, um, not as often as you might think, but that's because, you know, we've known about things like this current Kilvinsky scenario for, you know, a long time.

And so you get warned early on, like, don't make your. Life all about the job when you're 1st on, it's super exciting and it's all a consuming and all encompassing. And all you want to do is work. I mean, there's a constant or a frequent joke that gets told that there really isn't a joke. When you 1st come on the job, you run around like crazy.

And all you can think of is, I can't believe they pay me to do this and you're just so excited. And then, you know. After about five years or more, at some point you reach a point where you say, [00:55:00] God, they do not pay me enough to do this. You know, that's, that's how, that's the arc of the career, you know? And a lot of people figure out early on, Hey, I need to, you know, I, I need to be involved in other stuff.

So I, I have friends who are, uh, let me know my best friend from the Academy. He he's into cosplay. He makes cosplay outfits, like really high end ones. I know another guy who plays a couple of guys who play in different bands. Um, you know, people, they figure that out, but not everybody does like you, like you point out.

And, and it sometimes even happens while you're still on the job. I knew a guy who was one of those people who his entire identity was wrapped up in being a police officer and being successful at it. And he really wanted to achieve a particular position and things didn't break, right. Um, and, and it really was through no fault of his own.

He deserved the position and he deserved to succeed. He was a good guy and he worked hard and he had morals, but, uh, the [00:56:00] fate conspired against him and a lousy chief came in and kind of screwed him over and he struggled for a couple of years. With with how much that shattered his sense of self, because he didn't have a lot of other stuff going on.

It was all about who he was as a police officer. And when that got rocked, uh, it really shook him. And I think that happens to some people when they retire for sure. But I'm happy to report that. I don't think it happens as often as it used to because of, uh, you know, in, in some cases you can probably say that, uh, Wambaugh is at least a tiny bit to, to, uh, blame for it not happening as much or give him credit.

I guess I should say, uh, because fiction, you know, what is fiction, but, you know, a lie. Told to reveal the truth and by showing this guy Kilvinsky and how he's so into it and it's all he is and then he's just nothing when he's gone. There's a lot of cops that read Joseph Wambaugh. A lot of cops read the new centurions.

A lot of cops [00:57:00] read the choir boys. Um, there's, you know, there's a lesson learned there just, just from that. So, uh, but you, you make a valid point. It's the same with teaching though, right? It's the same with any career, I think. Yeah, I think a career where you're super invested, you've worked hard to get to that career.

It's not, it's not something that you generally people fall into. They, it's a, usually a life pursuit. They get it. And like you said, they go through those arcs in their career and. A lot of people, if they don't, if they're not careful, like you say, they can become consumed by it and then once they retire, it's dropped off the cliff.

I have seen that in teaching as well. Uh, one other thing that I think that they really touched upon, and I think it's, you know, maybe again, this is one that's not as. As much as it was back then, was it the alcoholism and, uh, Stacey Keech's character, Failure, [00:58:00] he, his alcoholism, he just kind of slid into it.

He got home, he was working the, uh, the night shift and he got home and you have a little bit of scotch to get to sleep and then you're, you still don't really sleep very well. You go to work, you get amped all day during work. You can't, you know, then you can't get home. You can't calm down again. So you have a little more scotch because you need a little bit more.

And I can see that that must be a very easy thing to slide into with either alcohol or prescription drugs could potentially be one to, you know, just give me one of these sleeping pills so that I can not be a zombie tomorrow at work. I would love to address that, but I want to hear what Chris is. Chris has been wanting to say something for him.

A minute here. No, I like, I can't say personally, like the police work and like, I'm not a police officer. Right. But you were talking about alcoholism and kind of just slipping into it. I mean, I can speak from, uh, [00:59:00] I mean, we talked a little bit about it on the leaving Las Vegas podcast, but again, speak from personal experience, uh, working in restaurants for a big chunk of my life.

And, uh, anyone who's ever worked in restaurants for any length of time knows that just drinking goes in and, and, you know, like, especially you're getting off late at night, everything's closed. What is there to do? Oh, let's all go hang out at the bar and have a drink. And it starts like that. And then some people, they just, you know, restaurant work is just something that they do for a little bit.

But then if it's something that you pursue for any length of time, all of a sudden it's like, oh, that's something that you're doing three, four days out of the week, 10 years. And you start associating with things where like, Oh, like, what are we going to do? Hey, like, are we going to go hang out? Oh, that means that we're going to go drinking.

And that's how it starts. And it slowly creeps up on you. And then before you even realize it, you're a full blown alcoholic. Like, um. That's usually how [01:00:00] alcoholism works. Nobody, I don't think anybody wakes up in the morning and goes, I want to be an alcoholic. You know, it starts off as, you know, it starts off as a thing here.

And then it just slowly gets worse and worse and worse. And then before you know it, you can't go to social events without thinking about drinking. You can't, you can't really think about doing anything else really, except for, you know, like, when are we going to go drink? And um, That's, there's like Nicolas Cage leaving Las Vegas style alcoholism, and then there's that type of alcoholism, which is much more prevalent, where people literally, they can't think about doing anything else than, you know, like getting home to get a drink.

Like, if you start thinking like that. You're an alcoholic. You know, you might be only having a couple of drinks, but still, if that's what you're thinking about during the day, it's like, oh, I can't, this is so stressful. I just, I can't wait to get home to have a drink. You're an alcoholic. And for cops, I mean, it's understandable.

It's like, oh, I just, I saw a crackhead, you know, throw his [01:01:00] baby in the microwave, you know, that's a, I guess we could have talked about heat, but like Al Pacino's character says that in the movie, Heats, and what do you do when you get home? Like, yeah, you're gonna get a drink, you know, you just saw that, you know, and then.

You know, it just becomes a habit that you brought it up, Steve, in the in the previously were a lot of addiction. It just becomes something that you do. And then before you realize that it's just something that you do, uh, it's a massive problem and you really hit on it. Steve, the two. The 2 of the big reasons that cops drink 1 is to calm down after a shift.

Not every shift is all jacked up, but a lot of them are depending on where you work and what shift you work and and so forth. So there's that. Um, and then, uh, you know, some of it is to cope. Some of it's self medication. Some of the stuff you see sucks and maybe it's. A single event, like the one that Chris described that Al Pacino talks about in heat.

Maybe it's cumulative. Maybe it's just like the whole [01:02:00] last week. Everybody lied. Nobody told me the truth about anything. They wouldn't tell me the sky was blue on a clear day and I'm just fed up with it. I need a drink. I need to calm down. And then there's the 3rd piece and that is, you know, celebrating party.

And, you know, I mean, uh, cops are people too. They want to party, you know, and, and just because there's not. Yeah. In my experience, there's not drugs involved and I didn't know anybody that did drugs. It was, it was a very where I came up. Anyway, it was a very verboten thing. It wasn't treated lightly at all.

Um, but drinking is legal drinking was legal and drinking to excess. Well, there's no speed limit on how much you can drink. So you can drink as much as you want. Right? And so. I, you know, I've been to a lot of parties, you know, and we've drank a lot and I was probably one of the more mellow guys on that spectrum.

But there was a time in my life when I was in command roles that, you know, I was, I was having a drink in the [01:03:00] evening and I was drinking every weekend. And that was, was, you know, my wife and our friends with another couple and they were kind of drinkers. And so we kind of became drinkers to a degree for a good year.

I mean, you know, I mean, I haven't had a. Uh, uh, as many drinks in, in the last year that I would've had in a week in that timeframe. Uh, in fact, that that friend of mine, he, he, when we were talking about getting, uh, uh, the difference between a sergeant and a lieutenant, and we were talking seriously about it, you know, we're having a serious conversation.

And then later he comes up to me and hands me a slip of paper. And, uh, I open it up like we're in a meeting when he did it. He slides me a piece of paper, like passing a note in class or something, and I pop it open and he's got a list sergeant on the left and lieutenant on the right. And then he's got brands of liquor and under sergeant, he'd have like, Jose Cuervo.

And then under lieutenant, it would be Patron and then, you know, it'd be some cheap, you know, whiskey and then. You know, I don't know what's good. Whiskey Hennessy or something. I don't know. Stoli would be under the Lieutenant [01:04:00] and, you know, something cheap. And the point was, yeah, the reason they pay you more as a Lieutenant is because you're dealing with more headaches.

And so you're going to drink. So you might as well drink a finer brand of alcohol. And it was a pretty funny joke, especially when I'm sitting there in the middle of command staff and the chief's wondering why I'm looking at this note. Uh, but, uh, that that's the thing about alcohol is for a lot of society, it's free or it's legal rather, and it's, it's free of stigma, uh, for, for most people.

And so cops leaned hard into that and, and there were, there was a lot of. Of that release going on and I don't, I don't judge him for it. I did it too. And I understand, I understand why. Um, but it, it's not a new thing. Like you point out, it's in the movie. Uh, and, and I think it's shown at least if it's anything like it is in the book, it's rather insidious in the way that it's eventually portrayed.

Yeah. And people know too, that he's [01:05:00] drinking on the job and they, that's another thing that I think they explore too, is how much do you cover from, for somebody and how much do you have to expose them? Because they're putting not only your life on the line, they could potentially be putting the people, you know, Obviously somebody who was as drunk as Fahler was getting towards the end there, he was putting everybody at a lot, in a lot of danger with that.

And you want to obviously help someone in that condition, but you also need to call them out. And I think they explore it more in the book, the issues around that, but I think you can, the, the movie invites you to explore that. Yeah, I don't, no way would anybody that I ever worked with. Uh, put up with that sort of behavior because officer safety was always the primary consideration.

You, you get home, you get your partner home, you protect the innocent people that you're [01:06:00] serving. And it even extended to doing your best to protect the suspect in every situation. But that was the, he was the bottom of the list. Right? Um, so if somebody was drinking on the job and was intoxicated, that was handled, um, Okay.

Very quickly and very harshly a lot of the things that you see historically in policing from the 50 60 70s that were, you know, kind of looked the other way or covered up or just flat out accepted by the time I came on in the early 90s was just wasn't tolerated. It just flat out wasn't tolerated. You wouldn't keep your job.

And part of the reason is, uh, Uh, you know, policing was paying better by the time I came on, it was a, it was a career that you could make a good wage at and own a house and take care of a family. And, and, you know, and 1 spouse stay home if you wanted to, um, certainly you do pretty well. If you had to do income.

And when a lot of police corruption [01:07:00] started, it started because of a lack of pay for police. That was 1 consideration back in the 30s, 40s and 50s. Um, And so, you know, things became normalized and then we started looking around going, why, why are we still doing this? There's no reason for it. We're not putting up with this anymore.

Um, and, and we're professionals now. It was a big thing when I was on the job, you know, be a professional, be a professional. And there's arguments about whether policing is a true profession or not by whose definition. And, and certainly you, you can't win that argument with someone if they don't believe so, but there's being a professional and there's.

Behaving like a professional and you can always do the ladder, no matter what job you're in. Right? And so it was, it was a huge emphasis. So, like, failure, he would have, he would have been out of the job so fast. Um, and, and maybe even charged for, for some of the stuff he did. Um. But definitely out of out of a job.

So when you talked about it going from time [01:08:00] period to time period and illustrating the differences within the L. A. and within the community and society, I think that's a difference between the police. I think by certainly by the the 1990 film, the one set 99, he'd be out. No, it's just interesting. Like, I just thought of this right now and you picked L.

1. kind of as a theme for all your movies. It's interesting to think because L. A. You could argue is probably the youngest big city in the United States. I mean, it really didn't become a big city until when, like the 60s, 50s, really? Because other than that, like, I wonder, it's just a, it was just an interesting thought I had, like, in comparison, like, all of the cities in the United States are young in comparison to, say, the cities that are in Europe, but, uh, I don't know, I just thought, I just thought of it now in terms of, um, the type of, uh, I don't know, like, the type of criminality and stuff that goes on in, in some of the movies that you're talking about.

I wonder if that has any factor into the fact that L. A. is such a young [01:09:00] city and it expanded so quickly. I've done a little reading into Los Angeles and their policing, and one thing that it seems as they grew up with a very different mindset, I think maybe because they did, they exploded so rapidly that they didn't have the ability A lot of the entrenched interests that a place like New York and Boston, and I think Frank brought this up and the previous episode where there's a lot of institutional baggage that accumulated L.

1. At least on paper, they tried to create. A very certain type of department that was highly professionalized, I think even down to the uniforms, like they have pretty cool uniforms that are really clean. And I think that they went for an image of, you know, like super professionalism and a small department to that was.

Kind of in the background, but it would go to the [01:10:00] forefront when it needed to. And I think that's worked really in their advantage in some ways. And then we've seen a lot of really high profile times where that's blown up on them. Well, you know, scandals aside, you know, you can take those and set them aside.

Rodney King, Rampart, the other, you know, however many other ones you want to talk about and, and to what level you want to consider them a scandal that all aside. Los Angeles is considered a premier police department and a department to model oneself after now. I think a lot of departments in saying that would model themselves after the ideal Los Angeles, right?

And, and try to avoid some of the same mistakes. But I mean, in Spokane, we were the same uniform. Uh, you know, I mean, a lot of the department structures are structured very similarly. Um, a lot of people's understanding of police work that's not East Coast police work comes from TV [01:11:00] shows, all of which are set and filmed in Los Angeles.

Um, I think you make a wonderful point, Steve, and I think it, uh, it is interesting that that maybe they are. In good ways and bad a, uh, a result of their rapid expansion, I think they were one of the first departments to to go away from revolvers that they, they, they, I'm pretty sure they were one of the first departments to do SWAT.

SWAT was invented by, um, one of their chiefs. I can't remember. I can picture his face to, uh, the fact that I know the name of a Darryl Gates chief Yeah, that's right, you're thinking of. Yeah. Yeah. And so many cutting edge things have come out of that department. I mean, crash, really, if you think that was a very cutting edge program.

And I think any program that can go really well, it can go really bad, depending on what happens in it, where it is, and it's evolution. Crash and these [01:12:00] programs worked pretty well when they were first instituted. If you're not managed properly, anything can, uh, go down the drain. Yeah. I mean, they had to do something in the, in the eighties that with the crack explosion in, in, in Los Angeles and Los Angeles County, uh, I mean, I guess through all of greater Southern California and any heavily populated area, something had to be done.

And so. They innovated and they created a unit and it was very effective. And unfortunately, over time, it wasn't as you very well point out. It was not, uh, they didn't, they didn't, uh, pay close attention and they, they'd had a lot of mission drift, let's say, as evidenced by, by the rampart scandal, but, uh, I know you want to talk about colors, but before we move to that, did you have a favorite quote from the movie?

Because I, I don't really have one. I haven't seen the movie. I don't remember 1 from the book. I don't know if Chris does, but. I'm sure you do. No, I don't have one on top of my head. I was, when I was [01:13:00] watching it, I think one of the things that stood out is Kilvinsky, who was played by George C. Scott. He had his Kilvinsky's Laws and he was one of those guys who would always, you know, Oh, this is, but he'd have all of his sayings and his one saying was, um, I can't say this one on the air.

Well, I mean, I'll, I'll, uh, fill you in. I think people can fill in the blanks. Take a look at the streets. They'll always be another, uh, I think our code for our code for that was, uh, Adam Henry, it'll teach. It was teaching failure that you can't be an avenging angel. You're not going to solve every crime.

You're not going to make the world safe on your shift. You're going to punch out and you're going to punch back in tomorrow. And it's going to be the, uh, we had a saying and on the one job, S. S. D. D. Same stuff, different day. Yeah, there's a lot of [01:14:00] variations of that in police work to, um, that, that saying that you just quoted, it actually kind of mirrors the lesson that Robert Duvall, the central lesson that Robert Duvall tries to teach Sean Penn and colors.

Right. With his bowl story. Um, and, and, but it, it, it is a veteran guy trying to teach a young guy that, uh, You're not going to change the world. You're certainly not going to change it all today, and you're not going to catch every bad guy. Every, you know, every, every game is not a Stanley Cup final. You know, you sometimes, it's just, you punch the clock, like, like, uh, uh, Kovinsky said.

Steve here. We are a member of the Parthenon Podcast Network featuring great podcasts like Mark Vinette's History of North America podcast. Go over to ParthenonPodcast. com to learn more. And now a quick word from our sponsors. Now I'll move on to colors. Colors. I really loved it. I think it captured [01:15:00] something of the age, even though it was a little cartoonish in some ways.

And it, it was very, uh, it painted the gangs, I think, a little cartoonishly. It didn't have the crisp ves. And then. Uh, they even, they insert a fake gang in there and that becomes the ultimate antagonist. Uh, the Crips and the Bloods kind of melt away and it's this gang, the 21 Street Gang, who's, as far as I know, it wasn't a real gang.

And I think. Just maybe to not get the Crypts of the Bloods angry, they made up this fake gang. But I think that one of the things is that it never had a clear antagonist. There was the one guy high top and then he flips and the, uh, then it switches over to Rocket. And you think that he's going to be sort of the, uh, Bond villain, but he doesn't turn into that.

And then the, uh, the ultimate, uh, Enemy or the [01:16:00] antagonist in the film is this gang that nominally was friendly with the, with, um, Robert Duvall and Sean Penn's character, the whole movie, and you could, in one way, look at it was a clunky storytelling, but I think in a way it really shows that how complicated the streets were for the nobody was really your friend.

Nobody was your enemy either, and a lot of relationships are very contextual. I, you know, I, I ran into people that I had fought with and arrested in different settings, not off duty. I didn't have that happen very often, but, you know, while working, you know, go to a party call or something and he's just chilling there and he's.

Not being a jerk and he's not under arrest and he doesn't have a warrant and we actually have a cordial conversation. That's quasi friendly, but we both know if I get behind his car and he's got a felony warrant or he's hold and he's holding drugs [01:17:00] or or a gun or something. That it's on. Right. And we know he's going to run, you know, he knows I'm going to chase him.

He knows if he gets out and points his gun at me, I'm going to shoot. If he runs from the car, I'm going to chase him. If he throws a fist, I'm going to throw one too. And, and like, we both know that. And, and, and it's interesting, some of these criminals that I came into contact Um, like there's kind of a code and it's like, you know, Hey, I, I got slammed on the ground.

I chased a guy down an alley one time and, and, uh, I was all by myself. I was undercover, well, it wasn't undercover exactly. We're playing close detail and I jumped out of the car to chase one guy and my partner jumped out to chase the other guy. And I go down this, this alley and it's in a residential neighborhood.

And, uh, I have my radio with me, but like a dumb ass, I didn't flip the power on because it was my handheld radio. Cause we were in, we weren't in a police car. We were in a undercover car. So I'm running down the alley telling my police radio and anybody with an ear shot [01:18:00] that I'm running down an alley.

But. But dispatch doesn't know. And my partner doesn't know cause he's running down a different alley. So the guy turns down and ends up being a blind alley. There's a fence at the other end and the guy gets to the fence and I'm pretty close to him. He grabs on the fence, tries to go over and Chris, you would have been proud of me, man.

I threw the best body check I'd ever thrown in my life. I just nailed it hard into the boards, man. That fence shook like it was. At the Spokane arena or whatever. And, and the guy falls to the ground, you know, I bounced back. I, you know, I got up first and got up on top of him before he could get up and he, he struggled a bit, but I had the advantage and I got, I got a good grip on him.

And he just, he realized it was like, it's either go all the way or, or give up at this point. Cause he's at a disadvantage. He gave up. I probably don't know if I was justified and slamming him into the fence like that. You know, looking back, I mean, if they had, if he had complained, I might, they might've argued I did.

You know, that was excessive for us. He should have grabbed him or something. Guy never said a peep. Um, and as we're walking [01:19:00] down the alley, he's kind of like. You know, I don't remember how he phrased it, but it was essentially good hit, you know, kind of thing. I was like, Hey, I ran, you caught me. That's the way it goes.

And the habitual criminals kind of understood that. And, you know, but, but it's a, it's a, it's a tenuous contextual relationship because if the tides had turned, I don't know that that guy wouldn't have grabbed my gun. You know, if, if he was looking at a long prison stretch, which he could have been, you know, um, and so what happened in the movie was actually brilliant in that regard, because it really punctuated the fact that, you know, the streets don't care.

They don't care about you and your relationships and the danger can come from anywhere. I mean, look at the wire, right? Who killed Omar little canard, you know, just as an eight year old kid or 10 year old kid, right? This is the big, bad assassin of the show. Um, You just never know where that's going to come from.

And so in a way, I think it was pretty brilliant that that [01:20:00] friendliest of antagonists ended up being the one that pulled the trigger on the fatal bullet. It's interesting. You bring up like that, um, like the relationship between like the habitual criminal and the cops. I mean, if you listen to a lot of these mafia guys, A lot of them don't necessarily hate the cops.

It's, you know, like I chose to be a criminal, and you chose to be a cop, and we're on two different sides. But, you know, I'm gonna do my thing, and you guys are gonna do your thing. All we ask is, be honest about it when you do get us, you know? Like, don't plant evidence on us. Don't, you know, make up charges.

Like, you're gonna, you're gonna catch me doing criminal act. I'm more than fine doing the time. But actually catch me doing criminal acting when I did, um, that's their opinions. A lot of the times when it's, you know, these guys talk about it is that's the way they view it. It's like, I'm on one side above the other side, just be honorable about it.

That's all we ask. Yeah. And that goes a long way and that was one of the [01:21:00] themes of the movie when you really got down to it was this and I think it was maybe a thing that was going in the zeitgeist at the time is that there was a change in attitude that there was maybe an honor amongst thieves and amongst cops and amongst everybody that was going away at that time and the young characters the Sean Penn that Cop, you know, he was, at least initially in the movie, he was going to bust everybody and he didn't grant any sort of mercy or have any thoughts.

He was just gonna get every collar he could, and he didn't really care if he made relationships or soured or anything. And then, The, the gang members, the older ones were the ones who wanted to work with the, you know, the cops and if they got busted, you got, but I mean, they even had that scene where the, um, the leader of the 21 gang was in the precinct helping out the police and then one of the cops walked by and he was like, Oh, hey, you have a warrant.

And he's like, all right, you know, [01:22:00] cuff me and take me to jail. And it was, there was an honor there. And then you see, as the movie develops, the young. Uh, gangsters are absolutely blood thirsty too, that they're not, they have no honor. And I think that that was a thing that a theme that I think they were trying to play out is that there's no, you know, that nostalgia of the old day where we'll all work together.

Hey, you, you got me, you got me and you know, that, or if, uh, you know, I will get you on something that's. That's chicken salad, right? I won't, I won't, I won't Trump anything up on you. I won't get you on something that's piddly. Uh, it'll be a legit thing. And if it's a legit thing, then you'll be a man about it.

That kind of thing. One of the things that you have in this show that is prevalent in all three is, uh, and you have it on your, on the outline to their Steve is. Partners riding together. And in, in every case, the examples seem to be the old veteran cop and the young brash rookie [01:23:00] or pretty new cop, um, in, in training day, he's, he's, but would be new as a detective, even though he's been on the job for a while and that that's a pretty common.

Theme that you see on pretty common trope that you see in these in these movies. Um, but I thought it was really well played in colors. I mean, Robert De Niro, he had a lot of patients, but he wasn't suffering fools when it came to to Sean Penn and he recognized that that character. I can't remember the character's name right now, but that pen was, you know, overly aggressive and he didn't understand that you're just arrested for stupid things that aren't going to go anywhere.

And the only result from that arrest. Besides padding your stats is an erosion of trust. Whereas if you were to play it a little bit differently, you might get some goodwill there that you can bank that somewhere down the line. Maybe somebody actually tells you who dropped the gun in a homicide or something along those lines.

And a young guy like that just doesn't think that way. He's [01:24:00] just all full of testosterone and, and, and, you know, lots of piss and vinegar and wants to just chase bad guys like a. Like, uh, you know, thoroughbred hound or something, you know, it's, it's, they're just so excited about it, but it's, it's really well done because he does impart wisdom, Robert Duvall, but he also kind of is like, Exasperated with him at times too, I think, and if I remember the movie, right, am I remembering right?

Yeah. Did you do to, um, officer cars when you were a cop? Because I would think that, um, I don't know. I'm not, uh, I think for somebody who's talkative, that would be the best thing in the universe. But I could also see that after about an hour, you've said everything that could possibly be said. And If you have somebody who won't shut up the whole time, that could be, that could be more annoying than, uh, actually going for criminals.

We had, uh, uh, one officer cars for the majority of my [01:25:00] career. Uh, so when you got to dump and ride with a partner, if, uh, if staffing allowed or special detail was going on or, or something like that, it was a, it was, it was a treat. Basically, it was a cool thing. Yeah. Absolutely. What you described is true.

If you were assigned to work with someone and you didn't get along, or they were annoying, or they like to talk and you preferred silence or the, you know, the radio or whatever that just go on a road trip with somebody you don't like. And imagine that 8 hours a day, 10 hours a day every week. All year long, but if you are partnered with somebody you chose to partner with and you work well together, it is, uh, it's, it's incredible.

It's a, it's a, it's like being on a, on a line with a hockey line with somebody that you just know where the other guy is and you hit him with the pass and he, you know, shoot past score, you know, that kind of a thing. Um, yeah. You, you're safer because, you know, where the [01:26:00] other guy is, you know, how he's going to play it.

You learn each other's sort of tells. And so you can communicate without directly speaking and so forth. And we used to work for tens. And so we had a sister platoon that worked our days off. There's, you know, not 8 days in a week. So there was 1 day a week where both teams worked and we call that the double update because we weren't very imaginative.

So, on double up nights. People would do 1 of 2 things. They would either use it as an opportunity to take a personal day or vacation day or whatever, start their, you know, start or extend their weekend or they, we double up. Where we could, as long as we had the middle number of cars out there, we could put out a couple of 2 officer cars and I went through the Academy with a guy named Steve and we used to double up almost every time that we were both working on a double up night.

And those were those were some of the most productive shifts. I ever had, I mean, we went to jail 7 times in 1 shift, [01:27:00] 1, 1, 1 day, and we had a couple of nights where he went 6. I mean, and these were not for chippy things. We weren't stopping people for littering and they're all warrants or felony arrests or whatever.

Got into some great. I would call it fun, but adventures, I guess, you know, pursuits and things like this. Um, it's great. It's wonderful. Um, but we got along and we both talked at about the same amount. Like we didn't mind writing around quiet for a little while too. So, um, but the biggest thing was knowing you got to know your partner.

I don't know how that relationship would have gone if we had worked together four nights a week instead of two nights a month, you know? Um, but boy, those two nights of the month were, you know, in the top 10 percent of my. You know, happiness level for, you know, patrol work. It was, uh, uh, pretty good. So I know there are some departments that have the staffing to put out to officer cars, but I think that that is uncommon these days.

So then my last movie that I picked to round up [01:28:00] this, uh, Three parter is the movie Rampart, and that takes place in 1999. And it's a, uh, corporal played by Woody Harrelson. And it's really, it doesn't, it's the story really focuses on the end of his career where he's. Burned out. He's a Vietnam vet and he's, you can tell he's burned out from that.

And he's had, he's gone through most of his career with the cloud that he, he killed somebody. And it's your normal noble cause corruption where he killed somebody because the person was a serial rapist. And so he. They don't really get into the exact circumstances of it, but he kills the guy and then it just sort of spiral.

I think it's that escalator or spiral that you've talked about, Frank, that a little bit of corruption leads into a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. And the next, next thing you know, you're not [01:29:00] making. These these choices for the betterment of society, you're making them fairly much for the betterment of yourself.

And I think this movie is maybe the most dramatic of the three. If, uh, really, when you look at New Centurions, it's the more realistic of the three. This one's the more dramatic of the three, but I think it uses that drama and a purpose to see a person whose life just goes it. It's that's. Going on, like truly going over the cliff.

It's just the inches up, inches up. And then when he goes down that, uh, that slide to the end, he's going full steam all the way down. Have you seen this one, Chris? I, I think I have has been quite some time. I'm not gonna lie. Yeah, for me too. I, I do remember watching it when it came out. Um, I remember how visceral it was.

I mean, Woody Harrelson's character was so unlikable, but charismatic. I [01:30:00] mean, he wasn't like, this wasn't, uh, uh, you know, training day in patrol. You know what I mean? It was, it was a completely different kind of movie. And he, he was. Like, like I said, very charismatic, very visceral in his behaviors, just the stuff he was doing in terms of his living situation.

And, and the biggest thing, I guess, was how unrepentant he was. Like, he did what he did and said what he said, and he believed in both and he wasn't apologizing for it. And. You know, I, I think that was already becoming problematic back in 2000, whatever it was when this was made. I'd, I'd, I'd love to see somebody in public service have that attitude today.

He wouldn't, he wouldn't last 5 minutes. Right? So it'd be a breath of fresh air though, if they did and be like, you know what, I did this at the time and by standby, I look at the results or something, you know, like something like it would be as opposed to the site and I'm constantly apologizing for something.

Thing that you did [01:31:00] before in your life at a different time, like it gets, I don't know for you guys, but for me, it's infuriating just constantly having to hear the, like the, the, the carousel of like, apologies about literally everything. It's just, I don't know. It's very, um, Sorry. I just don't like it. I could use a different word, but I, I don't like it.

I think though that in this, that, that was one of the things that they did in this movie that I thought was kind of interesting is Sigourney Weaver played. I don't know what her role was exactly. If she was somebody from internal affairs or if she was somebody from the DA's office, but she, uh, you know, he always thought that he was this, uh, you know, White knight who had, you know, rid the world of this serial rapist, but then she said, well, when you murdered him his and it all like came out to his wife and she killed herself and then the kids went into foster care and they were abused like there's no decision that just isn't that [01:32:00] has no consequences to it.

And I think when you, if you get into that avenging angel mode, Yeah. You don't look at the consequences of things, and that's maybe why we have a system that you arrest somebody. And maybe everything would have gone all bad for the family as it is. But to have that whole situation, I think that that's maybe why we don't have country justice.

So I will quote a very nerdy quote that is not a cop movie quote at all. It's actually from Lord of the Rings. It's J. R. R. Tolkien. And there's a point in which Frodo laments that Bilbo didn't stab and kill Gollum when he had the chance for those who know the stories or seen the movies, you get the contact, but Gollum is creating a whole lot of trouble at this point in time when he says this and Gandalf said.

You know, you're right. He did deserve death, but it was, it was, it was pity that stayed his [01:33:00] hand. It was pity and mercy. And he may have deserved death, but you know, some people who die deserve life. And can you give that to them? Uh, no, you can't. And so then he says, that's a paraphrase, but the exact quote is something along the lines of, you know, don't, don't be so quick to deal death.

Uh, even the wise cannot see all ends. And I always thought that last line was really great because you go out and, and, and try to be the guy meeting out street justice, deciding people's fates that are in an extra legal fashion in a way outside of the system that's in place. And you may get away with it a few times with a positive result.

You may make a difference exactly in the way that you intend, but there's gonna be a ripple effect. In some of these cases that you might end up with a worse situation than you started with. And it's not beyond the fact that it's just not your place to be doing that. But is it even wise to, I mean, at least habitually, the odds say you're going to screw it up [01:34:00] at some point, even if you get it right a few times.

And so, uh, it's, that's just an interesting piece to it. I think it's interesting though, with like street justice, because like, I'm sure if you asked. You know, pull people aside and you ask them like deep down inside. It's like, don't you want Charles Bronson just to go in there and clean up the streets that you want the punisher to just, you know, go outside the law and just kind of take care of the problems?

Because he does. He's not tied down by any of this stuff. If you honestly ask people will be like, well, yeah, there's going to be problems, but Okay. If he actually, you know, did take care of the problem, be like, oh yeah. You know, like he was, you know, he, he might be a vigilante, but look at what he did.

Honestly, if you do ask people, I mean, we touched on this with the, you know, like Robocop, um, we did the Robocop series too. This idea of like, yeah, he was working for the police force in a lot of ways. He was kind of like a vigilante to a degree. Um. I do think, like, if you honestly ask [01:35:00] people, it's like, they do want, they want Batman, they want Charles Bronson, they want a Punisher character to come in and just clean up all the junk outside of the entire system.

I mean, I know I do. Unless Batman shows up. Unless Batman shows up and kicks your butt and you're the one on the receiving end of Batman, then, you know, and, and I'm more to the point unless Batman makes a mistake, right? And that, that could happen with a human being. I hear what you're saying, Chris. I just, I, I, people absolutely have an appetite for it.

I mean, one of, one of my more popular books amongst. People who I know that are police officers is a book I wrote called the last horseman and, and the, the premise is that there are four X cops who are essentially vigilantes who are fed files from the system of those people who slipped through the system, who are with, you know, they're vetted.

They're 100%, no doubt guilty. And when, when the file comes, they, they slipped through the cracks [01:36:00] somehow, technicality or whatever, and they go and exact justice and. Man, every cop says how much they love it because it, I mean, it was born of a cop fantasy mine. Right? I mean, uh, that, that book came into being because I was walking out.

From from the end of shift 1 night, and I saw 1 of my sergeants who was looking depressed and staring at the screen. And I was like, Hey, Steve, what's going on different Steve? And he just relates to me how he was in court and they had a solid case against this job. And he got off because somebody didn't follow certain paperwork within a certain window.

And. He's like, how is that justice? That's, that's, that's a procedural, no harm error. And he just was so upset about it. And I just, you know, let him vent and try to be all Lieutenant Lee about it, you know, and offer some leadership in this situation. And finally he says to me, you know what? You know, it'd be great.

We'll be great as we get like you and me and [01:37:00] Brent and a couple of other guys. And we just, when these cases come out, we just go find this guy and just beat the snot out of him. So at least get some justice, man, that, that would be awesome. But I could never do that. And I said, yeah. Yeah, neither could I.

And then I went home and made some notes about this book because it was such a great idea that he came up with. And you're because you're right. People do want it, or at least they do think they want it because they have that sense of justice that I talked about, uh, in the previous, uh, uh, episode about how it's very refined.

And in the moment, they're very, it's very clear, but it's a slippery slope. It is a slippery slope. And, and I don't think you can rely on, I mean, it eventually leads to, to what despotism, right? Because somebody is going to get in charge that isn't noble. And then it's all going to change. Yeah, absolutely.

And I think like the Woody Harrelson's character and ramparts, it really is. Yeah. It ate at his soul. I don't see how that couldn't. I think that that's how you really do go down that [01:38:00] slippery slope is, you know, you're not doing your, your, you know, it's in the theoretical, you say there, maybe there is that group of cops out there.

Um, like that. And I, what was that dirty Harry Magnum force was kind of that, uh, yeah, that's the same kind of thing. And nobody is that virtuous that they can just do it out of pure virtue because it's, and I think all, a lot of these movies that we've talked about, the person starts off that that's what they're doing it out of the best intentions.

They did it to the, the child molester, and then it turns into the drug dealer, and then it turns down to shaking down the guy who's been doing 35 and a 30, you know, like, uh, the. You can go down that road really, it just, it opens yourself up to making these moral decisions that I don't think there's really any human who can be completely virtuous once they start going down that road.[01:39:00]

Every cop is going to realize at some point in his or her career that I cannot fix this problem in its totality. I am not going to change the world. I might change some people's experience in this world and I can make an impact, but I'm not going to change it. Big picture. Crime is going to exist. Drugs are going to exist.

All these things are still going to exist. And it's a sobering moment and it's a depressing moment. And I think. If you're already engaged in corrupt behavior, but for a noble reason, so that you could put bad guys that you know are bad guys in jail, when you reach that crisis point where you realize that even if you do that a hundred thousand times over the course of your career, you're not going to stop the next wave of the ocean coming onto the shore.

When you make that realization, if you're already corrupt, the next question that probably comes to mind is, well, If I'm not going to be able to change anything, then maybe at least I can make my own life better [01:40:00] somehow. And then you turn the corner and it's more about that self enrichment that happens.

I don't know for a fact that that happens. I'm not telling you that happened to anybody I know, but from just a basic psychological standpoint. It seems to make sense. The 1st part I know for a fact, every cop makes that realization. At some point, they don't necessarily give up. They don't necessarily become destitute or depressed to the point of not functioning.

They just realize that if I'm going to make a difference, it's going to be in more concentrated ways. I'm not going to change the entire game. I'm going to change this play. I'm going to change this 1 thing. Um, and so. You know, I do think that that realization can affect how corruption occurs. And in this case with Woody Harrelson character, he kind of defends himself by saying that he's like, I'm an equal opportunity hater.

You know, he hates criminals, but he gets into some stuff beyond that. That isn't about taking bad guys to jail. I think he's, he's reached that point of [01:41:00] disillusionment. Before that, um, at least that's what I remember. It's been a, it has, I probably saw it when it came out. So it's been a good 23 years. Uh, so if I'm blowing smoke, just, just, uh, feel free to point it out.

No, it's, uh, it's interesting. You brought, like, cops having a kind of inclusion. They can only make, uh, say, changes in concentrated ways. I can, not as a cop, but from personal experience, like, just from growing up, I used to get, uh, really, really upset and it used to really bother me when I would see injustice.

He brought up the example of, like, somebody misfiling paperwork and, uh, just injustice in society, you know, like government corruption, um, Um, you know, criminals on the streets and, you know, the list goes on. And I found as I, as getting older, as I'm getting older, being the youngest person on this podcast right now, but I am getting older, I have found that I am getting less upset about that type of stuff.

I still do get upset about it. Um. But I'm [01:42:00] finding that the difference I, I can make is in personal relationships where I can strengthen, you know, friendships with the people that I work with, um, and in particular younger people, or I find I can, I'm trying to at least make a difference in terms of giving advice.

To younger people, Hey, I'm older, you know, I've seen a lot of things I've gone through a lot of things in my life and I see what you're doing here. And, uh, this is not a good idea. And let me explain to you why. And sometimes it makes a difference. Sometimes it doesn't make a difference, but it's a lot, it's a lot more effective than getting upset about, Hey, did you hear what was going on in Congress today?

There's nothing I can do about that. Or in my case, parliament, there's nothing I can do about that. They're going to do their thing. I can at least maybe somewhat make a difference in this person's life. Yeah. You're not going to serve. You're not going to solve world hunger, but you can open a food bank locally.

And I think that from a [01:43:00] cost perspective, I'm not going to stop people from doing crime. I'm not going to stop people from speeding, but I can have a conversation with this person and maybe they'll slow down at least in a school zone. You know, I mean, you, you, you, you change your perspective and you change your focus and your emphasis.

And, you know, people don't always listen. Sometimes you talk about giving people advice. Sometimes the advice isn't heated the first time it takes making the mistake and getting pounded. And then Chris's advice comes back. Uh, after that, and, oh, man, he warned me about this. And then it really takes hold because now they have their own experience to anchor to the advice that you gave them.

And they know you're not just, you know, uh, you know, talking out your rear end or whatever. They, they see the value of it. Um, that happens on the job to people, people, cops get told things all the time by older cops. And we don't listen when we're young. And then we screw up or we, Mhm. Go through the fire.

And then we're like, Oh, wow, that old grinder, that old, that old call Kilvinsky guy, you [01:44:00] know, he looked a lot like George Patton did and he knew what he was talking about, you know? Yeah, that the, really the Robert Duvall character, the Kilvinsky character, they, they, they knew where they could make a difference and they knew where it just wasn't worth it.

There's a story I had with a student. He just. fought everything. Everything was, would turn into World War Three. And I sat him down and I said, there's two ways you can leave this room. You can use your head and bash down the wall right there and walk through the wall, or you can go out the door. Which ones get, the one is, is going to be a shorter distance.

But it's a lot more work or you can just take the door and I think eventually everybody's going to learn that there's, you can get a lot done doing it in an easier way and a more of one that easier isn't even always the way, but more [01:45:00] productively. And I think that that's what those old timers were trying to instill into the, the younger ones in colors and in the new centurions.

Walk down that hill, son. Walk down that hill. Don't run down that hill. The best is when Sean Penn tries to tell that story. He's completely screws it up. Like he's not quite there to mentorship. Yeah, that's a really, I think of all of those ones. That's the one I would go out for that. I would recommend people go out and watch.

It's such a fun movie and it puts you into that, that time, that place. They get the music just right. They get that, that whole thing with the crack and with the gangs and everything. And the world's changed a ton since then. Like, I mean, honestly, Robert Duvall's character might not have even died. And nowadays, yeah, Because he would have been wearing a bulletproof vest and that might have saved his life.

Like, I think there would have been so many [01:46:00] different things that would have been different now, but I think you really get to see a really specific time and place and good storytelling too. Yeah, it was a great movie. Not, not a huge quote generator was no tombstone or. Or a top gun in that respect, but, uh, uh, I love the Robert Duvall character.

And of course, Sean Penn is really good at playing a brash young kid, whatever role that might be. So I think it was a good choice. Uh, did, did you have a quote from it that you wanted to throw out there? I didn't have a quote, but I think one thing that I noticed with some of the older movies that it's something, maybe it's um, my old man coming out, they had a main character die in those movies.

I, I think that that, so many of the older movies, they, maybe they did it to the point of cliche where the main character dramatically dies at the end, but I think it, that brings you through such an emotional roller. [01:47:00] Uh, coaster where I think nowadays they're afraid to do that, maybe because they want to make the, make number 12 exactly.

You can't make a sequel unless he's going to be a ghost then. Right? So, so now we're going to dive into Chris's top cop movies and Chris's as mustache. Chris's want to do is taking things in a little slightly different direction. So let's hear what you got. Yeah, I, I picked The Pledge for one of my movies, and I mean, I think it's a, people would think, well, that's an odd choice for the theme of like, cops behaving badly, or the relationship between cops and criminals that we've been following so far with all the movies that we picked, but I picked this one because it is, it is kind of an odd choice, and basically the general rundown of the movie is, uh, it stars Jack Nicholson, actually directed by Sean Penn, and Jack Nicholson plays a Uh, character, uh, Jerry Black.

And, [01:48:00] um, at the beginning of the movie, we see, like, he's retiring, right? So, he's quite literally, uh, going to, uh, his retirement, uh, party. And, uh, he gets stopped, uh, the, the retirement party gets stopped. And he, because there was a murder of, uh, a little girl, uh, I guess within his district, uh, so he goes out and investigates it and, you know, they find the girl and then they go and inform the, the, uh, parents and he promises the parents that, you know, the last thing I do that I'm, I'm going to find who murdered your little daughter, um, they Get this Native American guy who has, uh, who's, who's special needs.

I believe he's, uh, it's not Down syndrome. He has, but he's, he's special needs. He's slow. It's the, I don't know what the right term is, but that's how I would describe it. And his partner kind of corroses like, uh, like, um, a confession out of them, but Jerry [01:49:00] Black, he just, he doesn't believe that that he doesn't believe this confession.

And, uh, yeah. The, uh, the Native American guy, he, Native American guy ends up killing himself. Uh, but, you know, the, the department and, uh, his partner and, you know, anybody, uh, important things, like, oh, it's open, shut case. He's the guy that did it. It's done. Uh, Jerry ends up getting, and Jerry ends up, uh, retiring and, um, He asks unofficially, can I, you know, investigate this case that I still think is unsolved and the chief of police said, you know what?

Okay, we'll allow you to do that. And, uh, he ends up buying, uh. Like a gas station nearby where the little girl was actually murdered and he starts doing his own investigation. But what we see clearly that's going on here is he is becoming obsessed with the case. Much of his career we've, he, we get the impression that he's just obsessed with his job.

He's [01:50:00] not married, doesn't have any kids. And through his obsession and trying to solve this case, he puts innocent people in danger. He befriends like a local girl. She's like a waitress and, uh, it takes a liking to her daughter and invites them to live with him after there was a domestic dispute. And he ends up actually using.

her daughter as bait to get this child murderer that he's convinced that there's like a serial child murderer going around and everyone that thinks he's nuts but they respect him because he was a really good detective for the most of his career and he's older so a lot of them kind of look at him like as a father figure and he sets up this whole scenario where he's going to trap this, uh, Child killer that he's convinced that he's convinced is going to come here, um, based on the, um, the evidence that he was able to gather because like the, [01:51:00] uh, this killer or whatever gave them like these little paper birds.

Um, I believe the, the, uh. At the original crime scene, they actually did find this, uh, paper bird there too, and that's what, how he makes the connection. And he gets all his cop friends to come and, you know, get ready, we're gonna bust the, uh, this actual, uh, child murderer. And What ends up happening is Jerry's actually right that there was a serial child murderer, but on the way to going to, uh, get the girl or go to the trap, he dies in a car crash and.

All we see is like a shot of his burning body in the, in the car crash, and obviously no one shows up to his trap, everyone's, you're, everyone's, yeah, you're insane, um, what's the matter with you? I mean, Frank, uh, I mean, sorry, uh, Jerry is, uh, during the movie you see that he is kind of slowly losing his mind, I believe it could be something like Alzheimer's, [01:52:00] um, And we pan away, and we see Jerry by himself, uh, talking to himself about, you know, how he was right, and he was right there, and it's a really depressing thought to have, because yes, Jerry was obsessed with doing the right thing to a degree, but he didn't care enough about the people around him, because he put the people around him in danger.

But at the end of the day, he, he was right. There was this child murderer and it was just a freak accident, road, uh, car crash that he's going to die with everyone thinking that. He's lost his mind and there wasn't this child killer about there actually was and if things maybe if buddy had just had finished drinking his coffee in the morning, he would have shown up there and Jerry would have been right and they would have actually been able to catch the killer of, uh, many of these girls that they had been founding, uh, finding and that just doesn't [01:53:00] happen.

It's interesting to think that it's. Like maybe a cop is right about something like is deadly right about something, but it he's not able to separate it. So he becomes so obsessed with it that, uh, it ends up destroying his life. I'm sure there's many scenarios where this happened where he's convinced that there's something going on and he's unable to directly prove it.

And, um, his partners and chief of police and. What have you, uh, ends up thinking maybe he's going crazy or ends up having to leave the police force. And what if that person ended up actually being right the entire time? I think you bring up a couple of really awesome points with this movie. And I'll be honest with you.

I don't remember this movie and I'm sure I saw it. I would have had to have seen it because it's Jack Nicholson at the time when I was watching movies all the time and. What a supporting cast. Holy cow. If you read the names of the other people in this movie that you chose, it's [01:54:00] just such an incredible array of actors.

And Sean Penn is an excellent director too. Um, but, but there are 2 things that jumped out at me as you were talking about this, Chris, the smaller of them was just that the randomness of the world is on display, much like when we were talking about colors and, and, and Steve talked about who actually shot it.

Robert Duvall's character and how it was kind of random, like, in my comment, then was the streets don't care. You know, they don't care about you and your relationships and fate is what fate is or randomness or chaos or however you want to put it. And that's what happens here, right? Just some random chaotic event, and you can't account for that.

But the larger piece that that I heard, as you were describing this film, it ties into a movie I talked about before, and that is training day where in training day, you have. Denzel Washington's Alonzo Harris say, you know, you want to catch the wolf. You got to be a wolf [01:55:00] basically. Right? And, and there are people in society who would say, yeah, you do.

I want my cops to be wolves so they can catch the wolves. It's necessary. Well, in this movie, you've got, you've got a cop who's obsessive about his cases and. If you went and ask somebody, you know, what, how do you want your detective to be a lot of them would be very okay with that. Most of them probably because he's going to find the bad guy.

He's going to hunt him down. He's never going to quit. I'll tell you right now, common sense, tenacity, and an ability to. Notice things in an open minded way or three traits that detectives need to have in spades and that they need to be able to draw upon if they're going to solve cases over long periods of time.

I mean, that's an addition to all of the basic foundational skill sets that that you have to have. This obsessive nature is just a, like the dark side of tenacity, isn't it? And As a society, we would applaud that because he's going to get his man, he's going to get this guy and if he [01:56:00] hadn't gotten that car wreck, as you point out, Chris, he would have got him.

But look at the toll that that takes on the individual. Look at the price that's paid. So is where Alonzo Harris or even in Copland, their failure, their, their negative way of doing something that society wants in, in, in training day, it affects it. The, the society, it affects the, the, the citizenry, the community, right in this, it it's turned inward.

It affects the individual flex, the cop himself, rather than the cop affecting the community, but it's just as dark. It's just as dark as when Alonzo was doing, it's just who's being affected by it. And in both cases, I think you would have a segment of society who, to at least a certain point before they got off the exit of the freeway would drive right along with it.

And they would say this guy, Jerry, this detective that Nicholson played, that's who I want looking for my kid. If my kid went missing. So I'm really [01:57:00] fascinated that you chose this film. But the part that always really gets to me in this movie is I could be say, I happen to go by that gas station. I'm talking to Jerry and he starts talking to me.

I had this guy, like I was right there and you know, I'm sitting there and I'm thinking to myself. This guy's insane. And yet, he's not, though. Like, he, he's telling the truth. The guy was right there, and I'm sitting there as an individual, myself, you know, justifiably thinking, this guy's lost his mind. But he really hasn't lost his mind.

It's, everybody else is just blind to the actual truth. He almost had this guy, and And how many times in society do we think that they'll were we think somebody is insane and then we come to maybe realize later that, you know, actually, they weren't and they weren't that insane. Or maybe people just never realized that.

And it's a slippery slope of like. How hard it is to how easily you can lose the truth and it could be just something as simple as like you pointed [01:58:00] out a freak accident. And then all of a sudden the truth is it's just gone. I always go back to Frank's movie. Cop land being right. Isn't a bulletproof vest and he was right.

But I'm You don't win every time, and I think that that's one of the things that he suffered, and he was right, but that didn't mean that he was going to, at the end of the day, get a medal from, for cracking the case, and I think different people handle that differently, and some people, it really does break them, that too.

They'd, because what I mean, maybe it isn't for notoriety, but maybe he just wants people to know the truth, but, um, to quote another Jack, uh, Nicholson movie, you can't handle the truth. Oh, yeah. And it's like just the movie itself. Like, I honestly, I suggest everyone want to watch it. It's one of those movies that, um, I don't know.

I [01:59:00] just, it's, I guess it's been forgotten over time. Um, but it's. It's a, it's a really emotional movie, and I mean, if you're a thinking person, uh, you'll get what I'm saying about just the slippery nature of the truth, and you'll go on this journey with this cop, where at one moment, like, at one moment, you're like, you're totally with this guy, like, he's obsessed, he's, he's gonna, he's, he's gonna catch this guy, and then you start realizing the, some of the stuff he's doing, like, he's putting another little kid in danger, he's sacrificing a potentially healthy relationship, I With, uh, this girl and her daughter, um, because he's so up so obsessed to, uh, to crack this case.

He basically, you know, he gave his life to the police force and trying to protect innocent people. But in the process, he ends up putting innocent people in danger and ends up destroying his own life. It's. It I mean, it's not an easy watch. It's a very depressing movie. And Mickey Rourke has, uh, has a [02:00:00] quick cameo appearance in it.

And, uh, Mickey Rourke is when he's on. Honestly, he's probably 1 of the best actors in Hollywood. And then this little 5 minute scene that he has in there where he's talking about because 1 of his daughters is 1 of the. One of the ones that were killed. Um, it's, it's, it's heartbreaking to watch and I find a lot of with a lot of these cop movies and, um, just crime shows in general.

It's all, it's all about like the CSI type stuff where it's just like, Oh, how are we going to solve this case? And like, uh, with criminal minds. And it's like, Oh, like this guy was doing this. And I found that the, the pledge really brings home just the, uh, personal trauma that comes with. The crimes of this nature, but just crime in general, like the toll it takes on people who are directly involved in it and the people around it and the people trying to, uh, solve the problem.

It's I find, uh, [02:01:00] with a lot in this genre, they try to make it seem it's like, oh, it's like a cat and mouse game. And, and, and. There's aspects of that in this movie, but it's really, it's not the focus. It's about the, the toll that, uh, criminality takes on everyone really well. And you quoted, uh, the other Jack Nicholson line of, you know, You can't handle the truth there a minute ago.

Was it you, Steve, that said that? Yeah. Yeah. But there's another line from that same speech that applies to this movie too, right? Where he says, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall. And that. Applies to this character, the detective that he plays in the pledge. It sounds like to me, I mean, that obsessive compulsive, you know, tenacious sort of personality is exactly who you want.

I mean, if that's who you're, if your kid was stolen, but again, there's a price, there's always a price. And, uh, it sounds like they depicted that really well in this movie. [02:02:00] Now, yeah. I did not see it recently, so I don't have a quote from it. So I am going to do a fun fact instead. Chris, did you know this was actually filmed largely in BC?

I didn't know that, but if you told me that I would have been, yeah, I'm not shocked by just like, it looked like it was filmed in the Pacific Northwest, like around that area. Yeah, it was in the, it was around, uh, it was all in the interior of BC, except for the exterior shots that they filmed in Reno to, to, to set it, but they, they shot it in a bunch of small towns.

I've never heard of. And I, I actually know BC fairly well from traveling up there for hockey and stuff. So yeah, it's a fun, fun fact instead of a quote. Yeah. BC is interesting people. They, when they think of British Columbia, if they, I don't know how many Americans actually do think about British Columbia when they do, they can go like Vancouver.

And so people don't realize just how like, what do you like the wilderness in BC? Like they don't get it, right? Like it's [02:03:00] really like, it's really like there we have our hillbillies in Canada too. And then they live in BC. Um, and those are, I'm telling you that, like, I personally haven't been there, but I've heard stories and, uh, Yeah, it can get, like, really, uh, Hillbilly esque in certain parts of British Columbia.

I don't have a quote either, but, uh, another, Mickey Rourke, where he made a really short but impactful cameo was in this movie called Man of God, and it, it was a Greek movie, in English, about a Greek, uh, religious person, and And the last literally two minutes, Mickey Rourke is in it and he absolutely made the movie in just two minutes and he makes a lot of stinkers too, which is pretty amazing.

So yeah, he's a, he's up and down. But boy, like Chris said, when he's up, you know, when you get your angel heart and you're, and you're the [02:04:00] wrestler and movies like this, I mean, that's, uh, that's, that's some pretty powerful acting. Did you have a favorite quote from the movie, Chris? I mean, did he, were there any like favorite quote per se?

I mean, I would say. My favorite scene, even though, like, favorites, like, I guess is a weird word to use, is just that shot of Jerry muttering to himself and, like, shaking his hand, and the camera's panning out, and you see, oh, this is how it ends. It's, no one's actually going to know the truth, and Jerry's going to sit here and slowly go insane for the rest of his life.

Sounds devastating. You know, it is a very, uh, I guess that I suggest everyone watch it. Like it's, uh, it's one of those movies that I just think has slowly been forgotten about. And, um, yeah, go out and watch it when you, uh, guys listen to this podcast.

Steve here again with a quick word from our sponsors. [02:05:00] Now, your second one is a really interesting movie, and it, it, it's on theme, but it also, it has an, it's a little different, too, and that's The Departed, another Jack Nicholson movie. How does that make your list? I didn't even realize I picked two Jack Nicholson movies that didn't, just don't tell me right now.

Maybe I should have picked a third one where he plays something with cops. Uh, should have picked, I'm trying to think of what am I at Chinatown? It's not a cop. Chinatown. Yeah, . He's not, he's a detective per se. But, um, I know I picked, picked the theme for, for Steve too with the LA setting. Yeah, um, I, I just, I picked it to party because I, I enjoyed this movie and I thought, honestly, there's a lot of people who really enjoy this movie and Steve doesn't really enjoy it all that much or thinks it's somewhat overrated.

Um. To be honest with you, I do prefer Black Mass just because it's more, but we'll talk about that I guess in a little bit. But, uh, [02:06:00] yeah, I picked The Departed because it just touches on a lot of themes, uh, and it's somewhat loosely based on a true story. Like, um, I'm assuming most people have seen The Departed, so, um, because it was such a big movie when it did come out.

Uh, The Departed is somewhat loosely based on Whitey Bulger, uh, that, The character played by Jack Nicholson is supposed to be Whitey Bulger, and people aren't familiar with Whitey Bulger. Whitey Bulger was a famous, uh, organized crime figure in South Boston, which is where The Departed takes place. And what makes Whitey Bulger interesting, there's a lot of organized crime figures in the history of Boston, especially South Boston, but Whitey Bulger was actually an FBI informant for most of his criminal career, and it somewhat works.

The way that it's somewhat worked out the way that it's depicted in the movie The Departed, um, where Matt Damon's character grew up in South Boston, idolized, uh, [02:07:00] Jack Nicholson's character and became a police officer. Well, more than a police officer, ended up working for the, the, the FBI. And, uh, Made, uh, Jack Nicholson and, you know, I gotta, I gotta correct you, I gotta correct you there.

That he went to work for the Massachusetts State Police. Oh, that worked for, yeah, he did. He didn't work for the F fbi, FBI story mixed up. Yeah. , the character, the real story, he went, went to work for the F fbi. I, but it was Leonardo DiCaprio's character went to be, he became a Stai, I think. Is that how it Bo Bo Both of them were STAs, yeah.

Oh, okay. Uh, and, yeah, so he ends up, uh, tipping them off, uh, on information, uh, I'm sorry, Matt Damon's character, because he, he idolized him, and there's a whole history about that with how South Boston's almost like a country on and of itself, or a big chunk of its history, um. Yeah, and then with Leonardo DiCaprio's [02:08:00] character, we kind of get a glimpse into the problems, potential problems of undercover police work, because as you're watching the movie, Leonardo DiCaprio's committing various crimes, and I get it, because he's an undercover cop, and he has to, you know, fit in to be able to get to Jack Nicholson's character, um, and But in the process of doing that, he is committing crimes.

He's setting buildings on fire. He's beating people up. He's doing extortion. Uh, pretty much everything short of like actual murder. Um, but he's, he's part of that too, though. Remember him and him and French go into that one place and French kills that guy. Yeah. Uh, he wasn't like, I mean, he didn't participate in per se, right?

But there is that famous scene where he's, he's talking to his handlers and he's, he's saying like, I literally, we literally have this guy on murder. Like, what are you guys doing? And that's always like, I've said this to me, even when I watched the movie and I didn't know it was kind of based on Whitey [02:09:00] Bulger.

I said, Yeah, that would have been the moment where I go, yeah, I'm out. If you're not bringing them in at this point, there's something else going on here. You literally have them on murder. What else do you need? Um, but it's, it raises a lot of those, uh, themes. And then the nature of informants, because I guess, spoiler alert, by the end of it, we find out that, uh, Uh, Jack Nicholson's character has been an informant for the FBI this entire time, which is what happened with Whitey Bulger before they actually decided to start going after him, and there was a huge manhunt.

They, they start realizing it's like Wait a minute, this guy's been, and, our, his handler's basically been protecting him this entire time, and he's been tipping them off about people ratting and telling stories, which have led to like multiple murders. It's like, oh, how did this happen? And It, it shows you like, uh, how quickly, like, the informant system can be abused.[02:10:00]

Um, I mean, J. Edgar Hoover himself was not a big fan of undercover work for obvious reasons. He goes, well, I mean, if you're going to do undercover work, like, you're going to have to commit the crimes to fit in for them to actually buy that you're who you say you are. And the nature of the, the, the problems, if you say using informants is.

They can easily lie, or they can easily not give you good information, or they can, by lying, covering up their own crimes. Yeah, look at Donnie Brasco. I mean, look at what he had to do to maintain his cover. And certainly, uh, Uh, Billy Costigan, the character that Leonardo DiCaprio plays, he, he's present for a murder and, and he, you know, he's doing all kinds of crimes, lower level crimes.

And you can see it's taken a toll on him. I mean, when he goes to see that, that, uh, psychologist, which obviously that's pretty contrived that they both talk to the same psychologist, blah, blah, blah. [02:11:00] But how busted up he is about it and how he's asking for, you know, something to help him sleep and to. Cope.

I think that's pretty realistic. I mean, he knows what he just did is wrong, but, and he's still, and he's being forced to continue to do it. And, uh, Quinn and, and, uh, what's Don, what's Donnie Wahlberg's character's name? Uh, the sergeant. Uh, there's a smart Alec through the whole movie, uh, you know, they don't, they don't pull them out on when, like you said, they had any number of charges on him.

So I would be going crazy if that were me undercover work. I've done undercover undercover work for. Like hours at a time. That's, that's all the experience I had. Um, and it's nerve wracking for, you know, three hours to pretend you're somebody else and to, you know, to delve into that world. Um, and it's a completely different experience and not necessarily a [02:12:00] pleasant one.

I can't imagine doing it for the period of time that this character had to. Well, and you're watching, like I'm saying, like, you're, you're a police officer. You signed up to like, you know, I don't want to not commit crimes. Really? Like the majority, you want to stop crimes and then you become an uncovered police officer and you're participating in the crimes.

You have no choice because I mean, your life's at risk too. Like, if you're not like. Helping with committing the crimes. They're going to be like, who's this guy? He's, uh, is he a cop? Is he a rat? What's going on here? And you could easily get, you know, the crap kicked out of you or killed in some circumstances.

Like if you're a witness to a murder and they're like, oh, this guy could be a cop, they're just going to kill you right there. I mean, I wouldn't even like besmirch them to a degree. I'm like, this is what they do. And this guy's a cop. And he just watched us do it. Like, We're all going to go to jail for life if this guy talks, right?

So, like, I get it to a degree. [02:13:00] I think I obviously think it's a, it's abhorrent, but I, I mean, is it fair to be putting police officers in those circumstances? You know, I really, I know, I think, I think you have to volunteer to do this type of work. Like, they don't, it's not assigned to you, but even somebody volunteers, I mean, somebody can volunteer to go home.

To Vietnam too. I mean, was it really fair to be sending them into those jungles and with like no real like plan in place or rhyme or reason of them? We're just going to bomb the crap out of something and then just like, Oh yeah, just go into the jungle. It's it's not, I don't. There's a part of me that feels like it's not fair, but there's also a part of me that's like, it's, it's necessary work to really kind of get to the information.

I mean, one of the biggest, I mean, successful, uh, you pointed out with Donnie Brasco, one of the most successful operations in terms of the mafia and just collecting information, not so much per se with arrests, but a fair amount of people were arrested too, was Donnie Brasco, right? Joe Pistone going undercover for many years on, [02:14:00] uh, and infiltrating the Bonanno family almost up until the point where.

You know, he was going to get made and he actually pushed against the FBI didn't want him to get made. And Joe was like, I'm right there. They're going to make me just, you know, let me do it. And they pulled him out at that point. Frank, in your experience, was that sort of deep cover type thing? Was that something that it wasn't?

It's more common for the feds and the state authorities to do that sort of thing. And, uh, local police department. I think it's more common for a larger agency because they have the resources to support it. And, and yes, it usually is, uh, you know, you're targeting something big most of the time. I mean, going undercover for a shift and buying drugs and pretending you're a drug user and doing street hand to hands.

I mean, that's undercover, but it's not deep undercover. It's not what you're talking about here. And so what you're talking about here is. It has a, an overarching goal, [02:15:00] uh, that's pretty ambitious. And so it requires the person to be undercover for a longer period of time. And it's more dangerous. You're working without a net most of the time.

I mean, one thing that you do in an undercover operation, that's a short term one is you can, you can control the situation a lot more and provide for a lot more safety for your undercover operative. Yeah. Uh, if, you know, if they were walking up to the corner to buy drugs, you can have the corner coverage.

You can have a ready response car. You can have a video camera rolling. You can, you know, you can, uh, have an ear pier, earpiece in to warn them if somebody's walking up behind them. I mean, there's things you can do. You put somebody undercover like Donnie Brasco. Well, Joe Pistone, but like, You know, in that scenario or in the fictional scenario of Billy Costigan here in the departed and you know, they are totally walking, working without a net.

They are on their own. And that has a stress level to it that I think has got to be off the charts. I mean, uh, [02:16:00] and again, it's kind of shown in how Costigan, you know, relates to the, uh, to the, to the psychologist. It's, but it's like you said, Chris, there are some Goals, there are some things that you might want to accomplish that can only be accomplished through undercover work.

And you accept the danger as the officer and as the organization and you accept that there may be some smaller transgressions that take place in order to achieve the greater good. But it's far more regimented and far more, um. There are a lot of rules in place and safety precautions and checks and balances in the real world than in a lot of the more ambitious films that want to, you know, hype up the drama.

And certainly the further back you go, you can play a little faster and loosen, be a little closer to reality. But to answer your question directly, Steve, I think it is a larger department, maybe a state or a federal department. Or a large department [02:17:00] that has a task that they see that is going to take a lot of work to take down and not uncoincidentally organized crime is one of those things which speaks directly to the core topic of your show and not being a lawyer or a cop or anything like that.

But I think that somebody like Donnie Brasco. He just he kind of like kept slipping deeper and deeper and deeper into it, but I would personally think that, you know, with my very limited knowledge that you start getting somebody to in deep and they start making those, you know, they start doing those little crimes that kind of.

Opens up the prosecution to problems of chain of evidence and all that sort of thing. When they get too deep into it. Well, Mr. Brass or, uh, you know, Agent Postone, where were you when that murder was committed? And, you know, I did. That sort of thing where I think that and that's what I think the [02:18:00] FBI was getting to when they didn't want him to be made.

Like you put somebody on the stand, you were made in the, in the mafia. Where exactly did you stand in this? Yeah. And how did you manage to, to do that? Yeah, in the departed situation, where not only was he undercover, he was also working for the, the Jack Nicholson Whitey Bulger character. So he was working on, you know, all three sides of the fence.

And it's interesting, too, because when Chris points out that this mirrors the Whitey Bulger scenario, and that Nicholson was absolutely modeled after him, um, it's actually also an adaptation from a Hong Kong film called Infernal Affairs that. Mirrors the storyline very closely. Um, there's some deviations and so forth.

And there's a couple of good videos on YouTube that highlight what those differences are. But when they said it in Boston, obviously they said, well, there's a lot of local Boston history that we need to work [02:19:00] into this. And the whole, all the whitey bulger stuff obviously was where it was, what they plugged in.

Crazy fact about this movie is that Whitey Bulger was on the run still from the FBI when this movie came out, so he could very well have watched this movie that was somewhat loosely, I mean, it's very loosely based on his life to a degree, and sit there and just Like, watch Jack Nicholson kind of play a fake version of him.

It's, it's, he was, he was still on the run at the time. You know, they only caught him when he was like an old man. And then he was like brutally murdered in prison. But I mean, we're gonna, I guess we'll save that for like a whole another series. That's gonna be like Voight E Paltry. It's gonna be a huge series.

But I, I want to catch it. Like, you worked with informants, right? Sure. I mean, how, like, how reliable it's, it could be such a slippery slope where, like, you think this guy's feeding you good information, but like, is he actually really feeding you useful information or not? Like, how do [02:20:00] you discern that? Well, the proof is in the pudding, right?

I mean, you always want to independently verify what you're told and in order to use a witness, um, or a CID in order to use, uh, a confidential informant. For as the basis for probable cause to get a search warrant or to arrest somebody, you have to prove that they have that knowledge and you have to be able to prove that they have a track record of being truthful and accurate, right?

That there, you can't just say, yeah, some guy named Chris told me that Steve was slinging dope. So I want to take the door. I have to be able to say, well, you know, Chris is a user he's bought From that house before Chris has provided me information on 3 separate occasions that I have confirmed to be accurate.

I mean, you have to go through this process of essentially qualifying the informant and if they're going to be an official CI, there's actually a CI contract that they, that people will have their [02:21:00] CI sign. There's a. You know, basically I call it what you want. It's basically a code of ethics, basically a do thou shalt not list, you know, that they have to abide by.

And, um, and, and so I'm not telling you that people don't have informal snitches. They certainly do, but to get to the point where they're actually a confidential informant, then it's a little bit more involved. And, and to, to know if they're telling the truth again, it's because they've told you the truth and you verified it.

So you're just open that, you know. This this 6th instance of them giving the information is also true because the 1st 5 or true, you know, best indicator of future performance is fast past performance, right? How does the instead of curiosity? How would a department figure out whether a cop is? Basically running protection for an informant in this movie in particular, like the cop, like Jack Nicholson's character, Whitey Bulger was an informant.

He was giving them information to a degree. [02:22:00] Um, but it wasn't a lot of the times. It wasn't very useful information, but he had an FBI handler that was running protection for him. And how does the department go about finding out whether this is happening with the police officer? He's running protection for informant may be the guy was high school friend, or maybe he's giving them a little bit of cash underneath the table, or maybe the cops got a drug problem or something.

You know, he's hooking them up. How do they find out whether the information that the cop is claiming is giving them is good information. Um, it's leading to, like, other arrests and it only all you'd have to do is the informant is just give enough to maybe. So it's just so maybe somebody's getting arrested, but in actuality, it's just all a front for something else.

I mean, how do they go about investigating that? Well, that's a multi layered question and probably too big for this, for this discussion here. But I, but, but the one, one piece that, that you kind [02:23:00] of went to there at the end, it only takes one time for an informant to give bad information and for the.

Officer to act on that information and get burned, particularly if other cops are present and see that, um, to to to sour that relationship. You might get away with 1 mishap like that. If you've got a really good excuse and a real good track record. Um, but. You burn me twice and we're done and I'll probably put you on my, you know, give no quarter list, uh, as well.

Um, so it, it, it really all comes down to Chris, the facts of it, right? You just see, you know, did this person give good information or not? And that answers the question in, in, in toward the idea of a cop covering for an informant or something. I mean, it's a real great scenario for fiction. I haven't encountered it really happening.

In my career, I'm not saying it hasn't happened, but my answer would be the same. I mean, I would expect that this sort of [02:24:00] thing would eventually become apparent. I mean, even in the movie, when Matt Damon is fiddling with his phone and texting. Jack Nicholson, and he gets a text and Billy Costigan sees him get a text and then immediately make his decision to do something when he goes and talks to Queen and, and I still can't remember the Wahlberg character's name, which is bugging me, but when he goes and talks to them for debrief on this incident, he's going to point that out that he got a text or something and he changed, you know, changed the plan and they did this.

If anybody. Was suspicious or saw Matt Damon's character doing something they're going to start to be suspicious. And once somebody's suspicious of something, they start looking at it. You know, most conspiracies don't hold up once people start actually, like, you know, open in the cupboards and peeking under under the rug and so forth.

So I think the truth went out in most agencies pretty quickly. If somebody was doing that. You know what I thought was, it was great about the movie, but it, and I think it made it exciting, but it also [02:25:00] was sort of the failure at the end is that Whitey Bulger at that point in 2006, that was one of the great mysteries of, uh, you know, you could rank that with like, where did Amelia Earhart go?

And where did, um, you know, is it, are, were they all Elvis and Jimi Hendrix and then living on an island somewhere? Like that's how, with DB Cooper flying the plane that way. was how gone he was in 2006. He was on unsolved mysteries, you know, that was one of the things. And then to me, that was sort of a fail at the end of the movie is because they didn't, Scorsese didn't seem to know how to end it.

And then, what was it, I think in 2012 did they catch him, something like that? And then so we know now what the rest of the story is. So I think that that was kind of the, that was what made the movie so exciting when it came out. But then the ending kind of fell flat because I don't think, I mean, I don't [02:26:00] feel like it was a satisfying ending to it.

It was kind of an action ending. Yeah, I get shot up and then they find out that he's an informant. I mean, I mean, I, I'm not going to disagree with that. The ending's a little anticlimactic, but, uh, like the, the rest of the movie, the pace of it's just great. It just kind of rolls along. And I know you said you're not a huge fan of it, but I like, I don't know.

I enjoy it. Like, uh, especially when like Leonardo DiCaprio's character dies. It was just such a good kick in the ending. Kicking the balls, sorry, but like, it's the truth, right? It's a good shock moment, right? Yeah, you know, it's like, whoa, but then it's not like just shocking for the sake of shocking. Like, it actually makes sense in terms of this movie.

It really does. Maybe I'll upset the audience here, but. I think one of the things that I didn't like about the Departed, or one of the things that like stuck in my craw is Matt Damon's, one of my poison pill actors. I guess I, I give a quite a bit of a list that Chris knows that Nicholas Cage is one of [02:27:00] them, but when some certain actors are in a movie, it's a, it, it sets a high bar for me to like it, and Matt Damon's one of them.

Really? That's interesting. I think he's a pretty good actor. I, I got a somewhat, I'm not as bad as Steve. I got to like, I'm not a huge, huge fan of his, but I'm a huge fan of Leonardo DiCaprio. So I love his acting. I think he's great. Right? Uh, you didn't like goodwill hunting, Steve. No, I, I, and I liked everything except for him.

I think there's something about Matt Damon that he's always Matt Damon. I never really believe him that he's even like in Elysium where he played, was he a cyborg or he was something he just seemed like Matt Damon. I don't. I don't know what it is science fiction. Matt Damon. Yeah, that's funny. Good. Well, hunting was out of a soft spot in my heart because there's that scene with, uh, Robin Williams character.

And he's [02:28:00] talking about how his wife passed away and. Like, he's just, that was like, his life was over at that point and, you know, not to get too personal, it's just like, after my mom passed away, what have you, and then I, I could see, even at a young age, I could see it on my dad's face, right? Like, that was, he was just, I just, life was just never going to be the same again.

And, and, I don't know, that scene just really changed. That scene just really, this is really touching. I enjoy the movie. I, I, I, I, I somewhat agree with Matt Damon's acting. You know, I find it's kind of like The Rock to a degree where I'm like, I, I don't know. Oh my God, no, no, no. Is it like The Rock? Come on.

No, no, no, no, no. I'm saying, I'm saying like, it's almost like I'm seeing it. Yeah, his, um, I just, it's almost like, no, we're, let me explain that before we, uh, are you saying his persona comes through no matter what? Is that kind of the same thing? I kind of again and again, like, I've seen Matt Damon act [02:29:00] and it's good, but it's, it's the same, right?

Like, I don't, I don't. See a range, like a range of acting where, like, compare Leonardo DiCaprio in this movie, and you watch Leo, and he's pretty, he's very different and pretty much every movie that he's in. And one reason, I mean, Steve might hate Nicolas Cage. And to me, like, the one of the reasons I do like Nicolas Cage is I never know what to expect when I watch one of his movies, you know, it's either it's going to be a train wreck, or it's going to be leaving Las Vegas, you know what I mean?

Like, it'd be one or the other, right? And, you know, I just find, like, with Matt Damon, it's just, it's very safe, his acting, right? And, and that's the reason I kind of brought up The Rock. Like, you watch The Rock's movies, and they're like, okay, they're entertaining, but they're very safe. Like, you're, no one's gonna remember.

No one's going to remember any of these rock movies that have come out, like the way they remember the predator or Terminator or Total Recall. They're just not going to remember them because [02:30:00] they're all so, they're so polished and they're so safe. They're very vanilla. They're very vanilla. Yeah, but I don't think the same is true of Matt Damon's movies.

I mean, The Talented Mr. Ripley. I mean, that's completely different than any of these other movies. I don't think I've seen that one. Yeah, because you don't like him. So it makes sense. And, and, and just going back to the departed, you have to admit he's pretty damn good in this movie. I mean, whether you like him or not, he, he plays.

The role really well now, I can see what you're saying. He kind of plays Matt Damon really well. If Matt Damon were a steady sergeant, I get what you're saying. And he does do that sometimes. I'm not going to deny it. But I do think he has more range than you're giving him credit for. Um. Is there a favorite line from this movie for either of you?

Do you have a favorite line? Since it's your movie, Chris, you want to go first? That scene with, uh, Leonardo DiCaprio, I can't remember the exact line, but he's, uh, he's talking to, uh, Martin Sheen and, uh, uh, [02:31:00] Marky Mark, and, uh, he's saying that you, we literally have him on tape committing murder. Why haven't you brought him in yet?

And it's like, and I'm watching that movie for the first time. Like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Murder. You have him on murder. Like, uh, what else could you possibly need? And, uh, they don't do anything about it. That would have been, I'm sitting there watching the movie. I'm like, that would have been the second. I'm like, I'm out because there's something else going on here.

There are a number of YouTube videos online. You can look up that talk about why the departed is not a good movie. And that is 1 of the things that they hammer on this is that that doesn't make any sense. How about you, Steve? I don't have a quote as such, but I think this is 1 of those. Scorsese movies that has take or leave Matt Damon, but otherwise like such a great cast and a young cast to a young Mark Wahlberg, young Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio was young, like all [02:32:00] of these guys were young and Jack Nicholson was still pretty young at that point.

And I think that the movie had a lot of energy to it. Yeah, that's the best part of the film is the, is the pacing. Like it's just, it's go, go, go, go, go. It's like the dropkick Murphy song that's famous in the movie. Uh, it's, it's just has a pace to it. Like almost like a punk rock song, you know, it's just, I get from one point one, even though the movie is like, I think it's almost three hours.

I think it's just, it doesn't feel like that though. It doesn't feel like that when you're watching it. The pacing is probably the best. Just from a technical standpoint is the best part of the film. In my opinion. I love how they rag on the fireman early on when they're playing rugby. It's pretty funny.

Rip on the fireman there. I also like where he says that, uh. The Irish are impervious to, uh, to, uh, psychoanalysis. It's that whole scene. It's pretty funny, but I got to tell you that, uh, Mark Wahlberg's character, it's [02:33:00] ding ding them. Sergeant ding them. He has some of the best lines and maybe the very best 1 is where somebody says, who are you?

And he says, uh. I'm the guy who does his job. You must be the other guy. Oh, yeah. He's Mark kills me. Mark Wahlberg is one of those type of actors to where he's like, I wouldn't say he's like a great actor, but like in a role like that, where he has to play the tough cop from Boston, he's phenomenal at it. I mean, his brother's made an entire career out of it.

Donnie, I think basically just playing Boston cop rates. Yeah, well, he was in Band of Brothers too, as Donnie Wahlberg was. He played Sergeant Lip, uh, Lip, Lipman, Lipman, something like that. And, uh, and he was briefly in, uh, Sixth Sense too. Yeah, he was really good at like, that was out way. I didn't even know it was him.

Yeah, this was a good film, though. I was gonna say, Don, he was also in the Saw movies, too. I think he was, like, in three of [02:34:00] them. I know that's not for everybody, but he's, uh Talk about range. He was, uh, he was a three. He plays a cop in that one, though. He plays, like, uh, like, kind of basically Mark Wahlberg's cop, kind of, in The Departure.

He's just, like, this hard nosed, like, detective. Well, these were interesting, interesting choices really Chris, because like the pledges when I had not remembered, and I think you hit on some really great themes in there and the departed could be, I mean, you can take it or leave it. You can like it or not.

It has some. Complex things woven inside of it and you could decide it's about X and X could be any of about five different things and you could definitively make a case that most academics would agree. Yeah, that's what it's about. And, and you'd have some good support for your arguments. And it is a fun movie.

I did watch it recently, um, within the last year. And I, I did find that it didn't hold up quite as well as previous watchings, but you know, yeah. That happens [02:35:00] sometimes it's funny. You brought up, like, people push to push back against the, the scene where Leonardo DiCaprio says, uh, like, you literally have them on murder.

And people said, like, well, that doesn't make any sense. Well, I mean, in the Whitey Bulger case, like, they knew what Whitey Bulger was like, they had pretty good idea that he was committing murders too. And they didn't do anything about that at the time either. So, I mean, it's not that far fetched. Great soundtrack too.

Mara, yes, Scorsese always has incredible soundtracks. I mean, that's one thing that no matter what he always has the perfect song for the perfect moment. That, that, uh, voiceover that Nicholson does while Gimme Shelter's playing at the beginning, that really, really gets the movie going. Uh, good choices, Chris.

Thumbs up on your choices here. Well, I want to thank everybody for listening. Uh, thanks to mustache, Chris and Frank for joining us. And I think we really, you know, we've looked at the, the movie qualities. We've [02:36:00] looked at the, the bigger story. I think there's a lot to get out of these episodes. And if there are people want more of movies, uh, I definitely like talking about movies.

And I think you can tell that Frank and mustache like to talk movies. Let's head out with just one more. What's your honorable mention that maybe one day we can do an honorable mention show? For me, it's a really weird one. Maybe it would, I think it would have fit well into Chris's list is the movie Dragged Across Concrete with Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn.

It was completely fictionalized and it was very weird and it was very crime noir, but it was a really fun movie. Yeah, I, I, I would love to talk about that one in terms of, uh, cops behaving badly because, uh, it's a great movie. Everything that director does has done. I'm trying to remember his name right now.

It's just been amazing. Like, he did Bonehawk Tomahawk, I [02:37:00] believe, or Bone Tomahawk. And he also did Cell Block, uh, was it 99? Right, Cell Block 99. And those three movies are just incredible. It's amazing. It's just, the themes of the films are just so anti what goes on in Hollywood right now. It's such a brush, brush hair, everything that this guy, the director's done, especially drag to cost concrete.

There's some scenes in that movie. I'm like, how did this movie get made? Like, this needs to get made, but how did this get made in this environment? I don't know how, but it's definitely worth watching, guys. So what's yours? Um, who wants to jump in? What's your honorable mention? Um, I'm trying to think of one, uh, trying to think.

Oh, I was going to say the French Connection. And I was going to do it initially, uh, for the three, but I ended up cutting it out. I think we're going to save it for something later. But, uh, yeah, French Connection is probably one of my top five favorite movies. Uh, William [02:38:00] Freakin is also one of my favorite directors, uh, you know, off air we were talking about how I just, I just like his approach to filmmaking and, you know, sometimes it's a huge hit like the Exorcist or the French Connection and sometimes it's, uh, it's not so good, but, uh, I appreciate the fact that he's willing to take risks, so.

I was buzzing through a bunch of them sitting here trying to decide which I'd name. I mean, I was thinking of To Live and Die in LA. Uh, man hunter one. I know Chris likes NARC. Um, but I think if we're doing a little more eclectic films that are police related films that are, are like you're saying, Chris, that need to be watched and watch with some intelligent intent.

I'm going to go with Lone Star. It's a movie directed by John sales. Has Chris Christopherson in it, Matthew McConaughey's in it, and I can't remember the actor's name right now. That's actually the main character. You've seen him before as a character actor. He has kind of a, uh, his [02:39:00] face is a little bit ready, you know, and, and, uh, he's, he's always a 2nd, you know, 2nd or 3rd billing.

But he's, he's the lead in this movie. It takes place in, in Texas. And I'll leave it at that. If we do end up talking about it, it's a really good piece of filmmaking and storytelling with some great acting. All right. Well, we're going to leave it at that. If you want to learn more about the show, you can check out for links in the show notes.

We'll have links to Frank and his projects in the show notes. And the best thing you can do to help us out is to tell a friend of yours about organized crime and punishment so that your friends can become friends of ours. Forget about it, guys. Forget about it.[02:40:00]

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60th Anniversary of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

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Hi everyone out there. Steve here with a special announcement for you from Richard Lim, host of the podcast This American President, a fellow member of the Parthenon Podcast Network.  November 22nd marked the 60th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. To commemorate this pivotal event in American history, learn more about Kennedy's 1963 Texas visit, reelection campaign, assassination, and legacy, with this excerpt from This American President. This American President is a fantastic podcast and I highly recommend you follow the links in the show notes to learn how to listen and subscribe!

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Title: Inside Attica: Corruption and Reform

Original Publication Date: 11/22/2023

Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/bWpV7Wwemxf

Description:  Joe Pascone from the Turning Tides History Podcast joins us to delve into the gripping story of the Attica prison riots and their lasting impact on the landscape of prison reform. Unravel the layers of this historic event as we explore its catalysts, the unfolding of events, and its reverberating effects on the criminal justice system. Discover how the Attica uprising sparked a national conversation on prison conditions, human rights, and the pursuit of justice. Join us in this insightful conversation shedding light on a pivotal moment in history and its enduring significance. #AtticaPrison #PrisonReform #TurningTidesHistory #CriminalJusticeReform

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Begin Transcript:

[00:00:00] Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment, the best spot in town to hang out and talk about history and crime, with your hosts, Steve and Mustache Chris.

Welcome back, guys. I am very excited to be joined by a very special guest today, Joseph Pascone, host of Turning Tides History Podcast, and he did a really special episode, or a series of episodes, on the Attica. Uprising from the early 1970s, and I thought that tied together really well with what we're talking about in organized crime and the punishment [00:01:00] aspect of organized crime as well, and crime in general.

So thank you so much for coming on, Joe. If people have listened to my other podcast, the History of the Papacy podcast, Joe Picon did a really helpful. Full primer on the resurgent Mento, and he has a really detailed series on that. So definitely go and check those out and then check out all of his other work as well.

Hey, thank you so much for having me on Steve. And yeah, I did a, maybe a bit too detailed of a series on the risk argument though but I definitely did it. It was a lot of fun and the Attica one just came out. And I'm just chugging along here over on my end. I think that this is a really interesting topic, the Attica uprising, because it brings together so many threads of society, crime, and in a lot of ways, it's touched our lives personally being New Yorkers who are expats from New York.

And so it gives us a, I think we have. A very interesting way to look at this objectively and [00:02:00] subjectively, especially being that it, the incident happened well before either of us was born. So I think we have a little bit of perspective on it, but it's also close to both of us as well. Yeah, in a historical sense, it happened yesterday.

Basically, it may as well have. It happened, the retaking and the uprising happened in a few days in September 1971 at, like you said, Attica. And this wasn't like an insular event. This was a culmination of basically the 60s. This was all the best and the worst parts of the 60s kind of thrown into a pot and it just exploded over into the deaths of 44 people.

And it was probably the biggest mass shooting, if you could call it that, up until the present day. And it was completely sanctioned by the state. I think the best place you could probably start the story is, I started, at least in my series, with 1865, because that to me is when race relations sort of start in [00:03:00] America.

Previously to that, there were a handful of free African Americans, sure. But the vast majority were enslaved peoples who were treated literally like property. Supreme court decided these people were property. You could bring them across state lines, just like you could bring a chair across the state line and it still counts as yours.

After the civil war. Millions and millions of free blacks were given the right to vote. They were given civil rights. They were elected to Congress. They were elected as representatives. They were elected as governors. In 1870, there was a black governor in Louisiana, for example, once reconstructing, reconstruction sort of ends with Rutherford B.

Hayes that's it all the reforms of the previous era go out the window black codes, Jim Crow laws, they come into effect, not just in the South, but in the North as well. It's just the segregated. In the north as it is in the south, just in a different way. It's not the same overt racism like, oh, this is the good old [00:04:00] south.

So this is how it's going to be. It's oh your economic status is maybe a little lower than mine because of whatever reason and because of that, you need to live in this much worse neighborhood than I get to live in. So that's where the idea or the start of Attica happens.

The Attica state is built in the height of the Great Depression. It's in 1931. It's finished in a year there, or less than a year. For the time, it was a state of the art institution, but basically what happens is over time, the facilities just degrade because time passes. It's 40 years later. It's the late 60s, early 70s, and Attica is a much worse place to live.

It's way overcrowded. There's about 2, 000 people there. In a facility that was probably only built to withstand maybe a thousand thousand two hundred tops. And in America, the continual rise of radicalization, the Vietnam War has started.[00:05:00] JFK has been assassinated. Nixon has been elected in a very controversial presidential election.

Police riots the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. Attacks on civil rights the civil rights movement. You see the Klan Come back with a new renewed force, which was super powerful, caused millions of black people to leave the South in the pre or in the post Civil War era.

And these all kind of all these forces come together into a very disgruntled population, and it wasn't just. For political reasons, there were obviously political prisoners who were deeply interested in black liberationist movements and anti war movements and were the rock bed of the uprising that's about to happen.

But for the most part, they were just regular people who've done the wrong thing in their life. And for the most part, they were kids. For example, John Hill, [00:06:00] who is the accused killer of William Quinn, he was in Attica because he turned 19 while he was still in juvie. He didn't rob a bank and then...

Set fire to an orphanage or something. That's all that happened. He was in juvie because, I don't know, could have stole something from the store. It was five cents. Another guy, Charles Pernassilis, he was in Attica because he didn't inform his parole officer about an out of state trip. And that's how he ends up in Attica.

So it wasn't just cut and dry. Oh, this is a place for murderers. This is a place for rapists. That's what it turns into. That's what the. The press and the state tries to turn this place into it's just this horrible place. And eventually it even becomes that. And after this period, people talk about Attica is a really dangerous place even today.

And I think it's interesting because it. The uprising takes place during a bunch of other uprisings and a big mess of problems throughout the [00:07:00] country. In 1970, in Soldad Prison, there's a guy called George Jackson. He was a very famous prisoner slash political activist. He wrote a book called Letters from Soldad, where he talks about his experiences in jail.

Basically, what happens one day is a CO or a guard, a corrections officer, CO. See something in his hair. Apparently George Jackson, somehow, I don't know how this happened. He got a wig and under the wig, he managed to sneak in a pistol. We still don't know how this happened, but in the ensuing he takes out the pistol.

He says, the dragon has come three people are dead by the end of it, or. Or two guards are dead and then three prisoners are dead, and George Jackson's among them. The people at Attica, who have heard about this uprising through the chain of information they instantly assumed that this was a police shooting.

They assumed that it was trigger happy guards who gunned down George Jackson. We still don't know [00:08:00] exactly how he got the gun. It seems very, it's a very far fetched story either way. But they were convinced that this was, because of the prison guards. Also down the street, there's Auburn State Penitentiary.

There's a massive uprising there. The black Muslim population takes the lead in the uprising. They take hostages. The guards promise there's not going to be any reprisals. Just give up. The apparatus who were in charge of the prison say, no, there are going to be reprisals, and everyone gets thrown in key block or solitary confinement.

And a bunch of these instigators are sent to Attica. These are called the Auburn Six. And these guys interject the population with a new surge of politic, politics and radicalism that they didn't experience before. You see all these things come together and it's September 9th. Basically what happens is the day before in D yard.

I'm sorry. There's a play [00:09:00] fight between two prisoners. The one of the prisoners runs away when he sees that guards interpreted as a real fight and they're coming question him. He says, leave me alone. I just got out of keep lock. I was there for 14 days. I'm just trying to let loose. He says, no, you're going, the guard says, no, you're going back to keep lock.

So instantly incendiary situation, a tussle starts. In the end, the prisoner gets away because the other guards see that there's a very dangerous situation explosive situation building up. They'll deal with this at another time. So that night, they come and grab the two prisoners. One guy is dragged out unconscious, so they have to really beat him pretty badly to get him out of his cell.

Everyone else in the cell block is convinced that this person's dead, so they start throwing things at the CO. One guy gets hit in the face with a soup can, so then it's even more raucous. The head CO, he goes to his boss, he says, look, let me keep some guys[00:10:00] over time, so that we can make sure that there's not going to be a incendiary situation.

And his boss says, who the hell's going to pay for that? That, that was his main argument, which I guess is fair, but in hindsight, probably should have been. The last thing on that guy's mind, considering the level of problems at the prison. That morning, everyone's going to breakfast. The person who threw the soup can the day before gets sprung from his cell.

When the guard's not looking. So you have 60, 70 people who are all pissed at you and you're in charge of them as this guard. It was a lose situation. Either you try to act like their buddy or you try to act, like an authoritarian. If you're in that situation. You talked about Mike Smith before he was someone who chose to act give people respect because he realized that's the only way they're both going to get through this at the end of the day, and both [00:11:00] have some sort of semblance of a decent time.

So this guy gets sprung and they, the state apparatus, the prison apparatus, decide they're going to send the whole 50 person squad, the whole 57, the whole 50 person regiment back to their cells. They're going to stay in solitary confinement. When they go to corner them in a place called Times Square, it's like the central corridor for the whole prison.

The prisoners realize what's going on. The guards are too slow on their uptake because there's no communication one way or the other. And, riot explodes guards are attacked, the door to Times Square is forced open using the plumbing system from the prison's water system, like water pipes are used to jimmy a door, the door open, William Quinn is on the other side of this door he's in charge of the, who gets in and out He surrenders, but he gets [00:12:00] overwhelmed, and he gets attacked by a whole gang of people, and their landing blows on him, and in no time at all, he's severely wounded unconscious, bleeding from his face, his head, his mouth, all over the place.

He's a bloody mess and then The prisoners go all over wherever they can go. They try to arm themselves. They try to grab as many hostages as possible and at this time, this is one of the few times you could call this a riot. This is when the riot was happening in these first hours. There's a lot of rape.

There's at least 2 instances of it. There's a lot of instances of assault. There's no murders or anything besides William Quinn, who's severely injured. Very quickly you see black, the black Muslim population and the politically minded prisoners take the lead in trying to organize everybody.

So they, everyone finds themselves in D yard. And they quickly draw up elections, and they decide on leaders from each different cell block, from all the, [00:13:00] there's something like 1, 200 prisoners in the D Yard right now, while the rest of the prison, everyone else ran to their cells, because they didn't want to be involved in any of the violence but about half the prison is in D Yard at this moment, and Things are very tense, they ask for a doctor, they ask for food, etc.

And they want observers. They want observers from across the country. People who are associated with the black liberation movement, with the civil rights movement. Radical politics, radical lawyers. And a bunch of these people, and they range the gamut, there's not just radicals there, but there are.

Plenty of radicals there. There's there's liberal minded Republicans. There's there's Democrats from across the spectrum. There are radical lawyers like William Kuntzler who defended the Chicago seven. There's people like. Tom Soto, who was a member of YAF, which was the Youth Against War and Fascism.

They were members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War et cetera. It was a coming [00:14:00] together of maybe not center and left people who wanted to see an end of this hostile situation before it devolved into serious violence or it devolved into a massacre. Because The second the uprising happened, that was the first thing that everyone was thinking, like, how do we take back the prison?

What do we do? And they start calling in police from across the state, they start bringing in armaments they bring in rifles, they bring in shotguns they're waiting. The main thing they're waiting for is a thing called CS gas and that'll be used, devastating effect down the line. There are, there's this situation now, and the observers are showing up, slowly but surely, and eventually, they come to an agreement there's 28 points that they can agree on.

One thing they can't... Get a judge to sign off on is amnesty for the prisoners because they want amnesty because at Auburn, they were promised amnesty. They didn't get it. So they want it in writing [00:15:00] from a real judge that they're not going to face reprisals or Or legal repercussions for the uprising that they, that took place because with William Quinn's condition deteriorating by the minute there was a very good likelihood that he was going to die and the death of a CEO carries with it a death sentence if you're found guilty and given the full measure of the sentence, but even with William Quinn, he was saved by prisoners yeah.

I don't want to say the guy's name wrong, so I won't, but one of the prisoners came across his unconscious body and he got four of his fellow Muslims to carry him down the stairs or carry him to The state controlled side of the prison on a mattress and they had to slog through like water because all the piping system was a mess.

There was blood on the floor. It was a real harrowing like journey. And once the police get William Quinn's body, they don't send them to the hospital. They just [00:16:00] leave them on the side of the on the side of the prison and it takes up to an hour for him to go see a doctor. And even then, when he's at the hospital, he's never sent to ICU.

There, there are a bunch of problems with the way he was treated, but he would be dead in a few days from the severe brain injury that was inflicted by no doubt, the prisoners who were rioting, but probably could have been helped along if. The state or police, someone stepped in and tried to give him adequate care, but that just didn't happen.

Steve here. We are a member of the Parthenon Podcast Network featuring great podcasts like Mark Vinette's History of North America podcast. Go over to ParthenonPodcast. com to learn more and now a quick word from our sponsors. But I think it's really interesting to get into the political and economic geography of New York and why these prisons are located where they [00:17:00] are.

So most of the population of New York, I think it's well over half, it might even be closer to 60 percent of the population lives in the New York City area. So right there, you're going to see that Prisoner populations weighted more in that direction, and I think it's weighted even way more in that direction.

Most of the prisons are in rural upstate New York. And it's interesting because in New York state, it's basically cut in half by the form. It still is the Erie Canal, but there's a series of cities that were once pretty wealthy, but even by the 60s and the 70s were. In post industrialization.

So you have Albany and Syracuse, Rochester Buffalo and a smaller towns that were wealthy at one time but we're on the downward spiral. But then you have places like Attica that never really were wealthy at all. They were just pretty much rural towns that were at a [00:18:00] crossroads. I think, yeah.

Attica might have had, I think you mentioned that they had a dog food factory, and I think they may have had a factory that made horseradish sauce. That's all they had. Yeah, it wasn't a very productive segment of the state, for sure. No, and... For even and back then it was a lot more removed.

Even today, the closest city was Rochester. That was about an hour and a half away. And I think Buffalo is about an hour and a half away. That's where the closest hospitals were. They didn't have very good local hospitals there. You're really talking. communications wise, like everything, even in the sixties and the late seventies, like how remote of an area, a place like Attica was from Auburn is in Auburn, which is right outside of Syracuse.

But that prison I think was built like either the late seventeen hundreds or the early eighteen hundreds. Have you ever seen it? It's [00:19:00] terrifying just from the outside. I can imagine. I'm not sure. I haven't seen a picture of Auburn specifically but Attica looks just as foreboding. And that was built much later, which is quite something.

I think I'll share a little on my own personal experience. I interviewed for a job at Attica, but I didn't wind up taking it. I was a it was right when I graduated from teaching school and I was just looking for a summer job. The jails all had all the New York State prisons had summer jobs. So I applied for one for them and I eventually got one at Wendy Correctional Facility, which is also an maximum security prison about an hour, 45 minutes from Attica.

And so I worked there and got a little bit of an inside, the most, I'd say the most interesting part to learn about was I got the Prisoner Handbook, which was really interesting. And I read that cover to cover just because it was fascinating. You saw the evolution of [00:20:00] things of there was a grievance process and a lot of that stuff had been put into place after Attica.

Really that whole time period and probably up until this day, this was maybe 15 years ago. So I'm a little out of touch with what the newest is, but I felt like even at that point, which would have been a good 35 years after Attica, that it was still a post Attica system in place.

And That was for the good, the better and for the worse, like both of it was a post Attica system. Because just what you were saying, there was no communication. There was very little elasticity between counties and state apparatuses. There was no way to communicate one with the other, even in Attica.

The phones, you could only make one phone call at a time. So if you go to, if you go to call up, you'd have to wait until whoever just called up was done making their piece. And on top of that, there was no [00:21:00] system in place for a riot. So like you were saying, for better or worse, I'm sure following Attica, that was the first thing on everyone's mind, is we need to make a comprehensive system for when a riot happens, what we're going to do.

And Probably an even worse riot in New Mexico State Prison in like the 80s after this, but that didn't have to do with state violence. That was like a gang situation and it just devolved into another bloodbath with the protective custody once they broke in there. But Attica wasn't like that at all.

In the end during the occupation, the siege, whatever you want to call it by the prisoners, three prisoners did die two were accused of treason. Because they spoke to a news team, and then another guy was just raving incoherently about how we're all gonna die. The end is nigh. He was, it turned out being right, but he was also, he also ended up being murdered.

This wasn't like a authority based decision. They weren't like, oh, let's kill these guys before they... Do whatever. This [00:22:00] was like someone just snapped and killed these three people who they assumed were snitching or whatever. But like you were saying, there's a serious divide between New York City and New York State.

You see it even in this most recent election New York state voted overwhelmingly Republican. A lot of our state or the state legislatures of New York are now Republican because there's a very deep divide between the urban and the rural suburban. And just like you were saying, you have some background with.

With New York state prison. So do I, my grandmother worked for Nelson Rockefeller. She was the his only Spanish speaking assistant. So anyone in New York state who was Latino, who sent a piece of mail to Nelson Rockefeller at that time, my grandmother probably read it and responded. And on top of that, my grandfather was a teamster.

He worked as a garbage man for years and he was, he was not a witness to, but he was around during the tombs uprising. The tombs was like this the [00:23:00] jail system in New York City. That's what they called it because it was such a hell hole. And this rose up, but he would previous to this. And after this, I assume he would smuggle in, he would smuggle in playboys.

He would smuggle in cigarettes for the for the prisoners and everything. And they loved them for it. They let them like eat with him. It was very, it's a very interesting that our lives are so intertwined by. By the prison system and so many people's lives are. This is a 2 million person chain of suffering.

That's how many people are in jail right now, which is an absurd number compared to how many people live in America compared to the prison system in other countries. It speaks to a very severe imbalance in the way we do things. I think a big part of it is and what I saw, it was really. It was a punitive system that was pretending that it was a penitential system, like they, they spent gobs and gobs of money on [00:24:00] rehabilitation, but the, at the really at the core, I felt like it was just housing people that they didn't really have a philosophy on how to reform people.

Yeah, despite half of the prison, the half of the employees were seemingly some sort of social worker or another, but they just didn't have a philosophy like the education didn't really have a philosophy on what to make these people. More educated and more purposeful and none of it. It just seemed like doing things to check off boxes.

Yeah, we're, we have an army of social workers. We have tons of teachers. We have all of this, but it didn't seem like there was a philosophy driving it. This is how we're going to get these people because another thing is like, You have the corrections officers who, even at that point, their base pay wasn't incredible.

I don't think anybody was going, has ever gone to become a prison guard to [00:25:00] make a fortune. They can make a decent amount of money with overtime, but you're still working in the prison despite your overtime. And they Even, I think to now, they're minimally trained for their job. I've been watching yeah, I've been re watching The Simpsons.

And there's a bunch of jokes about corrections officers in there. The guard hands Homer the nightstick. He said, this hand, this side's for holding, this side is for hitting. And he's okay, great, when does my training start? And the guard answers, it just finished Michael Smith that you brought up in his memoir.

And I think this is pretty common that you got on the job training. Like you said here's your stick, figure it out. Now there's a an. process, but I still think it's only a couple of weeks long. It's not a psychotic, like when I went in for the training for the, for being a teacher there for the summer, there was a two day training and I would say it was [00:26:00] a good training on two days for two days.

And I would have loved more of it. And a lot of it was really, which I think that hopefully that they're doing is the psychological training of how to deescalate and like strategic deescalation and strategic escalation, like both of them and that really drilling into your head. And I think that this is Yeah.

Because I think on all sides of it, we can very quickly demonize the inmates and we can glorify them and we can demonize the prison guards and we can glorify them. And the administration is probably just worthy of demonization. But it's easy to either demonize or glorify every side of it, but they're all.

Like in, amongst the criminals of the people I saw, there were some guys who were just like, they got caught up in some real bad stuff and they were, they seemed like honest to goodness good people, but [00:27:00] there were some. Yeah. Bad, violent people in there that genuinely deserve we were allowed to look through their files, and we were almost encouraged to do it.

And I reached a point, there was one I looked at it, and I just put it right back, because if I had looked at that file any longer that would, that'd be in my dreams. I still think of it to this day. And... It's like there, I, it's such a complicated system that can be flattened out into 2D very easily.

And I think that was like the one thing that I came out of it is it's a very complicated thing. Yeah it, and it's like you were saying, both sides are not to blame and both sides aren't the cause. They're both victims in a system that doesn't really work or at least doesn't work as well as it could be.

Certainly not as well as it could be. It's like you were saying, I doubt how much more training there is now as opposed to when Attica happened, and I'm not sure what [00:28:00] level it is at, or if they're teaching de escalation or strategic escalation like you're talking about. I think it's so much about a push and pull.

You have authoritarians on one side who want one thing, and they're trying to push that way. And then you have... The liberals on the other side who are trying to push this way and they're trying to make it, reform based while the other people are trying to make it punitive based. And in the end you have this sort of two headed monster that doesn't know what it wants and it's not doing really either.

Yeah. I think that's probably the thing that it really, that it turns into. It's just housing and it's such a large number of people that it's. People who are, people who maybe need more that there's not. And it almost seems like the counseling is one size fits all. There isn't that there's some people who need a very different type of counseling.

There probably are people who are in there. The unit, the particular unit that I was [00:29:00] working with was with prisoners who were mentally challenged. They weren't mentally challenged enough to be in a totally separate facility that are for people of asylums or places, state hospitals, but they were definitely that mentally challenged to such a degree that if they were in a general population that they would have been abused beyond all belief.

And a lot of the guys like they had to almost be recruited for this particular unit because they saw the guards and the administration saw that there were certain people who were they were just abused and we can get into the school to prison pipeline that these people should have been picked up long ago that there was one particular guy, it was because he was so mentally challenged and he was so easily manipulated.

The people on the street used him to do things that they know that he would have probably gotten caught [00:30:00] for and he did and that's why he was in jail is because he was manipulated on the outside and by criminal elements and that's why he's in jail with does that person need the same sort of programming of rehabilitation?

That's somebody who Is genuinely a criminal mind. It's totally different thing. And I don't think that the systems are set up at all to deal with those because essentially the prison system is done on the cheap. I think when I was there that each meal per prisoner was set at something insane, like a dollar and some change per person.

So that included their napkins, the cleanup, The utensils, everything had to be done in under 2 per person, per meal. Holy moly. Yeah, when that's the system you're working with and because both parties like to talk about being tough [00:31:00] on crime, they love talking about that. That's one of the few things that is bipartisan in this country.

Both parties. Love to be hard on crime. You want to look at Bill Clinton talking about your super predators or whatever he said, or you want to look at Ronald Reagan talking about, Detroit welfare Queens or whatever it's all pretty obvious what's going on. And it's very easy to demonize people who commit crimes because.

They committed most people. Yeah, they committed crime. What do you it's very hard to argue for that. It's like you said it last time we were talking. It's very hard. The easiest argument is usually the one that wins out. And it's very easy to be tough on crime. It's a lot harder to be like, Oh, we need to raise your taxes ever so slightly.

So that these 2 million people literally in bondage to have an extra meal a day or an extra shower. And that's really where the that's where the tire meets the road. That's where it is. And that's where it usually stops the second. Oh, you're [00:32:00] gonna raise my taxes.

That's it. Because that's really the only way or you keep investing in private prisons, which I think is just as a big of a crapshoot is anything else? Maybe even a little bit worse because you want to talk about profit. That's a completely profit driven. Apparatus then, and then I'm not sure if that's the solution.

Maybe it is, but I'm not sure. I think both of the systems, whether it's private or it's public, it's the Baptist and the bootlegger coalition where they both, they have diametrically opposed needs, but they wind up or viewpoints, but they wind up getting to, they need the same thing. I think that. The whole prison system, private or public, is it, the incentive is to have people in there.

You don't work if there's no prisoners. I think that's become so ingrained. It's just like that. It's the U. S. is like this Gord, Gordian knot of intractable problems that. You need to solve that [00:33:00] before you have two million people in a prison system, like that's, a whole bunch of things have gone wrong before we have two million people sitting in prison.

Yeah, and let's talk about the elephant in the room, a good portion of them are black, a good portion of them are Native American, a good portion of them are Latino. Very few of the percentages are actually white. Obviously there are more white people in this country, so there are more white prisoners, but if you look at the percentages versus population, it's staggering, it's three times as many black people that are.

In prison that are composed the population that can't just be because that's the way it is. It doesn't work for me. I need a better argument than that. I think that we have a really problematic not only justice system but corporeal punishment system. We have, like you were saying, it's all about the bottom line.

It's all about the dollar. If you could throw more people in jail you get a little bit more money. And if you [00:34:00] get a little bit more money, then you can take that extra vacation to Barbados this year. And that's really where it ends. And it stops being about humanizing people. It starts being about housing people, like you were saying.

Yeah, I think also one other thing is the strangeness of the 60s and the 70s, all that stuff just came, all the social justice issues and issues of things like you had been saying really the race problem in the United States begins in 1865 after slavery and So many things a hundred years later come to a head where it's a system that wasn't designed and didn't really understand it.

Could you think of it now, if there was a a riot in a prison, that's an uprising, it would never, you don't hear about them now because. They designed the system that those things get crushed. Like you're not going to have a thing like Attica today because they have teams that it's special teams that go and just break that up brutally and hide [00:35:00] away.

Yeah. First five minutes of the uprising is not even a chance for it to take a breath. And could you imagine today that if something happened where they would negotiate with the prisoners like over the course of the weeks and that's happened in an episode of this podcast where I'm one of the mafia people, Joey Gallo was in a prison riot and he was a part of the negotiation.

Crazy Joe. Crazy Joe. Yeah, he was he was seen as somebody who could work between the Italian, Irish Predominantly the prison system, and then he was friends with a lot of the African Americans and the black Muslims. And he worked in between. And that one, I can't remember what prison that was at but they were happening all over the place and they were negotiating.

Could you imagine that happening today? It wouldn't happen today. Depending on the state, maybe. Maybe if it happens in Vermont. Bernie Sanders would be talking with the prisoners, but anywhere else, I don't see it happening. [00:36:00] Even in like California. Even in California. It definitely wouldn't happen there.

And... And like you were saying, it's, it, this is all a response to the post Attica world we live in, and now we should probably talk about the retaking how that's a get into that. Over time they're still debating the observers are debating with the prisoners. The prisoners are debating back with the observers.

Very tense situation. Eventually, though, at some point, the state just decides, this is it. You're going to accept the 28 points we put forward or we're storming the place. And this was Nelson Rockefeller's choice. He could have showed up there and he was asked to show up there numerous times, at least.

Individually by individuals, four or five times, and then just in general by the news media, et cetera, probably dozens of times, but each time he refused to show up, he felt that if he was there, he wouldn't be able to fix the problems and it would just make his [00:37:00] administration looked weak. When they were trying to look incredibly strong with the, a new election coming up and Nixon's the guy in charge, he wants to be able to kowtow to him and show that he's tough on crime too.

He's not just like a liberal Republican, which is what he was defined as previous to this. So he says the National Guard's not going to lead this assault. It's going to be the state police. The state police have no plan for taking a prison. This isn't in the pamphlet. This isn't in the book.

The National Guard does. Why they aren't allowed to do it is I feel they are. Nelson believed that New York state troopers should take their facility back. That was the argument. It didn't matter that the troopers weren't trained to use the rifles they were carrying. It didn't matter that, the most of the prisoners would be incapacitated already by the gas. We're going to drop on them. But this is what needed to happen. It was led by the local Batavia unit in Batavia, New York Troop A. They led the attack on the catwalk. [00:38:00] And let me just talk about the loadout real quick.

These were 270 rifles. They used unjacketed bullets, which go against the Geneva Conventions. Then there were hundreds of shotguns brought in. All the shotguns were using buckshot and pellets and slugs. Bunch of people brought in personal weapons. One guy had an AR 15. One guy had a Thompson submachine gun that he fired at least 12 rounds off of.

One guy had a deer Slayer shotgun. With 12 gauge slugs in it. A bunch of people brought in revolvers, 44 Magnum rifles, bunch of things like that. It was and. A big thing about this whole thing, too, is not only did William Quinn die, but the FBI, using a thing called COINTELPRO, subtly dropped the hint that not only was he murdered by prisoners, he was castrated, and he was thrown from a second story building.

So this was this [00:39:00] inflamed all the state troopers who were... We're sure that the people who rebelled were, were absolute criminals and they weren't seeking anything they weren't seeking a redress of grievances or, human rights or anything. They wanted to just, cause hell.

They wanted to stir the pot, they wanted to make America look weak, and if they could kill as many guards as they do it, that's what they wanted to do. Like the stand that the prisoners built to be heard in D Yard, it wasn't a stand, it was an execution platform where they're gonna behead the hostages they still have.

In reality, the hostages were treated incredibly well. They were given medicine. They were given a place to sleep while all the prisoners just slept on the floor. They slept on mattresses. It wasn't a it wasn't by any means it was a hostile occupation, because they weren't supposed to be there, but.

By any other sense of the word, they were treated incredibly [00:40:00] fairly much more fairly than any prisoner would probably be treated in American prison system today. They certainly didn't have to strip naked and get cavity searched or anything like that. They were just left to their own devices and the black Muslims among them and the, more sympathetic of the prisoners formed human circles around them.

Big Black Smith was the leader of the security detail for the prisoners. He wasn't religious. He wasn't, he wasn't a political guy. He was just six foot six. So it helps if your security detail leader is six foot six. But yeah the assault is planned for around 10 a. m. on September 13th, 1971.

First, they drop CS gas into the yard from helicopters. Now, CS gas isn't a gas, really. It's more of a powder. And this powder attaches itself to oxygen. And it just strangles whatever oxygen is in the air. In turn, this strangles anyone who didn't have a gas [00:41:00] mask. Who is anywhere near the prison.

This was for everybody who was outside the prison, the news vans, everything, people who the observers who are in a different room with a closed door were feeling the effects of the gas and this made people throw up profusely one guy said he threw up until he threw up blood. If you want to talk about being incapacitated, every single person in D Yard is incapacitated right now.

You don't need to fire a single shot. Instead, they first clear the catwalks. So the catwalks, they have prisoners, hostages are brought up to the catwalks because the prisoners quickly realize this is going to go down soon. So we need to let them know that we still are in control of these people's lives in some sort of way.

So they clear the catwalks, a hundred different shots ring out, a bunch of people are felled on the catwalks, mostly prisoners, two hostages are killed on the catwalks, Mike Smith is shot four times in what appears to be an intentional attack there were four rounds from [00:42:00] I believe it's Thompson submachine gun that go into his abdomen and they explode on impact.

One of the shells takes away a base, the base of Mike's spine and a bunch of other ones just stay crammed in there and just burn him up. He's saved, this isn't the first time he was saved, by Don Noble, who is his prison guardian. He pulled him out of the way of a hail of bullets that were coming right for him.

And then it, from there, this assault takes nine minutes, In real life, this would have taken a blink of an eye, but in those nine minutes, something like 900 rounds are fired, or 300 rounds are fired. Countless pellets are fired, and each one of these pellets isn't just one pellet, it's about 14 different pellets per, pump of the shotgun.

This would, this spread all over the place, and it caused absolute devastation. People were just absolutely murdered. Kenneth Molloy. He was shot 12 times in the head. By by two separate personal [00:43:00] weapons, two guards came up on him, ripped his skull apart. They literally, his eyes were ripped to pieces because of the bone was fracturing in his skull.

Another guy so in this time, there's countless. Instances of racism, of hate based crime, torture. Big Black Smith gets the worst of it. He's he's forced to sit on a weight bench for about five to six hours balancing a football on his chest. And the guards around him told him, if you drop the football, we're gonna murder you.

And they would drop cigarette butts on him. They'd let a round off and let hot shell casings drop onto his chest. All the while saying the most horrendous things. Cause this was the guy who was accused of being William Quinn's castrator. So he was special, especially singled out and he was beaten within an inch of his life following the torture on the table.

He had to run a gauntlet. Everyone else [00:44:00] had to run the same gauntlet, but he got it especially bad. He faced. Sixty officers alone, and they were hitting him with two by fours and batons and nightsticks, anything they could grab a hold of. He had both of his wrists broken by the end of it. By the end, he's just grabbing his wrists, trying to protect himself.

His head is split open, and then they play Russian Roulette with him after he makes it past this gauntlet. That was a very... Favorite tactic of the CEO is after the retaking. It was to play shotgun. It was shotgun roulette actually, it wasn't Russian roulette. And they would make people drink urine if they were thirsty.

It was really horrendous. Imagine the worst abuses of any third world country in South America. Or the worst abuses in any African country that's been ruled by the same dictator for 40 years. This is what we're talking about. And it's not like the investigations following this go any better.

It's just as bad. It's just as [00:45:00] disheartening. It's just as undemocratic. It's just as dehumanizing. Witnesses are harassed. They're threatened. One witness who right at the end had a change of heart. He didn't want to tell on his guys. He had a gun pointed at his face and what the guard asked the other guard, you see that black jump out the window.

And the meeting was clear that, you're gonna, you're going to testify right now, or we're going to murder you. And this was the kind of state that it was in. This didn't happen in the deep South. This didn't happen in. Cuba or Venezuela. This happened in New York state. The most, uh, or arguably one of the most progressive states in the country, at least for the majority of the citizens.

And it still hasn't not only has it not been really acknowledged, has it been apologized for? The most basic thing that I think you could do is apologize. And it's again, a multi party thing. It's not like just [00:46:00] Republicans are refusing to apologize because they were the ones in charge. Democrats, who supposedly support equal rights under the law, and, racial equality and everything, refuse to apologize.

Kathy Hochul, who's the Democratic governor right now, said, Oh yeah, people were really affected by that. And that was it That was all she had to say about it. She never, she didn't apologize. She easily could. It seems like a win. If I was a Democrat, I would be like, Oh, I'm going to apologize for this right away.

This is an easy political win for me. But, either she's, she wants it to disappear. She wants the memory of Attica to disappear. She, is either worried that her original constituents in Erie County have a problem with it, or she's keeping it in her back pocket. Those are the only 3 options that are really available to her.

I suppose she just doesn't want to cause a fuss. That's the most obvious one. She doesn't want to make anyone upset because even with the amnesty that was proclaimed [00:47:00] for the Attica Attica victims following this the first people upset were the police unions and the, and patrolman benevolence association.

They considered it a slap in the face, that this, these crimes could go unpunished, even though most of the crimes committed that day were done by New York state officials and New York state. Really, the one I think who is most responsible is Nelson Rockefeller. At the end of the day, the buck stops there.

Obviously, there were other people involved. Spiro Agnew was super involved with the FBI and getting information on the Attica people. Richard Nixon just deferred to his judgment. If he wanted to Nelson Rockefeller could have made a difference, but he chose not to for political reasons, which is fine.

And in the end, he was rewarded for it. He became the vice president under Gerald Ford. In a lot of ways it worked out well for him. It didn't work out for, any of the 40 [00:48:00] people who were butchered. It didn't work out for, 40 people have, that's what 500 family members, friends.

Didn't work out for any of them who have to deal with the repercussions. Not only that, there were a hundred other people wounded. They have to live with that. People have to live with the racism they experienced that day. They have to live with the torture. And the police officers who may have committed murder have to live with that.

The officer who supposedly killed Kenneth Molloy says he dreams about brains still because he sees this guy's brains coming out of his head as he's blowing it apart. And that's real. It's a bunch of individual acts of horror culminated in a state designed massacre. And that's really what it was.

Like you were saying, everyone was the victim. It wasn't just the prisoners. It wasn't even the hostages. Because the hostages were butchered too. Most of the [00:49:00] hostages didn't die on the catwalk. Only two hostages died in the catwalk. Most of them died in the hostage circle, which is pretty crazy.

Someone ran up to a police officer, ran up to the hostage circle and everyone on the catwalk saw this and they started blasting too. So that spreading their shotgun blasts. Over, 20 feet or something, it's gonna go everywhere, and it's a miracle that anyone survived, especially in the hostage circle.

It's a miracle so few people died that did. It could have been, it could have been a dozen times worse. It could have been, 200 people dead, easily. Easily, but I guess in that sense, there was some measure of restraint shown.

Steve here again with a quick word from our sponsors. I think you bring up the, I think the, one of the most fascinating points is the politics. It's all political at, but you [00:50:00] can basically take out Republican and Democrat there. It's just politics. Nelson Rockefeller was a liberal Republican. He was not some rock ribbed right wing extremist.

He was about as liberal as you could get, but he did this completely illiberal thing to. Because you just don't know what else to do. If I do, I want to appear weak or do I want to appear tougher somewhere in between, or that, do I want to solve this problem and sweep it under the rug, that's what they really want.

It was all about what could save face. And then they give it to these people who they've. Kim completely filled with hate. Like I would, that's a study to see yeah, totally brainwashed. Yeah. COINTELPRO. Jams the people's heads full of, purposely gins up as much hatred and then gives them an outlet for the hatred.

And I just, I wonder, from the top of your head, why in the 70s, at this point, [00:51:00] there's such gluts of violence? It's just everywhere. It just, it seems like the cork's been pulled out at this particular moment in the late 60s and the early 70s that we don't really see before that, and we really don't see much of it after, but in that maybe five years of just absolute violence.

Yeah, I think it has a lot to do with World War II, honestly. You go back to World War II, America is fighting supposedly against fascism. It's fighting against anti Semitism. And then, when black veterans come home, they're lynched in their uniforms. People were seeing the hypocrisy laid bare in front of them.

This wasn't the city on a hill that it was supposed to be. This wasn't some beacon of democracy in the world. This was actually some of the places were incredibly backwards. And the way we treat anything that's other, even [00:52:00] today. thAt's how we've treated them the whole time.

This isn't some. New phenomenon where, you know, if people who are the other up have an uprising in America, they're always crushed. You want to go back to the first uprising in American history, the whiskey rebellion that happened because poor people wanted to maintain their economic privilege of trading in whiskey.

And powers that be didn't want this, so they changed the law. They made it almost impossible to trade and barter in whiskey. And, the ulterior motives were obvious. George Washington was the number one producer of whiskey in the entire country. It's so interesting you bring that up, because it's basically, as soon as the United States is formed, these backwoodsmen...

Who, like you said, that's their only real trade good, is whiskey. They're saying the same things that George [00:53:00] Washington said a week earlier, when he wasn't in power, and then as soon as he's in power, he crushes them like the British were trying to crush him. I think that's a part that you can't even really teach in school, because it's so discordant.

Yeah. And people trying to mention it really quick and then you run away. Yeah people try and brush it up. But I think if you really look at it, it's really hard to square that. Yeah, but it was. It was the first stamp. This isn't what America is. It's not made for poor people. It's not made for the other.

It's not made for different people who have a different opinion than, the status quo. It was made for this burgeoning bourgeoisie. There's a reason why France. The Dutch, the Spanish, all joined on the United States side, because these were civilized folks who could, who wanted to bring civilization forward.

[00:54:00] And that's why they joined up there. It wasn't because this was some radical movement of da. If that was the case, we would have joined with the French Revolution when we went at the beginning, but we didn't. We waited until Napoleon was the emperor. Yeah, it was a reactionary revolution, not a radical revolution.

Yeah. And it's it's just a hypocrisy that almost any country has to deal with. There are revolving factors. There were people during the American Revolution who could definitely be considered radical. You look at someone like Sam Adams, super radical for his day. Probably would be considered a terrorist today if he was still around.

But there were also people who were extremely conservative. What's his name? John Dickinson of Virginia. He was an extremely conservative guy who was even against independence. But in the end, he ended up fighting for America because he still loved this country. He just didn't love it that way.

So you see [00:55:00] this it's just this constant dichotomy. The more I look into history, the more I realize that these. I don't know what to call them, opposing forces I don't want to sound like too much of a Marxist, but that's really what it is, these opposing forces throughout history, throughout time they come together, and the result is something like Attica, is something like the 60s and 70s, it's something like World War II, it's something like the American Revolution, they all rhyme together in their own special way, and African Americans have been being treated poorly in this country since its inception, since it first started.

Like you're talking about American history the American Revolution, African Americans were promised their freedom if they fought for the... If they fought for George Washington and the national army, they didn't end up getting it most in most cases, I'm sure some probably did. But yeah, it's just something we have to contend with.

And the thing that I think we should not do is just pretend like it doesn't exist [00:56:00] or try to pass laws against it, even being taught. This is a really strange place that. We're in, and because we're so different, there's so many different opinions. I understand that, but there's a difference between having an opinion and then denying the right for someone else to have an opinion too.

Yeah, absolutely. And going back around to prisons, I think it's so hard. We've been in the series talking about people like John Gotti and Vito Rizzuto, who were, they're not good guys. Let's not Try and wash that over. They've murdered people. They've been responsible for murders drugs, but then we're putting them in jails where they're basically vanished.

You're in yourself for 23 hours a day. And the only time you have outside of yourself is an hour in a cell. That's just a little bit bigger. Then the cell you were in, sometimes they don't even get to go into a [00:57:00] place that even has any natural light. Yeah. Yeah. And I even find I struggle with that myself.

Like we have to show some humanity. So if we're putting people away that we're saying that are absolutely incorrigible for life, but we're still treating them like that. Like, why not just kill them? I think that you're essentially killing them without your. They're basically the powers are, they can't go all the way with the death penalty, so let's just essentially give them the death penalty, but oh, we're anti death penalty, but you're essentially killing them, and then at the same breath, if you look at John Gotti, where somebody like Sammy Gravano gets out scot free, and he gleefully admits he killed 19 people that's the justice system we're working with yeah it's quite something.

We're definitely at a crossroads, but it feels like we've been at this crossroads for a hundred and fifty years. Yeah. I just don't know when it's gonna it's gonna [00:58:00] snap, and it's gonna snap one way or the other. Either people are going to support reform or they're going to support punitive measures and they're going to support, like you're saying just get rid of them, it's plenty of people support that.

I'm sure people who are listening to this right now are hearing about the retaking and to be like that. That's what they deserve. They broke the law. That's just what happens. And there is, of course, that. That level of thinking, but like you're saying this argument doesn't go around toward white mafioso for some reason, like it's not the same thing.

It's it's interesting. It's us as a country. It's our big our big sin as a nation, I think, is not only the prison industrial complex, but the way we treat different people of different religions, ethnicities, whatever. It's a part of us, and it's a part, probably a part of humans.

I don't know. That doesn't mean that it's good. That doesn't mean you should encourage that part of you. [00:59:00] That's your... That's your Neanderthal talking. That's your that's your really terrified, there's only 20, 000 of us left in the entire world, we need to preserve our way of life thinking that's where that comes from evolutionarily.

But that doesn't have any place, I think, in society anymore. I think we can confidently move past it. I think instinctually we want people who've done wrong things to be punished, and I think we all struggle with that, that we want them to get really punished. I think a funny thing when we were, when I taught in the prison was on Fridays we would watch movies and sometimes the movies would be cops and robber movies.

And these criminals, a lot of them were doing life sentences to a man they always rooted for the police in these movies. Like you would think that there would even be one rebel who is anti police to a man, [01:00:00] like I think instinctually when you would strip it away. And I'm sure if you would talk to them on a political basis, they were all against the police, but once seeing it presented fictionalized.

They would they would root for the quote unquote good guy and root against the bad guy. It's like with anything. It's how the story is presented. You could present it the other way, and I'm sure there have been movies like that, but for the most part, that's the way it's presented is the way it is.

It's not how it is, it's how it appears to be. Oh, that'd be an interesting experiment to run. To have the, to have that the script flipped, so to speak, on that. I'd love to see that. Maybe I'll go try and get a job again in the summer. I think to wrap up for today, from what you learned in the Attica riots and from the, and from just that general time period, is there one thing that could be changed?

To make things better? Or does the [01:01:00] whole system really have to be evaluated? Can we make the system better with the prisons? Following the riots, there was an initiative to have prisoners a part of the decision boards for for the prison. They would give their two cents on what they needed or what, their fellow prisoners needed.

That seemed to be a good idea, but what happened is, they were just ignored. You just ignore this one individual who... Was voted on by their peers at, by the end, no one even wanted to run for the position. Someone was just chosen because no one even was voting for it because they knew it was just a nonsense position.

But if something like that could be done, maybe that would be better. Maybe if we gave even a little bit more money to. To prisons, then that would go a long step forward. More training for correctional officers. [01:02:00] I think that a lot of times. Yeah, I think that's pretty, that's a pretty general statement, but giving them more money is obviously easier said than done.

It would be nice if we, just held back I don't know, yeah. 20 million that we were going to give to the Ukraine or to Ukraine, sorry or to the military industrial complex. If we could give that to prisons, that wouldn't be a bad idea. But again the first argument from either side, take your pick is going to be, oh, they're trying to.

They're trying to go easy on crime. They're not enforcing the laws like they should be. This is America. If you break the law, this is what happens. And this is, we know the arguments and it's just going to be that ad nauseum. I would like it if something like that happened, but again, yeah.

I think that would be the response. I'm not sure if there's a clear cut answer. I and even if there [01:03:00] was, it would be something. Out of reach Oh, stop using people for profit. They would, politicians would hear that and be like, what do you mean? What do you mean? Yeah. I think that the, it's always a problem of obviously there's some really structural problems that need to be.

Fixed, and there's probably, there's very little will to fix any of those problems, and so is slapping some paint over the rusted wall really going to solve the problem? No, but it looks a little better, and so the rust comes back, and then do we paint it again, or do we really fix the problem? Then you just blame the painter.

Yeah, and exactly. Yeah, to follow that metaphor through, and it just, it keeps getting bounced back and forth until you have. A real problem. And I feel like in a lot of ways that we're really at this point, getting on 50 years from Attica. I did my math wrong. Where that there's some serious [01:04:00] problems.

And is that going to boil over now? Is it maybe never going to boil over? But the problems that happened at Attica really haven't been sufficiently addressed even half of a century later. If anything, they've gotten worse. It's just as overcrowded, if not more than it was then. Maybe politics isn't as big of a issue in prisons as it was then.

But that could change very easily. Everyone talks about us being in the new 60s, or I hear that all the time. It could very easily happen again. I'm not sure if another Attica uprising happens again, but maybe another pretty bad riot. I think that is very possible. And that would be shocking.

And probably what would happen if that happens is you just double down on being even stricter. That probably, sadly, what it would be. I want to thank you so much for coming on. We've really just scratched the surface of what you talked about in your series and your series of just scratching the surface of what was going on and what's going on with the [01:05:00] penal system in this country.

But I think we've given people a good place to. Definitely start off to go listen to your episodes and then maybe go learn a little bit more about this whole situation. If people want to go listen, which I highly recommend they do, how can they find your podcast? So you can find it wherever podcasts are.

It's the Turning Tides podcast. We're on Spotify. We're on Apple. We're on any of them. Take your pick. Thanks again. I definitely definitely go and listen to that episode and go listen to your series on the Risorgimento and on the history of Puerto Rico. You're, you've got a wide spectrum of different things that you're looking at.

Is there any, can you give us a little sneak of what might be coming up? So what's coming next is the life of Amir Timur, as he's known to history. Tamerlane he was an Asiatic conqueror. Very little is really documented about him. It's very niche [01:06:00] subject. Rose out of Central Asia and his empire expanded from the gates of China to Cairo.

South to Baghdad, up north to the gates of Moscow. So this guy had a huge expanse of territory and he built it all basically by himself. People talk about Alexander the great, but he had his Macedonians. This guy had to forge an alliance of tribal confederation, like a tribal confederation of peoples to even get into the, get out of the gate.

And after that, I'm setting sail. I'm getting on my Prahu and we're setting sail for Singapore. We're going to talk about the Orang Laut, how they discovered the island, how they created the first initial settlements there. Up through Stanford Raffles, who's one of the most interesting, weirdest dudes in history, how he founded the modern [01:07:00] colony, the British colony of Singapore.

Up through the Imperial Japanese invasion and desecration of the place for years. Oh, wow. That's awesome. I can't wait to listen to all of that. Thank you again for coming on and you're always welcome. Oh, that's awesome. I love so much being on. It's a lot of fun to, to talk to you. I think we should definitely talk again about some mafioso stuff.

That sounds like a lot of fun. Yeah. I'd love to talk about Lucky Luciano. He's a a far off relative, a far flung relative of mine, yeah, let's definitely do that. I think people will love that. And a deep dive into Lucky Luciano is you can always talk about him. He's one of the most fascinating characters, I would dare say, in American history.

Yeah. Probably responsible for us winning World War II in a lot of ways.[01:08:00]

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Title:  Donnie Brasco Fighting the Bureaucracy

Original Publication Date: 11/15/2023

Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/Hy2Rf4ymHZB

Description: Today we have a brief episode on an interesting perspective on Donnie Brasco from the perspective of a 20 police veteran and former police leader, Frank Scalise. Did Donnie’s leadership in the FBI manage his uncover work correctly? What could have Donnie’s leadership done better in the aftermath of his groundbreaking investigation?

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Begin Transcript:

[00:00:00] Thank you for joining Mustache Chris and I on Organized Crime and Punishment, a history and crime podcast. Here is a teaser for upcoming episodes of Organized Crime and Punishment. If you like what you hear, look in the description for links to full podcast episodes. Become a friend of ours by subscribing to the show and following us on social media.

Tell a friend about Organized Crime and Punishment so your friends can become friends of ours. Forget about it. Hey friends of ours. Let's talk a little Donnie Brasco. Now as a retired cop with 20 with a 20 year career who spent another four years after that teaching leadership all over the U S and Canada, I've come into contact with a lot of law enforcement agencies.

Now honestly, these organizations are just chock full of good people who work hard and do their best, but any bureaucracy is like any other bureaucracy and mission drift is a real thing. [00:01:00] Now, so what does this have to do with Donnie Brasco? You might ask. Sadly, one of the most realistic scenes for me from a law enforcement perspective in the entire movie was the one in which a distracted leader gives Joe Pistone an award for his service in a very hurried fashion.

thIs guy gave up years of his life facing constant danger the entire time. And the FBI ceremony that honored him took less time than you're taking to watch this video. I don't know how accurate a portrayal that was to Pistone's actual experience. If you do, by the way, please share it in the comments.

But unfortunately this kind of bungling is all too common. In bureaucracies and in, in the law enforcement profession on the bureaucratic side as well, a thoughtful leader will make sure something like this doesn't happen to, to a valued employee. But anyway, it's probably the most realistic scene in a movie full of realistic scenes.

Now the best [00:02:00] scene. That's when Johnny Depp explains, forget about it. Do you know if that's accurate with the Joe Pistone award ceremony being super rushed in? I know for, I know he was, he became really jaded with the FBI. He left. At one point just cause he didn't feel appreciated. And he started having troubles with the officers above him, like telling him how to do his job.

And I was undercover for how many years, like I, the most successful undercover job, probably in American history. And you're telling me how to do things. And he just got fed up with it. If you actually listen to Joe Pistone talk, he has a very. I totally believe that he was that successful at playing a mob guy, cause he has a very kind of street, talk, working class type vibe to him.

He really does. You hear him talk and he, I know he's what, how old is he now? He's 70. You hear him talk though. And he sounds like [00:03:00] a guy you don't want to mess with. We we showed that video in the leadership course that I taught and as just as a a warning, as a don't do this sort of thing because it's such a simple thing to recognize people who do good work in a way that's meaningful and just the slapdashery way in that scene with With the official who, could barely be bothered to be there.

And, and then they gave him 500 bucks, which just don't even give you any money, I think in that scenario, because 500 bucks is like kind of an insult after six years or whatever you spend undercover. That's 80 bucks a year. It's just, I don't know. It always struck me as wow, I've seen that exact scene play out.

In real life on a smaller scale. And it's just sad because it's like self inflicted as a leader. You don't, you've got total control over that. It's not a disaster that's happening from outside or a crisis that's being thrust upon you. This is just taking an extra three minutes and a little bit of [00:04:00] emotional energy to make it meaningful for somebody who deserves it.

 Maybe it's just me, but that was always the movie scene, part of the movie that seemed realistic and ticked me off at the same time. It's weird that you treat a professional like that, that somebody who's done their job and even more so of their job, their duty. And then you give them a publisher's clearing house check, give them a subscription to the Columbia records and tapes club, jelly, jelly of the month.

For sure. Yeah. When, yeah, he a, he left totally, and then he ended up rejoining and he ended up having to redo all the stuff again. Like he had to take the written test again. He had to do the physicals and everything, when he decided that he was gonna rejoin, so he was 100% out. Did he write an au did he write an autobiography about this?

Yeah, he has one yeah, that he wrote himself. Donny called Donny Brasco. He actually wrote. Didn't you say this Steve? I never write it, but didn't he write a book about it was like a [00:05:00] sequel to Donnie Brasco? I think he wrote some crime fiction as Donnie Brasco. So yeah, and he's he has a, he does a podcast with, I think it was like he's like an actor slash movie producer.

He's been in a couple films. I listened to a bit of it when we were researching For episodes and it's worth listening. It's good to listen to, you get a, I don't know. Joe Pistone seems like a pretty fun guy. He seems like the type of guy I'd enjoy having a beer with.

And even though he doesn't drink, which is, he's like very adamant about that and he doesn't he'll have a beer or something like that, but he doesn't doesn't drink alcohol like at all, and he talks about that actually in his, when he was undercover, Oh, how did this.

How did this work? Like you're hanging out with these mob guys and they all drink and nobody thought it was weird. He's Oh, they thought it was weird. But then you're just honest, he's Oh, I don't drink, and people just Oh, whatever, Donnie doesn't drink. And then they just go with it.

Yeah. Especially for the time that it took place [00:06:00] too. It would be no big deal today, but this was the eighties, right? Early nineties. Yeah, that's one of the good things that they showed in, they did in the movie too, is they, if you watch it again, you notice that Donnie never drinks, doesn't smoke cigarettes either.

Obviously that's like a big thing with him being sick of the cigarettes in the car and stuff like that. But yeah, Joe Pistone was yeah, he was straight edge, right? He was, that's the modern saying now, didn't drink, didn't smoke. Didn't do any drugs, nothing. He's always in pretty good shape.

He was always in good shape, always fantastic shape, actually. Maybe that's one way, one reason he got some respect from a lot of these mob guys, because, truthfully, he could probably beat the crap out of them. When I wanted to fight, which a lot of these mob guys probably aren't, probably weren't used to, they're tough guys, right?

They're from the streets, they grew up, fighting for a living, right? Not a living, but, getting into fistfights and the whole nine yards and, Joe could probably beat them up, I think they probably also respected his convictions. [00:07:00] People... Respect someone who has, strong conviction and sticks to it.

And even if they don't agree with it, so yeah, he doesn't drink. He doesn't smoke. That's crazy. Cause I love a beer and I smoke like a chimney, but damn, if he doesn't stick to it, and so they respect that kind of thing. So throw that in there with the fact that I don't want to say anything. Cause he could probably knock me on my keister.

Then you get that situation where, he's gets a little room. I get that from work too. Cause I work like a pretty blue collar job. And I don't. I don't drink at all. I don't do anything. And then certainly, I think people think it's a little weird. But then over enough time, they just come to I think they've come to just respect that about me is the fact that I don't do any of those things.

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