Episode 12, part 1 features an interview with Will Cleveland, who is well known in the Rochester area for his work as a journalist with the Democrat & Chronicle, his role with the Police Accountability Board, and his detailed and prolific writing on the regional beer scene and craft breweries. Will is as affable as he is outspoken. Consequently, this interview is humorous and insightful.

The discussion kicks off with a light-hearted examination of drop ceilings, which serves as a metaphorical (and literal) backdrop for exploring deeper themes of nostalgia and memory. As the conversation unfolds, Will recounts his journey into journalism, emphasizing the influence of his father, who instilled in him the value of being well-informed and engaged with the community.

Throughout the episode, Will elaborates on his tenure at the Democrat & Chronicle, as well as his high school newspaper and newspapers in Montana and Ithaca. He details the challenges and successes he encountered while covering breaking news stories, including an account of a notorious triple homicide in Rochester, which required him to quickly mobilize and report on a rapidly evolving situation. The episode highlights his transition from journalism to a role within the Police Accountability Board, where he continues to advocate for transparency and reform. This transition underscores the importance of accountability in public institutions and the necessity for journalists to evolve into roles that further their commitment to social justice and community engagement.

Check back on October 29th for the conclusion and part 2 of our interview with Will.

Mentioned in this episode:

Mind of Magnus

Check out Mind of Magnus at magnusapollo.com, and leave him factoids at 585-310-2473! https://mind-of-magnus.captivate.fm

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Dialed In: A Coffee Podcast

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All right, all right.

So you've got a drop ceiling.

You're in your basement.

You got a drop ceiling.

That was the first thing I noticed.

Yep.

Have.

Have you ever popped those ceiling tiles up to look to see if there's anything cool up there?

And this used to be.

It was the family we bought the house from was the family that built the house.

So it was like two or three or four generations that lived here.

They were really excited that they got to sell this house to another family because I had to move back into the city when I took the job working for the city.

And that's one of the.

And so this used to be a.

It's an old Italian family that lived here.

So it used to be our basement used to be an in law apartment.

So we tore out a lot of, like, really weird.

Really weird.

I could swear, right?

Yeah, really weird stuff.

And.

Yeah, so I'm gonna be fighting cats, which is gonna be fun.

Oh, there's a guy right there.

Mine might make an appearance too.

Yeah, that's the oldest cat.

That's Tonks.

My wife's a Harry Potter fan before all this.

Weird Harry Potter, but.

And so.

Yeah, so I've never actually looked, I'm afraid.

I'm sorry.

I have.

I have not pushed any of those up.

That was a long way to answer that question.

Yeah.

Like, when I was in school, I would stare up at the ceiling instead of learning.

And I would just often think, I'm gonna pop one of those out, crawl up there.

It'll be like, what's his name?

From Die Hard?

Crawling around.

Yeah.

John McLean.

Couldn't think of his name.

And then the only other experience I have with Drop Ceilings was a graduation party where my friend's metal band, Warblade, played in my other friend's basement.

And his basement looked just like that.

And then, you know, it was a raucous affair.

There was drinking involved.

Not a college graduation, so do the math.

Not responsible.

And then someone started crowd surfing, and they kicked a ceiling tile and it shattered.

And unbeknownst to anyone, my friend had been hiding his.

All right, good, good.

Because this is the good part.

My friend had been hiding his pornographic film and magazine collection under that ceiling tile in particular.

And so the ceiling tile breaks, all this pornography falls to the floor, and somebody's like, hey, porno pinata, porno pinata.

There's porn in the ceiling and then everyone starts punching and breaking ceiling tiles.

That was the only ceiling tile with porn in it, of course.

But another excellent use for a drop ceiling.

There might be an ample supply of 60s, 70s or 80s pornography up underneath those.

Okay, so that'll be the cold open.

Don't expect that.

Welcome Will Cleveland.

Hello, Will Cleveland, former journalist, beer expert extraordinaire, police accountability expert and bonafide local celebrity in the city of Rochester.

Yeah, like you're, I think you're like a full on minor time social media influencer and probably arguably the most famous guest we've had.

Oh, I wouldn't go there.

I really hope not.

I mean you guys have had some really, I mean I'm a devoted listener.

You've had some really, really cool like, I mean like a cross section of folks.

I mean I don't know but maybe first real for talking roster.

But that's just when I was, was more at, when I was more present on Twitter.

My wife convinced me to get rid of my Twitter account.

My life has been much quieter since.

I don't have a lot of people yelling at me anymore and blaming me for things and you know, accusing me of stuff.

But yeah, anyways, you're not their straw man.

Every once in a while though you get a little bit of that on Instagram.

I've noticed people throwing some shade your way and it always frustrates me because you're, you're a pretty affable dude, I gotta say.

You're, you're probably one of the most socially well adjusted people at, at a hardcore show when you're there.

Also you missed just not to fall on my ass.

Like Max who plays drums and, and, and, and coming down with, with Rory is, has seen me at a hardcore show over at the Psychic Garden and I, I, I, I have very bad balance.

So like you just, you just, you just like I, you think I'd be sturdy because I'm, I'm a, I'm a big dude and I just, someone will knock into me and I'm just like I, I like the last time we were over there I fell on to this mom who had brought her like daughter from Webster who was sitting on the couch over the Psychic Garden and I, so the whole joke is that you know, Will goes a hardcore show, he falls onto a mom and so yeah, I'm, I'm very, I'm very, yeah, I'm fully aware of what I am and what I'm working with and.

Yeah, but anyways.

So I kind of gave a highlight reel of your, your LinkedIn profile and some of the official titles you have.

I first came to know who you were not through hardcore.

And you're going to be an interesting guest because a lot of the, the folks we've had on are like, oh, I got into hardcore at 13 years old, but you got into hardcore a little bit later.

But I kind of want to map out your, your trajectory in life.

I first came to know who you were through your journalism work in the.

Yeah, kind of.

How did you get started in journalism and.

Sure.

And how did you wind up at the dnc?

So I started working at the Democrat Chronicle, which was my hometown paper, born and bred Rochester guy.

Moved away for undergrad and grad school and you know, got done with grad school.

I'm like, oh, I don't really have anything to do.

I guess I'm gonna move back home and you know, end up moving back to live with my parents when I was 23, three again.

And my dad and I ran into the old assistant sports eder from the Democrat Chronicle, a guy named Jim Caster over at Barnes and Noble.

He used to.

In Pittsford.

He used to do a lot of work over there apparently.

And my dad was like, you know who that is?

I'm like, I, I have no idea.

My dad was like, you should go introduce yourself.

And we communicated for a few months and started working part time at the paper when I was 24.

Local sports, doing high schools and kind of like the first man out of the bullpen.

So I would, you know, get to cover like a Bill's training camp or like a AMEX game or like a Red Wings game if someone was on vacation, like some other part time, full time, staff part time.

I studied journalism.

I knew I wanted to be a journalist for a long, long time.

My dad was, was one of my biggest influences because he was the guy who always knew a little bit about something because he would read, you know, three newspapers every morning.

So he was the guy who always have like a really good conversation with people and, and you know, find that common ground and kind of be an expert on just about everything, which, which I thought was really inspiring.

So it was always really cool for me that I could be like, you know, I want to, I want to impress him.

I want to, you know, just, you know, make good with Your dad.

So that was.

That was really important to me.

And so I started.

Started my journalism career, really, in ninth grade, the Ironicoid High school.

Started writing a column for the roit, which is the Westero High School student newspaper.

I did that for four years and then decided I wanted to study journalism.

Went out to the University of Montana, actually, and studied journalism out there, and then worked for the local newspaper out there as a high school.

High school sports reporter, which was the Missoulian in Missoula, Montana.

So I spent three years out there.

Ended up.

They were like, hey, you can stay out here.

We're gonna pay you $24,000 a year.

I'm like, oh, that's.

That's great.

I don't think I can survive on that.

They're like, well, it's a.

It's a cheap town.

Like, have you tried to pay rent in this town?

And so I ended up going to grad school at the University of Maine.

And that's when I moved back home, when I was like, what the.

What the heck am I gonna do with myself?

And then I ended up with the paper.

So I was there for 14 years.

First half of my career, I spent local sports.

Got laid off from there after about 10 months.

Was unemployed for a few months, and then went back to work for the dnc.

So I was making more on unemployment than I was as a journalist, which says a lot about our society, right?

When I was started covering, I was a breaking news reporter.

So I was working that 4 to midnight, like 5 to 1 shift.

Spend a lot of time at crime scenes and courtrooms and kind of.

I called it being a journalistic first responder.

So, you know, I'd be sitting there in front of the police scanner and waiting for stuff to happen and got to see a lot of stuff in and around the city and just kind of thought it was wildly important that, you know, someone was there to kind of bear witness and kind of share what was going on and, you know, tell as many is include as many different perspectives on those stories.

I've one cat using the litter box in the corner.

I have another cat using the scratching pad.

And I have another cat here who's farting and sneezing.

That's our youngest cat.

Her name is Yams.

So, yeah, we adopted three cats.

That's a whole other story.

And because I'm in the basement so I don't wake up the, the one year old and the four year old.

And so journalism was just kind of a lifeline for me.

I wanted to be that person who knew a little bit of everything, like my d. And it was, it was, I don't know, it was, it was just such a cool experience to get to, to work my.

For my local.

But, you know, I was there for 14 years and I led the newsroom and page use and bylines and subscriptions and topped out at $41,000.

So, you know, my wife used to call it.

She said I was supplementing my journalism habit.

Like it was my, my addiction was my journalism addiction.

So I wouldn't have been able to do that for the, probably the last four or five years of my journalism career unless my wife was supplementing my existence as a journalist.

I, I forgot already, but it seems.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

Yeah.

My, my first full time job that I had, like out of school, I think it paid like 35 maybe.

And I look back on that and like, somehow I made that work.

And I wish I had never updated my lifestyle from like that point onward because I would be so freaking rich I could retire by now.

But you know, you have a tendency to, to collect more things and.

Right.

You know, get the car payment or something.

Yeah.

Oh, geez, they're so expensive, man, I had no clue how much paper towel I was gonna go through with kids.

So many Kleenexes.

Yeah.

Every time you have to blow your nose requires like 6 Kleenexes according to my 4 year old.

But yeah.

So you, you dropped a lot on there.

You went to Montana for school and, and, and Maine for graduate school.

Like the Call of the Wild there was that like.

I assume you're in Missoula for, for school, right?

Yep.

What's that population like?

Because I know, I've heard of Missoula.

I've seen it on a map.

Yeah.

I don't know.

So Missoula is like 50.

Actually, Missoula is a little bigger than ironic white, honestly.

So.

But it's, it's kind of like an Ithaca or Burlington, Vermont kind of vibe.

You know, it's this.

It's a gigantic red state.

But Missoula is, you know, the.

The liberal arts town in the middle of.

Of that, you know, that.

That red desert.

So Missoula was.

Was a really, really cool place.

I would have.

Would have gladly stayed out there if I.

If I would have been able to make it work.

And.

But I think things worked out okay.

And.

Yeah.

So I make the joke to my wife that, you know, eventually we're gonna move back out west, and she's like.

She's like.

She's like.

She's like, so that's not gonna happen.

But, yeah, Missoula was really cool, but I got to.

It's a.

It's a really good journalism program.

So my, My mom.

Both my parents work for Kodak.

My mom, the summer before my senior year of high school, she worked for Kodak doing document imaging, health imaging.

So her job was to, like, sell X ray equipment and service contracts to hospitals.

So the summer before my senior year of high school, she was like, we should go out to Montana to, you know, see all the beauty.

But also, it's like, I want to meet a lot of the people I've been talking to on the phone for like, 10, 15 years.

But I was like, I. I was like, I know I want to do journalism, so let's.

Let's check it out and just kind of fell in love with it, honestly.

And I. I was one of those people that really, you know, I was born in the city, grew up, but then grew up in Western Equate.

When I moved here when we were like three or four, I was born over.

Over near Aquinas, actually.

Oh.

I spent.

Spent time over there as a young kid.

Yeah, I was born on Bryant street, you know, just.

Just south of Aquinas.

And.

But I really needed to get out of Rochester.

Was.

Was.

Was vitally important.

High school was a high school.

Was.

Was.

Was.

Was not.

Not fun for me.

Just, you know, a combination of my immaturity and my big mouth and shocking that I have a big mouth still, right?

Yeah.

Well, it's funny because I worked for the Irondequoit Library and I work with a couple people, one of whom went to high school with you, and they said you were kind of a troublemaker in high school.

Yeah, that's an understatement.

I was, I was going to ask about, did you have any breaking news stories in the paper when you.

When you're on a.

Or were you shushed at all?

Well, between seventh and 11th grade, I was suspended 11 times in high school or junior high to senior, to start to junior.

And the only reason I wasn't suspended senior was the.

The woman I consider kind of my second mom.

She was like.

She bet me a Palm Pilot BlackBerry that if I didn't get suspended, that she would buy me, you know, like, 150 pod pilot.

I saw.

So senior year, I was on my best behavior.

I had.

I had some issues with the high school paper.

A lot of it was due to my maturity.

Publishing things that, like, you know, looking back at it now, I'm, like, thinking I was funny.

I'm like.

Like, this is just rude.

Like, this is just mean.

Like, just stuff like that.

So it was.

It was a good experience.

I was still, you know, still mad.

23, 24 years later, whatever it is that I wasn't allowed to.

That wasn't asked to be the editor in chief of the paper.

That's a whole other story.

But I got to be the editor chief of the yearbook.

So I made.

I made that work.

Yeah.

So high school was a.

Was a.

Was a.

Was a wild ride.

But it was mainly because I was just very mature and very emotionally unintelligent, I guess you could say.

And, yeah, I think a lot of.

Us fall into that boat.

Yeah.

But sorry to cut you off there, Greg.

No, no.

I was a goody two shoes.

And I was having a conversation at some point in the past with a friend of mine who I'm still friends with to this day, Nate.

He's in.

In my band.

And we both read an article about the Yankees suck T shirts and.

And Chris from Bridge 9 and all the shenanigans they got into selling those T shirts and making a fortune on those shirts.

And we both came away with the same conclusion, which was we should have committed more crimes when we were younger, because at least we'd have some interesting stories now.

So I'm a little envious.

I'm curious.

What's this news story that stands out the most to you at your high school paper?

The Missoula paper, and then the dnc.

And if you have a story from Ithaca, you can share that.

But that seemed like kind of a short.

Yeah, so I think I was just covering Cornell sports.

It was really fun.

I got the.

Actually, like, I got to cover, like, the Cornell women's hockey team and the Cornell men's lacrosse team were, like, the two stories I got to follow the most, and those were filled with some really great, great folks.

So that was.

Looking back on.

It was.

Was a really good experience.

But high school.

So I wrote a high school.

I wrote a column every.

All.

All four years of high school.

Had, like, different names every year.

I think it was, like, the privileges of being a freshman or like, it was just like.

It was like the.

Something of something, like being a junior, being a senior, being a sophomore, and actually won a gold award from the New York State.

Whatever.

It's based in Syracuse, but it's the New York State, like, High School Newspaper Association.

And the award that I won, a gold award, it was for an apology.

I had to write back in the.

Either freshman or sophomore year where I made.

I wrote something that was just like.

Just totally unfunny and just like.

Like, looking back at it, just like.

Like, mean.

Like, I.

Like, I. I felt like I was kind of like, othering people.

Like, I shouldn't have been doing.

Like, I just.

I was.

But I wrote, like, this apology because that was, like, part of my punishment.

And I wanted a gold award, like, for the best column in the state for writing an apology.

So that was always the joke that I was, like, the one person who could, like, win an award for, like, being scolded for being wrong and then, like, having to, you know, atone for that by apologizing for it.

And I remember when I won the award, the woman who was a professor at Syracuse, at Newhouse, which is the journalism school at Syracuse, she introduced me as the ubiquitous Will Cleveland.

And I was just like.

I didn't know what that word meant at the time.

Like, you know, I'm like, oh, it means I'm.

I'm always around.

I'm, like, always present.

I'm like, you know, the person who's always at the forefront or, you know, trying to make himself the.

I don't know.

So I wanted an award for.

For an apology in high school, which is.

Which is just so dumb.

And Missoula was fun because I just got to write about a lot of, like, weird, little, tiny high schools, you know, So I would.

I didn't have a car at that point, so I would have to sign out the Missoulian truck every time.

I would have to, like, go across the state because it was in western Montana.

And, you know, you're covering Missoula, which has four high schools, you know, three big high schools, which is like the double A classification, which is.

Anyways, who cares about them?

You don't.

I don't need to name the Missoula high schools.

You don't care and so I would have to go to like Butte or like Plains Montana, or Hot Springs or Libby or Kalispell or Polson, like these.

All these weird little spots in Montana.

So that was just one of the cool things, was just seeing a lot of the state just from having to travel around.

And I remember I. I didn't have a driver's license when I was about to move out to Montana.

I was 18 and a half.

I was like.

I was like, you know, you can't move to Montana without having a driver's license.

And like, because all my friends in high school had driver's license, I'm like, I never had to do it.

So I remember I had to.

I bailed my driver's test two or three times.

One because I couldn't parallel park, one because I was going like 34 to 30 mile per hour zone type thing.

So just.

Just finally getting my driver's license.

Like a week before I moved to Montana.

I think I got my driver's license on my dad's birthday, which was August 23rd.

Wow.

I remember things.

Really weird things.

And so just.

Just having the ability to.

To meet a lot of cool people, see a lot of different things.

Montana was just kind of formative to.

To who I am.

I don't know.

I really.

I really enjoyed my time there.

The DNC was.

There's a few things that I'm.

I remember I'd clocked out for the night, and that's when I got news that there had been the quad triple homicide.

I think it was seven or eight people that were shot total outside the Boys and Girls Club, Genesee Street.

So, like, clocking back in and going to that and just being up there all night, just like, you know, being the person who was kind of feeding the newsroom.

I think it was me, editor, who I, you know, alerted to what was going on.

And I had one of my friends, Lauren Petracca, who's a really phenomenal photographer who does a lot of really cool freelance stuff now.

She actually took all the photos that I use as promo stuff for my beard newsletter now.

But she does, like, some freelance stuff for the New York Times and some other really cool publications now.

And she's a Pittsford, Pittsford grad.

And so, like, that was just.

That was like my third week, second week, when I was officially like the breaking news report of the paper.

So, like, that was just formative.

But I did a lot of really, really great reporting.

But I did A.

So 50A, the repeal of 50Amade all these records available to the public.

So I filed hundreds and hundreds, hundreds of FOIL requests and helped build a statewide database of police disciplinary records.

And one of my proudest things is I sent the FOIL into the city of Rochester.

That ultimately led to the city, Rochester, publishing all of their police system records online so the public could look at it even without a FOIL request.

So stuff like that is stuff that I'm really proud of.

You know, things that you can feel like they can have, like, a tangible impact on the public.

Yeah, that's awesome.

And, and I just have one thing that maybe you can tell us a little bit about, because I, I, I mean, up until probably maybe a decade ago, I had no idea what a FOIL was.

So can you explain, explain to someone that might not know what that is and how they can access that?

Yeah, absolutely.

Because I think that's really an interesting part of our.

Yeah, our world that we.

The funny part is I've had, I've had some really good chats with your wife, Chris, about.

Of course, yeah, absolutely.

Related to some Monroe County Sheriff's Office stuff.

So FOIL is the Freedom of Information Law, which makes it so you can file a request with the local government, with a local police department to gain access to records that should be public.

So whether it's police disciplinary records, whether it's, you know, budget documents, usually there's some sort of FOIL access records.

Officer for For a town or a village or a, or a city.

I'll.

You'll.

You can.

The best way to do it is you like, Google whatever kind of municipality you're dealing with.

So say you're trying to find something in Ogden or, or Brockport or Rochester or Pittsford or whatever.

You know, you Google Pittsford, FOIL request, and it should take you to someplace on their website.

Each place you tends to have sort of a different process for it.

Some places, like the more advanced places, have some sort of online portal where you can file stuff.

City of Rochester is good because you can file stuff and kind of track it through a portal.

Other places, like the town of Greece is a gigantic cluster pain in the ass where you have to email their town clerk and you know, with your request.

And within five days the municipality is supposed to confirm request of, or sorry, confirm receipt of your request.

And then within 20 business days you're supposed to have some sort of response.

Most of the time you're going to get some sort of bullshit denial.

Not denial, but some sort of delay.

That's where I've, I've, I have, I have language saved for all the different types of appeals and requests that I file.

So I kind of usually use some templates that have been either written by some of my lawyer friends or just kind of used from, from experience, you know.

So FOIL request is just a good way for the public to have some checks and balances and really have some accountability for local governments or police departments or whatever agency you're trying to deal with.

That's, you know, dealing with taxpayer, taxpayer dollars and records.

Freedom of Information law is why every single email I write, I just assume possibly someone could look at it.

And like, my friends who work in the private sector are like, oh, that must be awful to feel like someone's like, looking over your shoulder.

But once you just like, accept that that's the reality of working in the public sector, makes it easier to like, avoid unnecessary conflict with people because you're just like, all right, well, I'm going to conduct myself.

Like someday three years from now, a random person's gonna look at this and maybe put it all over social media or even in, in, you know, traditional media.

Right.

I just assume that my, my wife always tells me that I need to be less emotional in my responses.

So I'll, I'll, I'll run stuff past her.

She's also my social media consultant and she's a good, good person to have on payroll.

And so I'll, you know, I'll Be like before I, before I send something to someone, I'm like, you know, does, does this, can I do this?

Because there should, should I word this differently?

Which is weird because I'm the writer of, you know, and she'd be like, you know, there's too many I feel statements or there's too many like, you know, like this is, this is what this is doing to me.

It's like just stick to the facts.

So that's, that's what foil kind of reminds me of.

You know, as a public employee myself now, you know, work for the Police Accountability Board for the city roster.

You, you have to remember that, you know, just, just remain professional and remain kind of cool and objective and kind of a little detached almost.

Yeah.

So did your journalism work, especially the story about the database or the database that you helped put together, is that kind of what got you the, the gig in the Police Accountability Board?

Yeah.

So the first, the first executive director of the pab, Connor Dwyer Reynolds kind of courted me.

I had a lot of interaction with him when I was covering, you know, the formation of the PAB and which is the civilian led orbital site organization, Rochester.

We should probably, for people who are unfamiliar with it, either locally or outside of Rochester, it's kind of a unique board, but kind of give us a CliffsNotes version of what it is and what it does and how it came to be.

There was a really fascinating study written by Ted Forsyth and Barbara Lacquer Ware where they looked at police disciplinary records and police accountability in the city of Rochester and wrote a.

Both academics, they wrote a paper.

It was called the Case for Police Accountability.

And Rochester I think was the, the title of it.

That was the first, first PAB.

Now where the Police Accountability Board, but the Police Advisory Board back in the 60s was made up of a bunch of white dudes.

The funny part is a lot of these people didn't have to live in the city Rochester.

So you had like people living outside of the city Rochester, but they were only able to look at, they looked at claims of excessive force was what they looked at.

Now they had one employee that had a budget of $5,000.

The budget was to cover their part time clerk.

They were ultimately killed because of a series of lawsuits that were filed by the police union.

So the first PAB and roster failed for a number of different reasons.

So that led to a number of different kind of civilian oversight organizations.

I'm giving you a history of civilian oversight roster because I know this stuff way too well.

And we.

So the PAB that in its current form, the Police Accountability Board was replaced by.

Was, sorry, replaced the Civilian Review Board.

They looked at internal investigations that had already been decided by the police.

So they could either agree or disagree was kind of the extent of their power.

And so this, this paper by, by Ted and and Barbara kind of kickstarted this conversation about, you know, what would happen if, if there was more accountability with the police department, what happens if there was more oversight over them?

And that led to a really concerted and joint effort among a bunch of different groups, community and negotiations, ultimately city council and the mayor, who was lovely, Warren at that time to look at what would, what would civilian oversight look like in Rochester if it were to change?

Right.

What's that?

Was that unanimously passed?

I believe so.

So police people in Rochester overwhelmingly said they wanted this Police Accountability Board to exist.

So that led to about two years.

So our board is, is made up of nine volunteer members.

I'm part of the professional staff that supports this board.

I work in the Policy and oversight division.

So I do, I work on the long term systemic investigation.

So looking at the policies, patterns, practices and procedures of the police department.

So looking at whether it's, you know, I looked at the budget for rpd.

I've looked at juvenile use of forest policies.

I did a gigantic study about protest policies, currently looking at a few different things.

So that was approved by voters.

So my job is pretty close to what I was doing with the paper just has to do with a lot more research.

I still file a ton of FOIL requests currently involved in some foil fights with Monroe county and the state police.

So, yeah, it's, it's, it's fun, it's frustrating, it's important, but it was really cool.

And it's been kind of transformative for my family because, you know, I went to work for the city, Rochester, and I immediately make a living wage.

We have basically free health care.

I have.

I paid no pension system well invested in that soon.

So it's, it's, it's pretty remarkable.

It's.

You know, the work's really important.

I don't know what this.

More on cats trying to do next to me and why are you trying to go back there?

Oh, she's back in the spot.

She should be the, the fat, stinky one that I was talking about earlier.

Dms.

And so, yeah, that's kind of been the trick to the pav.

But I got roped in this because it was very similar to what I was doing as a journalist.

And, you know, it's, it's.

It's making these professional connections amongst academics and reading papers and doing a lot of legal research.

But the cool part is I've had to learn so many different skills, whether it's, you know, I've never thought I'd be a proponent of spreadsheets.

So it's just, it's, it's.

It's been good.

It's been.

It's been frustrating, it's been hard.

But it's, it's important to have a. I'm now the most senior member of the police accountability staff, which is just wild.

A lot of.

Yeah.

Anyways.

So you said a lot of stuff that I like, have thoughts about, like the.

I think the Police Accountability Board is.

Is.

Is a really interesting experiment because it's not common that like every city has something like this.

The same way that, like, every city might have a school board.

Yeah.

But I've often felt pretty common in.

New York state, honestly.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Outside of New York, though, it's not really all the standard fare.

Different.

Different powers and capabilities, though, which is okay.

Part of our.

Rochester.

Rochester was set up as pen of this.

Kind of set up in a manner that this is.

I don't know, we're.

We've kind of been like a state statewide test case.

Like we could have the power to do a lot of things.

And there's been numerous court cases that have been brought by the Police Locust Club.

You know, they're, they're doing their job.

They're protecting their members.

And I respect what they're doing because they're doing what they're, what they're empowered to do.

And so, like, one lawsuit took away our disciplinary powers.

The current lawsuit that's currently up for appeal took away our ability to look at cases of individual misconduct.

So the systemic stuff that I look at, so my job hasn't been impacted by the most current lawsuit.

So it's just, it's, it's been fascinating to watch.

Common Thread is co hosted by Greg Ben and Rory Van Grohl, with creative support from Rob Antonucci.

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For news and updates, contact us@common threadhxcpodcastmail.com Common Thread is a part of the Lunchadore podcast network.

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