1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:04,520
This episode of Behind the Shield podcast is brought to you by 511 Tactical, a company

2
00:00:04,520 --> 00:00:10,480
that I've used for well over a decade and they are offering you a 15% discount on every

3
00:00:10,480 --> 00:00:11,480
order.

4
00:00:11,480 --> 00:00:15,520
And I will tell you that code in just a moment, but I want to do another product highlight

5
00:00:15,520 --> 00:00:19,080
and I can testify as with the other ones through personal experience.

6
00:00:19,080 --> 00:00:24,280
I wore a 511 uniform way back when I worked for Anaheim Fire in California, so we're talking

7
00:00:24,280 --> 00:00:26,020
13 years ago.

8
00:00:26,020 --> 00:00:30,480
And I know for a fact that some of my brothers and sisters I work with still wear some of

9
00:00:30,480 --> 00:00:32,960
the clothes that they were given when I was hired there.

10
00:00:32,960 --> 00:00:37,300
So some of the job shirts, jackets, and this really kind of resonated with me because I

11
00:00:37,300 --> 00:00:42,820
realized so many of the departments I've worked at, there are men and women with lockers crammed

12
00:00:42,820 --> 00:00:45,840
with old worn frayed uniform.

13
00:00:45,840 --> 00:00:48,300
And that really represents wasted budget.

14
00:00:48,300 --> 00:00:52,480
So to have uniforms with durability means that you don't have to purchase them as often.

15
00:00:52,480 --> 00:00:55,400
Now you can apply that budget elsewhere.

16
00:00:55,400 --> 00:01:00,360
Another area they've really focused on is redesigning their women's first responder

17
00:01:00,360 --> 00:01:01,360
uniforms.

18
00:01:01,360 --> 00:01:06,640
I am a skinny six foot tall man and some of these uniforms I'm issued literally hang off

19
00:01:06,640 --> 00:01:08,160
me like a trash bag.

20
00:01:08,160 --> 00:01:11,940
And I can imagine it's even worse being a female first responder.

21
00:01:11,940 --> 00:01:14,800
So they have really taken that into account and redesigned the cuts.

22
00:01:14,800 --> 00:01:20,020
So they're far more flattering to the female firefighter, first responder, medic, et cetera.

23
00:01:20,020 --> 00:01:26,000
On top of that, several departments I've worked for have gone from job shirts to polo shirts.

24
00:01:26,000 --> 00:01:27,360
Five 11 has those.

25
00:01:27,360 --> 00:01:31,200
And then to underline a product I've already talked about, they have the footwear.

26
00:01:31,200 --> 00:01:35,220
I wore the CST slip on boot for a long time from five 11.

27
00:01:35,220 --> 00:01:39,220
And now the Norris sneaker that you've heard me talk about is a lightweight duty boot that

28
00:01:39,220 --> 00:01:43,180
puts far less pressure on the ankles and knees, the back, et cetera.

29
00:01:43,180 --> 00:01:49,000
So as I mentioned before, they are offering you guys a continuous 15% discount.

30
00:01:49,000 --> 00:01:54,900
And all you have to do is use the code SHIELD at checkout at five 11 tactical.com.

31
00:01:54,900 --> 00:02:01,200
So once again, code SHIELD at five 11 tactical.com.

32
00:02:01,200 --> 00:02:04,200
Welcome to episode 295 of Behind the Shield podcast.

33
00:02:04,200 --> 00:02:05,980
As always, my name is James Gearing.

34
00:02:05,980 --> 00:02:10,700
And this week I am extremely excited to welcome on the show Ron Stallworth.

35
00:02:10,700 --> 00:02:15,560
Now Ron is a career veteran of the Colorado Springs Police Department, but he is also

36
00:02:15,560 --> 00:02:21,280
the gentleman featured in the movie Black Klansman based on a book he wrote of the same

37
00:02:21,280 --> 00:02:22,280
name.

38
00:02:22,280 --> 00:02:27,540
So if you haven't seen it, very long story short, Ron was able to infiltrate the KKK

39
00:02:27,540 --> 00:02:29,340
as a young black police officer.

40
00:02:29,340 --> 00:02:33,100
So I'm going to let him tell the story on this interview, but as you can imagine, an

41
00:02:33,100 --> 00:02:38,180
incredible story, some very powerful lessons and tangents in this interview as well.

42
00:02:38,180 --> 00:02:41,660
So before we get to that conversation, please just take a moment, go to whichever app you

43
00:02:41,660 --> 00:02:45,420
listen to this podcast on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback.

44
00:02:45,420 --> 00:02:47,420
I really do love reading what you write.

45
00:02:47,420 --> 00:02:49,460
And then of course, leave a rating.

46
00:02:49,460 --> 00:02:53,460
The five star ratings do really make us more visible when people are looking for a podcast

47
00:02:53,460 --> 00:02:54,580
like this.

48
00:02:54,580 --> 00:02:58,380
And then lastly, take whichever means you have and share these incredible episodes.

49
00:02:58,380 --> 00:03:02,780
We're approaching 300 episodes of Behind the Shield podcast.

50
00:03:02,780 --> 00:03:07,020
That's 300 people telling their stories that I know will change lives around the world

51
00:03:07,020 --> 00:03:10,580
if we can just get these recordings to the people that need to hear them.

52
00:03:10,580 --> 00:03:13,780
So with that being said, I introduce to you Ron Stallworth.

53
00:03:13,780 --> 00:03:14,780
Enjoy.

54
00:03:14,780 --> 00:03:15,780
Brilliant.

55
00:03:15,780 --> 00:03:36,580
So I'd love to start at the very beginning then.

56
00:03:36,580 --> 00:03:39,180
Where on planet earth are we finding you today?

57
00:03:39,180 --> 00:03:45,140
On planet earth, you're finding me in El Paso, Texas where I grew up.

58
00:03:45,140 --> 00:03:46,140
Excellent.

59
00:03:46,140 --> 00:03:47,140
All right.

60
00:03:47,140 --> 00:03:48,140
Well, that's where I'd love to start.

61
00:03:48,140 --> 00:03:50,620
So if you wouldn't mind telling me like what your family dynamic was, what your parents

62
00:03:50,620 --> 00:03:52,820
did and how many siblings you had.

63
00:03:52,820 --> 00:03:58,460
I come from a divorced family.

64
00:03:58,460 --> 00:04:02,060
I was raised by my mother.

65
00:04:02,060 --> 00:04:03,060
She's deceased now.

66
00:04:03,060 --> 00:04:06,060
My father was military.

67
00:04:06,060 --> 00:04:12,260
He's a real worthless bastard.

68
00:04:12,260 --> 00:04:17,580
And my mother was the glue that kept us together.

69
00:04:17,580 --> 00:04:21,900
And there were five of us in the family.

70
00:04:21,900 --> 00:04:25,700
I'm the third of the five.

71
00:04:25,700 --> 00:04:30,660
And that's the basic story.

72
00:04:30,660 --> 00:04:31,660
Right.

73
00:04:31,660 --> 00:04:36,860
So obviously, we're going to talk about how you certainly thought outside the box when

74
00:04:36,860 --> 00:04:39,340
it came to your career in law enforcement.

75
00:04:39,340 --> 00:04:42,460
Were there any elements of your upbringing with your mother and your brothers and sisters

76
00:04:42,460 --> 00:04:50,140
that you think contributed to you being innovative when it came to your police career?

77
00:04:50,140 --> 00:04:52,340
Not really.

78
00:04:52,340 --> 00:04:58,940
My mother was a minimum wage worker for her entire life.

79
00:04:58,940 --> 00:05:08,860
She raised five kids on minimum wage and never once did she go into welfare roles to supplement

80
00:05:08,860 --> 00:05:11,700
her income.

81
00:05:11,700 --> 00:05:12,700
She worked.

82
00:05:12,700 --> 00:05:18,620
I'm very proud and always have been proud of the fact that that was her first basic

83
00:05:18,620 --> 00:05:23,140
personality.

84
00:05:23,140 --> 00:05:29,700
She had one basic rule, and that was because she dropped out of high school in her junior

85
00:05:29,700 --> 00:05:36,260
year in Chicago, she had one basic rule that she lived by, and that was none of her children

86
00:05:36,260 --> 00:05:37,940
would ever drop out of high school.

87
00:05:37,940 --> 00:05:43,260
And if we did, we would be kicked out of the house.

88
00:05:43,260 --> 00:05:46,500
All of her children graduated from high school.

89
00:05:46,500 --> 00:05:51,900
And my older brother, five years older, who's deceased now, my older brother and I are the

90
00:05:51,900 --> 00:05:55,340
only two high school graduates in our immediate family.

91
00:05:55,340 --> 00:06:01,180
I mean, are the only two college graduates in our immediate family.

92
00:06:01,180 --> 00:06:04,820
That was something my mother was extremely proud of.

93
00:06:04,820 --> 00:06:13,660
When I got my college degree, I gave my mother a copy of it and she sat there and cried because

94
00:06:13,660 --> 00:06:21,020
she could never conceive of the idea of being a college graduate, much less having a son,

95
00:06:21,020 --> 00:06:25,300
in this case, two sons who were college graduates.

96
00:06:25,300 --> 00:06:34,140
So I was always proud of my mother for being a strong, determined woman, a strong, determined

97
00:06:34,140 --> 00:06:40,740
black woman on top of that, and for keeping us on that straight and narrow path.

98
00:06:40,740 --> 00:06:41,740
Yeah.

99
00:06:41,740 --> 00:06:45,980
And that's just something that I talk about a lot on the podcast is you can change a pattern.

100
00:06:45,980 --> 00:06:52,420
You can change a cycle of, let's say, poverty or crime or whatever it is, addiction, just

101
00:06:52,420 --> 00:06:55,580
by investing in your children and being a present parent.

102
00:06:55,580 --> 00:06:58,340
It sounds exactly like that's what your mom understood.

103
00:06:58,340 --> 00:07:04,280
Regardless of economic wealth, if you're present with your kids, you can set them up for success

104
00:07:04,280 --> 00:07:07,460
in their journey.

105
00:07:07,460 --> 00:07:08,460
That's very true.

106
00:07:08,460 --> 00:07:10,260
That's very true.

107
00:07:10,260 --> 00:07:16,820
But if I have any regrets today, it's the fact that my mother's not around to enjoy

108
00:07:16,820 --> 00:07:23,860
the fact that I have achieved a level of success that she never could have conceived of.

109
00:07:23,860 --> 00:07:24,860
Yeah.

110
00:07:24,860 --> 00:07:25,860
Yeah.

111
00:07:25,860 --> 00:07:29,180
I'm sure she's looking down and seeing every moment of it.

112
00:07:29,180 --> 00:07:32,820
Well, with the childhood arena, what about athletics?

113
00:07:32,820 --> 00:07:36,780
Were you a sportsman when you were young?

114
00:07:36,780 --> 00:07:43,980
I played organized sports up until the eighth grade.

115
00:07:43,980 --> 00:07:50,620
I was a running back in football and a defensive back.

116
00:07:50,620 --> 00:07:52,420
I ran track.

117
00:07:52,420 --> 00:07:55,780
I was a sprinter and a long jumper.

118
00:07:55,780 --> 00:07:59,380
I played basketball.

119
00:07:59,380 --> 00:08:09,260
When I got into high school, I chose not to be a participant in sports.

120
00:08:09,260 --> 00:08:15,660
I recognized the limitations of my athletic talent, and I recognized that at the high

121
00:08:15,660 --> 00:08:23,820
school level, I would not be as competitive and therefore chose not to sit on the bench.

122
00:08:23,820 --> 00:08:26,580
So I chose not to play sports.

123
00:08:26,580 --> 00:08:36,220
However I was, I started training in chococon karate when I was 14 years old, and I participated

124
00:08:36,220 --> 00:08:41,140
in that for a number of years.

125
00:08:41,140 --> 00:08:47,500
Got very good, very proficient, became the instructor at the University of Texas El Paso

126
00:08:47,500 --> 00:08:52,100
Karate Club until I left El Paso in 1972.

127
00:08:52,100 --> 00:08:53,100
Brilliant.

128
00:08:53,100 --> 00:08:56,740
Actually, Chococon was the first martial arts I started with as well.

129
00:08:56,740 --> 00:08:59,620
It's a great foundation for a martial artist.

130
00:08:59,620 --> 00:09:00,620
Yeah.

131
00:09:00,620 --> 00:09:01,620
Brilliant.

132
00:09:01,620 --> 00:09:05,140
Well, then you kind of touch on it in the book.

133
00:09:05,140 --> 00:09:13,100
When we get into the extremes of the racial bias, I guess, in the two groups that you

134
00:09:13,100 --> 00:09:19,420
highlight in the book and in the film, you touch on the fact that in other areas of America,

135
00:09:19,420 --> 00:09:25,500
it seemed like race was a lot more of an issue than where you grew up.

136
00:09:25,500 --> 00:09:33,620
So tell me what the environment was like in El Paso for a young black man.

137
00:09:33,620 --> 00:09:42,020
El Paso was a good city to grow up during the 60s because even though El Paso was a

138
00:09:42,020 --> 00:09:48,660
southern city and a southern state, we did not have the racial tensions going on that

139
00:09:48,660 --> 00:09:51,340
the Deep South did.

140
00:09:51,340 --> 00:09:58,420
Everything that Martin Luther King and his nonviolent army were battling, that was the

141
00:09:58,420 --> 00:10:00,420
reality show for us.

142
00:10:00,420 --> 00:10:02,860
We watched it on the evening news.

143
00:10:02,860 --> 00:10:07,460
We didn't have those activities taking place here in El Paso.

144
00:10:07,460 --> 00:10:13,860
We tuned in at 5 to 6 o'clock and 10 o'clock and we saw the beatings that were happening

145
00:10:13,860 --> 00:10:14,860
down south.

146
00:10:14,860 --> 00:10:18,500
We saw the fires that were going on.

147
00:10:18,500 --> 00:10:27,060
We saw all hell breaking loose with whites attacking nonviolent, innocent young black

148
00:10:27,060 --> 00:10:32,340
children peacefully protesting.

149
00:10:32,340 --> 00:10:37,740
And as I said, it was more or less a reality show for us.

150
00:10:37,740 --> 00:10:49,820
And I was fortunate in that sense that we didn't have to deal directly with it, but

151
00:10:49,820 --> 00:10:52,700
we were aware of everything that was going on.

152
00:10:52,700 --> 00:10:57,660
Yeah, well, a question for you because I've asked this of a few guests and I still haven't

153
00:10:57,660 --> 00:10:59,060
had an answer.

154
00:10:59,060 --> 00:11:01,260
They haven't had an answer either.

155
00:11:01,260 --> 00:11:05,900
What baffles me is in the 40s, like I said, I'm from England.

156
00:11:05,900 --> 00:11:11,620
So we had the British army, obviously, a lot of them were young white men, but we had the

157
00:11:11,620 --> 00:11:15,980
Gurkhas, we had the Indian army, we had all these different cultures that were fighting

158
00:11:15,980 --> 00:11:19,220
side by side against fascism.

159
00:11:19,220 --> 00:11:20,620
And we obviously had the same in the US.

160
00:11:20,620 --> 00:11:25,300
You had the Buffalo Soldiers and these incredible airmen.

161
00:11:25,300 --> 00:11:30,320
And what I don't understand is how you go from unifying a nation like that, fighting

162
00:11:30,320 --> 00:11:36,300
a true evil, to then five years later, stringing black people up from trees again.

163
00:11:36,300 --> 00:11:44,900
Have you ever had any kind of anyone explain how we transition from a united front of America

164
00:11:44,900 --> 00:11:51,140
to that incredible racism again, just years after we were fighting the Nazis?

165
00:11:51,140 --> 00:11:54,860
Because America has never been united.

166
00:11:54,860 --> 00:11:56,980
That's a myth.

167
00:11:56,980 --> 00:12:03,180
America has always been white dominated from our inception as a nation in the 1770s.

168
00:12:03,180 --> 00:12:06,620
We have always been white dominated.

169
00:12:06,620 --> 00:12:16,060
Our very constitution, our freedom documents, the constitution, the Declaration of Independence,

170
00:12:16,060 --> 00:12:19,060
they were false, they were lies.

171
00:12:19,060 --> 00:12:23,980
You got to remember, people like me with my skin color, we were not people.

172
00:12:23,980 --> 00:12:27,220
We were cattle, we were animals.

173
00:12:27,220 --> 00:12:29,660
We were three-fifths of a human being.

174
00:12:29,660 --> 00:12:32,420
We weren't even one whole person.

175
00:12:32,420 --> 00:12:33,420
We were three-fifths.

176
00:12:33,420 --> 00:12:38,180
That's in the constitution.

177
00:12:38,180 --> 00:12:43,740
So our nation was founded on a lie, on a whole bunch of lies.

178
00:12:43,740 --> 00:12:47,340
Our founding fathers were liars.

179
00:12:47,340 --> 00:12:48,340
They were rapists.

180
00:12:48,340 --> 00:12:49,340
They were murderers.

181
00:12:49,340 --> 00:12:56,660
They were killing and beating my ancestors because they were slaveholders.

182
00:12:56,660 --> 00:13:02,780
So our nation has always been untrue to its ideals.

183
00:13:02,780 --> 00:13:09,740
And that's the kind of environment that my ancestors exist in and that's the type of

184
00:13:09,740 --> 00:13:13,420
environment that I had to grow up in.

185
00:13:13,420 --> 00:13:19,500
A lot of my white colleagues in law enforcement don't like to face that reality.

186
00:13:19,500 --> 00:13:22,300
They just want to believe in the red, white and blue.

187
00:13:22,300 --> 00:13:28,540
But the red, white and blue has always been a false notion.

188
00:13:28,540 --> 00:13:31,300
And people need to respect that truth.

189
00:13:31,300 --> 00:13:32,300
Yeah.

190
00:13:32,300 --> 00:13:38,660
Well, even, I mean, to put the British on trial for a second, my ancestry, we, I learned

191
00:13:38,660 --> 00:13:42,620
very recently visiting the State Museum in Charleston, we were the ones actually that

192
00:13:42,620 --> 00:13:48,660
were going to Africa and other European nations as well and buying the slaves and then selling

193
00:13:48,660 --> 00:13:49,940
them to the US.

194
00:13:49,940 --> 00:13:54,100
So it kind of looks like the UK's hands were kind of clean and they actually weren't at

195
00:13:54,100 --> 00:13:55,100
all.

196
00:13:55,100 --> 00:14:00,260
And then also, forgetting African nations for a moment, what we did to the indigenous

197
00:14:00,260 --> 00:14:06,620
tribes here in America, what we did in Australia, that is an element of history that's very

198
00:14:06,620 --> 00:14:08,140
downplayed.

199
00:14:08,140 --> 00:14:14,100
And as an immigrant coming in, the comment I get a lot as well, England has a long history.

200
00:14:14,100 --> 00:14:16,580
I'm like, well, so does the US.

201
00:14:16,580 --> 00:14:21,780
If you incorporate the native tribes that were here before my fellow Europeans arrived

202
00:14:21,780 --> 00:14:23,180
in this country.

203
00:14:23,180 --> 00:14:25,420
That's true.

204
00:14:25,420 --> 00:14:32,500
And I have colleagues, especially past colleagues in law enforcement, who like to point out,

205
00:14:32,500 --> 00:14:38,020
white colleagues I might add, who like to point out that, well, my ancestors, they were

206
00:14:38,020 --> 00:14:39,020
my ancestors.

207
00:14:39,020 --> 00:14:41,900
They'll say, my ancestors didn't have slaves.

208
00:14:41,900 --> 00:14:43,580
I wasn't a slave holder.

209
00:14:43,580 --> 00:14:48,620
So why should I feel anything about what happened to the slaves?

210
00:14:48,620 --> 00:14:51,140
Why should I feel any guilt towards that?

211
00:14:51,140 --> 00:14:55,860
And then they like to point out, well, there were blacks who participated in the slave

212
00:14:55,860 --> 00:15:03,540
trade that cooperated with the slavers and don't blame it all on whites.

213
00:15:03,540 --> 00:15:05,700
And there's an element of truth to that.

214
00:15:05,700 --> 00:15:09,380
But that doesn't excuse the fact that whites dominated society.

215
00:15:09,380 --> 00:15:11,660
They have always dominated society.

216
00:15:11,660 --> 00:15:14,580
And whites were the ones that set the rules.

217
00:15:14,580 --> 00:15:23,500
And one wrong does not, one right, I should say, does not correct all the wrongs.

218
00:15:23,500 --> 00:15:27,420
And so just because you may not have been directly involved with it, because you weren't

219
00:15:27,420 --> 00:15:31,700
around at the time, your ancestors probably were.

220
00:15:31,700 --> 00:15:37,380
And even if they weren't, there were enough whites back in those days involved in that

221
00:15:37,380 --> 00:15:44,140
trade to where it grew and grew and grew until it got out of control.

222
00:15:44,140 --> 00:15:52,300
So you are not absolved of guilt of wrongdoing, simply because you were not an active participant.

223
00:15:52,300 --> 00:15:53,300
Yeah.

224
00:15:53,300 --> 00:15:54,300
Yeah.

225
00:15:54,300 --> 00:15:56,940
I think that's the thing is acknowledging it, isn't it?

226
00:15:56,940 --> 00:16:02,700
It's not like that individual themselves was responsible or would agree in any way, shape

227
00:16:02,700 --> 00:16:03,700
or form with it.

228
00:16:03,700 --> 00:16:10,580
But I think probably what's jarring the most is this refusal to acknowledge our dark history

229
00:16:10,580 --> 00:16:16,220
and I say our by America, England, Portugal, all these countries that have a pretty sinister

230
00:16:16,220 --> 00:16:17,220
past.

231
00:16:17,220 --> 00:16:20,420
And then the perfect example is Nazi Germany.

232
00:16:20,420 --> 00:16:28,380
I mean, it amazes me how I'm 45 now, so less than my lifespan ago before I was born is

233
00:16:28,380 --> 00:16:34,740
when the Nazism was happening, when they were literally killing hundreds of thousands of

234
00:16:34,740 --> 00:16:39,500
Jewish people and gypsies and blacks and every other person that didn't fit their so-called

235
00:16:39,500 --> 00:16:45,340
Aryan image, which is laughable when I know my history of how many times my country was

236
00:16:45,340 --> 00:16:46,340
conquered.

237
00:16:46,340 --> 00:16:47,500
There is no such thing as a pure race.

238
00:16:47,500 --> 00:16:55,180
We were Swedish and Roman and French and all these other cultures that dominated my country

239
00:16:55,180 --> 00:16:59,100
before we for some reason miraculously became some Aryan nation.

240
00:16:59,100 --> 00:17:00,100
Right.

241
00:17:00,100 --> 00:17:01,100
Right.

242
00:17:01,100 --> 00:17:02,100
A lot of truth to that.

243
00:17:02,100 --> 00:17:03,100
A lot of truth to that.

244
00:17:03,100 --> 00:17:04,100
Right.

245
00:17:04,100 --> 00:17:07,860
Well, I'd love to steer you kind of into law enforcement.

246
00:17:07,860 --> 00:17:13,560
So as a young man, regardless of skin color, how were the law enforcement perceived by

247
00:17:13,560 --> 00:17:17,060
young men in El Paso taxes?

248
00:17:17,060 --> 00:17:19,180
I couldn't say.

249
00:17:19,180 --> 00:17:21,540
I'd never had any encounters with law enforcement.

250
00:17:21,540 --> 00:17:27,540
I lived across the street from a black El Paso officer.

251
00:17:27,540 --> 00:17:34,500
I grew up with his daughter who was one of my best friends in elementary school and he

252
00:17:34,500 --> 00:17:35,980
was always decent with me.

253
00:17:35,980 --> 00:17:43,820
He was a good man, good husband, good father, and that was my only encounter with police

254
00:17:43,820 --> 00:17:46,300
growing up.

255
00:17:46,300 --> 00:17:50,580
I never had any negative encounters with police.

256
00:17:50,580 --> 00:17:54,180
For one thing, I feared my mother more than I feared police or anyone else.

257
00:17:54,180 --> 00:17:55,180
That's the way it should be.

258
00:17:55,180 --> 00:17:58,660
That's the way it should be.

259
00:17:58,660 --> 00:18:03,660
And I knew that if I did wrong, my mother would be there to set me on the right path

260
00:18:03,660 --> 00:18:09,140
and I didn't want to be in her wake.

261
00:18:09,140 --> 00:18:13,340
So I didn't have any involvement with police officers.

262
00:18:13,340 --> 00:18:18,420
I couldn't say what it was like for blacks in El Paso.

263
00:18:18,420 --> 00:18:22,860
I've heard stories but that's all I can attest to is the stories that I heard.

264
00:18:22,860 --> 00:18:23,860
Yeah, yeah.

265
00:18:23,860 --> 00:18:30,300
Because as a young white boy in a very rural town, I got not harassed, it's the wrong word,

266
00:18:30,300 --> 00:18:35,380
but I wasn't a big fan of police because they kept thinking we were up to no good and I

267
00:18:35,380 --> 00:18:42,620
wouldn't say pulling us over specifically, but guilty until proven innocent, I guess,

268
00:18:42,620 --> 00:18:44,980
was the way we were viewed.

269
00:18:44,980 --> 00:18:49,460
But again, that's just kind of young teen boys that are up to something.

270
00:18:49,460 --> 00:18:52,060
So what about your personal journey then?

271
00:18:52,060 --> 00:18:57,180
What made you decide that you wanted to join the law enforcement community?

272
00:18:57,180 --> 00:19:03,180
I wanted to make enough money to put myself in college and become a high school PE teacher.

273
00:19:03,180 --> 00:19:08,900
And what was it about PE specifically that drew you to that?

274
00:19:08,900 --> 00:19:12,100
At the time, I was very physical.

275
00:19:12,100 --> 00:19:16,940
I was an athlete and I wanted to be involved in athletics at some point and I wanted to

276
00:19:16,940 --> 00:19:19,140
be in the teaching profession.

277
00:19:19,140 --> 00:19:22,140
So I wanted to be a PE teacher.

278
00:19:22,140 --> 00:19:26,700
But after a year of being and working for the police department in Colorado Springs,

279
00:19:26,700 --> 00:19:32,580
I found out that A, I was making twice as much money as a recent college graduate in

280
00:19:32,580 --> 00:19:38,700
the teaching profession and B, I was having too much fun working for the police department.

281
00:19:38,700 --> 00:19:45,500
So I decided to stick it out and 32 years later, I retired from law enforcement.

282
00:19:45,500 --> 00:19:46,500
Brilliant.

283
00:19:46,500 --> 00:19:47,500
All right.

284
00:19:47,500 --> 00:19:52,300
Well, then the first assignment that you kind of really talk about in the book is not the

285
00:19:52,300 --> 00:19:53,300
KKK.

286
00:19:53,300 --> 00:19:55,220
It's the kind of Black Power movement.

287
00:19:55,220 --> 00:19:59,980
So tell me about that first undercover assignment.

288
00:19:59,980 --> 00:20:04,180
My first undercover assignment was Stokely Carmichael, one of the leaders of the Black

289
00:20:04,180 --> 00:20:05,900
Panther Party.

290
00:20:05,900 --> 00:20:10,140
That was in 1975, about April of 75.

291
00:20:10,140 --> 00:20:21,260
I was assigned to monitor a speech he was giving at a local black bar and to basically

292
00:20:21,260 --> 00:20:24,340
gauge the audience reaction.

293
00:20:24,340 --> 00:20:35,900
Judge his delivery, his rhetorical delivery, and basically make a determination as to how

294
00:20:35,900 --> 00:20:40,500
we as a police agency should respond.

295
00:20:40,500 --> 00:20:44,260
Stokely was a very dynamic, a very powerful speaker.

296
00:20:44,260 --> 00:20:54,300
And my task was to determine whether we should be concerned as an agency to his powers of

297
00:20:54,300 --> 00:21:02,860
persuasion and how we should go about responding to his rhetorical delivery and whether we

298
00:21:02,860 --> 00:21:04,340
should be concerned about it.

299
00:21:04,340 --> 00:21:06,740
That was my first undercover assignment.

300
00:21:06,740 --> 00:21:07,740
Right.

301
00:21:07,740 --> 00:21:13,540
And did you, and I'll begin to talk about the KKK, did you see any similarities between

302
00:21:13,540 --> 00:21:18,980
the extremes of the Black Power group and the White Power group?

303
00:21:18,980 --> 00:21:26,020
I'm not talking about the more moderate middle, but the extremes of each side?

304
00:21:26,020 --> 00:21:30,780
No, I didn't.

305
00:21:30,780 --> 00:21:35,940
Let me answer it this way.

306
00:21:35,940 --> 00:21:39,300
Extremist groups are basically the same as far as I'm concerned.

307
00:21:39,300 --> 00:21:48,060
They have their individual beliefs, but they're far on the edges.

308
00:21:48,060 --> 00:21:55,740
And they're going to stick to the edges in terms of their belief patterns and not reside

309
00:21:55,740 --> 00:21:57,740
in the middle.

310
00:21:57,740 --> 00:22:02,140
Stokely was on one extreme.

311
00:22:02,140 --> 00:22:11,020
The KKK people that I later came to deal with were on another extreme.

312
00:22:11,020 --> 00:22:20,860
They both thought that their views were right and that the other groups were wrong, but

313
00:22:20,860 --> 00:22:28,100
they were nowhere in the middle in terms of where America stood.

314
00:22:28,100 --> 00:22:34,940
And in my opinion, such groups and their belief patterns are all screwed up.

315
00:22:34,940 --> 00:22:39,140
Yeah, because that's something that I've talked about several times with guests, especially

316
00:22:39,140 --> 00:22:45,980
that are in law enforcement military, is we see now in this generation's current climate

317
00:22:45,980 --> 00:22:53,580
that what appears to be just a severe mental illness that results in a horrific bombing,

318
00:22:53,580 --> 00:22:59,460
mass shooting, whatever it is, and there's always a clinging to some cause, but there's

319
00:22:59,460 --> 00:23:01,580
no rhyme or reason to it.

320
00:23:01,580 --> 00:23:07,980
It's not creating an improvement to whatever cause they're supposedly hailing from.

321
00:23:07,980 --> 00:23:12,740
It's mental illness, it's desperation and a feeble attempt at trying to create some

322
00:23:12,740 --> 00:23:15,380
sort of reason for their violence.

323
00:23:15,380 --> 00:23:16,380
Right.

324
00:23:16,380 --> 00:23:17,380
Right.

325
00:23:17,380 --> 00:23:20,100
Well, then moving on then, so you mentioned the KKK.

326
00:23:20,100 --> 00:23:26,140
I'd love to hear your take on how you initially found that connection and then just kind of,

327
00:23:26,140 --> 00:23:31,500
yeah, obviously not tell the whole book, but just the cliff notes of your experiences entering

328
00:23:31,500 --> 00:23:34,500
the KKK as a black man.

329
00:23:34,500 --> 00:23:40,660
Well, that came about as the book and the movie point out.

330
00:23:40,660 --> 00:23:48,460
I was working as an intelligence detective for Colorado Springs Police Department in

331
00:23:48,460 --> 00:23:50,780
October of 1978.

332
00:23:50,780 --> 00:23:54,460
I saw an ad in the newspaper in the Class 5 section.

333
00:23:54,460 --> 00:23:58,660
It said Ku Klux Klan for information, and then there was a P.O. box.

334
00:23:58,660 --> 00:24:06,300
So I wrote a letter to the P.O. box basically identifying myself as a white supremacist

335
00:24:06,300 --> 00:24:22,020
who had similar beliefs as a KKK and wanted to join to stop the furtherance of blacks

336
00:24:22,020 --> 00:24:28,500
and to promote the white supremacist notion.

337
00:24:28,500 --> 00:24:35,900
So I wrote this letter, gave the undercover phone line, which at that time was an untraceable

338
00:24:35,900 --> 00:24:43,100
line and signed my real name Ron Stallworth instead of my undercover name, which I should

339
00:24:43,100 --> 00:24:47,940
have done, and put the letter in the mail and forgot about it.

340
00:24:47,940 --> 00:24:54,240
About a week or two later, I got a response back in the form of a phone call to the office

341
00:24:54,240 --> 00:25:02,860
on that undercover line, and the voice on the phone asked to speak to Ron Stallworth.

342
00:25:02,860 --> 00:25:08,300
I immediately got suspicious because no one called Ron Stallworth on that line.

343
00:25:08,300 --> 00:25:15,220
The voice identified itself as Ken O'Dell, the local chapter president of the KKK in

344
00:25:15,220 --> 00:25:16,220
Colorado Springs.

345
00:25:16,220 --> 00:25:27,100
He wanted to know why I wrote the letter requesting membership in the Klan.

346
00:25:27,100 --> 00:25:30,980
That's when my investigation officially started because I had to immediately come up with

347
00:25:30,980 --> 00:25:33,100
a plan.

348
00:25:33,100 --> 00:25:41,180
I told him that I wanted to join the Klan because I hated niggers, bics, chinks, Jews,

349
00:25:41,180 --> 00:25:46,500
blacks, and anybody else who wasn't pure area white like I was.

350
00:25:46,500 --> 00:25:49,660
His response to me was, you're just the kind of guy we're looking for.

351
00:25:49,660 --> 00:25:52,740
When can we meet?

352
00:25:52,740 --> 00:25:56,260
That's when I saw that old shit.

353
00:25:56,260 --> 00:25:59,540
So there you are on the end of the phone as a black man, and now you've got to figure

354
00:25:59,540 --> 00:26:04,140
out how you can be physically present in front of this KKK member.

355
00:26:04,140 --> 00:26:08,980
Like I said, that's when my investigation officially started.

356
00:26:08,980 --> 00:26:14,340
I had to come up with a plan and my plan, obviously I had to think outside the box and

357
00:26:14,340 --> 00:26:19,420
put something together and we were off and running.

358
00:26:19,420 --> 00:26:25,740
Tell me about how you were able to find a colleague who could play you in real life,

359
00:26:25,740 --> 00:26:28,620
if that makes sense.

360
00:26:28,620 --> 00:26:32,140
In the book, I had identified my colleague as Chuck, not a real name.

361
00:26:32,140 --> 00:26:37,780
In the movie, he was Adam Driver and his name was changed to Flip Zimmerman.

362
00:26:37,780 --> 00:26:41,620
Chuck was a good undercover detective.

363
00:26:41,620 --> 00:26:50,580
He worked narcotics at the time and he was about my height, my weight, and I wanted Chuck

364
00:26:50,580 --> 00:26:54,300
to play me for that reason.

365
00:26:54,300 --> 00:27:01,860
So I went to the lieutenant that he worked for, I worked for the same lieutenant in narcotics

366
00:27:01,860 --> 00:27:10,660
about a year earlier and the lieutenant and I had a parting of the ways, it was a mutual

367
00:27:10,660 --> 00:27:14,300
respect that parted our ways.

368
00:27:14,300 --> 00:27:18,820
I asked the lieutenant for the use of Chuck to play me in this caper.

369
00:27:18,820 --> 00:27:21,260
The lieutenant said, you can't have him.

370
00:27:21,260 --> 00:27:27,900
I'm not going to waste a valuable undercover operative on a bunch of men wearing white

371
00:27:27,900 --> 00:27:34,780
sheets, a bunch of nonsense, and the lieutenant said, besides, your plan won't work because

372
00:27:34,780 --> 00:27:39,620
you've already talked to them on the phone and once Chuck walks in there, they'll recognize

373
00:27:39,620 --> 00:27:45,380
the difference between his voice, a white man's voice, and your voice, a black man that

374
00:27:45,380 --> 00:27:47,980
they've been talking to on the phone.

375
00:27:47,980 --> 00:27:52,300
So I asked the lieutenant, I said, what does a black man sound like?

376
00:27:52,300 --> 00:27:53,300
He just stared at me.

377
00:27:53,300 --> 00:27:54,300
He couldn't answer me.

378
00:27:54,300 --> 00:27:58,860
I asked him that several times and he never could answer.

379
00:27:58,860 --> 00:28:03,340
Finally, he just said, you can't have him.

380
00:28:03,340 --> 00:28:04,340
I said, okay.

381
00:28:04,340 --> 00:28:09,700
I turned around and walked away, went to my sergeant, told the sergeant what he said.

382
00:28:09,700 --> 00:28:11,820
The sergeant said, what do you want to do about it?

383
00:28:11,820 --> 00:28:15,060
I said, I want to take it directly to the chief of police.

384
00:28:15,060 --> 00:28:23,620
Now in Colorado Springs, we had a rank structure that consisted of patrolmen and detectives

385
00:28:23,620 --> 00:28:35,460
were in the same plane and then you had sergeants, lieutenants, captains, deputy chief, and chief.

386
00:28:35,460 --> 00:28:40,380
So I bypassed four people in the rank structure and went directly to the chief, top of the

387
00:28:40,380 --> 00:28:41,380
rank.

388
00:28:41,380 --> 00:28:44,980
It could have been a career ending move on my part.

389
00:28:44,980 --> 00:28:46,980
At that point, I didn't care.

390
00:28:46,980 --> 00:28:51,020
I wasn't going to let this lieutenant win.

391
00:28:51,020 --> 00:28:54,380
So I went, me and the sergeant went to the chief's office.

392
00:28:54,380 --> 00:29:01,660
I told the chief what I had done, my conversation on the phone, my conversation with the lieutenant

393
00:29:01,660 --> 00:29:04,380
and told him my plan.

394
00:29:04,380 --> 00:29:06,660
He said, what all do you need?

395
00:29:06,660 --> 00:29:10,820
I said, I need two surveillance officers and Chuck to play me.

396
00:29:10,820 --> 00:29:14,980
The lieutenant, I mean, the chief got on the phone to the lieutenant.

397
00:29:14,980 --> 00:29:19,820
He told the lieutenant to give me anything I needed and my investigation was off and

398
00:29:19,820 --> 00:29:21,420
running at that point.

399
00:29:21,420 --> 00:29:22,420
Brilliant.

400
00:29:22,420 --> 00:29:27,620
But I want to do a little backstory of the KKK if you wouldn't mind to educate us, the

401
00:29:27,620 --> 00:29:30,420
audience because we're all familiar with the sheets.

402
00:29:30,420 --> 00:29:32,020
We're all familiar with the burning cross.

403
00:29:32,020 --> 00:29:38,900
Some people might have seen Mississippi burning but the history of it, I think, is almost

404
00:29:38,900 --> 00:29:41,980
comical especially the reason why they're wearing the sheets.

405
00:29:41,980 --> 00:29:47,300
So if you're able just to kind of educate us from the Confederacy, like how this group

406
00:29:47,300 --> 00:29:53,820
was even born in the first place and the purpose of the sheets.

407
00:29:53,820 --> 00:30:06,220
The Klan came about as a result of the end of the Civil War, Reconstruction.

408
00:30:06,220 --> 00:30:16,140
They were trying to terrorize, the whole purpose was to terrorize blacks, the newly freed slaves,

409
00:30:16,140 --> 00:30:26,380
to prevent them from gaining any traction in the new United States.

410
00:30:26,380 --> 00:30:35,860
And they did not want these slaves to be able to vote or have any sense of franchisement

411
00:30:35,860 --> 00:30:40,060
in the new America following the Civil War.

412
00:30:40,060 --> 00:30:50,820
So what the KKK did, these veterans, these southerners, they put on sheets and in some

413
00:30:50,820 --> 00:30:56,820
of them, in some cases, they covered their horses in sheets and they rode around at night

414
00:30:56,820 --> 00:31:07,420
with torches and burning crosses on the property of slaves, their homes and farms and whatnot

415
00:31:07,420 --> 00:31:10,380
and basically terrorized them.

416
00:31:10,380 --> 00:31:20,300
And their story was they were the ghosts of the recently departed Civil War veterans.

417
00:31:20,300 --> 00:31:30,700
And in doing this, the slaves, many of them who were still bound by their African traditions,

418
00:31:30,700 --> 00:31:37,700
they believed in spirits, they believed in hauntings and they were frightened to the

419
00:31:37,700 --> 00:31:38,700
core.

420
00:31:38,700 --> 00:31:45,740
And so this was how the Klan operated back then, was to keep the newly freed slaves in

421
00:31:45,740 --> 00:31:57,220
line and to keep them from exercising their franchisement as newly freed citizens with

422
00:31:57,220 --> 00:31:58,220
power.

423
00:31:58,220 --> 00:32:11,740
They wanted them to continue following the old ways of the South and not to use anything

424
00:32:11,740 --> 00:32:15,340
newly established by the defeat of the South.

425
00:32:15,340 --> 00:32:22,140
So that's how the Ku Klux Klan came into being and that was their sole purpose.

426
00:32:22,140 --> 00:32:29,180
Right, well another thing you refer to and I also remember seeing it on a great documentary

427
00:32:29,180 --> 00:32:35,020
13th, I don't know if you've seen that one and it's kind of like the history of how slavery

428
00:32:35,020 --> 00:32:41,020
in a way transitioned into imprisonment in modern prison systems, but it's the movie

429
00:32:41,020 --> 00:32:42,300
The Birth of the Nation.

430
00:32:42,300 --> 00:32:47,140
So again, if you were able to kind of tell us a little bit about that and the accolades

431
00:32:47,140 --> 00:32:49,500
that it got when it came out.

432
00:32:49,500 --> 00:32:55,140
The Birth of the Nation came about around 1915 or so.

433
00:32:55,140 --> 00:32:59,060
That was a rebirth period for the Ku Klux Klan.

434
00:32:59,060 --> 00:33:04,500
They increased their membership exponentially.

435
00:33:04,500 --> 00:33:11,340
That was their longest dominant period of existence in America.

436
00:33:11,340 --> 00:33:19,740
And D.W. Griffiths, a major Hollywood producer, he produced blockbuster movies at the time

437
00:33:19,740 --> 00:33:24,380
in the early film days of Hollywood, moving pictures.

438
00:33:24,380 --> 00:33:32,060
And Birth of a Nation was one of the first blockbuster movies ever.

439
00:33:32,060 --> 00:33:43,500
He produced this movie about the Klan and basically the Klan and the decadent destroyed

440
00:33:43,500 --> 00:33:52,700
society in America and they came about and rescued that decadent destroyed society and

441
00:33:52,700 --> 00:33:56,100
they were portrayed as heroes.

442
00:33:56,100 --> 00:33:57,940
And it played very well.

443
00:33:57,940 --> 00:34:02,980
It was shown in the White House to President Wilson, who was a racist, by the way, and

444
00:34:02,980 --> 00:34:05,980
a Klan supporter.

445
00:34:05,980 --> 00:34:12,660
And he gave a good publicity in his review.

446
00:34:12,660 --> 00:34:18,140
And because of that film, the Klan's ranks grew even larger.

447
00:34:18,140 --> 00:34:24,700
To this day, the Klan uses Birth of a Nation in their recruitment of new members.

448
00:34:24,700 --> 00:34:26,900
Yeah, I'm watching it.

449
00:34:26,900 --> 00:34:32,580
So just for everyone listening, you have a white guy in blackface pretending to be a

450
00:34:32,580 --> 00:34:39,540
black slave who supposedly was accused of raping a white woman and there's a lynching

451
00:34:39,540 --> 00:34:45,580
and then, like you said, the Klan's come in like the cavalry.

452
00:34:45,580 --> 00:34:50,500
And it's an absolutely blatantly racist movie.

453
00:34:50,500 --> 00:34:55,780
The black people are portrayed as, like you said, lesser than people.

454
00:34:55,780 --> 00:35:00,660
And the fact that that was only 100 years ago being shown in the White House and hailed

455
00:35:00,660 --> 00:35:04,180
as a Hollywood classic just blows me away.

456
00:35:04,180 --> 00:35:11,900
But it illustrates the underlying cancer of hatred that we had in here.

457
00:35:11,900 --> 00:35:15,540
And again, to be fair, I'm sure in many other countries, obviously, certainly in Germany,

458
00:35:15,540 --> 00:35:21,900
but many other places around the world where one group is viewed as lesser than another.

459
00:35:21,900 --> 00:35:26,980
Yes, that's very true.

460
00:35:26,980 --> 00:35:37,060
And the propaganda appeal of Birth of a Nation is still very much active to this day.

461
00:35:37,060 --> 00:35:38,060
Yeah.

462
00:35:38,060 --> 00:35:42,020
Well, I want to take a tangent with you because, I mean, this would be a fascinating perspective

463
00:35:42,020 --> 00:35:43,940
from you personally.

464
00:35:43,940 --> 00:35:51,660
As a fireman, I've witnessed racism in several of the places I've worked.

465
00:35:51,660 --> 00:35:57,060
Not overtly by any means, but individuals amongst those men and women, the white people,

466
00:35:57,060 --> 00:36:05,500
black people, Hispanic heritage that are blatantly racist towards whites, towards blacks, towards

467
00:36:05,500 --> 00:36:08,260
Hispanics, whatever, different religions.

468
00:36:08,260 --> 00:36:13,380
Yet they wear a badge and when the tones go off, they go and do their job.

469
00:36:13,380 --> 00:36:17,180
And I found that such a ridiculous paradox that you hold this.

470
00:36:17,180 --> 00:36:22,180
And I don't think any of them had like an aggressive hatred, but certainly, you know,

471
00:36:22,180 --> 00:36:24,300
a racist mind.

472
00:36:24,300 --> 00:36:29,500
But then you would go and put your life at risk for the exact people you say you hold

473
00:36:29,500 --> 00:36:31,580
disdain to.

474
00:36:31,580 --> 00:36:35,940
You came across a firefighter in this particular KKK chapter.

475
00:36:35,940 --> 00:36:43,900
So as a policeman yourself, what is your understanding of racism in some of these professions where

476
00:36:43,900 --> 00:36:48,900
we're actually willing to die for the very people that some of these men and women are

477
00:36:48,900 --> 00:36:51,460
racist towards?

478
00:36:51,460 --> 00:36:56,460
I found it curious, say the least.

479
00:36:56,460 --> 00:37:01,180
You're referring to Fred Wilkins, who was the grand dragon for the state of Colorado.

480
00:37:01,180 --> 00:37:06,060
He was a fireman for the city, which is a Denver suburb.

481
00:37:06,060 --> 00:37:11,140
They tried to fire Fred on several occasions, city of Lakewood did.

482
00:37:11,140 --> 00:37:16,540
The problem was, by all indications, he was an exemplary fireman and they couldn't get

483
00:37:16,540 --> 00:37:18,580
rid of him.

484
00:37:18,580 --> 00:37:24,780
And Fred even gave articles of newspapers or interviews in which he said he feels that

485
00:37:24,780 --> 00:37:32,380
blacks are inferior to whites and he believes in the KKK.

486
00:37:32,380 --> 00:37:37,740
When it comes to his job, he puts all of that aside and he does his job to the best of his

487
00:37:37,740 --> 00:37:38,740
ability.

488
00:37:38,740 --> 00:37:47,300
He was never able to use the civil service rules and guidelines to terminate.

489
00:37:47,300 --> 00:37:51,460
And to the best of my knowledge, he retired with a pension.

490
00:37:51,460 --> 00:37:54,020
Yeah, and I just find that so strange.

491
00:37:54,020 --> 00:38:00,740
I mean, that's the outward symptoms and obviously, there can be just an internal opinion that

492
00:38:00,740 --> 00:38:07,580
never manifests into anything negative towards a group of people, internal monologue.

493
00:38:07,580 --> 00:38:13,260
But obviously, with the clan, with the black panthers, with these extreme Muslim groups

494
00:38:13,260 --> 00:38:19,100
that we're seeing, there's also a lot of violence with lynchings, perfect example.

495
00:38:19,100 --> 00:38:28,780
And I just don't understand how you can volunteer to be a first responder and still be ignorant

496
00:38:28,780 --> 00:38:32,580
enough to hold those kind of hateful prejudices.

497
00:38:32,580 --> 00:38:38,380
I mean, I get it if you are working in a factory somewhere and you're just stewing on that,

498
00:38:38,380 --> 00:38:43,380
but when you're putting your life on the line and prepare to die for someone, how can you

499
00:38:43,380 --> 00:38:50,060
not look in the mirror and see the hypocrisy of this racial hatred that you've been raised

500
00:38:50,060 --> 00:38:51,060
with?

501
00:38:51,060 --> 00:38:52,060
It just doesn't make any sense to me.

502
00:38:52,060 --> 00:38:53,060
No, it doesn't.

503
00:38:53,060 --> 00:39:01,460
What if you happen to come across a black citizen or Jewish citizen in need of mouth

504
00:39:01,460 --> 00:39:03,540
to mouth resuscitation?

505
00:39:03,540 --> 00:39:04,540
What would you do?

506
00:39:04,540 --> 00:39:08,620
And he said, I would give it to them because that's my job.

507
00:39:08,620 --> 00:39:16,260
And I know that if I were in such a situation, I would have hated to have Fred, he's the

508
00:39:16,260 --> 00:39:22,180
one to look down at me and be giving me mouth to mouth resuscitation.

509
00:39:22,180 --> 00:39:24,100
Yeah, it's crazy.

510
00:39:24,100 --> 00:39:29,140
And then again, I wonder what Fred's childhood was like, what his upbringing was like, where

511
00:39:29,140 --> 00:39:33,140
he learned to hate because America now...

512
00:39:33,140 --> 00:39:35,940
He grew up in Alabama.

513
00:39:35,940 --> 00:39:41,340
Okay, so he was probably surrounded by the same kind of philosophy then.

514
00:39:41,340 --> 00:39:46,820
So I want to bring us back to present day at the moment and get your perspective as

515
00:39:46,820 --> 00:39:54,620
an officer from a couple of decades ago now and also a man of color in uniform.

516
00:39:54,620 --> 00:39:59,660
At the moment, the current climate is being told a very polarizing story.

517
00:39:59,660 --> 00:40:04,940
You've got the Black Lives Matter movement, you've got the Blue Lives Matter movement,

518
00:40:04,940 --> 00:40:10,940
which again, they're two snapshots of two extremes where the reality is you've got men

519
00:40:10,940 --> 00:40:15,700
and women of all colors and creeds putting a badge on their chest, willing to risk their

520
00:40:15,700 --> 00:40:22,040
lives and of which I'm proud to serve next to 95% of all of them.

521
00:40:22,040 --> 00:40:29,780
What is your view on the environment in law enforcement and in race in general of our

522
00:40:29,780 --> 00:40:33,060
current climate in 2020?

523
00:40:33,060 --> 00:40:36,900
I think Blue Lives Matter movement is basically a joke.

524
00:40:36,900 --> 00:40:39,340
I'll tell you why.

525
00:40:39,340 --> 00:40:46,300
No one was ever going around saying Blue Lives Matter until you heard the expression Black

526
00:40:46,300 --> 00:40:48,180
Lives Matter.

527
00:40:48,180 --> 00:40:54,740
No one was going around saying White Lives Matter until you heard the expression Black

528
00:40:54,740 --> 00:40:57,260
Lives Matter.

529
00:40:57,260 --> 00:41:03,920
These are people and in terms of Blue Lives Matter, these are people in my profession

530
00:41:03,920 --> 00:41:15,180
that decided to jump on the bandwagon and counter protest those so-called radical extremes

531
00:41:15,180 --> 00:41:20,780
that they feel were in the wrong.

532
00:41:20,780 --> 00:41:25,860
I don't feel it's necessary.

533
00:41:25,860 --> 00:41:32,420
The people at Black Lives Matter are not revolutionary terrorists.

534
00:41:32,420 --> 00:41:41,060
They're people that are simply trying to live and survive in America, who are being treated

535
00:41:41,060 --> 00:41:49,700
wrongfully, whose constitutional rights are being violated, and they're protesting that.

536
00:41:49,700 --> 00:41:57,940
As part of their protest, the slogan Black Lives Matter was coined.

537
00:41:57,940 --> 00:42:06,660
I've always said and I told Dave Dobbins this, if somebody's rights are being violated, if

538
00:42:06,660 --> 00:42:13,260
the Constitution is not being adhered to, then the person violating those rights needs

539
00:42:13,260 --> 00:42:15,860
to be booted out of the profession.

540
00:42:15,860 --> 00:42:16,860
They're bad cops.

541
00:42:16,860 --> 00:42:17,860
They're dirty cops.

542
00:42:17,860 --> 00:42:20,500
I don't want to adhere to bad cops of any kind.

543
00:42:20,500 --> 00:42:24,460
The concept of Blue Lives Matter, I think, is a false notion.

544
00:42:24,460 --> 00:42:26,540
Yes, Blue Lives Matter.

545
00:42:26,540 --> 00:42:32,500
I'm not saying that our lives don't, but I don't need to go around proclaiming Blue Lives

546
00:42:32,500 --> 00:42:39,180
Matter and everything simply because there's a group called Black Lives Matter whose constitutional

547
00:42:39,180 --> 00:42:46,020
rights are being violated by people in blue uniforms.

548
00:42:46,020 --> 00:42:51,420
To play devil's advocate, well, not even that's the wrong even phrase.

549
00:42:51,420 --> 00:42:55,500
That's the dirty cops, like you said, and I don't think of any sound mind is going to

550
00:42:55,500 --> 00:42:56,500
argue that.

551
00:42:56,500 --> 00:43:04,860
But then we've got a lot of gray area where the cops are truly defending themselves.

552
00:43:04,860 --> 00:43:10,020
They're having to pull their weapon, which I think they're getting dragged into that

553
00:43:10,020 --> 00:43:17,380
side as well where we're asking men and women of law enforcement to go out at night to work

554
00:43:17,380 --> 00:43:18,380
these extra shifts.

555
00:43:18,380 --> 00:43:19,380
They're sleep deprived.

556
00:43:19,380 --> 00:43:24,460
They might be under trained and some of these gray areas may be a training issue, an overworking

557
00:43:24,460 --> 00:43:29,500
issue, still horrendous, still tragic, whoever was on the receiving end.

558
00:43:29,500 --> 00:43:33,700
But I feel like there's that polarizing thing like every shooting the cop was wrong is how

559
00:43:33,700 --> 00:43:39,620
it's being told now, regardless again of the skin color of the cop and or the person that

560
00:43:39,620 --> 00:43:40,620
was shot.

561
00:43:40,620 --> 00:43:45,500
And I think it's a very dangerous thing to just say, oh, it's always race that's causing

562
00:43:45,500 --> 00:43:46,500
this because it's not.

563
00:43:46,500 --> 00:43:54,340
Because there's always underlying areas that we can improve on to stop our citizens of

564
00:43:54,340 --> 00:43:59,420
all colors being as likely to commit crimes, whether it's drug policy, whether it's prison

565
00:43:59,420 --> 00:44:07,060
reform and obviously train our men and women in law enforcement to be able to, for example,

566
00:44:07,060 --> 00:44:11,620
go to go to hands rather than use their weapons, you know, the jujitsu, the strength training,

567
00:44:11,620 --> 00:44:15,580
the tactical training, those kind of things.

568
00:44:15,580 --> 00:44:18,420
So what's your view on that?

569
00:44:18,420 --> 00:44:19,580
That you've got the dirty cops.

570
00:44:19,580 --> 00:44:23,340
It's no question hands down that like the Rodney King's a perfect example.

571
00:44:23,340 --> 00:44:25,180
That was a disgrace.

572
00:44:25,180 --> 00:44:28,980
But what about the ones where you're seeing it where you as a law enforcement officer

573
00:44:28,980 --> 00:44:33,860
would say, well, I might have actually done the same thing myself in that position.

574
00:44:33,860 --> 00:44:40,260
Police officers have always had to get the issues of confrontation with the public.

575
00:44:40,260 --> 00:44:43,900
How you contend with those issues that comes into question.

576
00:44:43,900 --> 00:44:50,580
And when you are doing things that go against the grain of the constitution, as you have

577
00:44:50,580 --> 00:44:54,300
been trained to do, that's when you get into trouble.

578
00:44:54,300 --> 00:44:55,580
That's what I'm talking about.

579
00:44:55,580 --> 00:45:03,020
But when you have a situation like Mr. Scott down in South Carolina a couple of years back,

580
00:45:03,020 --> 00:45:08,340
where he was running away from that officer and it was clearly shown on video, that officer

581
00:45:08,340 --> 00:45:13,940
pulled his gun and shot him in the back from about 13 feet away.

582
00:45:13,940 --> 00:45:15,060
That is wrong.

583
00:45:15,060 --> 00:45:17,300
There is no justification for that.

584
00:45:17,300 --> 00:45:22,820
And yet my colleagues in law enforcement around the country defended that officer.

585
00:45:22,820 --> 00:45:23,820
That is wrong.

586
00:45:23,820 --> 00:45:25,700
There is no excuse for that.

587
00:45:25,700 --> 00:45:29,060
I don't condone that in any way, shape or form.

588
00:45:29,060 --> 00:45:33,540
You cannot, you cannot offset your way out of that.

589
00:45:33,540 --> 00:45:42,620
That is a classic example of a bad cop and that is not a good example of blue lives matter.

590
00:45:42,620 --> 00:45:48,700
That's an example of a dirty cop that needs to be put away for an extended period of time

591
00:45:48,700 --> 00:45:50,780
and doesn't belong in the profession.

592
00:45:50,780 --> 00:45:53,740
It's those type of situations that I'm talking about.

593
00:45:53,740 --> 00:45:54,740
Yeah.

594
00:45:54,740 --> 00:45:55,740
And I agree.

595
00:45:55,740 --> 00:45:58,980
And I've had, you know, like so many police officers murdered here just in the Orlando

596
00:45:58,980 --> 00:46:04,940
area that I either, you know, had worked with or were in my neighboring counties, you know,

597
00:46:04,940 --> 00:46:07,740
so that's the other side is we're getting all these police officers murdered.

598
00:46:07,740 --> 00:46:15,260
So my thing is this, you've got the criminals on the street who are a result of, you know,

599
00:46:15,260 --> 00:46:17,260
several areas that I think we can improve.

600
00:46:17,260 --> 00:46:22,340
You've got the police officers on the street who, you know, can be trained better and or

601
00:46:22,340 --> 00:46:25,620
we create an environment where it's not as dangerous for them.

602
00:46:25,620 --> 00:46:31,380
There are countries in the world where the police don't shoot people and don't get shot

603
00:46:31,380 --> 00:46:32,380
them either, you know.

604
00:46:32,380 --> 00:46:39,300
So, you know, a couple of areas that I've talked about a lot on this podcast, one is

605
00:46:39,300 --> 00:46:41,300
the legalization of drugs.

606
00:46:41,300 --> 00:46:46,220
So the addict becomes a patient, not a criminal.

607
00:46:46,220 --> 00:46:50,300
You know, they're not locked away, which is a big thing about the 13th movie I was talking

608
00:46:50,300 --> 00:46:52,900
about and that worked very well in Portugal.

609
00:46:52,900 --> 00:46:56,140
I interviewed the guy that spearheaded that in Portugal.

610
00:46:56,140 --> 00:47:01,820
And then prisons, again, right now we have a profit-based prison system.

611
00:47:01,820 --> 00:47:08,420
We're not driven to stop, you know, reoffending because when our prisons are full, someone's

612
00:47:08,420 --> 00:47:10,060
getting very, very rich.

613
00:47:10,060 --> 00:47:17,700
So for me, fixing those social areas will not only make it safer for the citizens regardless

614
00:47:17,700 --> 00:47:23,140
of color, but also, you know, our brothers and sisters in blue because now the streets

615
00:47:23,140 --> 00:47:27,220
aren't going to be as dangerous and they're not going to be as apt to even pull their

616
00:47:27,220 --> 00:47:29,460
weapon in the first place.

617
00:47:29,460 --> 00:47:33,140
What I am talking about is simple.

618
00:47:33,140 --> 00:47:36,300
Don't defend bad cops.

619
00:47:36,300 --> 00:47:43,980
My colleagues in blue, I have been rejected by a lot of police officers, guys that I work

620
00:47:43,980 --> 00:47:54,620
with since our spring, simply because I will not stand up and defend the police profession

621
00:47:54,620 --> 00:48:06,100
right or wrong when incidents arise that garner public attention.

622
00:48:06,100 --> 00:48:10,900
I judge each situation separately.

623
00:48:10,900 --> 00:48:17,780
And you go back to the Scott situation down in South Carolina, there is no justification

624
00:48:17,780 --> 00:48:20,540
for what happened down there.

625
00:48:20,540 --> 00:48:21,540
That was clearly wrong.

626
00:48:21,540 --> 00:48:28,540
And yet I've got colleagues that defend that officer that say he was wrongfully judged

627
00:48:28,540 --> 00:48:38,340
that not have been condemned, he should not have been convicted, and will yell blue lives

628
00:48:38,340 --> 00:48:39,340
matter.

629
00:48:39,340 --> 00:48:42,980
And I say, fuck that, blue lives don't matter in that situation.

630
00:48:42,980 --> 00:48:45,180
He's a dirty cop.

631
00:48:45,180 --> 00:48:47,580
He needs to be condemned for what he did.

632
00:48:47,580 --> 00:48:55,300
He murdered a man, it was caught on camera, end of discussion.

633
00:48:55,300 --> 00:49:00,300
But these officers don't agree on that, then fuck them too.

634
00:49:00,300 --> 00:49:03,820
Yeah, I think most people would absolutely agree with you, Ron, that's the thing.

635
00:49:03,820 --> 00:49:07,500
And I think there was another one just released and I haven't heard people's take on it,

636
00:49:07,500 --> 00:49:11,940
but again, from what I watched, it was two officers.

637
00:49:11,940 --> 00:49:19,740
I think all three people were black if I remember rightly, the perpetrator criminal, whatever

638
00:49:19,740 --> 00:49:26,220
you want to call the gentleman that was being detained and then a female and a male officer

639
00:49:26,220 --> 00:49:27,300
and they're struggling with him.

640
00:49:27,300 --> 00:49:33,820
I think they deployed a taser, it didn't work and the one black officer said, shoot him

641
00:49:33,820 --> 00:49:35,740
and told his partner to shoot the guy.

642
00:49:35,740 --> 00:49:38,900
Now they were laying on hands but very ineffectively.

643
00:49:38,900 --> 00:49:44,140
So again, in that situation, had they been trained, like I mean, you did show it to Cam

644
00:49:44,140 --> 00:49:50,700
when you were in law enforcement and being able to effectively restrain that gentleman,

645
00:49:50,700 --> 00:49:55,220
then he wouldn't have need to be shot in the first place.

646
00:49:55,220 --> 00:49:59,900
Now I believe he was in critical care but actually didn't die, so that's obviously a

647
00:49:59,900 --> 00:50:01,420
good thing.

648
00:50:01,420 --> 00:50:06,660
But going to the weapon, some of these ones that I see, it's a lack of training as well.

649
00:50:06,660 --> 00:50:12,180
It's a lack of physical fitness, it's a lack of understanding of grappling and combatives

650
00:50:12,180 --> 00:50:16,660
and I think that's another area that some agencies are doing it very well but some agencies

651
00:50:16,660 --> 00:50:18,140
definitely need to do a lot better.

652
00:50:18,140 --> 00:50:22,140
And I don't think anyone, no fireman is going to defend a shitty fireman.

653
00:50:22,140 --> 00:50:27,420
I've had people on here who's one gentleman lost his son because of an awful series of

654
00:50:27,420 --> 00:50:28,980
events with a couple of paramedics.

655
00:50:28,980 --> 00:50:32,100
No one's going to stand behind them, a 14-year-old boy died.

656
00:50:32,100 --> 00:50:38,640
So I think anyone stands behind a true bad cop is completely in the wrong.

657
00:50:38,640 --> 00:50:43,180
So I think that most people listening would agree with you and it's trying to fix the

658
00:50:43,180 --> 00:50:46,620
gray areas and trying to create an environment where there's just less crime in general,

659
00:50:46,620 --> 00:50:52,100
where we do proactive initiatives that stop people getting to that point where they're

660
00:50:52,100 --> 00:50:56,380
addicts, where they're in gangs, whatever it is that's creating this crime that we see

661
00:50:56,380 --> 00:51:00,060
is so rife in America compared to a lot of other countries in the world.

662
00:51:00,060 --> 00:51:08,860
I would agree with that but as I said earlier, each situation should be judged individually,

663
00:51:08,860 --> 00:51:14,580
not collectively thrown together in a posture of blue lives matter.

664
00:51:14,580 --> 00:51:19,500
Some situations are clearly visible as being wrong.

665
00:51:19,500 --> 00:51:23,820
I will not defend a bad cop or his bad actions.

666
00:51:23,820 --> 00:51:25,460
I will not stand by that.

667
00:51:25,460 --> 00:51:32,860
I will not join that blue wall of silence and just direct a barrier for any outside

668
00:51:32,860 --> 00:51:35,180
protest by saying blue lives matter.

669
00:51:35,180 --> 00:51:41,460
But to me, that's bullshit and if I stand alone in that, I stand alone.

670
00:51:41,460 --> 00:51:42,460
Yeah.

671
00:51:42,460 --> 00:51:46,540
Well, and just you do a great example of doing the converse as well.

672
00:51:46,540 --> 00:51:52,980
So just to throw the other side in, in the book, you talk about a young black boy who

673
00:51:52,980 --> 00:51:54,940
murdered someone at a restaurant.

674
00:51:54,940 --> 00:52:00,980
So tell me that story and again, your view of that and how it was almost like tarring

675
00:52:00,980 --> 00:52:03,860
with the same brush on that side too.

676
00:52:03,860 --> 00:52:09,340
Yeah, it was a 15-year-old kid, I believe, a white cook.

677
00:52:09,340 --> 00:52:16,020
The cook was working in a 24-hour diner in Colorado Springs and the cook got out of work.

678
00:52:16,020 --> 00:52:18,220
He had a young daughter, I believe.

679
00:52:18,220 --> 00:52:24,900
He got out of work, was walking home and our pose alongside of him.

680
00:52:24,900 --> 00:52:29,060
It's his attention and a gunshot rings out.

681
00:52:29,060 --> 00:52:32,220
The detective pieced it all together.

682
00:52:32,220 --> 00:52:41,180
The 15-year-old kid basically shot the man because he was curious to see what it would

683
00:52:41,180 --> 00:52:43,220
like to kill somebody.

684
00:52:43,220 --> 00:52:53,220
Now, he was arrested as far as with capital homicide, I believe it was, into the court

685
00:52:53,220 --> 00:52:57,900
system as an adult with a death penalty or not the death penalty.

686
00:52:57,900 --> 00:53:00,780
He was brought into the court system as an adult.

687
00:53:00,780 --> 00:53:06,940
The black community in Colorado Springs put up their arms over the fact that he was not

688
00:53:06,940 --> 00:53:17,340
treated as a juvenile and the prosecutor was accused of racial prejudice.

689
00:53:17,340 --> 00:53:24,020
So the black community got together, one of the Baptist churches.

690
00:53:24,020 --> 00:53:32,860
They managed to convince Dr. Abernathy to come into town and to take up the cause of

691
00:53:32,860 --> 00:53:35,820
this young black kid.

692
00:53:35,820 --> 00:53:43,580
And Dr. Abernathy came in and was helping to crusade on behalf of the kids.

693
00:53:43,580 --> 00:53:50,060
I was assigned to be Dr. Abernathy's bodyguard because it was still during my Klan investigation

694
00:53:50,060 --> 00:53:54,060
and they were protesting Dr. Abernathy's presence.

695
00:53:54,060 --> 00:54:00,300
I sat down with Dr. Abernathy in his hotel room and I asked him if he knew the story

696
00:54:00,300 --> 00:54:04,340
of this young black kid.

697
00:54:04,340 --> 00:54:08,500
He said he knew what he had been told.

698
00:54:08,500 --> 00:54:16,540
Well, to make a long story short, Dr. Abernathy had not been told the total story by the church

699
00:54:16,540 --> 00:54:19,860
members in order to get him to come.

700
00:54:19,860 --> 00:54:30,260
Here you have Dr. Abernathy, a venerable respected leader in the civil rights movement at the

701
00:54:30,260 --> 00:54:35,540
time, and they managed to convince him to come into town.

702
00:54:35,540 --> 00:54:39,820
And he's arguing, fighting on behalf of this murderer.

703
00:54:39,820 --> 00:54:46,300
Dr. Abernathy, after he had been told the truth about this kid, that he had wrongfully

704
00:54:46,300 --> 00:54:51,900
murdered the man just to see where it was like to kill somebody, that the man was a

705
00:54:51,900 --> 00:54:57,220
husband, a father of a young daughter, Dr. Abernathy's whole opinion changed, but he

706
00:54:57,220 --> 00:54:58,220
was trapped.

707
00:54:58,220 --> 00:55:10,940
He had already committed himself in writing and broadcasts and in the pulpit.

708
00:55:10,940 --> 00:55:13,940
Basically, he had been blackmailed.

709
00:55:13,940 --> 00:55:14,940
I witnessed it all.

710
00:55:14,940 --> 00:55:18,460
He didn't deserve that.

711
00:55:18,460 --> 00:55:24,260
So the kid was convicted of the murder.

712
00:55:24,260 --> 00:55:30,180
To the best of my knowledge, he spent something like 35, 40 years in prison.

713
00:55:30,180 --> 00:55:36,540
I don't know what this became of him, where he's at to this day, but that's an example

714
00:55:36,540 --> 00:55:43,500
of a wrongful situation that never should have happened.

715
00:55:43,500 --> 00:55:45,500
Yeah, exactly.

716
00:55:45,500 --> 00:55:49,580
So like you said, the bad cop should never have happened, that should never have happened,

717
00:55:49,580 --> 00:55:53,020
and to tar all those cases with the same brush is wrong.

718
00:55:53,020 --> 00:55:57,060
And we talk about even with nutrition, with fitness, with everything, no people are the

719
00:55:57,060 --> 00:55:59,660
same and no incidences are the same.

720
00:55:59,660 --> 00:56:06,020
And so I agree 100% and I thought it was very, very powerful to use that example as well,

721
00:56:06,020 --> 00:56:10,580
that each of these individual things are their own case.

722
00:56:10,580 --> 00:56:14,700
And if you have this knee jerk to every cop that's killed or every black person that's

723
00:56:14,700 --> 00:56:18,820
killed, they're not the same.

724
00:56:18,820 --> 00:56:20,260
There's all these different degrees.

725
00:56:20,260 --> 00:56:26,020
And the sooner we treat these individuals as individual cases and stop having this huge

726
00:56:26,020 --> 00:56:31,200
response, the more those individuals can actually get justice because one might be completely

727
00:56:31,200 --> 00:56:32,980
wrong and the other one might be completely right.

728
00:56:32,980 --> 00:56:37,820
So yeah, so I thank you for including that as well.

729
00:56:37,820 --> 00:56:42,540
I want to just do one more kind of area wrap up and then do some wrap up questions.

730
00:56:42,540 --> 00:56:47,700
But the closing of the movie specifically was heart-wrenching.

731
00:56:47,700 --> 00:56:49,060
It really was.

732
00:56:49,060 --> 00:56:55,020
And you have these two parallel stories, one of Jesse Washington who was basically lynched

733
00:56:55,020 --> 00:57:00,340
in Waco, Texas and a friend of his who's now an elderly gentleman telling the story.

734
00:57:00,340 --> 00:57:06,460
And then also the Charlottesville attack that we had just a few years ago, the neo-Nazi

735
00:57:06,460 --> 00:57:13,380
drove into the protesters and ironically killed a white woman.

736
00:57:13,380 --> 00:57:16,980
Obviously there's a subtext there to this is what happened 100 years ago and there's

737
00:57:16,980 --> 00:57:19,540
still this element that we're seeing today.

738
00:57:19,540 --> 00:57:26,260
I had a gentleman on whose brother, sister-in-law and her sister, Deah Yousor and Razan who

739
00:57:26,260 --> 00:57:32,100
were Muslim were murdered by a white neighbor and it was absolutely a hate crime.

740
00:57:32,100 --> 00:57:34,940
So what are you seeing now?

741
00:57:34,940 --> 00:57:41,180
Obviously not everyone in the community is like that but what is the danger of white

742
00:57:41,180 --> 00:57:44,500
supremacy in America in 2020?

743
00:57:44,500 --> 00:57:51,580
The danger of white supremacy in America in 2020 lies in the White House.

744
00:57:51,580 --> 00:57:58,260
Plain and simple, Donald Trump is the biggest danger representing America.

745
00:57:58,260 --> 00:58:06,660
He and his administration, his followers, he is the titular leader of the white supremacist

746
00:58:06,660 --> 00:58:14,420
movement and America did this to itself by putting him there.

747
00:58:14,420 --> 00:58:18,180
And we have to ride out the storm right now.

748
00:58:18,180 --> 00:58:20,260
Now I point this out a lot.

749
00:58:20,260 --> 00:58:26,900
So the last two people that we had, I'm talking as individuals, this isn't a political thing

750
00:58:26,900 --> 00:58:33,340
at all, I don't hail from left or right, I'm just me in my own personal opinion but I question

751
00:58:33,340 --> 00:58:37,460
a lot why we ended up with those last two people.

752
00:58:37,460 --> 00:58:43,580
Neither of those I would have ever in a million years wanted to select from let's say the

753
00:58:43,580 --> 00:58:48,820
top 100,000 people that should have been in line for the presidency.

754
00:58:48,820 --> 00:58:56,060
From your perspective now with obviously multiple decades behind you, what is your view on our

755
00:58:56,060 --> 00:59:03,660
political system and how we're not seeming to get what I would view as true leaders that

756
00:59:03,660 --> 00:59:04,660
we can really respect?

757
00:59:04,660 --> 00:59:10,420
And I'm sure everyone can name 20 people they would be honored to have as our president,

758
00:59:10,420 --> 00:59:17,580
male, female, whatever color, military service, that we just seem to have such a poor choice

759
00:59:17,580 --> 00:59:19,380
when it comes to the end now.

760
00:59:19,380 --> 00:59:29,940
If I've got friends who insist that Barack Obama was the devil incarnate when it comes

761
00:59:29,940 --> 00:59:42,420
to American politics, that all he did was promote issues and things that appealed to

762
00:59:42,420 --> 00:59:47,140
black people and when I asked them to be specific they can't.

763
00:59:47,140 --> 00:59:50,500
They just say he was for the blacks.

764
00:59:50,500 --> 00:59:56,780
Notice I said the blacks not black people because that's how they put it.

765
00:59:56,780 --> 01:00:04,260
He was for the blacks which is a racist way of saying black people.

766
01:00:04,260 --> 01:00:12,420
Why doesn't the same principle apply to George Bush II and to Ronald Reagan and all the other

767
01:00:12,420 --> 01:00:15,980
white presidents appreciated Barack Obama?

768
01:00:15,980 --> 01:00:18,700
They never have an answer for that.

769
01:00:18,700 --> 01:00:26,940
In other words, it's about race, but they loved everything Trump is doing.

770
01:00:26,940 --> 01:00:36,380
They called Barack Obama an imperial president because he was governing a lot by executive

771
01:00:36,380 --> 01:00:44,180
orders simply because the Republicans were erecting a barrier from him governing because

772
01:00:44,180 --> 01:00:45,780
they didn't want to cooperate with him.

773
01:00:45,780 --> 01:00:48,860
They didn't want to give him any wins.

774
01:00:48,860 --> 01:00:54,580
Well, Donald Trump is doing the same thing, not for the same reason.

775
01:00:54,580 --> 01:01:01,420
He's doing the same thing simply because he's in the political process and he's changing

776
01:01:01,420 --> 01:01:05,580
a lot of things through executive order, but they apply him.

777
01:01:05,580 --> 01:01:12,540
They don't say he's governing by imperial decree like they did with Obama.

778
01:01:12,540 --> 01:01:22,540
It's racist and it's racism oriented, but they believe in what they're championing.

779
01:01:22,540 --> 01:01:29,340
They believe in Donald Trump and they're against everything that Obama stood for and when you

780
01:01:29,340 --> 01:01:33,060
put the two side by side, there is no comparison.

781
01:01:33,060 --> 01:01:37,020
Barack Obama was governing on behalf of the African people.

782
01:01:37,020 --> 01:01:45,740
Donald Trump is doing things on behalf of Donald Trump and his empire.

783
01:01:45,740 --> 01:01:49,940
I recognize the fact that America has slipped politically.

784
01:01:49,940 --> 01:01:59,220
We've got this racist in the White House and until we get rid of him, by any means necessary,

785
01:01:59,220 --> 01:02:02,420
you can take that any way you want.

786
01:02:02,420 --> 01:02:11,900
I particularly don't care, but he needs to be gotten rid of and until we weather this

787
01:02:11,900 --> 01:02:14,940
bad situation.

788
01:02:14,940 --> 01:02:17,140
Yeah.

789
01:02:17,140 --> 01:02:24,260
My view is this of coming from a different country is my hope is that we're going to

790
01:02:24,260 --> 01:02:32,060
have a leader, someone who is intent on making our country better and I mean that for the

791
01:02:32,060 --> 01:02:33,060
people.

792
01:02:33,060 --> 01:02:38,420
So, it doesn't matter to me if that person happens to be black, white, Hindu, gay, straight,

793
01:02:38,420 --> 01:02:41,340
whatever, just the best leader, the best person.

794
01:02:41,340 --> 01:02:45,580
The person that's going to improve our schools, it's going to give healthcare so 80-year-olds

795
01:02:45,580 --> 01:02:49,540
don't have to stand in Walmart.

796
01:02:49,540 --> 01:02:54,220
Prison reform and drug reform so we don't have homelessness and addiction problems and

797
01:02:54,220 --> 01:02:58,860
all this crime and I'm still waiting to see that.

798
01:02:58,860 --> 01:03:05,980
It's been person after person that's wearing different color ties and may have short, maybe

799
01:03:05,980 --> 01:03:11,500
this skin tone, that skin tone, whatever but it seems to be the same kind of person.

800
01:03:11,500 --> 01:03:17,700
But I have to say, I'll be very blunt, when you start throwing out statements like Mexicans

801
01:03:17,700 --> 01:03:23,180
are rapists and murderers, then yeah, you are definitely stepping over the line of decency

802
01:03:23,180 --> 01:03:24,820
and diplomacy as well.

803
01:03:24,820 --> 01:03:28,780
You're starting up to poke the bear as it were.

804
01:03:28,780 --> 01:03:34,540
My yearning is to find an American and we are an immigrant culture.

805
01:03:34,540 --> 01:03:38,340
Some like you said, historically we're forced here when you look far enough back but we're

806
01:03:38,340 --> 01:03:45,420
a proud nation of men and women of all creeds and colors and we just need a good human being

807
01:03:45,420 --> 01:03:49,840
to be proud of and to start overturning some of the things.

808
01:03:49,840 --> 01:03:55,180
We are one of the most chronically ill nations on the planet yet we're one of the most affluent.

809
01:03:55,180 --> 01:04:04,100
I mean, it's just such a disengagement of wealth and health and happiness and so I hope

810
01:04:04,100 --> 01:04:11,100
that whoever we get next, left, right, independent, whoever it is, is someone who truly wants

811
01:04:11,100 --> 01:04:16,660
to make this better and obviously with the racial tension address that side too because

812
01:04:16,660 --> 01:04:21,660
that polarizing is not doing anything other than dividing this nation that we all adore.

813
01:04:21,660 --> 01:04:27,540
But everything you just mentioned is supposed to be how the system works.

814
01:04:27,540 --> 01:04:32,860
We're supposed to go for the best person that will bring the country together and work on

815
01:04:32,860 --> 01:04:37,100
behalf of the people of this country.

816
01:04:37,100 --> 01:04:41,140
I challenge anybody to show where Donald Trump has done any of that.

817
01:04:41,140 --> 01:04:42,140
He hasn't.

818
01:04:42,140 --> 01:04:48,380
Conversely, I challenge anybody to show where Barack Obama did just the opposite.

819
01:04:48,380 --> 01:04:54,340
They can't show that, but we need to find somebody that will go back and do the right

820
01:04:54,340 --> 01:04:55,340
thing.

821
01:04:55,340 --> 01:04:57,940
Yeah, I couldn't agree more with that.

822
01:04:57,940 --> 01:04:58,940
Absolutely.

823
01:04:58,940 --> 01:04:59,940
I mean, that's it.

824
01:04:59,940 --> 01:05:00,940
That's what the flag means.

825
01:05:00,940 --> 01:05:01,940
It doesn't mean an individual.

826
01:05:01,940 --> 01:05:07,140
It means the country and I think I've talked about this in many episodes, but it's making

827
01:05:07,140 --> 01:05:11,060
our own community better and it's what you did in Colorado Springs Police Department

828
01:05:11,060 --> 01:05:15,400
and it's what everyone that's listening to this podcast is doing, whether they're first

829
01:05:15,400 --> 01:05:20,620
responders or in hospitals or corrections, whatever it is.

830
01:05:20,620 --> 01:05:24,700
And I think all we ask is that the people in these government buildings do the same

831
01:05:24,700 --> 01:05:27,300
as the men and women that are on the streets protecting them.

832
01:05:27,300 --> 01:05:34,060
Yeah, but it's hard for the people in government buildings to do their job when you have somebody

833
01:05:34,060 --> 01:05:40,180
at the head of the government who's forever attacking them for trying to do their job.

834
01:05:40,180 --> 01:05:41,180
Yeah.

835
01:05:41,180 --> 01:05:42,180
Yeah.

836
01:05:42,180 --> 01:05:43,180
And the same down.

837
01:05:43,180 --> 01:05:50,620
I mean, even internationally, my British brothers and sisters are constantly on strike.

838
01:05:50,620 --> 01:05:54,980
I mean, they're being cut and the NHS is being attacked, which is their healthcare system

839
01:05:54,980 --> 01:05:57,740
there, which I think is amazing.

840
01:05:57,740 --> 01:06:01,100
So yeah, the people that are out there trying to make the world better are constantly fighting

841
01:06:01,100 --> 01:06:03,820
an uphill battle and it should be the other way around.

842
01:06:03,820 --> 01:06:07,820
They should be given the support of the infrastructure because they are the ones making the world

843
01:06:07,820 --> 01:06:08,820
better.

844
01:06:08,820 --> 01:06:11,800
They're the ones there running on people on their worst day.

845
01:06:11,800 --> 01:06:16,460
So anyway, Ron, I want to go some wrap up questions so I can let you go.

846
01:06:16,460 --> 01:06:19,380
I've been very generous with your time.

847
01:06:19,380 --> 01:06:21,020
Your book is Black Klansmen.

848
01:06:21,020 --> 01:06:22,460
I want to recommend it to everyone there.

849
01:06:22,460 --> 01:06:25,420
You actually narrate the audio book as well, which is what I did.

850
01:06:25,420 --> 01:06:28,340
I do want to do a warning though.

851
01:06:28,340 --> 01:06:32,620
I was listening, I had my windows down and pulled into a gas station and then you start

852
01:06:32,620 --> 01:06:35,100
reciting some of the things that some of the Klansmen said.

853
01:06:35,100 --> 01:06:36,580
I'm like, oh shit, oh shit.

854
01:06:36,580 --> 01:06:40,780
I'm raising up my windows and turning down the stereo.

855
01:06:40,780 --> 01:06:42,980
So be careful when you listen to the audio book.

856
01:06:42,980 --> 01:06:47,860
But yeah, it's an incredible book and I urge everyone to listen to that.

857
01:06:47,860 --> 01:06:50,460
So firstly, where else can people find your book?

858
01:06:50,460 --> 01:06:55,940
Barnes and Noble is the best place to find it.

859
01:06:55,940 --> 01:07:01,100
Any book store in your community probably will have it and if not, you can get it on

860
01:07:01,100 --> 01:07:04,620
Amazon and on Kindle.

861
01:07:04,620 --> 01:07:05,620
Brilliant.

862
01:07:05,620 --> 01:07:09,920
So another question I'd like to ask, is there another book, like someone else's book that

863
01:07:09,920 --> 01:07:11,340
you love to recommend to people?

864
01:07:11,340 --> 01:07:14,540
It can be about what we've discussed today or something completely different.

865
01:07:14,540 --> 01:07:23,420
Yeah, if you want to read about the Ku Klux Klan, a good book about their rise to political

866
01:07:23,420 --> 01:07:32,580
power and the parallels that's going on in America today is a book by Linda Gordon, G-O-R-D

867
01:07:32,580 --> 01:07:37,460
and David O-N called The Second Coming of the KKK.

868
01:07:37,460 --> 01:07:40,940
Brilliant, thank you.

869
01:07:40,940 --> 01:07:46,620
Now again, with the movie, so Black Klansman is the movie and very well done.

870
01:07:46,620 --> 01:07:51,500
And it's funny because there's some, when you listen to the book or read the book, you

871
01:07:51,500 --> 01:07:58,100
realize there's some fictional elements in there as well but aside from the little frills

872
01:07:58,100 --> 01:08:04,000
they put on to make it more attractive, I guess, to a filmgoer, it pretty much stays

873
01:08:04,000 --> 01:08:05,060
true to your story.

874
01:08:05,060 --> 01:08:07,700
I highly recommend people reading it and seeing the film.

875
01:08:07,700 --> 01:08:13,700
Are there any movies that you love?

876
01:08:13,700 --> 01:08:19,940
Malcolm X by Lee, I think it's probably his best movie, at least in my opinion, I think

877
01:08:19,940 --> 01:08:25,060
it's his best movie, excluding Black Klansman.

878
01:08:25,060 --> 01:08:34,540
I like a lot of movies and Malcolm X is probably one of the better ones that have ever been

879
01:08:34,540 --> 01:08:35,540
made.

880
01:08:35,540 --> 01:08:40,780
Yeah, that's an observation I've talked about a couple times on here as well with award

881
01:08:40,780 --> 01:08:47,500
ceremonies is that Denzel Washington won an award for Training Day and for some reason,

882
01:08:47,500 --> 01:08:52,740
the academy that year wanted to make it like a black actor year but it was crazy because

883
01:08:52,740 --> 01:08:57,300
if you've ever seen Cry Freedom that he did about Steve Biko in South Africa and then

884
01:08:57,300 --> 01:09:03,260
Malcolm X, to me, are far more powerful performances than Training Day.

885
01:09:03,260 --> 01:09:10,980
So it's a shame that he didn't win an Academy for, in my opinion, much better performances.

886
01:09:10,980 --> 01:09:18,380
Well, one thing I learned about my year in the Hollywood scene is that the Academy Award

887
01:09:18,380 --> 01:09:21,260
does not necessarily go to the best movie.

888
01:09:21,260 --> 01:09:28,500
It goes to the studio that puts up the best political barrage promoting their movie.

889
01:09:28,500 --> 01:09:35,940
So the people that win, movies that win, are basically the ones that pump the most money

890
01:09:35,940 --> 01:09:39,060
into promoting their movie.

891
01:09:39,060 --> 01:09:41,100
So not too dissimilar from politics then.

892
01:09:41,100 --> 01:09:43,180
I'll give you an example.

893
01:09:43,180 --> 01:09:48,140
The movie Roma that was leading went into the movies.

894
01:09:48,140 --> 01:09:52,180
A lot of people were saying it was going to win the movie.

895
01:09:52,180 --> 01:09:59,420
It didn't, but it won all the awards leading up to the Academy.

896
01:09:59,420 --> 01:10:07,340
Roma was spending 30 million on their ad campaign for, I mean, the studio was spending 30 million

897
01:10:07,340 --> 01:10:09,540
on their ad campaign for Roma.

898
01:10:09,540 --> 01:10:14,100
Black Plasmon wasn't spending probably half of that.

899
01:10:14,100 --> 01:10:15,100
That's a huge amount of money.

900
01:10:15,100 --> 01:10:17,660
That sounds like the budget for the movie itself.

901
01:10:17,660 --> 01:10:20,540
In some cases, it is.

902
01:10:20,540 --> 01:10:23,860
Well, then on the movie theme, what about documentaries?

903
01:10:23,860 --> 01:10:26,300
Are there any documentaries that you love?

904
01:10:26,300 --> 01:10:30,100
I recently saw Kobe Bryant's Dear Basketball.

905
01:10:30,100 --> 01:10:31,100
I loved it.

906
01:10:31,100 --> 01:10:32,100
Brilliant.

907
01:10:32,100 --> 01:10:33,100
Yeah.

908
01:10:33,100 --> 01:10:34,100
Rest in peace.

909
01:10:34,100 --> 01:10:35,100
All right.

910
01:10:35,100 --> 01:10:38,140
Well, I've got one to suggest to you then.

911
01:10:38,140 --> 01:10:42,620
I think you would love 13th, 13th.

912
01:10:42,620 --> 01:10:46,580
It's Ava DuVernay on our legal system here.

913
01:10:46,580 --> 01:10:51,580
They talk about Birth of a Nation in that documentary, but it's extremely well done

914
01:10:51,580 --> 01:10:53,660
and very, very powerful.

915
01:10:53,660 --> 01:10:57,260
It talks a lot about slavery into the prisons.

916
01:10:57,260 --> 01:10:59,020
I think you'd probably love that one.

917
01:10:59,020 --> 01:11:00,020
All right.

918
01:11:00,020 --> 01:11:04,500
So the next question, and I asked Jay this and you were one of the people that he told

919
01:11:04,500 --> 01:11:05,540
me about.

920
01:11:05,540 --> 01:11:10,260
Is there a person that you would recommend to come on this podcast as a guest to speak

921
01:11:10,260 --> 01:11:13,420
to the first responders of military of the world?

922
01:11:13,420 --> 01:11:14,420
Jerry Flowers.

923
01:11:14,420 --> 01:11:15,420
Flowers?

924
01:11:15,420 --> 01:11:16,420
Flowers.

925
01:11:16,420 --> 01:11:17,420
Jerry, what's his background?

926
01:11:17,420 --> 01:11:22,420
Jerry was an Oklahoma City inspector detective.

927
01:11:22,420 --> 01:11:31,860
He was one of the first responders at the Oklahoma City bombing and he worked gangs with me,

928
01:11:31,860 --> 01:11:34,460
a good friend of mine.

929
01:11:34,460 --> 01:11:41,700
And he retired from the Oklahoma City Police Department and became head of the Oklahoma

930
01:11:41,700 --> 01:11:47,780
Bureau of Agriculture investigators, they call them the cattle cops.

931
01:11:47,780 --> 01:11:56,140
And he retired from there and became a marshal in Oklahoma.

932
01:11:56,140 --> 01:12:00,460
And he recently retired from there.

933
01:12:00,460 --> 01:12:04,460
And to be honest with you, I don't know what he's doing right now, but Jerry's got over

934
01:12:04,460 --> 01:12:10,260
40 years in law enforcement and he's still going strong.

935
01:12:10,260 --> 01:12:12,140
Wow.

936
01:12:12,140 --> 01:12:13,660
Hopefully he's resting now after all that.

937
01:12:13,660 --> 01:12:14,660
My God.

938
01:12:14,660 --> 01:12:17,940
Yeah, I would love to connect with him if you were able to connect us up.

939
01:12:17,940 --> 01:12:19,260
It sounds like an incredible story.

940
01:12:19,260 --> 01:12:24,020
And I had Chris Fields on the show who was, when you think about the Oklahoma bombing,

941
01:12:24,020 --> 01:12:29,420
there was that one very tragically iconic picture of a fireman holding a baby who had

942
01:12:29,420 --> 01:12:30,420
passed.

943
01:12:30,420 --> 01:12:34,260
That was Chris and he came on the show about a year ago.

944
01:12:34,260 --> 01:12:37,460
Was it the headless baby?

945
01:12:37,460 --> 01:12:40,020
Wasn't headless though, but she had passed away.

946
01:12:40,020 --> 01:12:42,620
They pulled her from the rubble, but she didn't make it.

947
01:12:42,620 --> 01:12:46,100
So it's a very, very sad story.

948
01:12:46,100 --> 01:12:54,260
Jerry tells the story of going through the rubble and the first responder picking up

949
01:12:54,260 --> 01:12:56,420
a baby and carrying him.

950
01:12:56,420 --> 01:13:01,700
And when they finally got safety, looking at the baby and looked down and there was

951
01:13:01,700 --> 01:13:02,700
no head.

952
01:13:02,700 --> 01:13:03,700
Oh, God.

953
01:13:03,700 --> 01:13:08,740
Yeah, because there was a whole kindergarten on the, or daycare on the ground floor.

954
01:13:08,740 --> 01:13:09,740
Yeah.

955
01:13:09,740 --> 01:13:10,740
It was awful.

956
01:13:10,740 --> 01:13:11,740
Awful.

957
01:13:11,740 --> 01:13:12,740
All right.

958
01:13:12,740 --> 01:13:15,300
Well, one more question before we make sure everyone knows where to find you.

959
01:13:15,300 --> 01:13:19,460
What do you do to decompress when you want to relax these days?

960
01:13:19,460 --> 01:13:23,380
I read a lot and I write.

961
01:13:23,380 --> 01:13:28,660
I'm working on a follow-up to my book, about 50 pages into it.

962
01:13:28,660 --> 01:13:31,220
And it keeps me grounded.

963
01:13:31,220 --> 01:13:32,220
Excellent.

964
01:13:32,220 --> 01:13:33,740
Well, please let me know when it's ready.

965
01:13:33,740 --> 01:13:37,740
I will definitely let everyone listening know that the new one is out.

966
01:13:37,740 --> 01:13:38,740
All right.

967
01:13:38,740 --> 01:13:40,940
Well, I want to thank you so much.

968
01:13:40,940 --> 01:13:43,700
Where can people find you online if they want to reach out?

969
01:13:43,700 --> 01:13:45,780
Do you have social media or website?

970
01:13:45,780 --> 01:13:48,580
Oh, not really.

971
01:13:48,580 --> 01:13:55,300
You can contact me at Ron at AOL.com.

972
01:13:55,300 --> 01:13:57,300
All right.

973
01:13:57,300 --> 01:13:59,100
Well, Ron, I want to thank you so much.

974
01:13:59,100 --> 01:14:03,340
I know this weird Englishman kind of came out of nowhere and asked you if you do an

975
01:14:03,340 --> 01:14:05,180
hour and a half conversation with him.

976
01:14:05,180 --> 01:14:07,780
But your story is so powerful.

977
01:14:07,780 --> 01:14:12,460
Your perspective is unique and very raw and honest.

978
01:14:12,460 --> 01:14:13,780
But it needs to be heard.

979
01:14:13,780 --> 01:14:18,980
We hear so much about certain groups that are creating a huge amount of death and destruction

980
01:14:18,980 --> 01:14:20,500
in our country at the moment.

981
01:14:20,500 --> 01:14:23,820
But this is an area where we don't hear as much.

982
01:14:23,820 --> 01:14:26,940
But I mean, when you read the paper closely, it does happen a lot.

983
01:14:26,940 --> 01:14:30,500
So it is a topic that needs to be talked about.

984
01:14:30,500 --> 01:14:37,460
And then the irony is the story through your perspective, there's an amount of humor to

985
01:14:37,460 --> 01:14:40,940
it as well, like the ridiculousness of the Aeolian of the clan too.

986
01:14:40,940 --> 01:14:45,220
But I just want to thank you so much for being so generous with your time and allowing me

987
01:14:45,220 --> 01:14:49,060
to kind of hear your journey from your perspective.

988
01:14:49,060 --> 01:14:50,060
No worries.

989
01:14:50,060 --> 01:14:51,060
Thanks a lot.

990
01:14:51,060 --> 01:14:52,060
No worries.

991
01:14:52,060 --> 01:15:07,700
Thanks a lot.