Shownotes
Norm Murdock and Steve Palmer welcome special guests Brian Steel and Steven Walter about pressing policing issues affecting our community.
Brian Steel is the Executive Vice President of FOP Capital City Lodge #9 serving 4300 members.
Steven Walter is a return guest, heard in this episode, and a retired U.S. Marine Corps officer and a retired sergeant from the Columbus Police Department.
We explore the aftermath of recent protests and unrest, discussing the dilemma of protecting property during such events. We recount witnessing the heartbreaking scene of business owners picking up the pieces after their windows were smashed. We shed some light on the connection between drug addiction and criminal behaviors, emphasizing the desperate choices some individuals may make when in the grip of addiction.
Bail reform becomes a focal point of discussion, as we examine the unintended consequences it may have on the very communities it aims to help. What is the effectiveness of the current system? We need to keep seeking solutions that are fair and beneficial for everyone.
We talk about the lack of effective investigative resources and the need to replace experienced investigators with younger ones, highlighting the importance of addressing this potential gap.
The mental health and well-being of law enforcement officers are also explored. There is a toll on police officers' lives. It's a demanding and often high-stress job. We talk about the tools and assistance available to support officers in such situations, emphasizing the need for a holistic approach to promote their well-being.
Stephen Palmer is the Managing Partner for the law firm, Palmer Legal Defense. He has specialized almost exclusively in criminal defense for over 26 years. Steve is also a partner in Criminal Defense Consultants, a firm focused wholly on helping criminal defense attorneys design winning strategies for their clients.
Norm Murdock is an automobile racing driver and owner of a high-performance and restoration car parts company. He earned undergraduate degrees in literature and journalism and graduated with a Juris Doctor from the University of Cincinnati College of Law in 1985. He worked in the IT industry for two years before launching a career in government relations in Columbus, Ohio. Norm has assisted clients in the Transportation, Education, Healthcare, and Public Infrastructure sectors.
Brett Johnson is an award-winning podcast consultant and small business owner for nearly 10 years, leaving a long career in radio. He is passionate about helping small businesses tell their story through podcasts, and he believes podcasting is a great opportunity for different voices to speak and be heard.
Recorded at the 511 Studios, in the Brewery District in downtown Columbus, OH.
Copyright 2024 Common Sense Ohio
Transcripts
Alright. Here we are. Another weekly dose of Common Sense here at Common Sense Ohio, and you can check us out at commonsense ohio show.com if you're curious about prior past saying the same thing. I see what I did. Prior past episodes of Common Sense Ohio trying to make sense of the world in a world that seems like it's lost its common sense. So those who want to, and by the way, we do have a sponsor, Harper Plus Accounting. We had, Glenn Harper here from Harper Plus last week talking about what he did. We thought it was gonna be, like, a 5 minute little introduction, and he could sit along and do whatever.
Steve Palmer [:But we ended up making accounting fun or at least
Norm Murdock [:interesting. It was interesting.
Steve Palmer [:It was very interesting. Yeah. He and he obviously at Harper Plus, they don't just do your transactions. It's not like the guy flinging the signs and circles on the side of the road. He actually does some accounting. You know, they give he's my tax accountant. He does tax accounting planning. So that means in July, I know where I'm gonna be in, in in October.
Steve Palmer [:And then in October, I know where I'm gonna be in December and, you know, do the math from there.
Norm Murdock [:The best part was, his answers about Hunter Biden and how how How he is not being charged with some of those tax evasion years because they timed out.
Steve Palmer [:You know, they yeah. They intentionally timed us out, but it's not just charge. Well, he was talking about a statute of limitation on filing tax returns versus what I do, which is criminal defense. They let the actual statute of limitations, I think, on some of those things roll. Although, that does go from the data discovery. There there's nuances. Maybe we'll do a breakdown on that one here.
Norm Murdock [:We we got into more than just straight up how you fill your forms out. That that's all I meant.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. Oh, yeah. We did a lot more than that, and it was a lot more interesting than that. So believe me, if you're here I know everybody's thinking, you know, Right. Like, accountant. This is gonna be awful. Trust me. It's worth a listen.
Steve Palmer [:So, anyway, I didn't give the date. It is 10/27/23, 10/27/23. And, Norm, you got some guests. You see, Norm just brings people in at random. I don't even know where they find it. Anyway, no. We got some guests. Why don't you introduce them? And, we will, fascinating discussion, I think, anyway.
Norm Murdock [:For sure. So returning today, we have Steven Walter, retired USMC. He was here, discussing Lima Company, last month. He's here today As a 40 year, public servant on the Columbus Police Department, retired as a sergeant, so he's a double sergeant, marine sergeant and a CPD sergeant, retired, and Steven is known as the GOAT Amongst the the men and women in blue. He is, I'm embarrassing him, but, other people have told me that he is considered, pretty much the ideal of of how to be a good policeman. And then today, our special guest is Brian Steele. Brian is also a sergeant, I believe, and he is executive vice president of the Columbus FOP, which, More accurately, would be called Capital City Lodge 9, representing 28 agencies, the the the men and women, in the police department for 28 different agencies, Franklin County. And, why don't you hit the big ones, Brian? Some of the, obviously, Columbus.
Brian Steel [:Yeah. So 45 100 members, 28 agencies. We represent the Columbus division of police, the, the airport police, the sheriff's office, OSU, and a majority of
Norm Murdock [:the suburbs. Wow. Fantastic. And, something that people may not actually realize, but the FOP, in addition to being an advocacy group, is a straight up labor union. And and I think, you know, is it every 3 years you negotiate with the city of Columbus?
Brian Steel [:Every 3 years, we negotiate with all the cities that we represent. Contracts are generally every 3 years.
Norm Murdock [:So when's Columbus up again?
Brian Steel [:Right now is yesterday was day 2. This was week 1 of negotiations. Relations. Yesterday was day 2. Wow. So it's intense Yes. To say the least. Absolutely.
Norm Murdock [:You had some, things that you, Came to talk about. And then, you know, I would like to talk about policing in general, and then I'm sure Steve, will have, his legal point of view, which is obviously, he has expertise in that. So why don't you why don't you go ahead, Brian? You you had some, current issues, to bring to the table, and, go for it.
Brian Steel [:Yep. So I've been a police officer 20 years, and and you, labeled Master Hunt Walter. He is the goat. There's no doubt about that. I've been to Plenty of retirement parties in my dime. Only 1 was a blockbuster sellout such as his. To this day, we still talk about his retirement party. When everybody from the janitor to the chief of police shows up.
Brian Steel [:You know you've done it right. So it's an awesome surprise.
Steve Palmer [:For that one?
Brian Steel [:Yeah. You know, we were gonna put some police officer outside to have chiefs maybe not be able to come in, but then at the last minute, the mass sources know everybody's welcome here. So that was awesome. So listen, I've been a police officer 20 years. I came on the heels of 911. Very, very easy to join after 911. There was no shortage of recruits. Our nation was under attack.
Brian Steel [: olice service. Circle back to: Steve Palmer [:Well, you know, is it is it you you brought up some interesting stuff, but is it let me let me let me back up. I'm a criminal defense attorney. I've done criminal defense now for 28, 29 years. And everybody always asked me, like, people think I I think there's a perception that I don't get along with police officers. I don't get along with detectives, that somehow there's a there's a constant animosity. It couldn't be further from the truth. Now sometimes that happens. I mean, look, there are a holes on both sides.
Steve Palmer [:Know, no matter where you go, you're gonna run into people who are disagreeable. But, you know, practically speaking, I have always had a good relationship with most police officers, especially the good ones. It's not, it's not that, we we we work on different sides of the field, but when either side is sloppy, it it screws it up for everybody. Right? Yeah.
Brian Steel [:Totally agree.
Steve Palmer [:You know? But with that backdrop, I there was a time when during the riots a couple of years ago where I have a very close friend who's a Columbus police officer, and he was down there. And he's a veteran. He's been around a long time. I'm sure you guys know him. I'm not gonna bring up his name. But I texted him, and I said, are you keeping things under control out there? And he goes, yeah. It's you know, he he made some comments. I said, no.
Steve Palmer [:No. No. No. I mean, the younger officers, are are how are you able to keep them in check? Because it looked like to me that because I walked down there and saw some. It looked like to me, a lot of it was people sort of goading officers to do things. They didn't you know, it's like everybody's human, and police officers are human. I think that's sort of where you're getting at where, we have a shortage of interest in police work now. So I'm just gonna I'm gonna I'll turn it over to you for that that event.
Steve Palmer [:I think that's why you're talking about we had the shortage. Were you down there? Was any what's your impression of of what happened there, and what happened as the aftermath.
Brian Steel [: to be losing money. Prior to: Brian Steel [: Proactive policing, After: Brian Steel [:We do because we're not pulling over cars like we used to because that was the direction we got after reimagining policing. Right? We were basically, vilified for being a proactive police department, and now you have for reactive. You have a fire department. There's a crime. We come, and we do the best we can, and That's really it. To go back to the start, I was down there. I served ground 0 in protests and riots, and we had both. We had peaceful protests.
Brian Steel [: Ohio. But what happened after: Brian Steel [:We might have messed up some procedural things. We attacked the complete police department. We called for a reimagining police department. We brought in Baker Hostetler to investigate a 160 officers. Out of those a 160 officers investigated, One officer walked away with minor discipline for not filling out paperwork.
Norm Murdock [:Well,
Steve Palmer [:that was all over the news, wasn't it, Norm? Mhmm.
Steven Walter [:No. It
Steve Palmer [:wasn't. Not what? It wasn't. Mean, that that stat's pretty incredible. I mean, that's a pretty incredible statistic.
Norm Murdock [: may not be familiar. Yep. So: Brian Steel [:Yep.
Norm Murdock [:Right? And, and then city council on their own without any kind of decision by a court that Said you did anything wrong, you meaning the police Sure. The division of police. City council settled for I forget the the amount. Was it 8,000,000 or 800,000? It was a lot of money. It was a lot of money. Disgorged this money, to people who were part of the riot. Sure. Who complained that the tear gas made him cry and and choked him.
Norm Murdock [:Well, that's the whole point of tear gas.
Steve Palmer [:Tear gas made him cry. Sure.
Brian Steel [:I remember 200 officers were injured, 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 of dollars worth of damage. The state house was broken into if you recall.
Norm Murdock [:How many were injured?
Brian Steel [:200 officers were injured in
Norm Murdock [:holy cow.
Brian Steel [:Probably never heard about that.
Norm Murdock [:Never heard about that. That's amazing.
Brian Steel [:So the important thing is now we brought in BakerHostetler to investigate. Found there was no misconduct or wrongdoing. We brought in, the Carter report, former former assistant United States attorney Carter from OSU. We brought in the John Gunn College and a Carter to investigate our tactics. There was no misconduct by officers. There were some policy changes that we could have done better, and that's what reform is, not taking everything you do and throwing it away, just doing some things better. We brought in the, Wozniak Garber special prosecutor to investigate officers' actions. They walked away with 3 misdemeanor charges.
Brian Steel [:A US judge, Marblee, called us a department that ran amok. Well, you ran amok with 3 misdemeanor charges. 1 officer was found not guilty during a trial, and the second 2 were dismissed. The bottom line is misconduct cannot be hidden where it exists nor can be found where it does not.
Norm Murdock [:Gotcha. And this was an a BLM, Antifa backed
Steve Palmer [:riot
Norm Murdock [:Yes. On on and and, of course, traffic was shutdown and, you know, private businesses suffered. I know Steve, who has a property on High Street. He was barricaded in here trying to he he was gonna be Korean grocer and protect his property.
Steve Palmer [:You know, police I look at the police as part of the community. And I know you talked about proactive versus reactive, but I'm gonna get back to that because that's that's a incredible topic or that's a fascinating topic for me. But I came down here. I had a close friend who said, hey. Look. It was Saturday after all this started. And he said, hey. Look.
Steve Palmer [:You know? He took a picture of High Street, and he goes, they're really close to your building. And I was like, you know, what do I do? You know, on the one hand, I've got you you got you got what I call beggar's choice. Do I come down here and try to, defend my building? Do I come and then risk having to do something I don't wanna do, do I come down here and just watch? I I did come down here, and then I was talking to a lot of the property owners here on High Street, business owners. You know, we're just small businesses. We don't it's not I'm not made of money. I I don't have the funds, to replace all the windows in my building when they're smashed out, or replace things in the in the building that are stolen if they are. And I've got insurance, I guess, but, you know, I couldn't go to work on Monday if that happens. So we were all left with this choice.
Steve Palmer [:Do, you know, do I go down to Home Depot and buy a bunch of sheets of plywood? And then it was like, do I screw it into the bricks and then try to patch those, or do I screw it in the aluminum window frames and ruin those? You know, what what choice am I gonna make? Fortunately, I chose to do neither, and I didn't have anybody smash the windows. By then, they had sort of pushed everybody north, and that's, I think, what you're talking about up in the short north. But the point I'm trying to make here is that The community suffered here, not because of what the police were doing, but because, it was permitted to let this stuff happen. And I came in the next day on Sunday, and, I met a friend down here in the studio. And he drove by Katzinger's Deli, and he sees an older gentleman, probably the owner of Cat Singers Deli, out there with a broom sort of looked forlorn and, I think, almost in tears, sweeping up the mess that they had created. They smashed his windows. Catsingers. You know, they smashed his windows.
Steve Palmer [:This there's nothing that that didn't gain any attention for any cause. That was just crime at its fundamental nature. And I think, you know, instead of saying, we need to stop this, people were sort of encouraging it. I know I'm making a speech, not really asking a question. But, as a result of that, you the police get blamed in large part for that, not the offenders. There were very few prosecutions. And then you used the term reactive versus proactive. I'm gonna let you talk about that a little bit because I've seen it in my practice of law and as a building owner down here in Columbus.
Steve Palmer [:So talk a little bit about what you mean by that and how it works in the community.
Brian Steel [:So proactive policing, for example, I'll give you reactive. Reactive is an officer sitting in a parking lot waiting for a call, right, kinda like a fireman does, sit around waiting for a fire. That is not what the community expects of a police officer. Your fundamental job is 2 in the morning. You drive around. You look for cars that are Swerving because you wanna find someone who's impaired, a drunk driver, and you wanna remove them from that street that night. I think that's what the community expects of you. The community expects officers at 3 in the morning to be driving up and down alleys in challenged high crime neighborhoods, looking for somebody, looking in cars, looking a windows, that is proactive policing.
Brian Steel [: which we've kind of done post: Norm Murdock [:So, Brian Brian, explain the broken windows thing. I I know mayor Giuliani in New York Yeah. The thing about graffiti is that we're we're we're gonna get rid of graffiti because then the next if you leave it up, then the next thing. Would you explain that?
Brian Steel [:The theory is if there's a building that says, has it a broken window today, and you don't repair that window tomorrow, someone's gonna throw a rock through the next window, then the next window, then they're gonna start graffitiing. We use that here in Columbus with cars. When you work 1st shift in some of the more challenged low socioeconomic areas, one of the main complaints of the residents is the Car broken down on the street. Right? The car breaks down the street. The tires are now deflated. Now a litter of kittens move in. All of a sudden, a drug user is now using it to take shelter. There's prostitution acts.
Brian Steel [:There's a reason why we wanna go if that car's abandoned and remove that car from the street. It's a quality of life issue. It's an eyesore. If you look to what happened the last couple years, we were no longer doing that. We were given order not to remove cars, not to impound cars because the impound lot was full. Instead of just managing Impala and moving the cars, we left the taxpayer with just a row of broken down cars on the street. That's a perfect example.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Wow.
Steve Palmer [:What What what do you would you talk a little bit about because I know you talked about, like, patrolling and and getting proactive. But what about just the police presence? Because remember a time when I started practicing law back in the nineties where the officers sort of knew everybody in the community. And even though they there was almost as, like, cat and mouse game to some extent. You know? We're look. We know you're up to something, but we're here, so you're not gonna be able to do it when we're here.
Norm Murdock [:I agree with you, Steve. So I My business was in Hungarian Village, and, there would there would be police on bikes or walking or in patrol cars, and I would see them regularly. And they were there to basically say, hey. Bad guys, we're we're in the hood here.
Steve Palmer [:But it was more than that. It was I don't wanna call it friendship, but They knew people. Knew that they knew each other. Like, the police officers knew the community that they were policing. Is that still going on?
Brian Steel [:To some extent, yeah. To some extent, no. It used to be, the sergeant and I were having a conversation. When we came on, there was a cruiser district. You were assigned, let's just say, 8 blocks of the community. That was your district. You were responsible for that district. You did not leave that district unless there's an emergency called you.
Brian Steel [: In about: Brian Steel [:You lose the walking patrols. You lose the bicycles, and they're so inundated with runs. It just becomes like a triage system. The officer kinda like you go in a doctor's office. He does not have all day to talk to you. He is just banging through patients. The modern day peace officer now is taking so many runs a day because the call service is up and the manpower's down. Unfortunately, they don't have time, and that's what we're losing in this profession.
Steve Palmer [: So you you said go back to: Brian Steel [:a good reason, but what was the stated reason for it? I don't recall exactly why the the the chiefs did it at the time. We were creating new precincts. We were expanding. They Took a new precinct out east. They added a new precinct up in, the northern end of the city. I don't recall exactly why they did rid of them, but they did rid of them. It looks like we might be bringing them back, which is the good news. The current chief right now and her her executive staff, they're looking at returning cruiser districts.
Norm Murdock [:Is that is that, the same as or affiliated with what is called community policing? Is it kind of the same idea that you have officers assigned to integrate themselves into a community, get to know the people, you know, become a resource on a regular basis. Is that is that, sure.
Brian Steel [:Sure. No. An officer is 100% part of the community. Sometimes I'll hear an activist to say something about, you know, you come into my community. I say, well, this is our community. I'm part of the community. The clergy's part of the community. The mailman's part of the community.
Brian Steel [:This is my community too, so let's work on it together.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. So a story I told on one of the shows is, there's a picture in a local paper where, Out near where I live, in not my town, but, somebody had called, the Licking County sheriff's on, some kids playing at a they were on some kind of playground, you know, like, at, 2 12, 1 in the morning. Right? And all they're doing is playing basketball. So so the deputy went out there, and guess what he did? Start playing basketball. He started playing
Steve Palmer [:that's awesome.
Norm Murdock [:He did he did not arrest them. He did not tell them to go home. He's like, listen. I get it. You're you're got nowhere to go. You you're full energy. You're young men. You know, some common sense here.
Brian Steel [:Right? We get that call all the time. The midnight call. I mean, you'll hear it. Someone will call and complain because of the noise of basketball. And you'll talk to the caller, and you'll say, hey. I I understand. It's keeping you up. We'll go talk to the kids.
Brian Steel [:We'd rather than play basketball, but we understand you have to sleep, and We'll have the conversation with the kids. Hey. We appreciate what you're doing. There's nothing wrong with you doing. Unfortunately, it's keeping your neighbor up. Usually, at this point, someone comes out with a cell phone camera now and holds it up in our face, what are you doing to these kids? Why are you harassing them? They have no idea why we're there. Wow. But that's just the reality of policing them.
Norm Murdock [:Wow. That that's unbelievable.
Steve Palmer [:Know, you were talking about the the broken window theory, and maybe it's, I'm trying to connect a couple dots here. I have noticed this building, which I've had my practice in for a number of years. It's my litmus test for the health of the city is how much trash I have to walk by when I go to the front door of my building. And it seems like it's it's growing and growing to the point where if I don't do it daily and there's probably trash out there right now, it just I can't keep up on it. And it wasn't like that. Even just 5 years ago or 4 years ago. It wasn't like that. Is that part of this broken window theory?
Brian Steel [:Lot of things we change. So number 1, COVID. What happened with COVID is what do we do with prisoners? We We literally let prisoners out of prison. And where did they go? They went to Broad and High, and they started walking the streets the streets to your neighborhood. Right. Yep. I don't say you take a homeless person. I don't think a homeless is a crime.
Brian Steel [: ked like zombie land on after: Steve Palmer [:COVID. It was it was bizarre.
Brian Steel [:100% bizarre. Listen. We could do better. We also did a summons in lieu of arrest. It used to be if there was a misdemeanor crime, we could take you to jail. Then the city attorney's office, through chief Quinlan, they come up with a summons in lieu of arrest. Right now and if there's a misdemeanor crime, let's say a homeless person refuses to leave your property, we are simply supposed to give them a summons and say, please leave. Yeah.
Brian Steel [:If there's some persistent, they continually do it, well, then you ask a supervisor permission to take them to jail. Again, I'm not suggesting that you arrest homeless people. But if they're in that scenario, he's in front of your building, in your vestibule refusing to leave, well, then you have to go to jail.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. And, you know, the other the other thing I've noticed as part of the health of the city along these lines, I have a parking lot in the back, and it wasn't that long ago that that look. The parking lot's a constant battle. Wanna park there, they think they can park there for free. That's a different story. But there was a guy back there parked, and he clearly wasn't doing anything that was lawful. You know? I mean, there's a certain look that people have when they're engaged in illegal transactions, and he was one of them. And, you know, we went up and I said, look, man.
Steve Palmer [: -: Brian Steel [:Yeah. So I'll tell you answer number 1. I'm sorry you went through that that it's embarrassing As a division officer, I could just tell you it is not that patrol officer's fault. His I'm not blaming anyone. I know. I know. I know. You're not.
Brian Steel [:I know. Because we're the end users. I walk up to a house. They'll say, hey. I called you 3 hours Yeah. And I always say, number 1 thing I say, I apologize. I apologize on behalf of City of Columbus. I just got this call now, but You're right.
Brian Steel [:There's not much you could do with that that person. And, we virtually legalize narcotics in the city of Columbus. I don't know if anybody knows that. F 4, f 5 narcotics, We're not even indicting the an officer. It used to be, I could charge you. If you had a bag of crack on you, I would charge you with a crack. Now we're not even charging We're calling a detective bureau who handles the f 4, f 5 narcotics, low level narcotics. The prosecutor's office is not even indicting it, and that's The problem now, now you have individuals because they have to feed their f 4, f 5, crack habit, heroin addict.
Brian Steel [:They're breaking into your cars. The car break ins in this area, It's astronomical how many cars, and we're not coming. If you call us because your car breaks in, the city's gonna say, hey. I'm sorry. Call this phone number and and make a report that's gonna go nowhere. It is absolutely pro
Steve Palmer [:form a just to give your insurance company so they have something to to work from. And, you know, it's funny you said that because I just told somebody recently. I I I got a call from another attorney in town, and he was called on an on a narcotics case down in Southern Ohio somewhere. And I was, like, you know, I haven't had a dope case in years. I mean, a couple here or there, but, like, there was I always had 2 or 3 big either state or federal dope cases, And most of those started with f 45 arrests of somebody who got caught, who said, I bought it here. I bought it here. The task force would get involved. They would, work it up.
Steve Palmer [:Usually, just not not even with using snitches, but they'd get the first one, get the information, go to work, and they would develop cases. And I some of my best friends, in the business were task force cops, either DEA or local cops or whoever involved in the task force. And we would work cases together. You know? I would defend them, and there was a couple times we had to go to court and trials and etcetera. But There was a there was always a big dope case. Now there's none. And I you can't tell me it's because there's no dope on the streets. I just I can't accept that.
Brian Steel [:It it's for the reasons I just laid out. As a street officer, you would sit down the block, usually through having good relationships with people on the street. And sometimes, it's criminals. Sometimes, the the the prostitute on the street, You know she's committing a crime, but you have a good relationship with her. You might buy her a a cheeseburger and a cup of coffee in a call night, and she might say, hey. That house right there is selling narcotics. So as a as a proactive police officer, we would sit down the street in the master's nose is. You'd watch the house.
Brian Steel [:You'd pick off 2 or 3 individuals coming in, hitting the back door coming out, you get them with low f 4, f 5 crack them out, and you turn that over to the investigators. And next thing, the investigators have A major crime going on, and they're just working their way up that food train without going after f 4, f 5 dope. We've lost that.
Steve Palmer [:You've lost it. Right? And it's not even that and the here's the funny thing is very if if I got hired on an f 4 and f 5 possession case, it's not like those people's lives were ruined. They're actually helped. And I'm not saying charge people with crimes that'll help them, but I'm sort of saying that. You know, it's like, at the same time, they come into my office. It's a come to Jesus moment where look. You're a user. You've got a fork in the roads here.
Steve Palmer [:And maybe 2 out of 10, you can get back on the right track. Or maybe it's a college kid, or maybe it's somebody who should be in college who isn't, maybe somebody who should be working who got this addiction and they're not. And now the system gets them an intervention in lieu of conviction or maybe even just the threat of, like, oh, crap. I gotta tell my and dad, I'm charged with a felony. And then all of a sudden, it turns them around. So it's not like you're helping people by not going after them. You're you're doing quite the opposite.
Brian Steel [:Yep. I couldn't agree more. Listen to the FOP. We're not to lock you up and throw away the key people. If there's a way to get you back on track, either that's absolutely. I freely talk about my mother had issues growing up, with substance abuse. My, my father was in and out of prison, ended up taking his own life, was a drug dealer. He went one path in life.
Brian Steel [:I went the other path in life. So I I I understand some of the things people go through. But if you're a repeat violent offender, you can't walk the streets. If you can't beat your narcotics habit and you are robbing people to feed that, you can't walk the streets.
Steve Palmer [: ought they would ever do in a: Steve Palmer [:So how long do you tolerate it?
Brian Steel [:We lost a police officer here about 10 years ago. He, it's it's the same kinda Cinderella story. He got injured, got hooked on, painkillers, right, for a back injury. When we knocked, got rid of the pill mills and started cracking down on it, went to heroin. Next thing, ended up robbing a bank. And he he was a police officer that I mean, he got fired, but
Steve Palmer [:Yep.
Brian Steel [:Man, we all know him, and it which just shows you, like, what what can happen once this gets a grip, which is why you have to enforce it and either get you help or incarceration, one or the other.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. The the story your your family story you alluded to just reminds me of that current situation in Nashville, you know, where the the chief of police, before he when his son was being, looked four when they were all points bulletin. He asked that the police officers arrest his son. Get my son. He committed these crimes. He's he's wanted I believe, at that point, he was wanted for murder. And, you know, and and then he got involved in a shootout and was killed. And and, And so, you know, there there is a law enforcement person of, you know, of some note, like, your family story that, you know, you guys see it from both sides.
Norm Murdock [:You you do have humanity. I mean, no. There's bad people in every profession. Sure. But most police officers I've encountered, you know, If you if you keep your hands visible and and you and you treat them with respect, you're gonna be fine. The the thing that I can't get over is this current brand. And Steve, in one of our shows, called it learned behavior, that some of these young people like that situation at the Kroger in Blended Township, where what would cause this person, after being ordered 10 times out of the car, to then Get on the accelerator and and and motor her way, you know, into a a police officer. It's a deadly weapon car.
Norm Murdock [:You you know, you can kill a lot of people with a car. And it, I just don't understand what's going on in our society that that we have The the complete and total lack of respect for when you see those blue lights on. I I think you had something 1 week, you had maybe 5 or 6 Columbus police officers hurt in traffic incidents Where they were controlling an accident scene or arresting somebody or whatever, and it just seems like it seems like we have a whole generation that thinks you're all racist, and you're all bad guys, and you're out to shoot black men, and all of these crazy memes that turn out not to be statistically accurate. I don't I don't I don't know how you guys do your job, honestly.
Brian Steel [:You know, for for every 1 person that comes up to me and says ACAB or f the police, I'm not exaggerating when I say there's another 50 Say, hey. Thank you for your service. Thank you what you're doing. Keep your channel, and that's what keeps you going.
Steve Palmer [:Well, that's a good point. Like, a lot of times, the loudest voice is the one you hear, but it's not It's not just that we have officers. I guess, behavior is being modified on both sides. I think police officers and you can I'm curious your thoughts on this. I think you guys are now approaching as a routine traffic stop a little bit differently because the people who are getting stopped are approaching a little bit differently. So if I think fundamentally that it's unfair that I ever get stopped and it's a result of some nefarious racist or other, intent, then I immediately feel like I don't have to comply because this isn't fair. And I I also think that, I have a right. I that we've sort of given people the thought that they have a right or a privilege to push back.
Steve Palmer [:And I see it on YouTube. I see it on TikTok. I see people saying, you don't have to roll down your window, a police officer comes to your car. You don't have to get out, which is nonsense. It's absolute crap. I see lawyers giving this advice. And, you know, people ask me, what do I do when I get pulled over? I was like, Say yes, sir, no, sir. And if you're in the right and they're in the wrong, call me after it's done.
Steve Palmer [:I can't help you on the side of the road when you don't comply and end up with your face in a dirt and handcuffs. I can't help that scenario. I can help you if they have pulled you over for a wrong reason or if they searched your car and they shouldn't have, call me. And then, by the way, shut up and don't make any statements.
Brian Steel [:Yeah. So yeah. Listen. You're absolutely right, and that's how it's supposed to go For both criminal and administrative. If the officer did something wrong, we have body cameras. Everything we do is reviewed. If you have a complaint, if you think the officer stopped you and didn't have cause, whatever it is. Call your attorney, call you like you said, and then report it.
Brian Steel [:Report it to the division of police, report it to inspector general, or internal affairs, And then we'll investigate it. And if somebody did something wrong, they will be held accountable. There's no doubt about it. I love the body worn cameras. When we first got them, like most police officers, it was something new. We didn't really understand.
Steve Palmer [:Who wants to have their life documented? You know? It's a scary thought, I imagine.
Brian Steel [:It it exonerates 80% of the complaints that come in or exonerated from the body worn camera. As a criminal defense attorney, it's gotta be tough to represent someone with a DUI, then we come with a camera that's got the entire stop, all the probable cause. It's all on there. It it's only helping us. This is where it hurt the community, though, I believe. Let's go before body worn cameras. I pull over, stop, Oakwood and Whittier. Right? Challenge, low socioeconomic status, neighborhood of color.
Brian Steel [:I pull someone over. They have, say, expired license, 2 kids in a car without car seats, no insurance, and let's just say it's a person of color, and she has a warrant for Jaywalking, something minor.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah.
Brian Steel [:Pre body worn camera, we are going to follow her home. We're not gonna take her on a jaywalking warrant. Mhmm. Right? Not gonna put those kids in the Franklin County system. We're not gonna tow her car. She doesn't have much to begin with. She's not a bad person. Right? She's just she doesn't have a pot to piss in, just say.
Brian Steel [:Now with a body camera, you're going on your warrant. If I don't take you to jail for a warrant and it's on camera, now I'm could be held, contempt to court. Year, you have nowhere for the kids to go. They're going to children's services. We're towing your car. We just hurt the the community. Yeah. I believe
Norm Murdock [:you took away discretion.
Brian Steel [:You took away discretion.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. I I often when we have created a system of justice both at at all levels now where discretion is being eliminated from the equation. And that's what scares me a little bit. I hear, I I there's a term I there's a there I have a saying about this. I won't I won't say it, but When when I go to a prosecutor's table at court or I talk to somebody, who's got authority over a case and they say, well, our policy is that we don't do this with these kind of cases. I think, a different word. I don't think policy. I think coward.
Steve Palmer [:Right? You you don't have taking away discretion eliminates fairness in the system because there is no rigid rule. You know, we've tried that historically. Just go back to, like, the Nazis and Stalin. And, you know, you have you have a rigid rule. You do this. This is what happens without any sort of plan to joint or discretion. It's the system breaks down, and it breaks down for the reasons you're talking about. So you can't take the old woman home and, and or the the single mother home and and and help her and say, look.
Steve Palmer [:Call somebody tomorrow and fix this warrant. All you gotta do is go pay your ticket, and it goes away. You know, the that doesn't get to happen. Now on the other hand, there's a there's a as you said, there's a there's a plus to it that we can look at it. And maybe from the police officer side, I can say this guy didn't do anything wrong. Or if you did, I get to call you on it, and I can defend the case with it. So I guess it's got its pros and cons. But, really, what we're talking about is why would the police get in trouble for doing something like that? And and that goes down to leadership.
Steve Palmer [:You know, I I think it should be encouraged to exercise some discretion like that, but you can't. You know, everybody's come up with this rigid. It's gotta be this way. And whenever that happens, the back it tends to break instead of bend.
Brian Steel [:100%. I agree.
Norm Murdock [:Well, the, you know, this This this concept that the police are the the enemy of, particularly, of, minority communities It is such a terrible falsehood. It's it's such a pernicious thing, and and Steve mentioned leadership. And this sounds political. I don't mean it to be. If George Bush had said this, I'd be saying it about George Bush. But it turns out The president Obama, when he was in office, would leap to a conclusion that the that it was a wrongful, action by a police officer. And it started with that beer summit that that that was at an Ivy League,
Brian Steel [:Cambridge.
Norm Murdock [:Cambridge. Thank you.
Steven Walter [:Henry Louis Gates.
Norm Murdock [:And then, you know, and then the young man that, that that that, he said could have been like my son, that that, it it and and then the Ferguson thing where, I mean, the the guy was trying to take that gun away from the police officer. What I don't know what he was supposed to do. Let him have the gun, And it turns up the hands up, don't shoot never happened.
Brian Steel [:Biggest lie ever told.
Norm Murdock [:A black jury vindicated the police officer, the white police. The people in the community knew it was not a a a bad police officer, But it became politicized, and Steve mentioned leadership. When you start at the White House and and and you start to say the police are the problem, It's no. It's it's it's it's like, it's
Steve Palmer [:like, you think just that the police are the problem. The police are the only problem. Another book. That every the the problem is is multifaceted. Right? It's a multifaceted problem. And and as as Thomas Sowell always says, it's You can't hardly ever is one outcome attributable to a single cause ever. You know? So you can't just say that. And part I'll tell you the flip side that I saw going back 10, 15 years ago, there was sort of an I I have always said in the in the wake of all this backlash against the police.
Steve Palmer [:It's like, look, we have rules that keep the police in check already. We don't need anymore. You just need to enforce the ones we have. We have a 4th amendment. We have, all these standards that that if you go to court, you can vindicate it. But now it's instead of allowing that, the system wants to do something even worse, which is, alright. We'll just get rid of the police, or we'll just we'll just change the how the police operate.
Norm Murdock [:We'll defund them. That whole movement.
Steve Palmer [:And I'll tell you. I I I have a hypothesis that is unstudied, but I handled, I don't know, dozens and dozens and dozens of police stop drug cases, f fours and fives, right, that we don't litigate anymore, where, frankly, cops would get up, and they would engage what I would call test aligning. So I know that sounds like a harsh term, but, you know, you're gonna you're gonna shade it. Maybe it's before body cams, actually. So you could shade it, make it seem like the like, maybe they smelled marijuana, maybe they didn't, maybe whatever. And and even when I exposed it, And it's not every case, obviously. But even when I exposed that, they got the the judges back to police and didn't take action. I think that left an impression on people a little bit.
Steve Palmer [:Like, my clients look at me as like, this is BS, man. This is not what happened. I'm guilty. I get it, but this isn't what happened. It's not right. And and I think that that created its own backlash, and it it created its own problems. So if we just force the rules we have, in other words. I think the system would fall into place the way it needs to.
Steve Palmer [:Get out of the way and let the rules work. It's already there.
Brian Steel [:I I you remind me of a story. I to someone yesterday, but you just hit it when you said, hey. I'm guilty. I get it, but that's not happening. I talked to a mother who wants some help, and I referred her to The Innocent Project. And there's also an Right here in Columbus, there's something that helps, cases if they're not guilty. She had said, look. My son is 100% a major level drug dealer.
Brian Steel [:But In this one case with Columbus police, we don't think what they said happened happened. So she's admitting that her son's a drug dealer, admitting his son should be in prison. But in this one case, She goes, I don't think the officers are right. And so she called us the FOP. She had no one else to to go to. This is not what we do. But anytime someone's gonna call, gonna give them the resources, so we refer them to these nonprofits. But it just made me made laugh when he said that.
Steve Palmer [:And I should probably give the other side of the coin. This is this is a true story too. Back in 96, 90 probably 96 was my 1st felony jury trial in Franklin County in front of judge Bessie. And if my client was charged with RSP auto, he got wasted at a bar and got in a car with a bunch of people, and the column was stripped. And, turns out it was a stolen car, and he was in the back seat drunk as a monkey, half passed out. The car gets pulled over. Everybody scatters, and they find my client hiding on somebody's patio on the west side. I don't remember.
Steve Palmer [:It's a hilltop. It's somewhere. And, the arrest and charge with RSP. Well, of course, the system moves so slowly that a year and a half later, we're going to trial. Mhmm. And, you know, my client always said, look. I don't I didn't know that car was stolen. I had no idea.
Steve Palmer [:And you guys know that in order to make an RSP, you gotta you gotta know. No. Would you? So it was it was a good it was a good defensible case, like a law school type case. Stolen property. Just Or or, yeah, receiving stolen property for an unauthorized deal.
Norm Murdock [:I'm just saying because people may not know. You got you guys in the in the legal business have this jargon. So
Steve Palmer [:So we go through the trial, and the prosecutor goes through the whole direct examination of the stopping officer. And, you know, in the very last question, now do you recognize the man that you found on the patio hiding behind the grill there, and and the cop looks over at me and looks over at the at the prosecutor's table. It's like, I don't recognize anybody in this courtroom. It's been almost 2 years. I can't say that's the guy. I'm just gonna be honest. And it it it I was blown away because I talked about Testa Line, and that's what I was talking about. I think a lot of people and it's not just police officers.
Steve Palmer [:Everybody would do it. Oh, yeah. That's the guy because he's sitting right next to me. It's obvious that's the guy. And, he didn't. He was I don't I don't remember his name. I could probably look it up. I was wondering what happened to that officer because hats off to him.
Steve Palmer [:You know? I I went up to him afterwards. I said, I'm blown away. I I'm a 1st year lawyer. It's my 1st jury trial. I cannot believe this. You know? It you know, kudos. And, so it it works both ways. And I think the the point you made earlier, Norm, is, like, Everybody's human.
Steve Palmer [:Police officers are human. Everybody's human, and people are are prone to do something. It's like at the checkout aisle, and they give you something. They don't ring it up. What do you do? Does everybody go back after they get home and say, oh, I didn't pay for this. I'm gonna take it back. No. I mean, some people don't.
Steve Palmer [:Some people do. So, Steve, let let me, This is
Norm Murdock [:turning into a love then, and it should because I do love the police, and they're they're underpaid, they're overstressed, and and I I have a lot of compassion for the police. But I think you and Brian might have a disagreement on bail reform, And before you have to go to court, Steve, you're you're gonna get called out early here today. I'd like to have a little dialogue. Brian was telling me of a recent court decision, that may have changed, when bail is appropriate. And you may have some differing views. I'm not gonna say. We agree
Steve Palmer [:on more than we do.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. So one of what's Brian, why don't you talk about this new, protecting the community is is is one reason for bail now.
Brian Steel [:Sure. So I'll start by saying I don't expect to agree with everybody. I don't my wife and I have a great, loving relationship. We don't Agree on everything every time. I say, if we if we agree on 60% of the stuff, that is a very healthy, friendship and relationship. Sure. So we were talking about kind of, the the bail reform, how we have a problem here in the city of repeat reciditive, you know, violent offenders Getting arrested. Police are doing their job.
Brian Steel [:They're being prosecuted, and they're being given a low bond. We've seen it time and time again. And then recently, what was it, the DuBose case, where we could use public safety as exception? It was about, what, 6 months ago. Yep. Maybe a year ago, it changed. Now the judges can use a public safety exception to keep the person locked up. Some judges are using it. Some judges are not using it.
Brian Steel [:Our issue is When we put someone in jail for, say, a drive by shooting, and they're given a $25,000 bail, an ankle monitor, and a piece of paper that says, please don't commit another drive by shooting. It's really wreaking havoc on the the community and particularly communities of color. Because if we're gonna be honest, which no one wants to talk about in the city of Columbus, The majority of your victims in violent crimes are from the community color. The majority of your suspects, statistically, in Columbus are from community color. So you wanna have this bail reform because at least in the city, it was kinda like, well, the bail reform bail is racist. They, people of color can't afford it. Let's get rid of it. I think it hurt, the the same people you're trying to help.
Steve Palmer [:Well, again, I think it this is back to the point. We had rules in place that worked. They just weren't getting enforced. So it could be both things could be true. Right? It could be that bonds were too high for certain cases. And I represent a lot of folks where I would hear a judge shout out a bond at court. I'd be like, come on. This is this is absurd.
Steve Palmer [:It doesn't need to be this high. And I've also had cases
Norm Murdock [:Like, how high, Steve? I'm just curious. Like, what kind of numbers? Like, for what kind of crime?
Steve Palmer [:Well, I would say I'll I'll give you a formula, not a number.
Norm Murdock [:Okay.
Steve Palmer [:High enough where somebody couldn't make it. Because if you're Donald Trump, you're gonna make a $1,000,000 bond. If you're a guy on the street with no money, you're not gonna make a $10,000 bond. So one of the things I always tell a judge at a bond hearing is, look. Any cash bond here is tantamount to no bond because this guy is indigent. He can't pay a bond. But He's not a danger to the community. He shows up in court.
Steve Palmer [:He's kept in contact with me as an attorney. He's got family support. And I would give the credentials that were the criteria that might, convince a judge to give a a low bond or a recognizance bond. There are other cases where in the back of my head, I'm thinking, there's no way this guy should be released on bond. He's a bad dude, and he should be held, because I in in, you know, it sort of worked for about 15, 20 years, then all of a sudden it's changed. Now everybody's getting out. And, actually, that's not true. It's almost flipped.
Steve Palmer [:Like, people who shouldn't get out are getting out, and people who should get out are not getting out. And I can't I don't know the reason for it. Maybe there might be some sort of inverse race relationship to that at this point. But, it's it's just bizarre. You know? I I don't I don't quite get it. I don't think it's racist to hold somebody, or have a high bond for somebody, one way or another, white or black. I mean, I think the case should speak for itself. I don't like the idea, though, that as a policy, shouldn't have bond or as a policy, there should be a high bond.
Steve Palmer [:Again, I think judges are pretty good at discretion on this stuff, and lawyers doing what I do should be able to advocate the criteria necessary for a judge to make a reasonable decision. But, I so, again, I don't think we disagree much on that.
Brian Steel [:No. I don't think we disagree at all on that.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. So, Brian, I read one of your press releases. I was on the website, and, one of your press releases, you talked about a case. If you recall this, if if you don't, I'm sure there's, Hundreds of these, but it was a recent case, a guy named Sagittarius Lamar. Could you He had a rap sheet. He had 2 felonies pending, and he went out and shot 3 women. You know? Please go into people don't understand why it matters, why that guy, for example that's an example of a guy Steve would probably also agree. You know, a violent prior guy.
Norm Murdock [:He he should he should stay locked up, but he had an ankle bracelet.
Brian Steel [:He he was a repeat violent offender that never should have been on our streets. And he was given a low bond, then he was let out of jail, and he went what repeat he went and did what repeat violent offenders do. They re, reoffended. This is over and over. The the woman at OSU, the the poor professor who was stabbed and murdered in her own home, The individual who stabbed a murder herd went on to go down to Dayton, carjack a car, go down to Georgia, try to rob somebody's house, and got shot. He's in the hospital right now. He was let out the day before on a low bond by a Franklin County judge, $25,000, and, hey. Please don't shoot anybody again.
Brian Steel [:So, again, individuals like that, Bomb is not punitive. Right? We know that. If you like, as as you said, if you're gonna go to court, you're gonna cooperate, you're gonna stay in touch with the attorney, and you've not committed A drive by shooting, a felonious assault, a rape. There's some crimes. You can't be back on the street. I always said, did we forget Reagan Tokes already? We have the Reagan Tokes Act. That individual never should have been on the street.
Norm Murdock [:No. She that's the coed at Ohio State University, Reagan. That was her name.
Brian Steel [:That was her name.
Norm Murdock [:And and and and what happened there.
Brian Steel [:I don't remember the I keep forgetting the you got a nationwide audience here. So Reagan Tokes was a young lady. He was an OSU student. She was a bartender. She walked. She left the Short North area, went to her car. She was abducted by an individual. I won't even call him an individual.
Brian Steel [:He was an absolute animal. He was on an ankle bra monitor released from prison. He laid havoc the couple days before right here in the area of your studio. He was doing robberies in the, in the, German village area. So he adopted her, took her down to Grove City. Over the course of 3 or 4 hours, sodomized her, put out cigarettes on her and ended up killing her, by an individual who never should have been on our streets in the 1st place. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:How
Brian Steel [:do you let someone like that out?
Steve Palmer [:Well, you know, it I I agree with you a 100%, but, maybe we disagree here. I as a wise judge once said, Most laws that are named after somebody are bad laws. And the the idea is and and maybe gun control is a great way or a great analogy. I hear it all the time, quote, we gotta do something. We gotta do something. And usually when people say, particularly politicians or city leaders say, we gotta do something, it means what they're about to do is not really gonna help the problem, but it's gonna look like gonna like, they're trying, and that's what matters. And then you get all these adverse consequences or unexpected, unintended bad consequences as a result. And Reagan Tokes is a tragic scenario.
Steve Palmer [:That guy never should have been released. But, it also implicit in that law is the notion that Somebody in the system could have known that that would happen. And maybe that's true, maybe it's not true. But further, it's also implicit in that law that going forward, We're gonna vest certain people with the authority to know whether that'll happen. And my guess is that's impossible. And my guess is that It won't prevent the something similar from happening, at least in the in the anecdotal world again. It'll happen again, just because there's bad people out there. So I think my point is that the dragnet of Reagan Tokes has made my job a a terrible pain in the ass.
Steve Palmer [:Because you look back in 90 six, we had all this we had the the sentencing reform where if you got 5 years, 5 years is 5 years. We got rid of, indeterminate sentencing. So when I went to a a court before that, I would had to say, look, dude, we're gonna plead guilty. You're gonna get 5 to 25. And he's, like, what does that mean? Was like, it means somebody, probably some college right out of college guy at the adult parole authority is gonna determine when you get out of jail. And he's like, what the hell does that mean? I was like, well, Good luck. And we said, well, our judges are better able to make that decision. So if somebody wants 10 years, they get or if somebody deserves 10 years, they get 10, and that's it.
Steve Palmer [:Now we've gone back to sort of that indeterminate sentencing because of Reagan Tokes, and I think it's gumming up the works more than it's helping. Not to say that that's not tragic, and not to say that somebody couldn't have caught this one. But it's, the the the thought that we can fix it with a law, I think is where I I disagree a little bit.
Brian Steel [:Yeah. No. I appreciate I appreciate that. What I like about Reagan Toast is now we're actually monitoring the ankle monitors when you're on parole. 4. Right? The issue was he had an ankle monitor, but nobody was actually monitoring that, and he was out on parole. I like the fact that now you have people on parole monitoring.
Steve Palmer [:I got no problem with that part. So, look, we could we could probably find common ground there. So but that's not what's happening. That that's not the only thing that's happening. So Reagan Tokes now says The adult parole authority now has discretion to hold somebody or not release them after their stated prison term. They can hold them more if they determine somehow that the guy's a bigger risk. I have a problem with anybody or organization or individual making that decision. I because I think there, you end up with, bad outcomes or or people staying that shouldn't and people getting released that shouldn't.
Brian Steel [:Yeah. I appreciate that.
Steve Palmer [:But if they just said, look, everybody, if you're if we're gonna be on an ankle monitor, well, sure. Somebody should watch what they're doing, I would think. Right? That's that's the purpose of an ankle monitor.
Norm Murdock [:I should've I should've asked this earlier, but since you're in negotiations, I'm just curious. Could you give us, like, what the starting pay is for a brand new, you know, fresh out of the wrapper, CPD officer right out of the academy, the the police peace officers training or what whatever whatever the process is.
Brian Steel [:So so it between 28 agencies. We'll take Columbus. Columbus starts, I wanna say, at 67,000, and you top out at a 100,000 at your 5th year.
Norm Murdock [:Okay. And so your take home, you know, is gonna be, what, 2 thirds of that, roughly? Yeah. About that. Yeah. Okay. And you're down over 200.
Brian Steel [: on. We're authorized: Steve Palmer [:You know, Steve, this might be a question for you because I my mentor was a guy named Bill Meeks, and and I I was very privileged and and blessed to be able to work with Bill and learn from him. And he used to say this. You know, everybody's got their back in the old day stories, but he was an old school criminal defense lawyer. And you say, you know, back in the old day, we had really good homicide detectives. We had guys in in homicide assault. We knew what they were doing. They knew how to investigate a case, and it was always cleaner in the courtroom when we had when we had that kind of work. You would work together.
Steve Palmer [:And then I've seen a couple of I'm working on a homicide right now. I know a very close colleague of mine just finished a homicide case. And, it wasn't the kind you know, the I'm not seeing the same experience or even it's not even experience. It's it's almost like people don't care anymore. You know? It's like the I I don't even know if the it's not that they don't care. Like, things aren't getting done in the investigative side of things. And how do we replace? Like, what it it almost seems like there's gotta be a plan to replace the guys who are leaving, who had experienced investigating cases, and then younger guys coming in who seem maybe they don't have the on the job experience or maybe they don't have the training. I mean, it might it might just, Am I seeing phantoms, or is there a problem there that, that you think exists?
Steven Walter [:Okay. First of all, Back in the day, say, the late seventies, early nineties, by no stretch did we have the number of homicides Relative to the Fair enough.
Steve Palmer [:That's a that's a great variable that I hadn't considered.
Steven Walter [: and some homicides in in: Steve Palmer [:Gotcha. Well and I'm not saying it's all bad. I just, it it feel I guess, what I'm really trying to say, it feels like exactly what you said, now that you just said that. Like, they're overworked.
Norm Murdock [:You know, I had a a $100,000, theft that occurred out in Lincoln County, and the perp lived over here off of Parsons. Well, my office isn't too far from there. Right. And, he was renting space out in Lincoln County, and then he cased out who had what in their storage units. And 1 night, He and his adoptive son, so he's gonna bring him along as a criminal. Just, you know, Clip the locks and and took all this stuff. So we had we had physical evidence. We had ring video of him fencing these goods, And because it was multi jurisdictional.
Norm Murdock [:He he lived in Columbus. He stored some of the stuff in Columbus, and we had photographs. It occurred in Licking County, and then the state patrol apparently handles vehicle theft in in some way. So the bottom line is and this guy was a recidivist. The bottom line is nothing happened to this guy. Nobody even issued a a an arrest warrant.
Steve Palmer [:Norm was beside himself. Norm was calling me all the time, like, what do I do? What do I do? Never will
Steven Walter [:be in
Norm Murdock [:the way of fencing the stuff, and and and nobody will take the case. And I'm finding that property crime is just kinda like I mean, if you got murders to solve, I get it. Rapes to solve, I get it. Prioritization.
Steven Walter [:Yeah. High felonious assault numbers also. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:So as a citizen, you know, I'm I'm frustrated. I'm sure merchants at Easton are frustrated with people just
Steve Palmer [:Well, that's a good I mean, what you you just opened the door for that. It's like you see the stuff going out out in California and San Francisco. Is there anything like in Columbus where there's these, like, theft rings that, that are not getting policed due to some policy.
Brian Steel [:Well well, sure. I mean, we'll use the, The the young lady that unfortunately lost her life in Blended Township. She it's proven now. She was part of a theft ring. That's what they were doing. They were going around Dealing liquor bottles. Ohio Liquor Control or or, the investigative unit knew about it. I mean, they didn't have her that day, but they knew.
Brian Steel [:And because a lot of stores aren't prosecuting. If it's a a low level, they'll call it. What it's killing is the mom and pop stores. The mom and pop store can't afford to lose, you know, 1 bag of Chips every single day. Maybe the Home Depot can, but they're turning that cost over to you, the customer.
Steve Palmer [:We're paying it. One way or another, we're paying it. And then we saw that also last summer, I think it was probably last summer, with juvenile car theft rings. I mean, I, I the local news called me. I wanted my Kia boys or whatever
Norm Murdock [:they Yeah. They called me and want
Steve Palmer [:an interview on that. Like, what do we do? I was like, you gotta cutum. I mean, this is very simple. Right? If you tolerate this, it'll continue. I mean, look. Is it just joy riding? No. This is beyond that. This is, like, kids in an organized fashion or maybe adults using kids because they can insulate themselves, in an organized fashion stealing people's cars.
Steve Palmer [:And, you know, it's easy to say that that's targeting races or this or that or the other. But when you're the person who lost the car, it's not so, you know, it's not
Norm Murdock [:so pleasant. But let's do some quick hits, and maybe we can get this, in before Steve has to rock. How do you feel about constitutional carry?
Brian Steel [:So the FOP the state FOP officially opposed constitutional carry. The reason we oppose it, we did not believe and still don't believe it was gonna rise crime. We were more concerned with with a weapon who's never trained a weapon, never practiced a weapon. We were more concerned that somebody's gonna shoot themselves in the foot than than shoot us. I could tell you, I do not know a single case in Columbus where a violent crime against a police officer was committed by someone with a constitutional carry.
Norm Murdock [:Okay. Okay. Just go down the list. Does the FOP have a position on the death penalty?
Brian Steel [:We don't take official position on the death penalty, as a person, I would say if the crime warrants it, sure, but we don't have official position.
Norm Murdock [:Okay. So, no no policy on that? No. Issue 2, legalization for recreational marijuana. What what do you think about that either as an organization or you personally?
Brian Steel [:So we we oppose that. We oppose the, issue too. I could tell you, we've pretty much legalized marijuana in the city. It's a local ordinance. It's a $10 crime. We don't. With the legalization of hemp, you're very unlikely to ever get charged for, marijuana by Columbus Police because it's a $10 ticket, And the cost to test that to see if it's hemp or marijuana is just the costs are astronomical. So unless it's bulk product trafficking task force stuff, I don't even know the last time marijuana ticket was written in the city of Columbus because we don't know what it is.
Brian Steel [:If you say it's hemp, it's hemp.
Steve Palmer [:This is this is my dad always used to say, look. It's easy to it's easy to win an argument. All you gotta do is change the definition. So you use the term like we've legalized it. They would say we've decriminalized it. What are they really doing? They're not enforcing any marijuana crimes.
Brian Steel [:Yep.
Steve Palmer [:And they could. And they could.
Norm Murdock [:We were talking earlier in show prep about, illegal immigration, human trafficking, some of the other kinds of I mean, face it. The people coming from really violent or or I should say, maybe, very different cultures. Probably don't really understand how America works. Maybe that's part of it. But the idea that if I have this straight, that a a a CPD pulls a guy over for OVI or or speeding ticket or something, and he is he or she is in the country illegally. There's not a darn thing that local police nationally can do about this. Right? You can't arrest that person and hold them for ice to come get them and deport them. You're you're just a spectator to this invasion that has happened.
Norm Murdock [:Just the last 3 years, I think they estimate 8,000,000 people have have come into the country illegally, So they're criminals. They're here illegally, but you you can't enforce that crime.
Brian Steel [:So I'll just speak of Columbus. As a local law enforcement officer in the city Columbus, we do not enforce, immigration laws. So under your scenario, I arrest an individual for drunk driving. As I fill out that form, I ask them, Are you a are you a US citizen? Yes or no? Just does not matter what he says. I simply check the box. I take him to jail. I do not. As an officer, I don't inform, I don't inform the US government, Homeland Security, or used to be known as ICE, If they are a violent offender, if they committed a murder, a homicide, something like that, then we would send the, the it's called the DRO, detention removal order.
Brian Steel [:We will fax that DRO over to Homeland Security just to let him know we suspect this gentleman's an or female is an illegal immigrant, And they're arrested for this violent crime.
Steve Palmer [:And then, Norm, would it like, on my end, if I get that guy if I get a bond set for a case like that, which that would be, like, $1,000,000 bond, and you know the guy's not gonna make it. If he could make it, now we get an ice holder or an immigration holder, so he couldn't get out otherwise. So a lot of times, there's a race to the court. You know, we wanna get him we wanna do it quickly before Homeland Security gets a hold of it and puts a a a impossible detainer on him, so he can't
Norm Murdock [:get it. So so you're in the middle of negotiations right now. One of the things that, mayor Ginther wanted to insert into the contract, last go round, was to give the Civilian Review Board power to actually, you know, fire police officers to to come to a conclusion that this person needs to be disciplined all the way up to being let go of, where and and that's not the way it works now, but that's what he wanted in the contract. Is he still pushing for that? Is that still up? Is that an item? I know you're against it, but is that an item that city hall still is trying to shove down your throat?
Brian Steel [:So just to rephrases or recapture for your audience. So I represent the police union. We're in negotiations with the city. We have a collective bargain agreement. It's the terms and conditions of our employment. One of the ground rules we Set day 1 is we do not discuss active negotiations. We'll just discuss it when it's over. Oh, fair enough.
Brian Steel [:So we can't actually talk about it. But
Steve Palmer [:I'm trying to push them into something I can't do.
Brian Steel [:I said Yeah. It it was brought up last time, and we opposed the Civil Review Board having any kind of, subpoena powers or or actual, authority because the contract clearly states all media discipline comes from the media supervisor, and, eventually, recommendations or all the media discipline recommendations from the media supervisor up the chain of command to ultimately the chief of police.
Norm Murdock [:Gotcha. Okay. And is it the city safety director that actually has the final say on firing.
Brian Steel [:If it's a termination, the chief can recommend anything over a 120 hour suspension or termination automatically goes to the safety director For their final authority. It's kind of ironic, though, that BakerHostetler is the law firm who investigated the officers out of the riots, And the lead investigator, miss Jenny Edwards, wonderful person. I like Jenny. She is now the the lead, attorney on the city side negotiating our contract.
Norm Murdock [:So the last thing I have
Steve Palmer [:That's interesting.
Norm Murdock [:Steve may have some some stuff, but the last last thing I have is I I was reading about this case, I believe, in Hilliard, where the officers there found a newborn baby in a 5 gallon, like, Home Depot type of contractor bucket with the lid on. And the baby the neighbors said they could still hear that baby mewing, you know, as it was dying. So they found a dead fetus.
Brian Steel [:Mhmm.
Norm Murdock [:And the officers or or the chief there was talking about the officers were very distraught. This was the kind of ugliness that they they can't unsee what they saw, and I wonder about the mental health. You know, I I knew of a I grew up in Cincinnati. I knew of a great police officer that committed suicide. Just a wonderful man, and I don't know the reasons. Could had nothing to do with him being a police officer. But I I hear, you know, military, police, suicides are up. Mental health issues are up.
Norm Murdock [:We have this please, I'm not drawing any analogies, but they're currently looking for, you know, an ex military guy, in Maine that had turned himself in for mental health. And I'm just wondering, what tools does the FOP or your health plan. What do you have to help officers, you know, or even family like Joring and Morelli's families, you know, the 2 officers who were just shot, reporting to a domestic where they'd been there before, opened the door, and a guy, bam bam, just killed both. There's all of this stress, and you see the semi underside of society, you meaning police officers. I don't know how you guys deal with that. It's it's gotta be a load to carry that, and I wonder what assistance is out there.
Brian Steel [:Sure. Well, I'll start off with this. Someone asked me once, an activist, who said, do you believe black lives matter? I said, absolutely. Sometimes I wish they don't. And they looked at me at horror and says, what is that supposed to mean? I said, I can't tell you how many, people of color's bodies I stood over or how many children of color I've stood over. I said, maybe if they didn't matter, I'd get a good night's sleep one night. And the person was like, I never thought of that. Right? Because our experiences are are are a reflection of our ideals.
Brian Steel [:We've got better than when master sergeant started his career, certainly when I started his career. When I came on 22 years ago, My suicide awareness class from our instructor was, hey, guys. If you kill yourself, do your family and your department a solid And leave your gun cleaning kit out so we could chalk it up as an accident. Next slide. Right?
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. Indeed.
Brian Steel [:Now we have a wellness center. We have employee assistance programs. There are some great nonprofit organizations in town called the, the Brad Foster Foundation. If you are an officer Sir, or a fireman with some kind of substance abuse, some kind of post traumatic stress, they will pay your mortgage. And the FOP Charity Organization, the foundation, and the fire, foundation. We'll help you get a plane ticket and put you into some kind of rehab or mental health. We've came a long way. A lot of that was because of the war in Iraq.
Brian Steel [:We saw these marines come back, these SEALs who were coming back saying, I have a problem. I need to talk to someone, some of the toughest guys in the world, and I think that helped police officers. When you see people like that that have issues and talk about it, well, maybe we're talking about it, and we are doing better.
Norm Murdock [:Steven, I think you wanted in on this.
Steven Walter [: In my case, I was a member in: Norm Murdock [:You were president of the local ACLU chapter in Columbus. The only police officer maybe in the whole country who ever held that position. That's amazing.
Steven Walter [:And then, Also coached, girls' basketball at Grove City High, Balance. And then, I joined the Marine Corps Reserve, and That was that. But, see, we didn't have the programs to which, Brian alludes.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. Well, it's interesting. Hearing you say that, it it it's like, It's not that maybe it's not so much that officers are are how am I gonna say this? I think we all have these problems right now. I think what you what you just said is, I think, is very fundamental to a a healthy society, which is a stable family, outside interests, you know, community involvement. Those those are the things that sort of anchor us, I think, in a mentally healthy way. And if you take those things away as we have in our society, maybe across the boards in in a lot of ways, then we're creating high risk problems. And then if those individuals going to policing, it just gets exposed quick more quicker. And I can see the same thing for lawyers.
Steve Palmer [:Right? Lawyers are horrible, or terrible statistically for mental health issues and suicides and alcoholism and and and abuse because our our families fall apart and all this stuff happens. And I think I think maybe these high risk professions just expose a bigger problem that we're dealing within our society, and I think that also is showing up on the criminal side. I think we're seeing more crime as a result of that. So in in that not to say that the officer's doing a stressful job, it is to say that they do, and that causes, that exposes these otherwise weaknesses that we have.
Norm Murdock [:Jump in, Steve.
Steven Walter [:Well, part of that, if you, watch TV and, one of our crime scenes, You might see the officers chuckling a bit because it hurts too much to
Brian Steel [:Yeah.
Steven Walter [:Turn that inward, and there's Helplessness of victims are.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Get gallows humor. Yeah. I mean, how else can you handle it?
Steven Walter [:Well, well, you in my day, you crawled inside of a bottle of Jack Daniel's. Yeah. And your buddies took you out drinking and yada yada yada. And Right. That's about all we had then because we were tough guys.
Norm Murdock [:Well, Brian, will you come back sometime? We'd love to have you back.
Brian Steel [:Yeah. Absolutely.
Norm Murdock [:I I you know, maybe after the contract negotiations are finished, you can you can tell us where things stand. You're welcome here as a guest anytime.
Steve Palmer [:Been great.
Norm Murdock [:Thank you. You. You know,
Steve Palmer [:what we what we try to do here, just to sort of wrap it up, is we try to get a common sense discussion going about all these problems. And I think, you know, it's hard to do that in the context of an hour, in the context of a show, But it it's sort of, I think part of what we were just talking about, it's lost. You know, we don't have interaction with individuals anymore where we actually get to discuss stuff. It's throwing bombs through social media or Twitter or whatever. And, we always invite others to come down here and give me a contrary view. I learn something every time I sit down with people and and maybe even more so today than than normal. So thank you very much for showing up.
Norm Murdock [:And thank you, Steven, for for your reprise, appearance here.
Steven Walter [:Well, very pleased To to help.
Norm Murdock [:Thank you.
Steve Palmer [:Yep. Alright. Well, this has been Common Sense Ohio, and you can check it out at commonsense ohio show.com, brought to you by Harper Plus Accounting. If you wanna read Norm's blog, and I I know 1,000 across the globe are reading it, and you can check that out at commonsense ohio show.com. Brett, who was, unable to sit at the table today, but, he's got a blog. I got one. It's trailing last to 0, but I promise it'll be post eventually.
Norm Murdock [:I keep
Steve Palmer [:promising that. It's gotta happen.
