The CopDoc Podcast: Aiming for Excellence in Leadership
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The CopDoc Podcast delves into police leadership and innovation. The focus is on aiming for excellence in the delivery of police services across the globe.
Dr. Steve Morreale is a retired law enforcement practitioner, a pracademic, turned academic, and scholar from Worcester State University. Steve is the Program Director for LIFTE, Command College - The Leadership Institute for Tomorrow's Executives at Liberty University.
Steve shares ideas and talks with thought leaders in policing, academia, community leaders, and other related government agencies. You'll find Interviews with thought leaders drive the discussion to improve police services and community relationships.
The CopDoc Podcast: Aiming for Excellence in Leadership
Challenges of Public Safety in Times of Ideological Divide - James F. Pastor, J.D., Ph.D., former Chicago Police
Season 5 - Episode 122
Join the conversation with James F. "Jim" Pastor, a former Chicago Police Officer turned author, as he unpacks the tumultuous atmosphere enveloping police leadership today. Our chat delves into ideologies that shape our society, touching on race, religion, and politics, and their effects on law enforcement. Pastor's book "You Say You Want a Revolution" serves as our backdrop, exposing the intense pressures officers face during societal upheaval and the forewarning of potential perils that lie ahead. It's a dialogue that transcends the pages, shedding light on the readiness required in these unpredictable times.
Strap in for this deep discussion of policing's evolution over the past four decades, as we dissect the escalating police-involved incidents and the heart-wrenching rise in officer suicides. Pastor, with his multifaceted expertise, guides us through the socio-political minefields that today's officers must navigate, and we probe the contentious nature of modern-day politics, especially within the heated discussions of college campuses. The conversation extends to the necessity of public safety policing, as Pastor's insights challenge us to consider the alignment of policing practices with the core values of our communities.
The chat ends as we tackle the relationship between patriotism and the challenges facing policing against the backdrop of globalism and its critique of nationalistic sentiments. Pastor illuminates the impact of political decisions on the ground, stressing the critical role of police leadership in steering officers through treacherous waters. It's a crucial discussion for those vested in the intersection of law enforcement and the fabric of our national identity, and Pastor doesn't shy away from the tough questions that confront the very essence of public safety.
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Website: www.copdocpodcast.com
If you'd like to arrange for facilitated training, or consulting, or talk about steps you might take to improve your leadership and help in your quest for promotion, contact Steve at stephen.morreale@gmail.com
Welcome to The Cop Doc Podcast. This podcast explores police leadership issues and innovative ideas. The cop doc shares thoughts and ideas as he talks with leaders in policing communities, academia and other government agencies. And now please join Dr Steve Morreale and industry thought leaders as they share their insights and experience on The CopD oc Podcast.
Steve Morreale:Hey everybody, Steve Morreale, coming to you from South Carolina today, and today we go down to Naples, Florida, beautiful Naples, Florida. We talked to Jim Pastor and he is in Naples, Florida, and a former police officer, a PhD, doctor, Pastor, a JD, and doing some wonderful work, wrote some books. We'll talk about it. The most recent is you say you want a revolution, a compelling and cautionary tale on what lies ahead. So good morning to you, Jim. Hi Steve, thanks for having me, Thank you for coming.
Steve Morreale:I think that this is going to be a very interesting episode because and I know when you were a police officer I want you to talk about your background. But when you're a police officer, you have to be somewhat measured as to what you can say in public. No different than me as a faculty member at a state university now. But because you are released from that, you are retired, you're no longer a police officer, but you have all that experience You've been a professor, an author, a lawyer. Tell us about yourself and what brings you to writing and what brought you to The CopD oc Podcast.
Jim Pastor:Thanks for having me again. I'm a kid from the South side of Chicago. I grew up in a very working class neighborhood. Father was a steel worker and my friends went to the trades and steel mills and I became a cop and I had this idea of being an FBI as a kid.
Jim Pastor:I started on a Chicago police department 40 years ago. It was a great opportunity Back then. I came in with a bachelor's degree in law enforcement and sociology, which was rather unusual back then. We want a lot of educated cops back then. Right, and you know, through the years I progressed. I had this idea that you keep learning and working and I loved the things that I was doing and I went to graduate school, I went to law school and then I got my PhD all while working and all writing, and I've had a what I'd call labor of love over the years, all in and around policing, public safety and security. I'm currently legal counsel for electronic security firm and I have a small consulting business where I do expert witness work and then I write the book you say you want a revolution is a labor of love. I've studied terrorism for many years. Back in the day I was, one of my mentors was Dick Ward.
Steve Morreale:Oh, my goodness, Dick and I was so, so bad to see him leave. Yes, I know Dick very well, I knew him.
Jim Pastor:Yes, he was NYPD detective and ultimately he pretty much ran the University of Illinois, chicago when I was there working on my master's and PhD and he used to have a terrorism conference every year. And I was this young kid, 24 years old, with all kinds of alphabet people in the audience, you know FBICIA, tf, dea. It was fascinating to me at the time. It was a time in American history just early to mid 80s when there was a lot of concern with terrorism, and then I think we're coming back around to that. So what I was fascinated with back then was why people had the fanatical mindsets, why ideologies grow and what feeds them and how those things can be addressed, both from a law enforcement or from a societal perspective. There's a long tentacle story over the years, but why I wrote this book is because I think we're in very, very dangerous times. I call it a revolutionary climate and what happened in Israel?
Steve Morreale:just gonna say that I think that's a telling yes, so I don't know.
Jim Pastor:I mean, I could keep going. There's so much to say and I'm fascinated around the topic intellectually and academically, but it's also it's us, it's it's who we are.
Steve Morreale:It's like our life. I was just gonna say that, and I think those who are listening and so many are faculty members, students and police officers and those who are scholars and such can benefit from this. I believe when you look at the book and as you look chapter by chapter, it's really fascinating. It's well researched and obviously, like you say, a labor love. It's not the first thing you've written, but one of the things you start with is talking about race, religion and politics, and I do believe that race and religion play a very, very big role.
Steve Morreale:We talk about oppression oppression with the Palestinians at the Gaza Strip and did that cause the attack on Israel? The situation where you have hostages being taken in, the threat of being killed one by one, is just chilling. I know it seems like far, far away, but I'm sure you and I was just engaged in a course last night graduate course on border security and we talked about what was going on, as we're talking about now, in Israel. Could that have an impact in the United States? I think so many of us think, eh, that's way, way far away. I would hasten to say that this is a problem that may come our way and we need to be ready, would you agree?
Jim Pastor:I totally. I think you've seen a small indicators of that already with some of the protests and counter protests in the streets.
Steve Morreale:Sorry, we just had a disruption in our internet connectivity and we were talking about what's going on and how people are railing for both sides here in the United States, and certainly we have seen over and over and over again different groups, radical units and those who are sort of counterculture thinkers that are putting police in the middle, and I think that's really important. Let's talk about that, because imagine the job of a police officer. You and I were in the business for an awfully long time a while ago, but it's so much more difficult now. And so here police are marshaled to come and allow sometimes illegal or an illegal gathering where two factions are railing against each other, and you're in the. You're in the middle. You know you're trying to allow for free speech, but also make sure that it doesn't get out of hand. Talk about that and how difficult that is for police organizations.
Jim Pastor:It's extraordinarily difficult, but the thin blue line is becoming thinner and more problematic and more difficult to manage.
Jim Pastor:These entities are designed essentially to maintain law and order, and part of the law, of course, is to allow protests.
Jim Pastor:First, amendment rights are hugely important in this country, as is public safety, and there's a very fine line between what can be allowed in the public square and particularly when you have a counter protest situation, and that's where the volatile nature of these issues that are so embedded into people's lives this is where ideology plays such a huge role, in that the thinking is so embedded in people's minds and lives, and there's essentially I would call it a collision course that we're on, where the reasonable people, the reasonable minds, are becoming less common and what is more strident is becoming more frequent, because these conflicts or protests can turn into demonstrations and then chaos. The police are in a very delicate situation, and how do you manage? That is a kind of a case-by-case analysis, but what I looked at is the larger trends to say that these things are happening. This is why they're happening, and in the middle is the canaries in the coal mine, which can see this the police and when police are targeted, it just creates that additional stress on society.
Jim Pastor:The dynamic of attacking the police and attacking police entities or institutions are such that it breaks down that thin blue line into a city. And that is why I wrote the book, because I can harken back to a book I wrote in 2008, which was called Terrorism and Public Safety Policing Implications for the Obama Presidency, and at that time it was my opinion that we were getting to a very, very delicate, racially impugned situation where race was playing a role, where the first black president was coming aboard and there was a lot of people who were unhappy about that. And at the time the society harkened a post-racial America, and I wrote about this in my new book. How can you become post-racial and then, 12 years later, become systematically racist? It's almost we're on a ferris wheel, a titty water, where we are declared post-racial and then we become systematically racist. It's impossible to be both. Systematically racist is essentially, you know, embedded with racism throughout your society, throughout your system. Post-racial is to say that you don't care about race anymore.
Steve Morreale:So in this is where we're at. You're asking what is it? It's easy to learn, right.
Jim Pastor:And that's right. And so it's because these things are so deep-seated. We are creating a circumstance. Who's the we? I got ideas about who the we is. There's a lot of things driving this collision course that the reason why I cared about it so much is because of the police, because they're the ones caught in the mix. They're the ones who are going to have to deal with the fallout and be directly affected by it. The police shootings or police involved attacks are becoming more frequent as our police suicide as are a very delicate situation where the psyche of the average police officer and how the job is done has changed dramatically from what I saw 40 years ago. And I care about the police, but I care even more about society. If you affect the police, you affect society.
Steve Morreale:We're talking to Jim Pastor. Talk to Jim Pastor. He is in Naples, florida, former Chicago police officer, an educator, a writer, obviously a lawyer and a PhD. And we're talking about society and we're talking about how police are drawn into the middle. Actually, jim, one of the things that I am beginning to write about is socio-political risk and policing and something that police managers don't think that they are drawn into social issues. They are drawn into political issues. You know just as we're talking about.
Steve Morreale:But, as I read the book and I read pieces of your book and the book is called you say you want a revolution, a takeoff on the Beatles. You talk about race, religion and politics. But what I find here? You start talking about Charlottesville and what happened there. We talk about critical race theory. You talk about white privilege. You talk about a third rail, wokeism in the culture, war, the national anthem and attack on the American flag, mob action. You talk about religion, but then you go on to talk about extremist ideologies in the capitalist system and the attack of the capitalist system. And it could be very well.
Steve Morreale:What's going on over there in the Middle East? You talk about single interest groups and they just want the audience to know what you are writing about Anti-abortion, animal rights, radical environmentalists, ms-13, marxists, urban street gangs. You talk about Antifa as anarchist and the Boogaloo boys. You're talking about fascism. Right wing just goes on and on Right wing fascism, anti-government groups and racial and hate groups and national racist groups. The Black Panther Party for self-defense, the Aryan Brotherhood, proud boys and all of this is which is crazy. But then you go on to talk about reimagining policing. It's pretty hard to reimagine policing, even though it might be forced on us when, in many cases if you think about Portland and Seattle that the police were under siege. How do you reform while you're trying to just protect the people who are protecting society? I mean big questions.
Jim Pastor:Huge questions and during the summer of 2020, I think there was a knee jerk reaction to the George Floyd killing, which was no one could defend it.
Jim Pastor:I haven't heard one police officer and all the people that I know try to defend it in any real way, but it's one man 800,000 or 750,000 police officers in this country and it turned the world upside down in a sense of police, and I say in my book that it's changed policing for the foreseeable future, what it's going to look like going forward, it's still a question, and I offer up what I call public safety policing, where I have three crucial elements of what that looks like.
Jim Pastor:To the larger point, all those ideologies are all, and I use a diagram in my book where I have the capitalistic system and around them is all the various ideologies, and they're all.
Jim Pastor:All of them look to destroy the system and, with the police being the most visible representatives of the system, they are inevitably tied to the system and then tied to the impact of these ideologies and they're coming, and the way I see ideologies is it's a tit for tat the more the the one stands up, the more likely the other will stand up, and I use this principle and this is something that most people don't want to understand or our biases do not allow us to really get our arms around.
Jim Pastor:And this is the principle If you ignore or appease one extreme and you demonize and attack the other extreme, you'll get more of both, and that's what I think is happening in this country. There's enough people on both sides of the spectrum that are supporting these extremist thinking that are inevitably creating our own demise, if you will. And I use a quote in my book where Lincoln President Lincoln in the 1840s basically said if we lose this society, if we lose this country, it won't be because of foreign troops crossing the Ohio River. It will be because of our own divide.
Jim Pastor:That's what I see is happening in this country in a very dangerous way, and he is Israeli war, and the incident with Hamas is one of those triggers that we start to see the lines being hardened and people's mindsets becoming more and more strident to either side. And how it plays in the book was either an attempt to find a reasonable ground or it's a warning. I don't know what it is and I can tell you this, and, for whatever it's worth, thank you for putting a book called Revolution on your podcast, because a lot of people don't want to touch it. And why? Because it's so potentially volatile that people are afraid to think about what this may mean to their life.
Steve Morreale:But when you look, at the title, some might think that you are proposing a revolution, but what you're saying is that it's in the country we are so divided, both politically and in belief conservative versus liberal, whatever that is and it's so hard to avoid the conversation. Having the conversation is very important, and you know you've been on campuses for a long, long time. It strikes me that campuses across the country are supposed to allow for dialogue and that's not always happening. It really isn't to the point where, if you are a conservative and I hold myself as a conservative I have to bite my tongue. I have to keep my thoughts to myself. You know, jim, as a former police officer, you know as a former law enforcement officer, you know that there are people on campus that have nothing but disdain for criminal justice.
Steve Morreale:Nothing but disdain for me as a professor. I'm not saying it's a great number, but it, like everything else we're talking about, there is an undercurrent to say you are an apologist for police when people don't understand what I am and what I believe in. I don't like bad police officers any more than you do. I can't imagine a country without policing and how it would go into utter chaos.
Jim Pastor:It is. It's inherent in human nature. This is where most people don't really want to get to the basis of who we are as people. We need order. People crave for order and without an enforcing arm in a country, you will open up Pandora's box, so to speak. But let me just say, yes, the title sounds like I want to advocate for it, but really it's the first line of the song revolution.
Jim Pastor:And the Beatles in 68 said essentially be careful what you ask for folks. So I use that as a jumping off point to say the Beatles said the same thing If you want money for people with minds that hate, well, brother, you have to wait and we have a lot of hate going on. And my point was to say, just as the Beatles in 68 put a lid on a revolutionary environment that was percolating back then, what I'm trying to do is put another lid on a revolutionary environment that is percolating now, but in a much more dangerous fashion, because back in 68, there wasn't a right wing counter revolution mindset that was out there. It was mostly, almost exclusively, driven from the left. So now you have an element of a counterweight, if you will, that is pushing the envelope and creating a kind of that collision course in a way that we didn't have in the 60s.
Jim Pastor:So I say this this is not my idea, folks, this is what they're saying. And one of the things I've learned from Dick Ward over the years is pay attention to what the terrorists are telling you, because they're telling you what they're going to do. Yeah, listen, they're saying it. They're telling you loud and clear what their minds are and what their attitudes are and what their intentions are. So you look at your ideologies and you say to yourself oh, I either ignore that is just puff or I take it seriously. And I've been around the black long enough to know that you ought to take it seriously, because some of these people are dead serious in their intense and again, this is not something that most people want to talk about, no, but if we don't talk about it?
Steve Morreale:we're going to get it. I keep cutting off because you get me thinking about so many things and I hope the audience is thinking the same thing, like what do we do? Is this a wake up call? Should we be paying attention? Is a potential attack just for for a tax sake, to attack the capitalist system of the United States or any democratic society? Is that in the offing? Is there so much anger that's out there that we should be on alert? I mean that's a real problem. And then you think about Jim, just to bring it a little bit forward, talking about the Islamist actors out there. What about our own cities? Look at the lawlessness that we're watching on television where there are groups of people. It baffles me when you see a group of people who are using social media to amass and attack and overrun a store and then go on to the next one a couple of days later and the police are outnumbered, they are outflanked and in some cases you've got politicians saying stand down, yeah.
Jim Pastor:Well, one of my titles of my chapter four is reimagining policing from defunding to lawlessness, and I lay out the reasons why lawlessness will increase and why lawlessness could be seen as a indicator for the destruction of capitalism. Look what happens in these scenarios that you're describing. You have these mobs going in, grabbing anything they want in a store or greatly affecting the commerce in a business district. What do businesses do? Many of them are just shutting down, and so what do you do when you shut down a Walgreens or CVS or even some Neiman Marcus or target?
Steve Morreale:Target is in the middle of it.
Jim Pastor:Yes, yeah, and you just shut it down. What do you affect? The way commerce is done? You affect the capitalistic system.
Steve Morreale:Well, you begin to oppress the very people who need this.
Jim Pastor:Absolutely. The woman who's got three kids, that doesn't have a car, that relies on the CVS to go to the store Now isn't there anymore, and so what do you do? There are so many parts of this and this animates me in a way, because those mob actions are really also political and that's where people they see this as a bunch of criminal actors. Yeah, but the criminal actors design or intending to do something bigger than just steal. There is a momentum and there's a logic in lawlessness and it's like a cancer If you have a cancer in your body, it will continue to grow unless it's addressed. And we are afraid to address those things because it's going to speak to a racial incitement. A lot of urban leaders doing they're sitting on their hands because they're afraid, or now they're blaming the businesses for not having enough security. That's a classic juxtaposition. It's not my job to stop the looting, it's your job to stop the looting.
Steve Morreale:Yes, it's what society in America believes that the government is responsible to maintain security and protect, and so I think, in a lot of ways, what we're seeing as capital or for profit organizations are saying I'm not staying in this city because you can't protect me. There's a statement that's being made there.
Jim Pastor:Absolutely, and you know I said it in my book. Now the book is a little. I wrote it mostly during 2021. And so a lot of what I said in the book is happening now. It's ahead of its time. It's purkuling, because what you do is you look at the tea leaves and you start to kind of like how is this going to play? How is this going to play? Well, it's playing out as I said in the book, and that is, businesses will take the bottom line and say wait a minute, we can't continue to lose money, we're just going, we're going to shut it down and we're going to do business where we can't Now. That may shift even more business to online shopping and things like that.
Jim Pastor:There may be some actual alternative available, but for some people it's not a real good alternative.
Jim Pastor:But, more importantly, for the social structure, for social cohesion, for the viability of our urban areas, it is hugely detrimental. And how this gets solved is what I offer up is public safety, policing, emphasis on order maintenance technology and then what I call protective measures, which is both police officers protecting themselves and the public, and that may require police officers arming up in a way that a lot of people don't feel comfortable with. So it's a very interesting dynamic and I admire and appreciate the average pop that's out there and I speak to them and my heart goes out to them. But when you talk earlier about the police leaders not wanting to get involved with politics, really for me this is policy. I have a PhD in public policy. Policies matter and, okay, politics is often tied to policies. It's really the policies that drive human behavior and the incentives we either give people to abide the law or the incentives we give them to ignore the law, and I think what we're doing now is giving more incentives to the law violators than we are to the law of viaduct.
Steve Morreale:We're talking to Jim Pastor and he is an author, a PhD, ajd and a former police officer out of Chicago, and he has written a number of books. The book we're focusing on, as you say, you want a revolution, and one of the things that I'm hearing is what you're talking about is policy. I understand, and what began to happen a few years ago was a same thing that prosecutors would come in and run on the idea, the premise, that they were not going to enforce minor laws and those laws, perhaps that were targeted at the inner city, at minorities, and when there is no consequence, very often there's Lawlessness. If you're not gonna put me in jail, then I'll do what I can do. And so the revolving door happens the police put handcuffs on people, they bring them in, then they're out, the system handles it and if the offender is not going to be held to account, there's no consequences.
Steve Morreale:Believe me, as you well know, the signal goes out like it doesn't matter. No one's doing anything. Coming to the store, steal outwardly Securities not gonna stop you, so just keep coming, and it becomes a devolution in a lot of ways and that's a real problem. I'm sure police are sitting and listening today on the sideline, thinking what the hell am I gonna do? But I want to say is that police leaders and I do so much training with police leaders listen, your job is to keep a focus on the mission, even amongst the noise, make sure that your people are protected and make sure that they do Not ignore the law, take action and you have no control over what happens afterwards. What are your thoughts?
Jim Pastor:Yes, police leaders have to do their job, and so police officers, for that matter. The problem is what you call Devolution, I called momentum, and there's a logic and a Momentum to lawlessness is, as you just said, people learn. Oh, tony, got away with a bunch of stuff, look at, hey, but I'm gonna get some for myself. I see this is rational actors. These are not necessarily yeah, they're criminals because they're committing these kinds of things, but really, what they are is rational actors. They're doing what they can get away with and whatever the system allows them to get away with.
Jim Pastor:When the rational person do that, well, there's the incentives that I talked about. How do you manage that from a policing perspective? How does the police chief protect the citizens and his or her officers at the same time? Well, what I think is happening more commonly we have rejected the notion of proactive policing and become police officers in the audience will probably Find us somewhat humorous. I hope there may be a point where police officers turn into firemen, where they stay in the station until Something happens and then they go to deal with the issue.
Steve Morreale:They wait for the paxons to ring and then they go. They respond right.
Jim Pastor:Correct. So that completely reactive approach is foreign to me. I was a tactical police officer. I stopped probably five thousand cars. I look for the bad guys. It's important that police officers understand that the proactive approach is historically been the way to reduce crime. It's also, granted, become sometimes done in ways that are wrong and there is that very fine line. But what I think has happened because some of those things are very much a discretionary basis and some of these things can treat, stop, can go bad in a heartbeat. So I think the emphasis has become just don't do that, stay in the car and Wait for you to be called and then deal with it then now let me interrupt.
Steve Morreale:I understand what you're saying and I think it's absolutely what happens in many major cities, but my question is is that what the general public expect in your mind?
Jim Pastor:you know what they Expect not to be harassed, but then they expect to be protected. And what is a funny thing is who is the bad guy? I can tell you how many times I was asked the question why are you stopping me? You're stopping me because I'm black. No, I'm stopping you because I'm investigating a crime. I don't know if you're a bad guy or a good guy, I just don't know who you are. And so the way that average person sees that is they don't care about it until they're affected. And once they're affected, then they get interested, and I think we're gonna find more and more people getting interested About how their communities are policed, because if there's lack of policing, then there's more crime. Now the dynamic of this is even more volatile. If policing as a whole doesn't become more proactive, well, what will happen? People will become more self-defense and they will carry weapons, and they will then be their own judge During an executioner, if you will, and I'm saying the vaginal anti-ism right.
Jim Pastor:Yes if we have created this situation where we are afraid to deal with the to use your Analogy earlier the mobs. If the mobs can't be dealt with, then at some point in time Citizens will deal with the mobs and that's where it gets potentially very volatile.
Steve Morreale:You put the police in the middle. As to who are we policing?
Jim Pastor:and if you think about a mob.
Steve Morreale:You think about a mob. It's a flash mob and police show up and you know there's not enough people on the street and three or four or five cars show up. They can't deal with a mob. I mean, you put your hands on one person, you really are taking yourself out of commission and you may be threatened by others who are jumping on you to stop them from Arresting Tony. So very often what happens is that you just stand back for a little bit because you can't outdo a mob of a hundred people If there's only three people with a gun and with a taser.
Jim Pastor:I bring up a historical example. Ironically, right before the Civil War, there was a movement called the wide-awakes and the wide-awakes were essentially More than there's who decided that they were going to protect their communities and protect their politicians, who were advocating the Prohibition of slavery, and they sought to create an environment where free men, free land and Succeed freedom. Well, society was breaking down then, so there was a movement that brought to the fore called the wide-awakes. Now we have fast forward 160 years. We now have a wolf Movement on the other side of the realm and there's going to be a wide-awake type of situation in the US. If we don't get our Streets under control, if we don't get commerce under control, if our urban areas Breakdown, people will flee. That can't flee, and if they're not fleeing, they're gonna do something to protect themselves. Human nature is self-protective. That's in our DNA.
Jim Pastor:So yes, in your scenario, if there's three police officers on the street and a hundred people running around, they have to just stay the course and just observe being observed, which it often happens in the case where the stores are hiring security guards to essentially watch people commit crimes.
Steve Morreale:We see that all the time I know yeah, cuz they're afraid to engage and they're outnumbered.
Steve Morreale:We're talking to Jim, pastor, and we're having a conversation that is, I won't say, much deeper, but it is so much more important because it talks about society and the way society has evolved, the way we are as a country with our Mores. You, at the end of your book, talk about God, country and Family. There have been some who feel that those Core bedrock beliefs in America are eroding. So Jim had written a book. You say you want a revolution and we're sort of picking apart some of the things that he has talked about. The couple of questions that come to mind for me, jim, is have you gained traction since writing this book? Are people seeing it, paying attention, understanding it? Are you clairvoyant?
Jim Pastor:Let me answer the second part first. I am not clairvoyant, but I pay attention. I'm a student of human nature and a student of society. Since I was 18 years old I have a sociology and law enforcement degree, so I guess I was trained to look at.
Jim Pastor:Sociology was all about giving behavior and subcultures and things like that so I pay attention to how people think and in my humble opinion, the book is ahead of its time and the traction that is coming and there is some coming. But I didn't write the book to make money. I wrote the book as an attempt to find Rational heads and also maybe just a warrant if we don't do something Significant, we're heading towards this collision course but that said in the end it's what do we go for?
Jim Pastor:What's our purpose in life? Do we see it as one with the most toys wins, or is there a larger meaning to our lives? And that's where that last chapter I try to pull out what has driven people in this country for millennium? And that is something bigger than ourselves, and that we should see things that we are just part of a larger puzzle, if you will, and our country, our family and ultimately, if you believe in God, the Creator, is the reason why we are living.
Jim Pastor:Shakespeare said we are with the actors in the world as a stage. So it's disappointing to me on one level, that a lot of people in public safety and security don't want to deal with the idea of revolution because they see the title, they're chilled away from it. I think they're afraid of maybe even a cancel culture situation, or they just don't want to go to the logical end game of what is going on around them. What I say is that end game is percolating and only the good people will stop it from happening, and or maybe there is some rational way to bridge the gap between the extremes that are developing in this country.
Steve Morreale:Well, don't you say that. You know, as you're saying, that I'm thinking to myself. Well, define good people and don't get me wrong. But is it my side or your side? Is it liberal or conservative, Is it? And that's the big deal. When you saw what happened on January 6th, what was your reaction to that?
Jim Pastor:Frankly, it was a mob action gone wild and I see that as a. It cuts both ways. I don't know enough about whether this was some part of this was egged on by either governmental actors or by essentially others inciting the crowd, or if it was just a crowd that went out of control. It wasn't good. Obviously, any violence, any law-biting, any hatred is how I break out. Those people who are good versus there are not. I don't have an excuse for anyone who violates the law. That's it, bottom line. So good people don't violate the law.
Jim Pastor:Now how do you bridge the gap if the government has created a circumstance where good people say I have to violate the law, that's a dangerous place to be and I don't want to go there, and yet, at the same time, we allow riots to occur. I mean, I did the stats there's I don't know 700 and some odd riots in the summer of 2020. And then there was a three hour riot in the Capitol. On balance, the riots of 2020 greatly impacted society in my mind, way more than the riot in the Capitol. Now, neither one were right. You can appease either side, because go with the principle If you ignore or appease one side and demonize and attack the other. You're going to get more of both, but why was it? The overriding emphasis was on the Capitol three hour riot and we essentially did the wink and nod.
Jim Pastor:For a summer of law. You can't reconcile the two. Both were wrong, but we have attacked one and ignored the other. That's dangerous in my mind. Now we can get into reasons why the riots of 2020 went out and how provocateurs were in the crowd in the riots in the cities, just why there were provocateurs in the crowd and the riots in the Capitol. In the end of the day, steve, good people in my mind, don't hate, don't commit crime, don't commit violence. Now then there's those exceptions, and I don't know how to manage that and unfortunately, government's job is to number one duty is to protect the citizens. The failure to government to do that leads to these other very dicey situations where we lose the perspective of what is right and wrong, and that's dangerous it is dangerous.
Steve Morreale:We're talking to Jim Pastor and you're listening to the Cop Talk podcast. I'm Steve Moriellian. We're talking about some pretty deep, deep situations and deep issues in America and beyond. I wrote a few things down and we need to wind down in a few moments, but one of the things that I wrote down was patriotism, which is, I guess, what you would say God, family and country. What do you think is happening? Why are there so many people who are speaking out against the United States as a principle, as a belief, as a country, supposedly, of freedom and rights? Where's that?
Jim Pastor:coming from? Well, you can argue it's coming from the vice of ideologies that believe that a nationalistic approach, which is essentially what patriotism is, is not healthy for this globe, and nationalistic thinking causes wars, and so thus the solution to mankind's ills is a globalist government that takes away the idea of patriotism and then takes the dynamics of the competition that goes to patriotism and nationalistic thinking out of the equation. And I think one of the reasons why we are in a flag mire as a country is there's a lot of people in this country that don't really care about the country. They care about the globe, and if the solution is to save the world, then maybe one of the solutions is to diminish the country, and I think you could see that at the southern border, the idea of a border and sovereignty has become almost repulsive to a lot of people, and so if you're seeking a globalist solution, you don't want a strong United States, because that would stand in the way of a one world government mindset.
Jim Pastor:Now that is a lot bigger than most people want to go To me. You have to ask the question like a rational actor why would you defund policing to upset the apple cart in the United States in terms of its ability to govern itself? Why would you open up the southern border? Why would you leave Afghanistan, in a way that you did, with billions of dollars of munitions that now have allegedly some of them landed in Hamas's hands? Why would you do those things? The country was your desire to maintain the integrity of the country. If you look at and that's what I did in my book I took the capitalistic system and I took the various ideologies and I put it around it and said every one of these ideologies wants to destroy the capitalistic system and the capitalistic system is embedded in the notion of sovereignty and patriotism in this country. So this is big and I can't say that everyone who desires to let in migrants from the southern border wants a globalistic system, but I can say the end result of that policy is to foster that.
Steve Morreale:So let me interrupt you again, let me ask you this question as we wind down how do police respond to all of the things we're talking about? Have they shut us off because we're talking so big, so global? This hasn't got anything to do with me in the Chicago Police Department or the Boston Police Department or the San Francisco Police Department, and I'm just throwing so many things at you. But what strikes me is that conundrum that we put police in sometimes when politicians decide what laws they wish to enforce, that when they tell police you will not deal with GSA police protecting the federal building, we're not going to protect it, that's their job, which is crazy. Or we're not going to allow you to call immigration and you're not going to assist immigration because we whomever we is politicians do not believe in that arm of the law. How confusing and confounding is that for a police officer who believes that a badge is a badge and that we help each other.
Jim Pastor:And the law is the law, and the reason why they got on the job is because they care about people and they want to help people, and the way they help people is they enforce the law when bad guys commit criminal acts. So, yes, how does an average police officer manage this? Human nature says a lot of them just put their heads down and try to stay out of the fray. Those who do get into the fray when they are in the fray be professional and buy the law that requires the boss and the leaders in the police communities to protect their officers when they are being accused of wrongdoing by snippets on a camera that lose the context of the whole situation. I can say that I've done a lot of use of force work in my life as a lawyer for police unions. It's one of the most difficult things to defend because it's an inevitably a situation that sometimes looks bad, because it's hard to arrest somebody that doesn't want to be arrested.
Steve Morreale:Oh yeah yeah, it never looks good. There's an awful lot of resistance and it always looks bad when you're trying to overcome that resistance. It's not print out.
Jim Pastor:So what do people do? And people are police and police are people. They will often avoid those situations because they're too hard to manage. So what can we do as a police? In my mind and this might be idealistic police leaders have to drive the show, and this is why I admire what you're doing with your podcast, because you're getting inside the heads of leaders and, at least from what I can see, most of these leaders have created kind of a little box that they live in, that they manage their daily life, which we all have to do. But they gotta see beyond their box and see the larger trends and see how those things are affecting policing generally, and police associations need to step up and defend the policies that we know historically have led to reductions in crime and defend why those are needed.
Steve Morreale:That's so interesting because you're talking about leaders and I say that there's an awful lot of police chiefs out there that are managers and they manage the day-to-day and they never step up, they never use the pulpit that they have to explain to society why the police do what they do and what the expectations are, and to work with the community to say what do you expect? Here's what we have, what would you like us to do? In other words, society isn't gonna drive what the police do, but they are gonna help them focus on what's important to them quality of life, crimes, those kinds of issues. Jim, we need to wind down. We could talk for quite a while and I can only assume that we'll be back at this, but let me ask you a couple of parting questions. How do people get in touch with you?
Jim Pastor:I have a website, wwwsecurelaw, and let me spell it secure S-E-C-U-R-E-L-A-W-L-L-C, securelaw-l-l-c. Dot com. You'll find my email on the website. The book is available in Amazon borders. You say you want a revolution, a compelling and cautionary tale of what lies ahead, because that's a take off from the Beatles song. There's another book out there with that first line, so be careful what you're buying. But beyond that, I'm available in a lot of capacities. I want to get the word out. This is the message that matters to me, and I care about police officers and I care about this country, and so I thank you for the opportunity. Partially, steve, and I say this with great respect.
Jim Pastor:There was a lot of people that don't want to touch this with a 10 foot pole, and it's those people who are the managers and essentially you described, that just want to kind of put their head in the sand and just hope things get better and just deal with the circumstances that are in front of them. So we got to see if life is bigger than ourselves. At least that's how I manage my life, that's how I try to rationalize who Jim Pastor is. I'm a nothing, and yet I've spent 40 plus years trying to do the right thing, and all of us have to work inside of ourselves and say what matters to me. What is worth sacrificing for Is my country, is my family, is my God worth sacrificing for? So that's why I wrote the book.
Jim Pastor:I knew I was gonna get into the fray. I didn't want to get into fray. I don't want to be called a racist. I'm not a racist. But yet inevitably, when you're dealing with controversial subjects and biases inherent in all of us, people just want to rather throw the stone instead of deal with the issue. So be part of the solution, not the problem.
Steve Morreale:I have to say that this has prompted a number of questions. You dig into some things that are really very important, and I'll ask you one final question. We're talking to Jim Pastor as we wind down the Cop Talk podcast. If you could sit down at dinner, wow, that's a great question.
Jim Pastor:It's not directly, but I admire what Abraham Lincoln did. He didn't deal with necessarily policing, but he dealt with public safety and he dealt with humanity, and that, to me, that's what policing is. It's human beings trying to keep lives safe. And what Lincoln went through and extraordinary stances he took. I ported him a lot in my book because it was an attempt just to say a man stood up at the time, this country needed it and we have been blessed from it. But Lincoln declared martial law and he forced laws when a lot of people were afraid to do it. He actually engaged a rebellion in order to keep the country together and it was hard. Why was it hard? Because it would probably have been easier to just appease and just allow the country to separate. But is that what we want? And ultimately, in my mind, the answer is no. But we'll all have to make that decision, individually and collectively.
Steve Morreale:And I think what you say is we have more in common than we would believe, but it requires us to listen to each other and to talk and to identify problems and work on solutions exactly what you've been saying. So I appreciate it. We've been talking to Jim Pastor and he is down in beautiful Naples, florida now. After being a Chicago police officer, now a lawyer and a PhD. So if you're from Chicago, do you support a couple of teams?
Jim Pastor:Well, I was a South Sider, so my heart was with the White Sacks and, of course, the Bears and Bulls.
Steve Morreale:Well, you gotta say the Bears for me.
Jim Pastor:Yeah the Bears, yeah the Bears. And Bik Bok is just dying. I know, I know. He grew up in an area just rest of where I grew up. I had friends from the neighborhood that went to high school with him. He was an absolute legend on the South Side, but of course he was a legend in football.
Steve Morreale:But Is it true? Jim Bad Bad Lee Roy Brown was from the South Side of Chicago. Yeah, yeah.
Jim Pastor:Yeah, people like him. And you know, steve, there's a lot of wonderful people that are being affected by the crime in Chicago and I care about those people, and Chicagoans are real downer people and I try. That's who I am.
Steve Morreale:Well, thank you so much for your time, for your energy. I wish you the best of luck. So we've been talking to Jim Pastor and his book. You Say You Want a Revolution. That's another episode of the Cop Doc Podcast in the can. Thanks for listening and keep listening for other episodes coming up. If you have an idea, please reach out and let me know Easy to find CopDocPodcastcom. I'm Steve Morielli. Thanks for listening.
Intro-Outro:To The CopDoc Podcast with Dr Steve Morreale. Steve is a retired law enforcement practitioner and manager, turned academic and scholar from Worcester State University. Please tune into The CopDoc Podcast for regular episodes of interviews with thought leaders in policing.
